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Horace’s second book of Satires (30 BCE), written in the troubled period around Actium, shows two big differences from Book 1. First, there is a new focus on the Saturnalia, which is the setting for both 2.3 and 2.7. This was traditionally a time for playful freedoms and festive self-indulgences (and had some affinities with satura itself). But second, Horace’s own already-humble persona becomes far less visible, and the original giver of diatribes now receives them from others. How do we resolve the contradiction? The reason why Horace de-carnivalized the Saturnalia is that his close friend Virgil recently engaged with Saturnus and the Golden Age in the Georgics (29 BCE). The Saturnalia could no longer be a straightforward revival of fun and freedom. Instead, at the dangerous birth of the Principate, Horace makes the Saturnalia another way to refract his satiric voice. Horace avoids talking about either a Golden Age or Saturn in his post-Aeneid poetry (Zanker 2010). I argue that this festive Saturnalian vision is already missing from Satires 2. The reason is the same. Virgil and Horace’s poetic projects, simultaneously fashioning Roman identity, had to move in parallel: crossing paths would be fatal to both.

Horace’s second book of Satires (30 BCE), written in the troubled period around Actium, shows two big differences from Book 1. First, there is a new focus on the Saturnalia, which is the setting for both 2.3 and 2.7. This was traditionally a time for playful freedoms and festive self-indulgences (and had some affinities with satura itself). But second, Horace’s own already-humble persona becomes far less visible, and the original giver of diatribes now receives them from others. How do we resolve the contradiction? The reason why Horace de-carnivalized the Saturnalia is that his close friend Virgil recently engaged with Saturnus and the Golden Age in the Georgics (29 BCE). The Saturnalia could no longer be a straightforward revival of fun and freedom. Instead, at the dangerous birth of the Principate, Horace makes the Saturnalia another way to refract his satiric voice. Horace avoids talking about either a Golden Age or Saturn in his post-Aeneid poetry (Zanker 2010). I argue that this festive Saturnalian vision is already missing from Satires 2. The reason is the same. Virgil and Horace’s poetic projects, simultaneously fashioning Roman identity, had to move in parallel: crossing paths would be fatal to both.

This article offers an approach to folkloric motifs in pre-modern literature, and with it, two new answers to old questions. The first is how Shakespeare got the idea for Yorick’s skull. Most critics have suggested a general inspiration from the memento mori theme in the visual arts. Instead, I offer the first ever investigation of a textual source. The second question is why, in an Irish legend recorded in two twelfth-century texts, a certain man’s tomb made women fart and laugh when they saw it. I offer both answers in the form of a genealogy for the jester’s skull motif, which proves to be a pattern of cultural migrations between Francia, Ireland, Norway, and England between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. The results shed new light on several European literary texts, both Latin and vernacular, not least scene 5.1 of Hamlet. By reconstructing a historical development from a fart-prompting tomb to a jester’s skull, I demonstrate that supernatural motifs can survive significant adaptation between different literary genres, as religious, obscene, and humorous elements are edited or recoded.

Medusa the Gorgon is arguably the best known of all monsters from the ancient Mediterranean world: she was undeniably the most visible. The design known to art historians as the gorgoneion appears on countless art-objects throughout Greek and Roman history, though its style changes profoundly over time, as does the narrative connected with it.

This is a review article about the arcade videogame 'Pandora's Palace' (Konami 1983).

After half a century of existence, digital games now regularly portray women in and around the ancient world, but this situation took time to evolve. In this chapter, I propose the transformative years 1985–7 as a point of origin, when the first playable woman from classical antiquity appeared in a digital game. In that period, many developers created fantasized versions of Greek mythology, just as female protagonists began to gain popularity. This chapter examines SNK’s 1986 arcade game Athena, the intersection of these two trends, which would both have lasting effects on how classical receptions in gaming evolved.

Medusa the Gorgon is arguably the best known of all monsters from the ancient Mediterranean world: she was undeniably the most visible. The design known to art historians as the gorgoneion appears on countless art-objects throughout Greek and Roman history, though its style changes profoundly over time, as does the narrative connected with it.

The golden age of beat-em-up videogames, in arcade and console gaming in the 1980s and 1990s, has a large but neglected cast of Greek and Roman warriors. Gladiators and centurions represented Italy and Greece in worldwide tournaments such as Fighters History, reflecting the fantastical impressions of casual cultural tourists. There are traces of classical antiquity in the major franchises Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Tekken, and above all Soulcalibur, in which the Greek Sophitia is the chosen warrior of Hephaestus. At times the ancient world is literally a mere backdrop, as the Parthenon or Colosseum is incongruously overlaid with more contemporary spectacle. But this genre transforms this cultural background in surprising ways, exposing what it really means to audiences whose attention is focused on the foreground.

[Description quoted from an early draft of the introductory chapter:] Dunstan Lowe starts with a nuanced survey of the territory, sensibly suggesting hermeneutic restraint in how to deal with the phenomenon of possible allegorization: in many instances, the allusive recall of a historical event or figure is perhaps just that: an allusive recall rather than a full-blown allegory. He then goes on to consider the intertextual presence of one late-republican figure who has so far eluded proper recognition, let alone received sustained discussion: Sertorius. Lowe shows how the tame stag of Aeneid 7 and Hercules and Cacus episode in Aeneid 8, while also standing in allusive dialogue with a wide range of literary texts also reworks themes and motifs from historiographical treatments of Sertorius. He concludes by reasserting the principle of hermeneutic abstinence: the intertextual presence of Sertorius in the fabric of Virgil’s epic narrative does not yield any obvious allegory or clear political message. Rather, what we find on display here is Virgil’s encyclopaedic desire which informs his approach to all areas of discourse – from literary to philosophy, as well as historiography. The ambition to offer, in and through the Aeneid, a preview (however allusive) of all of Roman history and its main characters operates independent of, indeed outside and perhaps even in contradistinction to, any narrow ideological commitments, complements the Augustan teleology that constitutes the backbone of Virgil’s conception of history (for better or worse), and enriches the historiographical dimension of his epic.

Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy is the first collection of essays in English focusing on how fantasy draws deeply on ancient Greek and Roman mythology, philosophy, literature, history, art, and cult practice. Presenting fifteen all-new essays intended for both scholars and other readers of fantasy, this volume explores many of the most significant examples of the modern genre-including the works of H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, and more-in relation to important ancient texts such as Aeschylus' Oresteia, Aristotle's Poetics, Virgil's Aeneid, and Apuleius' The Golden Ass. These varied studies raise fascinating questions about genre, literary and artistic histories, and the suspension of disbelief required not only of readers of fantasy but also of students of antiquity. Ranging from harpies to hobbits, from Cyclopes to Cthulhu, and all manner of monster and myth in-between, this comparative study of Classics and fantasy reveals deep similarities between ancient and modern ways of imagining the world. Although antiquity and the present day differ in many ways, at its base, ancient literature resonates deeply with modern fantasy's image of worlds in flux and bodies in motion.

Offers the first book-length study in English or any other language on this neglected Augustan poet and his work. Provides the Latin text of Cynegetica and a new English translation, making the extant poem accessible to a wide audience. Collects a wide range of interpretive essays from an international team of scholars arranged thematically to orient the reader effectively.

Roman poets of the Augustan period reinvented monsters from Greek myth, such as Harpies, Furies, and the warring Centaurs and Giants. These monsters represented the attractions and dangers of novelty in various contexts, ranging from social values to artistic innovation. Rome’s two great epics of the early principate, Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, are both filled with mythical monsters. Like the culture that produced them, these poets were fascinated by unfamiliar forms despite their potential to disturb and disrupt. Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry is the first full-length study of monsters in Augustan poetry, and the first metapoetic reading of monstrosity in classical antiquity. Dunstan Lowe takes a fresh approach to the canonical works of Vergil, Ovid, and their contemporaries, contributing to a very recent turn toward marvels, monsters, and deformity in classical studies. Monsters provided a fantastical means to explore attitudes toward human nature, especially in its relationship with sex. They also symbolized deformations of poetic form. Such gestures were doomed to replay the defeat of hypermasculine monsters yet, paradoxically, they legitimized poetic innovation. Lowe proposes that monstrosity was acutely topical during the birth of the principate, having featured in aesthetic debates of the Hellenistic age, while also serving as an established, if controversial, means for public figures to amaze the population and display their power. Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry will appeal to scholars and students of classical Latin literature and of interdisciplinary monster studies.

Some of the most colourful evidence for Roman sexual behaviour, such as Seneca’s charge of cunnilingus and ‘menophilia’ against Mamercus Scaurus, should not be regarded as factual. Seneca applies a longstanding stereotype, directly or indirectly inspired by the tactics of Scaurus’ prosecutors, who possibly exploited a medical treatment Scaurus used.

Ausonius' poem on the number three has prompted at least four different avenues of interpretation aimed at answering the 'riddle'. I argue that all but one of them are misguided, and that the remaining one can only be speculative (though I offer some new speculations on it). I propose a different interpretation of the title, using the preface as the key to understanding the work in the wider context of Ausonius' age and individual poetics.

In videogames, classical buildings and objects are usually tarnished and collapsed. This chapter surveys how different styles of videogame from the 1980s to the 21st century depict antiquity. Four versions can be identified: its original freshness, its modern traces, and the moments of its destruction are three. The fourth is that ancient Greece and Rome were already made of ruins. This range reflects the nature of games themselves, as well as the tastes of modern audiences.

Virgil's vision of Italy in the age of heroes places great emphasis on sacred groves (often the scene of encounters with gods), and individual sacred trees (like the stump of Faunus where Aeneas' spear lodges in the final duel). This reflects a more widespread belief among the Romans that their oldest and best cultural practices concerned intimacy with, and reverence for, ancient trees. This article surveys the historical and literary evidence to associate tree-reverence with the religious origins of Roman poetry and with the mysterious god Faunus. I also argue that Virgil falsely links the battlefield practice of suspended votives--the tropaeum--with tree-worship in order to make it a token of proto-Roman values.