Ritual and Religion in Flavian Epic

This edited collection addresses the role of ritual representations and religion in the epic poems of the Flavian period (69-96 CE). Drawing on various modern studies on religion and ritual, and the relationship between literature and religion in the Greco-Roman world, it explores how we can interpret the poets' use of the relationship between gods and humans, cults and rituals, and religious activities.Divided into three major sections, thevolume includes essays on the most important religious activities and the relationship between religion and political power under the Flavian emperors. It also addresses specific episodes in Flavian epic which focus on religious activities associated with the dead and the Underworld, such aspurification, necromancy, katabasis, suicide, and burial. It finally explores the role of gender in ritual and religion.

Antony Augoustakis is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, USA). He is the author of Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (2010) and Plautus' Mercator.

List of Contributors
Preface
Texts and Translations Used
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Representing ritual and religion in Flavian epic, Antony Augoustakis
Part A: Gods and humans
1. With (a) god on our side: Ancient ritual practices and imagery in Flavian Epic, Marco Fucecchi
2. Divine messages and human actions in the Argonautica, Gesine Manuwald
3. Competing visions: Prophecy, spectacle, and theatricality in Flavian epic, Helen Lovatt
4. Argive augury and portents in the Thebaid, Anne Tuttle
5. Consider in the image of Thebes: Celestial and poetic auspicy in the Thebaid, Eleni Manolaraki
6. Malae preces and their articulation in the Thebaid, Ann Hubert
7. Hymnic features in Statian epic and the Siluae, Bruce Gibson
8. 8 Religion and Power in the Thebaid, Federica Bessone
Part B: Death and ritual
9. Chthonic ingredients and thematic concerns: The shaping of the necromancy in the Thebaid, Ruth Parkes
10. Wasted water: The failure of purification in the Thebaid, Nicholas Dee
11. Patterns of darkness: Chthonic illusion, gigantomachy, and sacrificial ritual in the Punica, R. Joy Littlewood
12. Back out of hell: The virtual Katabasis and initiation of Silius Minucius, Robert Cowan
13. Ritual murder and suicide in the Thebaid, Neil W. Bernstein
14. The death and funeral rites of Opheltes in the Thebaid, Randall Ganiban
15. Epitaphic gestures in Statius and Silius Italicus, Martin T. Dinter
Part C: Ritual and the female
16. Reconcilable differences: Anna Perenna in the battle of Cannae in the Punica, Raymond Marks
17. Medusa, Python, and Poine in Argive religious ritual, Alison Keith
18. Orphic ritual and myth in the Thebaid, Christopher Chinn
19. Dancing in Scyros: Masculinity and young women s rituals in the Achilleid, Vassiliki Panoussi
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index