Classical myth and film have a long history of being intertwined, as myth was made into film from the days of silent movies, and ancient texts themsel...
Greek Myth at Rome: Power
Ovid’s Metamorphoses was written during the Augustan period, and it is clear that its author was often out of tune with the political regime. This lec...
Greek Myth at Rome: Metamorphosis
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is one of the most significant ancient texts for the study of Greek mythology, but we should remember that this is a Roman work, ...
Roman Identity II: Heroines
Although Ancient Rome was clearly a patriarchal society (literally so, as the father had supreme power in the Roman household), Roman myth also featur...
Roman Identity I: Heroes
Rome’s mythic history is littered with heroes who exemplify positive and negative ways of behaving. Livy in particular is fond of using mythic figures...
Rome II: Asylum: Romulus and Remus
Romulus was revered as the founding hero of Rome, later made a god, but his myth is not without ambiguity. A significant element of the city foundatio...
Rome I: Foundation
Rome was famously founded by Romulus in 753 BCE, but that’s not the end of the story, for the Romans also traced their ancestry back to Aeneas, a surv...
Thebes II: Destruction
Incest, fratricide and patricideare central to the Theban myths explored in Athenian tragedy, particularly Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. Written during...
Thebes I: Foundation
Thebes, in central Greece, had its own distinctive foundation myths, which combined divine origin, autochthony and immigrant stories. There are severa...
Founding Athens II: Ion and Origin Myths in Tragedy
Mythological stories dramatized in Athenian tragedy provide us with a good opportunity to explore how myth is used in aparticular political and social...