Ovid’s Fasti: Historical Readings at Its Bimillennium

This ground-breaking book celebrates the bimillennial anniversary of the inception of Ovid’s Fasti by offering a variety of approaches to Ovid’s poem on the Roman religious calendar. The volume does not aim at consensus but brings together experts from around the world without allowing any single prejudice to prevail. In reconstructing the value-systems which inform the poem, twelve contributors discuss topics such as the calendar, religion, politics, women, mime, myth, theatre, cult, astronomy, astrology, theology, intertextuality, gender, poetic ecphrasis, speech, time, and space. The tension arising from the discrepancy in interpretation and approach in the essays is an apt reflection of the tension arising from the contradictory and elusive nature of the Fasti itself. It will engage all those interested in the relationship between literature and society during the early Roman Principate.

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