This cutting-edge collection of essays offers provocative studies of ancient history, literature, gender identifications and roles, and subsequent interpretations of the republican and imperial Roman past. The prose and poetry of Cicero and Petronius, Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid receive fresh interpretations; pagan and Christian texts are re-examined from feminist and imaginative perspectives; genres of epic, didactic, and tragedy are re-examined; and subsequent uses and re-uses of the ancient heritage are probed with new attention: Shakespeare, Nineteenth Century American theater, and contemporary productions involving prisoners and veterans.

Donald Lateiner teaches Greek, Latin and Ancient History at Ohio Wesleyan University. He has published more than sixty articles and over one hundred book reviews, usually on topics connected to Hellenic historiography, nonverbal behaviors in ancient epic, and in the Greek and Roman novels.

Barbara K. Gold is Edward North Professor of Classics at Hamilton College. Her edited volume, A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, was published in 2012. She has published widely on satire, lyric and elegy, feminist theory and late antiquity.

Judith Perkins is Professor of Classics and Humanities emerita at the University of Saint Joseph. She is has authored and edited several titles, including (with Ronald F. Hock and J. Bradley Chance) Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (1998).

Notes on Contributors Introduction to a Force of Nature Donald Lateiner and Amy Richlin Part 1: Roman Literature 1. Cicero and the Alien Erich S. Gruen 2. Frigidus Sanguis: Lucretius, Virgil, and Death Michael C.J. Putnam 3. Troy and Trauma in the Aeneid Marilyn B. Skinner 4. Poetic Doubling Effects in Ovid's 'Ceyx and Alcyone' (Met. XI): Donald Lateiner 5. Naso and Gods Timothy Peter Wiseman 6. A Note on Fame and the 'Widow of Ephesus' Sheila Dickison Part 2: Gender 7. The Fragments of Terentia Amy Richlin 8. Onomastics, Intertextuality, and Gender: 'Phyllis' in Roman Poetry Jacqueline Fabre-Serris 9. Woman Warrior? Aeneas's Encounters with the Feminine Thomas Van Nortwick 10. 'And I Became a Man': Gender Fluidity and Closure in Perpetua's Prison Narrative Barbara K. Gold 11. Dynastic Weaving: Claudian, Carmina minora 46-48 Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer Part 3: Reception 12. The Spectacle of 'Bare Life' in Martial's Liber Spectaculorum and Martyr Discourse Judith Perkins 13. The Role of Physicians in the History of Greek Sport and the Olympic Revival Hugh M. Lee 14. Alessandro Piccolomini's Translation of Xenophon's Oeconomicus Diana Robin 15. Bianca: The Other African in Othello Jane Donawerth 16. Talfourd's Ion: Classical Reception and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia Lee T. Pearcy 17. Women and Classics in Victorian Oxbridge: Parallels and Contrasts Christopher Stray 18. Ancient Myth and Feminist Politics: The Medea Project and San Francisco Women's Prisons Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz 19. Theaters of War Jana Adamitis and Mary-Kay Gamel Publications of Judith P. Hallett Index