close this window
Complete the following form to e-mail a copy of this event to a friend.
Hello, The following event may be of interest to you: Bizarro Hercules: The Omphale Myth in Augustan Rome Monday, February 19, 2018 Following decades of civil war in the first century BCE, two separate myths of Hercules attained sudden popularity in Augustan Rome (ca. 31 BCE–14 CE): his epic battle with the robber-monster Cacus, and his transvestite servitude to the Lydian queen Omphale. Traditionally, both myths have been seen as part of an elaborate propaganda campaign orchestrated by/for Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, where the monster-slaying Hercules stands in for Augustus while the cross-dressed Hercules stands in for Marc Antony, Augustus’ onetime rival. However, lost amidst this political jousting are some of the striking similarities between the two myths and the contexts in which they appear. This talk will focus on how one Augustan poet in particular, the Roman elegist Propertius (ca. 47–16 BCE), treats the two myths, arguing that Propertius casts the Omphale myth as a kind of multiform of the Cacus myth, using the former to dress up some of the more troubling aspects of Hercules’ violent interventions in Rome’s mythic pre-history. Time: 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102 Sponsor: Classical Studies Program; Dean of the College; Division of Languages and Literature Contact: James Romm. E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 845-758-7283 If you would like to see more events please visit the following URL: http://flcl.bard.edu/calendar/