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Citizens of ancient Greece and Rome were expected to reproduce, whereas violators of this guideline were penalized by governmental legislation. An exception was made for the Vestal Virgins and the eunuch‐priests of the Cybele cult because of their religious office. The obligation to reproduce hides a cultural conviction that sexual pleasure was potentially dangerous and antisocial because orgasm was associated with epilepsy and loss of vital spirit.

This chapter examines the portrayal of Imilce, Hannibal's wife, and Masinissa's mother, i.e. of two women from the periphery of the empire, to demonstrate the significance of gendered otherness. Imilce is fashioned as a reasonable Roman matrona, who denounces child-sacrifice, yet she is marked as a hybridic, unclassified, other. By contrast, Masinissa's mother promotes alliance with the Romans and is placed within reach of the centre, as she preaches Roman ideals of fidelity and piety. At the end, Claudia Quinta's intervention for the arrival of Cybele, a foreign deity, proves that the conflation of Romanness and otherness is no longer a threat but a necessary condition for a prosperous future.

Three major episodes set at what would be the sites of important Greek colonies are discussed as examples of a definition of space through colonialist discourse and ways in which the narrative complicates those claims. With the Argonauts’ landing in the trackless and void desert in North Africa (Book 4) and their carrying of the Argo following the prints of a horse that miraculously appeared to Lake Tritonis near the eventual site of Cyrene, the poem offers an archetype of the cultural production of space and claims this area for Greeks. The episode at Kyzikos (Book 1) is more mixed. The Argonauts kill their hosts by mistake in contravention of the basic Greek value of hospitality. This is memorialized by signs on the land, alongside other signs anticipating Greek colonization and the Argonauts’ ridding the area of earth-born giants and their appropriation of the Asiatic Cult of the Great Mother (Rheia/Cybele). The violence inherent in colonization is thus acknowledged. The episode at the site of Heraclea, by contrast, presents colonization as cooperation between newcomers and local people, with the mastery of the former acknowledged. But the strange aitia of the tombs of two dead Argonauts expose the limits of sign-making and spatial production.

This chapter explores the cult and rituals of Magna Mater (or Cybele) and Attis in imperial Rome. It briefly reviews the history and festivals of the goddess and the sacrifice of the taurobolium (focusing on the controversial account by Prudentius), throwing light on some of the very processes by which we can (or cannot) access ancient rituals and festivals. But the main focus is on the eunuch priests (or galli) and the unresolved tension between the incorporation of the cult and its rejection. The paper argues that Roman reactions to these priests, the hostility and the ridicule, needs to be seen in the context of constructive debates on the nature of what is Roman in Roman religion—debates that lie at the heart of Roman religious culture.

This chapter focuses on a cluster of epigrams connected with Cybele’s cult and her priests and priestesses, in particular her galli (emasculated priests). In most of these poems, the galli make a dedication to Cybele that is related to the restraining of a lion in a cave through music typical of the goddess’ orgiastic rites. The chapter examines the relation of the epigrams to Catullus 63, which intriguingly comes before a string of negative or indignant portrayals of Cybele’s galli in imperial Rome and after critical remarks on the lack of control caused by her music in various literary sources. The chapter argues that Catullus reversed the motif of the lion’s encounter with the gallus in the cave, which was used in several epigrams to offer a defensive or eulogistic presentation of Cybele’s cult, in order to express an opposing position.

Christianity was the only religion in the Roman Empire that offered universal salvation. Porphyry came to the same conclusion, but opted for the creation of his tripartite soteriology to compete with Christian universalism. Yet none of the pagan cults was equipped to offer one way of salvation to everybody during times when people were looking for a sense of safety and well-being. With its central message of salvation through Jesus Christ for all people, Christianity could offer such a benefit, and its program of benevolence during the period of crisis undoubtedly reinforced its attractiveness. Constantinian universalism, which attempted to use Christianity as the primary unifying agent of the Roman Empire, cashed in on the stocks that had been bought by preceding pagan emperors, the major difference now being that there was One God, One Emperor, and One (unified) Empire.

This chapter looks at the role which physical geography plays in promoting regional integration by examining how the forests of Mt Ida functioned within the Troad. Mt Ida has often been imagined as a place free from, even hostile to, human intervention and habitation. We encounter this characterization not just in the literature produced by urban elites who may not have had first-hand experience of the forests, but also in the religious practices of those who lived around Mt Ida in antiquity, and indeed in the folklore of the Turkmen who live there today. Yet the reality, as revealed in particular by the evidence of Theophrastos’ Historia plantarum, is that the forested uplands of Mt Ida were intensely cultivated by the lowland cities of the middle Scamander valley and the coastal Troad. Mt Ida has historically been an important source of resources, above all pitch and timber, which have been crucial to the lowland economy and which gained significant value through convenient access to water-borne transport via the Scamander and the Aegean. It is thus precisely the environmental differences between the forests of Mt Ida and the lowland Troad which bring them together. This is true not just economically, but also culturally: the idea of the forests as the antithesis of lowland urban society has played an important role in identity formation for precisely those communities which know these forests best.

The eunuchs serving the cult of the Great Mother appeared in Greek and Latin literature during the Hellenistic period, and they persisted as a popular motif up until late antiquity. From the very beginning, the figure of gallos or gallus evoked feelings of bewilderment, abhorrence, and disgust. The authors mocked their unmanly behavior and womanish appearance and denounced their alleged moral failings and indecency. Whereas the Greek references generally retained an amusing tone, the Roman portrayals of galli often oozed with contempt. Many features of the descriptions were designed to induce disgust responses and, thus, to marginalize the galli in order to counter the potential threat they posed to the existing social hierarchies. For, the self-castrated cultic officials defied several basic assumptions and categorizations upon which ancient societies rested. In particular, they seemed to challenge the fundamental gender division along with its inbuilt belief in male superiority. Chapter keywords