Death, Ritual, and Burial in Flavian Poetry

Antony Augoustakis, Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Episodes of death, elaborate ritual, and burial abound in Flavian epic poetry. In this talk, I examine the episodes that describe a “fake” funeral to investigate the strong ties between burial, lament and civil war. In particular, female lament is opposed to and complements male grief, as lamentation becomes a vessel for letting out the darkest side of human predisposition towards despotism.