Theorizing Religion in Antiquity - Nickolas P. Roubekas
11. Metaphor and Religion in Ancient Rome
Theorizing Religion in Antiquity - Nickolas P. Roubekas
Spencer E. Cole [+]
University of Minnesota
Spencer Cole is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Minnesota, USA. His publications include Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and articles on Roman religion in the republican and imperial periods, Augustan poetry, and Greek drama. He is also a contributor to The Routledge Dictionary of Ancient Mediterranean Religions.
Description
This paper employs contemporary metaphor theory to unpack and analyze structural principles that configure ancient Roman religious discourses. Attuned to the cognitive dimensions of metaphor, it explores how metaphorical framings normalized new ideas and arrangements in phases of religious reordering at Rome. It focuses on cognitive "cross-domain mapping" in two case studies: the naturalization of new divinities at Rome and the formation of novel concepts of death and afterlife.