This is a study of religion and cult in Hellenistic temples and sanctuaries with special reference to the incorporation of the Roman Imperial cult in Anatolian temples.

Explores two instances early in the Metamorphoses where chaos exerts itself on the formed world, namely the climate crises triggered by the flood and Phaethon narratives. These narratives frequently occur as a pair in philosophical discourses, where conflagrations and floods are seen as part of a regular cosmic cycle, whereby the world moves between phases of increasing and decreasing entropy, such as in the Stoic theory of the Great Year or in Empedocles’ cosmogony. In such cases, the Phaethon and flood narratives are seen as myths that can be mined for evidence of a ‘true’ scientific doctrine. In the Metamorphoses, however, the narratives of Phaethon and the flood do not indicate a stable cycle but rather are expressions of a world continually veering towards a chaotic collapse. This becomes evident when reading these narratives through the cosmic theories of Empedocles, Plato, and Lucretius.

Provides a short epilogue that discusses how the works of Ovid and especially the Metamorphoses were aligned with Platonist and Neoplatonist views of the cosmos in the eleventh and twelfth centuries before making some concluding remarks.

This is a chapter on the architectural analysis and comparison of the Artemis Temple of Sardis and other Hellenistic temples with special reference to their architectonic qualities explicated through the philosophies of Jonathan Kepler and Louis I. Kahn.

Explores the interaction between love poetry and philosophy in Ovid and Plato. The philosophical uncertainty that results from Ovid’s visions of fluid ontologies is not restricted to the Metamorphoses but can also be identified in his earlier elegiac work, as love too is subject to constant change. Love and desire are also frequently theorized in ancient philosophy, with Ovid’s didactic Ars Amatoria integrating and distorting elements of this tradition. Its combination of a speculative approach to love with manipulative rhetoric, all with the goal of fostering and pursuing the object of desire, has clear precedents in the philosophical tradition, most notably Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus. The nature of love, however, remains fundamentally elusive, and its definition something of a paradox. The dangers of abduction and sexual assault, however, remain a dark undercurrent in both Ovid’s and Plato’s works. This danger is closely associated with poetry in the Phaedrus, which includes myths of abduction and metamorphosis that internally disrupt the philosophical dimensions of the dialogue. Comparisons are also drawn between passages from the Symposium and Phaedrus and Ovid’s narratives of Narcissus and Hermaphroditus from the Metamorphoses.

Explores how Ovid in the Tristia and Ex Ponto adopts imagery associated with the eschatological exile of the soul and instead applies it to his own fate at the shores of Tomis so as to give his geographical banishment cosmic significance. Ovid plays upon a longstanding association between philosophy and exile and the notion that the philosopher may be seen as a citizen of the world and so is effectively immune to banishment; Ovid instead views himself as superseding the philosophers and especially Socrates in the hardships he endures in Tomis. The dangers of misreading and the potential destructive dimensions of the text are discussed in relation to Ovid’s Ibis and Plato’s myth of Theuth from the Phaedrus. Connections are also traced with Plato’s Phaedo and the Epistles, as we turn our attention back to ideas of misreading and failures of communication that result from the dislocations of exile.