Lora Holland
University of North Carolina at Asheville, Classics, Faculty Member
- Greek religion (Classics), Ancient myth and religion, Classics, Ancient Persia, Euripides, Greek Tragedy, and 24 morePlutarch, Latin Epigraphy, Archaeology, Roman Religion, Etruscan, Roman Comedy, Women in the ancient world, History of Classical Scholarship, Vergil, Ancient Mediterranean Religions, Ancient Tyrsenian Languages, Festus, Roman Art, Roman Archaeology, Etruscan Funerary Art, Zooarchaeology, Ritual Zooarchaeology, Small finds from the roman period, Roman ceramics, Bone antler and ivories, Roman Small Finds, Religion Roman Colonization, Acculturation In Roman World, Population Mobility In Roman World, Ethne, Ancient Greek Religion, Sicily, and Ancient Greek Religionedit
- Ph. D. 2002 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dissertation: Worshiping Diana: the cult of a Roman goddess in Republican Italy, directed by Jerzy Linderskiedit
At the Crossroads of Greco-Roman History, Culture, and Religion brings together recent research from a range of upcoming and well-established scholars to demonstrate the richness of the cross-cultural exchange of ideas around the ancient... more
At the Crossroads of Greco-Roman History, Culture, and Religion brings together recent research from a range of upcoming and well-established scholars to demonstrate the richness of the cross-cultural exchange of ideas around the ancient Mediterranean along with the reception of and continuing dialogues with these ideas in the medieval and modern worlds. The crossroads theme both honors the memory of our late colleague and friend Carin M. C. Green, who published an important book on the cult of Diana—one of whose aspects was Trivia, the goddess of crossroads—and emphasizes how each encounter of new topic or genre forces the reader to pause and think before proceeding down the new path.
The contents are arranged accordingly under three headings: (1) Greek philosophy, history, and historiography; (2) Latin literature, history, and historiography; and (3) Greco-Roman material culture, religion, and literature. These papers also coincide in myriad ways across the three headings, tracing themes such as friendship, leadership, and the reception of ideas in the arenas of philosophy, historiography, manuscript studies, poetry, medicine, art, and war. Within this delimited framework, the volume’s diversity of topics and approaches to a range of genres in the Greco-Roman world is intended both to appeal to the general scholar with varied interests and to offer students a wide scope through which to consider those genres.
The contents are arranged accordingly under three headings: (1) Greek philosophy, history, and historiography; (2) Latin literature, history, and historiography; and (3) Greco-Roman material culture, religion, and literature. These papers also coincide in myriad ways across the three headings, tracing themes such as friendship, leadership, and the reception of ideas in the arenas of philosophy, historiography, manuscript studies, poetry, medicine, art, and war. Within this delimited framework, the volume’s diversity of topics and approaches to a range of genres in the Greco-Roman world is intended both to appeal to the general scholar with varied interests and to offer students a wide scope through which to consider those genres.
Research Interests: Ancient History, Neronian Literature, History of Religion, Roman Religion, Manuscript Studies, and 15 moreGalen, Ancient Historiography, Lucan, Horace, Thucydides, Xenophon, Classical Reception Studies, Ancient Greek Philosophy, Catullus, Ovid (Classics), Pausanias, Hercules, Sallust, Ancient Greek Drama, and Petronius' Satyricon
Overview of the use of water and ritual objects from wells at Cetamura, for the exhibition catalogue Wells of Wonder: New Discoveries at Cetamura del Chianti, Florence Archaeological Museum, June 9-September 30, 2017.
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The report reviews the results of four campaigns of excavation in an Etruscan well at Cetamura del Chianti (2011-2014). Dug to a depth of 100 Etruscan feet around 300 B.C.E., the well was in use throughout the Late Etruscan period,... more
The report reviews the results of four campaigns of excavation in an Etruscan well at Cetamura del Chianti (2011-2014). Dug to a depth of 100 Etruscan feet around 300 B.C.E., the well was in use throughout the Late Etruscan period, overlapping in a transitional phase with the Roman Republican period (ca. 100-50 B.C.E.), and continuing in use during the early Roman Imperial period down to about 68 C.E. In the Middle Ages the shaft was subject to frequent dumping operations. This article analyzes the stratigraphy into eight chronological groups to create a framework for dating the deposits of thousands of items: bronze and silver coins, bronze situlae (buckets), artifacts of iron and iron scoriae, wooden artifacts, local and imported ceramics, astragali and other offerings associated with divination, miniature vessels, loom weights, items of personal adornment (rings of bone and bronze; ring stones of glass), implements of metal and worked bone, and floral and faunal remains.
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A cultural response to language can be detected in the mythology concerning three pairs of male and female deities in Roman religion: Liber/Libera, Faunus/Fauna, and Janus/Jana. Their same-name status usually invokes the familial... more
A cultural response to language can be detected in the mythology concerning three pairs of male and female deities in Roman religion: Liber/Libera, Faunus/Fauna, and Janus/Jana. Their same-name status usually invokes the familial relationships of the agnatic nomenclatural system, that is, brother/sister and father/daughter. The interpretation of Liber/Libera and Faunus/Fauna as husband-wife pairs in some authors could be understood in terms of the same-name status of agnatic cousins; but such marriages are rarely attested. The unusual or even scandalous treatments of these same-name divine spouses in Latin literature are best understood in light of contemporary issues in Roman culture.
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A study of CIL1(2).45, a mid-Republican dedication to the goddess Diana, made by a certain noutrix Paperia at the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis at the Lago di Nemi, Italy. This unique Republican attestation of a wet nurse has been used as... more
A study of CIL1(2).45, a mid-Republican dedication to the goddess Diana, made by a certain noutrix Paperia at the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis at the Lago di Nemi, Italy. This unique Republican attestation of a wet nurse has been used as evidence for a slave woman's prayer to Diana for a good milk supply, but the use of the nomen gentilicium, Paperia, suggests her status was freedwoman. This dedication has also been used as evidence for Diana as a goddess primarily of women's concerns, a 19th century idea not borne out by the epigraphical evidence. The use of a bronze spear point suggests instead that we look for another meaning for the dedication. In Roman culture the spear was a symbol of sovereignty. This article explores the links between this symbol and the association of Diana's cult in Republican Rome with both sovereignty and slavery, and concludes that Nurse Paperia's dedication may have been a thanks offering for her manumission, a symbol of her restoration to herself.
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On Plautus' innovative treatment of the old woman/nurse figure in the Aulularia.
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Religious and historical aspects of Euripides’ innovative aetiology for the cult of Medea’s children (Med. 1378–83) have been much discussed; less attention has been paid to Medea’s fear that an enemy might abuse her children’s corpses... more
Religious and historical aspects of Euripides’ innovative aetiology for the cult of Medea’s children (Med. 1378–83) have been much discussed; less attention has been paid to Medea’s fear that an enemy might abuse her children’s corpses and tomb if she does not bury them in Hera Acraea’s precinct. An analysis of Medea’s enemies in the play, of the practice of tomb- and corpse-violation in Greek culture, and of how beliefs about the spirits of biaiothanatoi and elucidates this fear and sets it in its cultural context.
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Plutarch draws Aemilius Paullus into the philosophical tradition both by assigning to him Pythagoras as an ancestor, and by his portrayal of the man as a type of Socrates through metaphorical imagery and anecdote. Especially pertinent are... more
Plutarch draws Aemilius Paullus into the philosophical tradition both by assigning to him Pythagoras as an ancestor, and by his portrayal of the man as a type of Socrates through metaphorical imagery and anecdote. Especially pertinent are Aemilius' roles as helmsman,
religious leader, and charioteer in his conduct of the Battle of Pydna, the narration of which comprises the bulk of the Life. His depiction of Paullus as a philosopher statesman corresponds to Cicero's portrait of the man in the Somnium Scipionis in several important respects: his self-control, his religiosity, and his interest in instructing the youth. The subtlety of Plutarch's portrait reflects his own notion of paideia, and adds to the larger picture of his acknowledged interest in Socrates and Greek philosophy in general.
religious leader, and charioteer in his conduct of the Battle of Pydna, the narration of which comprises the bulk of the Life. His depiction of Paullus as a philosopher statesman corresponds to Cicero's portrait of the man in the Somnium Scipionis in several important respects: his self-control, his religiosity, and his interest in instructing the youth. The subtlety of Plutarch's portrait reflects his own notion of paideia, and adds to the larger picture of his acknowledged interest in Socrates and Greek philosophy in general.
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This study explores the significance of Medea's conjugal family for the plot of the Medea. Both Jason and the royal family at Corinth belong to the House of Aeolus; coherent reference to this House is central to the play's mythological... more
This study explores the significance of Medea's conjugal family for the plot of the Medea. Both Jason and the royal family at Corinth belong to the House of Aeolus; coherent reference to this House is central to the play's mythological imagery. The House's mythography, of which the chorus shows awareness, involves an inherited curse associated with the Aeolid most closely connected with Corinth, namely, Sisyphus. The outcome of Medea's oath-invoked curse calling for the eradication of Jason's line is thus over-determined.