Antonios Augoustakis, assistant professor of Classics at Baylor University, will deliver a lecture "Mother as Makers of Same and Other in Flavian Epic," Tuesday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Stetson Faculty Lounge. The event is free and open to the public.

In his presentation, Augoustakis will re-examine the fundamental aim of epic poetry in the late first century C.E., and argue that women come to the foreground of action simultaneously as heroines and readers.

To propagate the male ideology of the Roman Empire, Flavian poets promote the ideals of the glorious Roman past or underscore the failure of mythical heroines as mothers and wives. Despite this fact, the old male ideology is simultaneously destabilized as women assume a key role in securing and promoting their sons' prosperous future.

Augoustakis is associate director of the Baylor in Italy program. He received his B.A. from the University of Crete, Greece, and this Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University.

He is currently working on a monograph on the role of women in Latin epic poetry of the first century C.E. (Silius Italicus' Punica and Statius' Thebaid) for Oxford University Press, titled "Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic."

He is the author of articles on Silius Italicus, Statius, and Pliny the Younger. His research interests include Roman historiography (Pliny and Tacitus), late Latin poetry and historiography (Claudian, Corippus, Ammianus Marcellinus), and Renaissance Latin poetry (Petrarch, Poliziano, Vegio).

The event is sponsored by the Williams College classics department.