In this article, I first examine the use of the word orgia in the context of Optatian’s, Avienus’ and Claudian’s poetry. I then evaluate the references to the cult of Eleusis occurring in the proemium of the first book of Claudian’s Rape of Proserpina. By these two test cases, I try to survey the way in which the vocabulary of the mystery cults is used by Latin poets writing in the 4th century AD, a time punctuated by events which had progressively pushed the mystery cults to the margins of the Empire. In these texts, which might possibly mirror contemporary religious issues—although they are, first and foremost, literary projects shaped by their own models and narrative mechanisms—the mystery ceremony is sometimes likened to a theatrical performance; the emphasis is placed on the collective sensory experience, on the occult nature of these practices, as well as on their etiological aspects and symbolic meaning.
Living in the fifth century CE, the poet Dracontius challenges the Homeric tradition by choosing to tell one more time the story of the Rape of Helen (Romul. 8). In his reworking of a well-known myth, Dracontius shapes his characters by employing epic mannerisms, such as similes, ekphraseis, narratorial interventions, and epithets, all of which play a part in establishing the typology of each character and giving them narrative coherence. On the one hand, the poem surveys some old questions concerning these literary characters (the legitimacy of Paris in a heroic world, the possible guilt of Helen, Hecuba or Priam, Hector’s function, the role of Cassandra and Helenus), while on the other hand the myth becomes a pretext allowing the poet to reflect on the human condition, especially in relation to the problem of personal responsibility, the force of fate, the inevitability of crime, the performative power of speech and its excesses.
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