In his Oratio ad Graecos Tatian claims to have seen Sappho's statue among a number of other female fijigures in Rome, which, according to a passage in Pliny the Elder, seem to have been in the Portico of Pompey. This article examines how diffijiculties in the scholarly reception of Tatian's Oratio ad Graecos continue to obstruct a fuller picture of the role of female fijigures such as Sappho in late Republican and Augustan Rome. Furthermore, by bringing fresh archaeological evidence into the discussion of Tatian's text and pointing out previously ignored philological connections between Oratio ad Graecos and late Republican and Augustan literature, the article refijines the image of a woman like Sappho in Ancient Rome.
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