Introduction

Abstract

The Introduction outlines the purpose, approach, structure, and arguments of the book. The chapter also provides a helpful roadmap for the journey ahead. It offers a substantial discussion that presents the reader with a nexus of major ideas, carefully laid out to ensure that the readings, which focus on Flavian epic, are grounded in a clear, shared understanding of the larger context. This chapter includes a detailed section that takes stock of the existing scholarship on emotion and Stoicism in Flavian epic before delving into key issues surrounding Stoic ethics in Rome, Stoic political thought, and the figure of the tyrant in the poetic tradition from Homer all the way to the Flavians.