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Roy Gibson has brilliantly shown that women who follow Ovid's advice on dressing in Ars Amatoria 3 will resemble neither the traditional matron nor the stereotypical whore. For Gibson, Ovid encourages his female students to choose their hairstyles and clothes according to aesthetic rather than moral criteria. This substitution clashes with the spirit of the lex Iulia, which attempted to polarize women into two social categories: prostitute and mater familias. What is more, each group was to be identified with its own type of distinguishing dress: the stola and palla were the distinctive markers of respectable women, while prostitutes had to assume the toga. Ovid undermines the dress code of the Augustan legislation not only in his playful Ars but also in the more serious Fasti. Whereas the cults of traditional Roman religion tended to reinforce social hierarchies, Ovid, in his treatment of theVeneralia in Fasti 4, not only invites women of all social groups to common rituals, but also uses female nudity as a means of blurring the social and marital status of the participants.

In the Apophthegmata Laconica, a collection of witty exchanges that highlight the shrewdness of Laconian brevity, we read the following story. An Argive once taunted a Spartan by pointing out the multitude of Spartan tombs in Argive territory. The Spartan retorted that, by contrast, not a single Argive tomb could be found in Sparta. The author of the Plutarchan tale comments that the Spartan insinuated that, while his people had repeatedly invaded Argos, the Argives had never set foot on Sparta (Mor. 233c; cf. Vit. Ages. 31.6). Besides attesting to the sharp wit of Laconian concision, the story is a good example of how easily a soldier's tomb can serve different national agendas. While the presence of Spartan dead in Argos is a source of pride for the Argives, from another point of view it can be read as a sign of Spartan military prowess. The Greek word σῆμα ('tomb') speaks for the crucial role of semiotics in interpreting the semantics of military monuments. The tomb is a sign that needs to be decoded; only more often than not there is more than one way of deciphering it.

Roy Gibson has brilliantly shown that women who follow Ovid's advice on dressing in Ars Amatoria 3 will resemble neither the traditional matron nor the stereotypical whore. For Gibson, Ovid encourages his female students to choose their hairstyles and clothes according to aesthetic rather than moral criteria. This substitution clashes with the spirit of the lex Iulia, which attempted to polarize women into two social categories: prostitute and mater familias. What is more, each group was to be identified with its own type of distinguishing dress: the stola and palla were the distinctive markers of respectable women, while prostitutes had to assume the toga. Ovid undermines the dress code of the Augustan legislation not only in his playful Ars but also in the more serious Fasti. Whereas the cults of traditional Roman religion tended to reinforce social hierarchies, Ovid, in his treatment of theVeneralia in Fasti 4, not only invites women of all social groups to common rituals, but also uses female nudity as a means of blurring the social and marital status of the participants.

There has been an increasing awareness in recent scholarship that Augustus's new political regime created space for an unprecedented rivalry between poets and rulers. For the purpose of this chapter, I focus on Virgil and Ovid, and their attempts to edit, destroy, and self-censor their works.

There has been an increasing awareness in recent scholarship that Augustus's new political regime created space for an unprecedented rivalry between poets and rulers. For the purpose of this chapter, I focus on Virgil and Ovid, and their attempts to edit, destroy, and self-censor their works.

In the Apophthegmata Laconica, a collection of witty exchanges that highlight the shrewdness of Laconian brevity, we read the following story. An Argive once taunted a Spartan by pointing out the multitude of Spartan tombs in Argive territory. The Spartan retorted that, by contrast, not a single Argive tomb could be found in Sparta. The author of the Plutarchan tale comments that the Spartan insinuated that, while his people had repeatedly invaded Argos, the Argives had never set foot on Sparta (Mor. 233c; cf. Vit. Ages. 31.6). Besides attesting to the sharp wit of Laconian concision, the story is a good example of how easily a soldier's tomb can serve different national agendas. While the presence of Spartan dead in Argos is a source of pride for the Argives, from another point of view it can be read as a sign of Spartan military prowess. The Greek word σῆμα ('tomb') speaks for the crucial role of semiotics in interpreting the semantics of military monuments. The tomb is a sign that needs to be decoded; only more often than not there is more than one way of deciphering it.