Aitia (Jan 2020)
The Violence of boukolēsis in the Literature of Roman Greece
Abstract
The boukolos or ‘cowherd’ is a familiar feature on the landscape of Roman Greek imaginative literature, but whereas in earlier texts he is a fundamentally benign figure, in imperial culture he usually plays an aggressive, threatening role, particularly in erotic discourse. In this article I aim first to substantiate that claim and second to propose some explanations for the shift.
