Noscendi Nilum Cupido: Imagining Egypt from Lucan to Philostratus

What significations did Egypt have for the Romans a century after Actium and afterwards? How did Greek imperial authors respond to the Roman fascination with the Nile? This book explores Egypt's aftermath beyond the hostility of Augustan rhetoric, and Greek and Roman topoi of Egyptian barbarism . Set against history and material culture, Julio-Claudian, Flavian, Antonine, and Severan authors reveal a multivalent Egypt that defines Rome's increasingly diffuse identity while remaining a tantalizing tertium quid between Roman Selfhood and foreign Otherness.