Maximae Furiarum: The Female Demonic in Augustan Epic

Abstract

This dissertation examines the development of the traditional Greek Furies into a new type of demonic figure that arises in Vergil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Along with the new emphasis on their independent agency, disguise, and feminine and monstrous physicality, one of the most important innovations in the Aeneid is that the Furies incite crimes by playing on human desires, even as their traditional power to enforce order by punishing crimes is expanded upon. At the heart of the Furies' structural and thematic importance in the Aeneid is their fundamental connection to inflaming passion, which is both necessary and dangerous, and to the authoritative punishment that is central to Roman social order. The associations with wrath and passions developed by Vergil are very much a part of the Furies in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but they are also important within the broader context of ancient views of women, the supernatural, and how they intersect with provocation, punishment, and power. Overall, then, the traits of this new type of figure are very influential on imperial Latin epic and later images of the demonic in Western culture, particularly in their double edged power to arouse human passions and punish the resulting crimes.