Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians contains instruction for women to veil their heads when praying or prophesying in the assembly (ekklēsia). In this chapter, I argue that, like other women in the first-century Mediterranean world, Corinthian women most likely veiled and unveiled for a variety of reasons having to do with beauty, comfort, status, virtue, and piety, not solely for theological, exegetical, or liberative purposes.

The third-century Christian writer Origen of Alexandria used the image of the veil to describe the relation between the “letter” of the biblical text and its hidden, spiritual meaning. Origen constructed an allegorical theory of biblical interpretation that relied on the imagery of the veil to illustrate the hiddenness of truth. His biblical interpretations consistently privileged the unveiled Christian “spirit” of the text over what he called the Jewish “letter” – the veiled “flesh” of the text.

The treatment of Rome and its history in Ennius’ Annales has received significant scholarly attention in recent years. This work has shown well that the epic sets the city at the centre of a widening Roman world, thereby making it a cosmic hub of space and time. Such epic transformations also transform perspectives on the past and the present. What of Rome in the rest of Ennius’ wide-ranging literary output? How does the tri- or quadrilingual former Rudian approach his new unelected home and its socio-cultural practices in genres beyond epic? Taking into consideration the representation of (urban) space, monuments, social practices (especially ritual acts, praise, and elite self-presentation), and intersectional conceptions of Roman identity, this chapter examines the ways in which Ennius’ writings construct and reflect Rome qua city and set of cultural values and perspectives. The Scipio, Ambracia, and Sabinae anchor the chapter, but the contribution also uncovers key themes in less expected places, with some comment on the epigrams, Hedyphagetica, and philosophical works.

Jacques Derrida’s contribution to the book Veils, jointly authored with his friend Hélène Cixous, is, in part, a meditation on his tallit – the Jewish prayer shawl – that was given to him as a boy. Derrida turns to the tallit as a contrast to the veil. The tallit opens an avenue for him to critique the traditional and widespread trope of truth as that which is veiled and that which calls out for unveiling. This epilogue focuses on Derrida‘s affectionate description of his tallit–the yellowing, familiar, soft, singular tallit that resists knowing.

Against received opinion, this chapter argues that Ennius does not primarily figure as a stalwart of ancient Roman values within Varro’s Menippean Satires: the Ennius of these understudied late-republican texts is rather a boldly experimental and multiform poet, a model for Varro’s own modernist project. Particular attention is paid to Varro’s Bimarcus, in which a “new” fragment of Ennius’ Saturae is tentatively discovered.

This chapter examines the representation of textiles, curtains, drapery, and other architectural veils in early Christian art from the earliest Christian frescoes to the catacombs and sarcophagi of the fourth and fifth centuries, to the mosaic programs of sixth-century Ravenna and Rome. I argue that one of the ways that veiling increasingly signified in late antiquity and early Byzantium was to intimate mystery, sacrality, and hiddenness while hinting at the promise of revelation and discovery.

For fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa, veils became part of the way to describe the soul’s pursuit of divine love and union. This chapter examines how the numerous veils of the biblical book known as the Song of Songs become the threads with which Gregory weaves not only his mystical reflections on the soul’s unrelenting desire for God but also his description of the allegorist’s pursuit.

This chapter investigates the diction of the fragments attributed to Ennius’ Saturae by ancient sources and conjecturally by modern editors. While thirty or so transmitted lines naturally do not permit one to paint a conclusive picture of Ennius’ experiment, a little more can be said about the relationship between his Saturae and those of Lucilius, and ultimately about Ennius’ role in the introduction of personal poetry at Rome. Monologic and dialogic utterances and the mixture of metres (iambo-trochaic, hexameter, Sotadean) and registers (comic, informal, mock-epic) will be discussed, using Lucilius as a comparandum. Attention is paid to “early” features of language and style, with reference to Ennius’ diction in his epic and dramatic works.