| Summary: | This article analyzes the strategic representation of an elegiac mistress (puella), Gallus’ Lycoris, and her putative inspiration, the freedwoman and mime‑actress Volumnia Cytheris, across a number of Latin literary genres, both verse (elegy, bucolic, epigram) and prose (political invective, informal epistles, inscriptions). It argues that the investigation of ancient literary and material evidence together can illuminate our understanding of ancient attitudes to women, in this case to the figure of a Greek courtesan in late republican Rome, and enrich our knowledge of women’s lived experience in Roman antiquity.
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