Graeco-Roman Horror and its Modern Reception Unleashing Classical Dread

Introduction: Unleashing Classical Dread Vasileios Balaskas, Isidro Molina Zorrilla, and Nuno Simões Rodrigues

Part 1: Violence and the Appeal of Horror
1. Horrific Facts over Horrific Fictions: Ancient Interventions into Horror’s Appeal Kathleen Cruz
2. A Morbid Taste for the Suffering Girl: Cultural Roots of Gore Scenes in Ancient Greek Novel Nuno Simões Rodrigues
3. Violence and Forgetting: Traces of Greek Mythology in Flanagan’s Manor Joana Pinto Salvador Costa

Part 2: Daemons, Monsters, and other Fantastic Creatures
4. From Terrifying to Comforting: A Brief Study of Underworld Daemons in Etruria Catarina dos Santos Madeira
5. Laughing and/or Fearing the Witch: Exploring Horace’s Canidia & The Monstrous-Feminine Harrison Biddle
6. “That limitless Mind”: Yog-Sothoth and the reception of Hermetic γνῶσις in H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction Carlos Sánchez Pérez

Part 3: Altering Human Condition: Death and Necromancy
7. The Basel Dancers (BS 415): A Tragic Chorus Pleading with the Ghost of Patroclus? Míriam Librán Moreno
8. Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Lucan’s Necromancy Recentered Patricia Y. Hatcher
9. Reworking the Horror of War and Death in Contemporary Spanish Theatre: The “Impossible Heroism” of Numantia and Saguntum Vasileios Balaskas

Part 4: Body Horror and Spectatorship
10. Cannibals, Amazons, and the Male Gaze: Horror and Horror Cinematography in Imperial Greek Epic James Kieran Oakley
11. Horresco intuens: Body Horror, Embodied Spectatorship, and the Extispicium of Seneca’s Oedipus Izzy Levy
12. “Convert of Die”: The Horror of Cannibalism in Blood of Zeus and Graeco-Roman Mythology Aisha Dad

Part 5: Fear and Suspense
13. “Don’t Go in There!” Forms of Fear and Suspense in Aeschylus Marta González González
14. Knives and Masks: Agency as a Suspense Device from Greek Tragedy to Slasher Isidro Molina Zorrilla
15. Lucian’s Lies and Trimalchio’s Truths: Memorates and Credibility in The Lover of Lies and the Satyricon Mallory Fitzpatrick

Biography

Isidro Molina Zorrilla is Assistant Professor of Greek Philology at the University of Málaga (Spain). His research focus on Greek Tragedy and its reception in cinema and popular culture. He has published “The Tragedy of Eddard Stark: Greek Tragedy in A Song of Ice and Fire” in Games of Thrones – A View from the Humanities Vol. 2 (2023).

Nuno Simões Rodrigues is Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). His research has focused on themes in the Cultural History of Ancient Greece, the Social and Political History of Ancient Rome, and Reception Studies. He is author of Portuguese translations of Euripides, Plutarch, and the Historia Augusta.

Vasileios Balaskas is Assistant Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Málaga (Spain). His research centres on how modern cultural and sociopolitical expressions appropriated Graeco-Roman antiquity. He has published Revivals of Classical Drama in Greece and Spain (1860s–1970s): Theatre in the Realm of Ideology (2025).