...Jared Secord In this article, I propose a new way of interpreting athletic metaphors in early Christian literature. I argue that the metaphorical figure of the athlete would have evoked for ancient readers not simply the ideas of competitive struggle, but also the idea of sexual abstinence...

...Wendy Mayer This essay seeks to provide a framework for the four articles that follow. While the employment of medical metaphors by the writers of Late Antiquity has long been recognized, for medical historians the domains to which the metaphors are applied have remained largely in the background...

...Jessica Wright In late antique theological texts, metaphors of the brain were useful tools for talking about forms of governance: cosmic, political, and domestic; failed and successful; interior discipline and social control. These metaphors were grounded in a common philosophical analogy between...

... Oration should be understood as more than merely a metaphorical flourish, more than a clever use of medical imagery at the service of a sacramental theology. Rather, his use of technical medical terminology and concepts about dietetics and pharmacology are an example of medical knowledge being applied...

...Emily R. Cain In Paedagogus 1.6.28, Clement describes baptism through the metaphor of a cataract surgery that enables the percipient to see God. In antiquity, cataract surgery was neither a common nor a safe procedure, which raises the question: why does Clement use such an unlikely metaphor...