<p>Over 1,000 years before Milton put classical epic to work to ‘assert eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to Man’ in Paradise Lost, there was Eudocia, who in retelling the Christian story of salvation with lines from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey composed a theological poem of unusual communicative power. This is a woman—an empress, no less—who, as Karl Olav Sandnes puts it, insists on being heard, at a time of charged theological debate dominated by men. Sandnes presents Eudocia’s poem as an original, even idiosyncratic, interpretation of the Gospels that weaves together Christian and pre-Christian strands of tradition into one rich tapestry.</p>

- M. D. Usher, The University of Vermont,

<p>This is a careful study of Eudocia’s representation of Jesus as a Homeric hero in her Homerocentones—a very fine investigation into the work of an ancient, refined female author against the backdrop of Biblical passages silencing women, which Eudocia turns upside down. This intriguing research delves into one of the many ways in which classical culture and Christianity intersected in late antiquity in amazingly productive ways.</p>

- Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, Durham University and University of Cambridge,