Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- I In the World of Make-Believe -- Preliminary Remarks -- 1 Fictionality: Theoretical Considerations -- And All for Nothing! For Hecuba! -- Avatars of Fiction, Then and Now -- 2 Fictionality: Historical Circumstances -- The Ancient Quarrel (Greece) -- The Fictional Contract (Rome) -- The Cobweb and the Rainbow (Plutarch) -- 3 Late Antiquity -- Periodization -- The Issue of Truth -- The Shadow of Creusa -- II Augustine: A Restless Farewell. Renouncing Ficta in Late Antiquity -- Preliminary Remarks -- 1 At the Window in Ostia -- Plotinian/Pauline Raptus -- The Speech of the Heart -- Ineffability -- 2 Recycling the Classics -- Weeping for Dido -- The Liberal Arts -- The Wounds of Imagination -- 3 The Figures of the Spirit -- The Speech of Creation -- The Bible: Tropes and Mysteries -- The Fact of Allegory -- 4 In the Heat of the Battle -- Orthodoxy and Heresy -- The Illusions of Culture -- 5 "Set me free, O God, from that multitude of speech" -- III Oblique Speech: Implementations of Allegory in Late Roman Learned Culture -- Preliminary Remarks -- 1 Lactantius: Christian Eloquence -- Pious infiltration -- Veiled Figuration -- 2 Servius: The Grammarian's Gaze -- Allegorical Sense -- Poetic Licence -- 3 Macrobius: Narratio fabulosa -- The Saturnalia -- The Commentary on the Dream of Scipio -- 4 Martianus Capella: A Hopeless Mess -- Fabulous Festivities -- Showy Fiction, Naked Learning -- 5 Fulgentius: Mythographer and Mythoclast -- A Surprise Visit -- The Flirtatious Muse -- Adorning Greece -- 6 Boethius: The Maieutics of Consolation -- Philosophy Sets the Tone -- The Wings of Imagination -- The Limits of Imagination -- IV Poeta Christianus: From Ficta to Facta in Early Christian Poetry -- Preliminary Remarks -- 1 The Foam of Style.

2 Paulinus and Proba: "A Greater Order" -- The Lyre of Nola -- The Female Vates -- 3 Prudentius: Dreams and Demons -- 4 Biblical Epic Poetry: The Orthodoxy of Paraphrase -- Juvencus: The Pioneer -- Sedulius: The Food of Poetry -- Avitus: Non-Fiction -- Arator: Documenta -- V Epilogue: Ecclesia Triumphans. Fiction and Figuration on the Threshold of the Middle Ages -- Preliminary Remarks -- 1 The Old Dreams -- 2 The New Library -- 3 The Glory of the Mirror -- Appendix: Original Quotations -- Bibliography -- Primary Sources -- Secondary Sources -- Index.