Blurb:

This paper employs contemporary metaphor theory to unpack and analyze structural principles that configure ancient Roman religious discourses. Attuned to the cognitive dimensions of metaphor, it explores how metaphorical framings normalized new ideas and arrangements in phases of religious reordering at Rome. It focuses on cognitive "cross-domain mapping" in two case studies: the naturalization of new divinities at Rome and the formation of novel concepts of death and afterlife.