Susanna Drake, "Veiling in the Late Antique World" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

June 8, 2026

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5 min read

When the poet Claudian described Constantinople’s beauty, he praised how “covered” the city was—in purple couches, gemmed veils, and curtains that segmented space and added intrigue. Veiling, in the late antique world, was not merely a women’s practice or a symbol of oppression. It was a ubiquitous, multivalent feature of daily life, worn and felt and noticed by everyone. Men veiled their heads during sacrifice to signal submission to the gods—and, simultaneously, their authority as priests. Women veiled to show modesty, but the expensive fabric of that same veil could also broadcast wealth and status. A veil could conceal, and concealing could attract. Curtains could hide an emperor before his grand entrance, then be pulled back to reveal him at the perfect dramatic moment. As Susanna Drake explains in her new book, the veil was not a fixed symbol but a material object that mediated between apparent opposites: concealment and revelation, submission and power, modesty and allure.

What a veil actually was

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What you'll learn

1 (00:52) **Introduction & The Multivalent Veil** - Host Michael Tia introduces Susanna Drake and frames the veil as a common, polysemous object in the late antique world.
2 (04:09) **Guest Introduction & Research Origin** - Susanna Drake introduces herself and explains how she became interested in veiling.
3 (07:14) **Theoretical Framework: Saba Mahmood’s Influence** - Drake explains how feminist theory, especially Saba Mahmood’s work, guided her methodology.
4 (11:33) **What Did Veils Actually Look Like?** - Drake describes the physical variety of veils and the challenge of mapping ancient vocabulary to actual garments.
5 (18:04) **The Social Logic of Veiling: Aïdōs** - Drake explains that veiling was a navigation of social virtue, not just a binary of modesty vs. immodesty.
6 (19:53) **Multiple Reasons for Veiling** - Drake enumerates the many, often contradictory, reasons people veiled in antiquity.
7 (33:33) **The Pudicitia Statue Type** - Drake uses the Pudicitia (“modesty”) statue type to challenge modern assumptions about modesty and beauty.

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Show Notes

Veiling meant many things to the ancients. On women, veils could signify virtue, beauty, piety, self-control, and status. On men, covering the head could signify piety or an emotion such as grief. Late Roman mosaics show people covering their hands with veils when receiving or giving something precious. They covered their altars, doorways, shrines, and temples; and many covered their heads when sacrificing to their gods. Early Christian intellectuals such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa used these everyday practices of veiling to interpret sacred texts. These writers understood the divine as veiled, and the notion of a veiled spiritual truth informed their interpretation of the bible. Veiling in the Late Antique World (Cambridge UP, 2026) provides the first assessment of textual and material evidence for veiling in the late antique Mediterranean world. Susanna Drake here explores the relation between the social history of the veil and the intellectual history of the concept of truth as veiled/revealed.

New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review

Susanna Drake is Professor of Religious Studies at Macalister College. Her first book was Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts.

Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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