This panel seeks papers exploring experiences in Latin literature that have typically been excluded from aesthetic consideration: representations and perceptions of smallness, meanness, ugliness, the uncanny, and more. We aim to explore these “impoverished aesthetics” in ancient literature, particularly in their potential for disrupting discourses of power. When and how is the marginal, the mean, or the small elevated to a position of power in the literary discourse? When and how is it used to craft discourse about power? When and how is it used to empower or disempower audiences and readers, e.g. by reinforcing or disrupting aesthetic expectations? How do smallness and meanness disrupt or challenge the power of dominant aesthetics and rhetorical canonization in Latin literature?