Classical languages and literature

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/4906

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 44

Res Novae Feminarum: The Dissonant Roles of Roman Women in the Triumviral Period
(2024-09-09) Harrington, Mary L; Gowing, Alain
The actions of Roman women in the chaotic and paradigm-destabilizing civil wars after the assassination of Julius Caesar were a locus of intense interest and anxiety for ancient authors, and, for that reason, narrative engagements with these constricted actions are particularly indicative of the underlying structures and modes of understanding that connected gender performance, power, and morality within elite Roman discourse and thought. By analyzing the representation of Roman women in the triumviral period (44 BCE-30 BCE) across class and status, I argue that, while these representations varied according to each author’s context and narrative objectives, they nevertheless demonstrate a consistent concern with how women’s actions in this period subverted and revealed the expectations of the cultural frameworks that governed Roman political and social relations. The women recorded in proscription narratives who either saved or betrayed their male relations (husbands, sons, and brothers) operated by either underlining their traditional values or abnegating them. In either case, the stable framework of Roman elite moral norms was delineated and reinforced. Representations of elite women demonstrate how some women were able to situate themselves as political actors in a way that could be read as consonant with traditional values while at the same time engaging in novel and dissonant interventions. Enslaved women and freedwomen, because of both their status and gender reveal that the performance of elite masculinity depended upon the actions of the most marginalized in Roman society. Within a social crisis that negated the protections that would otherwise preclude the need for women to take on the roles of intermediary or protector, the description of women’s actions allowed authors to think through the nature of the crisis and the meaning of Roman values.
The Roman Revolutionaries: The Evolution of Revolution in Ancient Rome
(2024-09-09) Bringman, Joseph; Gowing, Alain
This dissertation is a collective study of the phenomenon of the revolutionary in ancient Rome. I have selected six Roman political actors as case studies in revolution and have utilized the ancient historiographical accounts to show how ancient writers interpreted the phenomenon of revolution and thus revolutionaries in Rome between the Late Republic and early Principate. Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Spartacus, Catiline, Octavian, and Vespasian are the focus of this study, and I concentrate on their depictions as revolutionaries in writers from a range of periods, including Sallust, Tacitus, Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. The four chapters analyze what factors a Roman revolutionary had to contend with in order to stage a revolution and how ancient historians depicted revolutionaries across time in response to these factors by looking in turn at revolutionaries during the Late Republic, the transition from Republic to Principate, and the early Principate. Chapter 1 first analyzes the language and essence of Roman revolution to demonstrate how the ancient conception of revolution differs from the modern conception. Then it proceeds to outline the factors necessary, from a historical perspective, to stage a revolution in ancient Rome, which thereby serves as a yardstick with which to measure the historiographical depictions of revolutionaries in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 examines the historiographical portrayal of revolutionaries under the Late Republic through focusing on Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Spartacus, and Catiline. Chapter 3 shows how Octavian is represented during his revolutionary career prior to his attainment of supreme rule and establishment of the Principate. Chapter 4 begins with a brief overview of some differences between staging a revolution under the Principate and under the Republic and then analyzes Vespasian and his role in the Flavian movement to seize the emperorship in AD 69. Overall, my research highlights how ancient historiography portrayed the evolution of the figure of the Roman revolutionary from the Late Republic to early Principate and analyzes the depictions of the revolutionary aspects of the six revolutionaries chosen as case studies.
The Lived Experience of Short-Statured People in the Early Roman Empire
(2024-02-12) Molkova, Diana; Levin-Richardson, Sarah
In the Roman Empire, what constituted a non-normative body, as well as the symbolic values ascribed to it, was not fixed or “natural,” but was instead negotiated as a part of a complex social identity. While research on bodily difference and disability in ancient Rome has focused, perhaps excessively, on “‘monstrous’ or extremely deformed bodies” (Graham 2013, 250), how individuals inhabited and participated in creating their identity as non-normatively bodied has rarely been considered. The aim of this dissertation is to explore what can be learned about the lived experience of non-normatively bodied and specifically short-statured individuals from art, literature, and funerary inscriptions.I begin in chapter 1 by interrogating the premises central to previous scholarship on lives and representations of short-statured individuals: that they were always seen as the apotropaic, humorous “Others” (Barton 1993; Garland 1995; Clarke 1998, 2001, 2005, 2007; Trentin 2022). I examine terracotta lamps portraying sex scenes to show that while the bodies of short-statured individuals were sometimes “Othered” by Romans to amuse and avert the evil eye, a wider range of responses—including normalizing and integrating ones—can be conceptualized when we do not apply these interpretations uncritically. Using one such lamp found in an Aquileian burial as a case study, I suggest that it was chosen for its association with leisure and entertainment and was likely chosen by the tomb owners to reflect and enhance their social status. I then use two historical figures as my case studies in chapter 2 and 3 to show that in imperial Rome enslaved and freed short-statured people were similarly ascribed socially enhancing and entertainment value and attempt to envision how they could have navigated this expectation. I also propose that these functions were imposed on enslaved and freed short-statured people specifically, while freeborn people had the resources and opportunity to engage with their bodily non-normativity differently. In chapter 2 I consider how the identities of deliciae, “pet child,” and short-statured person overlapped for Conops, an enslaved person of Julia the Younger (Plin. HN 7.75). By bringing out the parallels between the skills ascribed to deliciae and non-normatively bodied performers, I explicate the labor that likely went into maintaining these personas. I then argue that this labor and the benefits it brought was seen as an opportunity for positive identification in the community of enslaved people and freedpeople by analyzing Conops’ epitaph (CIL 6.7613) alongside others found in the Iunii Silani columbarium. In chapter 3 I turn to the gravestone of Myropnous the aulos player (IG 14.1865 = IGUR 2.798); I propose that life accounts of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century freak show performers provide useful comparative evidence for envisioning the agency of Roman enslaved and freed short-statured performers. I interpret Myropnous’ commemoration as showing his identities as short-statured performer and musician as inextricably linked, and as reflecting the pride he and his community had in both facets of his life.
Craft and Cosmogonies: The Reception of Hesiod in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias
(2023-09-27) Boulding, Kaitlyn; Levaniouk, Olga
The poems attributed to Hesiod and composed in the 8th century BCE were highly influential in Socrates’ and Plato’s Athens of the 5th to early 4th centuries BCE. This dissertation examines Plato’s reception of the poetry attributed to Hesiod in the Timaeus-Critias dialogues. The first chapter examines Plato’s engagement with the Hesiodic myth of Pandora in Timaeus’ etiology for the body. I argue that Plato evokes the myth of Pandora in his audience’s minds in order to place his cosmogony, anthropogony, and zoogony in relation to this foundational myth and thereby make his likely story more likely. The second chapter examines the theme of competition in the Atlantis sections of the Timaeus-Critias. This chapter explores destructive and productive forms of competition in Plato and Hesiod. I show how Plato frames the speech competition in the dialogue as song contest through a discussion of the festival settings and the Certamen of Homer and Hesiod. Plato thus uses Hesiodic techniques to disrupt canonical etiologies for Athens. The third chapter investigates the themes of written versus oral modes of transmitting stories in the framing narrative for the myth of Atlantis and oral traditions generally. I demonstrate that Plato imitates the entextualization of oral poetic performance in his framing of the myth. Through a comparative analysis of etiologies in other oral traditions that coincide with the development of literacy, I demonstrate that mythical written texts frequently feature in the backstory for oral epic poetry in order to provide authority, but frequently rely on oral recitations to be transmitted through time. In the fourth and final chapter I document the process of co-founding and running a cross-disciplinary public Humanities project, UW Textile Studies Graduate Research Cluster (GRC). This project aimed to gather members of the public and researchers at the University of Washington from different disciplines who all shared an interest in the creation and study of textiles. This chapter highlights the goals and achievements of this project in relation to the overall project of the dissertation. Through collaborative efforts, the UW Textile Studies GRC successfully built reciprocal intellectual networks across and beyond the university.
The Ghost of Slavery: A Closer Examination of Freed People in Classical Athens
(2023-09-27) Syed, Zainab Hassan; Kamen, Deborah
Manumission is often assumed to be the absolute end point of enslavement, since the formerly enslaved are now “free” and therefore no longer subject to their enslavers. However, manumission in Classical Athens was not a clear-cut end to enslavement, and the “freedom” offered to manumitted slaves was incomplete, gradual, and perhaps not really freedom at all. Reading between the lines of courtroom speeches, wills, and manumission inscriptions, it is possible to glean a greater understanding of the obstacles freed people faced in both obtaining and maintaining their freedom within the confines of a slave society. Freed people in Athens often remained forcibly connected to their enslavers through post-manumission obligations and they continued to be treated as servile by Athenian law and society. Thus, slavery continued to “haunt” freed people long after manumission, a disruptive and violent poltergeist that tried to drag them back into a servile past while they struggled to exorcise it and assert their freedom.
En versus facio: Rewriting Augustan Elegy in Latin Epitaphs, Maximianus, and Louise LabÃ©
(2022-09-23) Funsten, Grace; Hinds, Stephen
This dissertation examines the reception of Augustan elegy using three case studies: verse epitaphs from imperial Rome, Maximianus’s late antique Elegies, and sixteenth-century French author Louise LabÃ©’s Ã lÃ©gies. Through close readings of my case studies and broader interpretations situating the works in their historical contexts, I show how each author uses elegy’s erotic framework to consider larger issues of their own changing times. In each case, I show that the authors of these receptions adapt the language of Augustan elegy to their own concerns by changing the identity of the lover-poet. In the epitaphs, these changes range from a poem in the voice of the wealthy rival to one whose narrator is a dog and allow the authors a venue for literary competition and contemplations of status under the Empire. In the case of Maximianus, an elderly lover-poet allows the author to explore anxieties about cultural degeneration in the western Roman Empire, as well as to reckon with changing ideals of masculinity in Late Antiquity. Louise LabÃ©’s female speaker allows her to examine women’s desire, and to take part in early modern France’s proto-feminist movement by calling on women to pursue an education in reading and writing.
“Someone Get a Whip!” Enslaved Women and Violence in Athenian Oratory, Comedy, and Curses
(2022-09-23) Breitenfeld, Sarah Brucia; Kamen, Deborah
This dissertation examines physical and sexual violence against enslaved women in Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Because work on Greco-Roman slavery too often prioritizes the narratives of enslaved men, and work on gender issues nearly exclusively examines the position of citizen women, enslaved women continue to be omitted from scholarly analysis of violence. I focus on the neglected people at the intersection of these identities (Crenshaw 1991), using court cases, comedies, and curse tablets to investigate the substantial abuse that enslaved women suffered at the hands of others. I argue that despite the paucity of our sources, we can identify the specific circumstances that would have been dangerous for enslaved women, and studies which do not highlight this violence risk further misrepresenting and silencing their histories. Chapter One investigates Athenian lawcourt speeches, using Demosthenes’s On the False Embassy and Apollodoros’s Against Neaira as case studies to show that the accounts of abuse in these speeches reflect broader patterns of violence. Chapter Two examines enslaved women on the Athenian comic stage, comparing depictions in Aristophanes’s Acharnians and Wasps, Menander’s Epitrepontes, and Terence’s Eunuchus (based on a Menandrian original). I explore the potential for using comedy as a lens through which to view the daily experiences of enslaved women, and especially their susceptibility to violence. Chapter Three interrogates the portrayal of sex laborers on curse tablets from the 4th century BCE. Examining the curse tablet DT 68, which targets a woman named Theodora, I track evidence for marginalized women using curse tablets in order to improve their social and legal standing. In this way, I argue, curse tablets like DT 68 demonstrate that enslaved and manumitted women could become not just the victims of others’ violence, but agents in their own lives.
Agonistic Intertextuality: Studies in Pindar and Bacchylides
(2022-09-23) Zacks, Joshua Andre; Levaniouk, Olga
This dissertation critiques the notion that the 5th century BCE praise poets Pindar of Thebes and Bacchylides of Ceos were natural adversaries. Both ancient and modern scholarship assumes a situation of competition between these authors as their odes routinely stress the composer’s poetic skill. I examine intertextual engagements in poems which Pindar and Bacchylides composed for the same victory celebration. By integrating literary, material, and social historical perspectives, I argue that such shared panegyric occasions trigger an interplay of polemic and complementarity in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ songs. The six chapters analyze intertextual links in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ poems for the victory celebrations of Pytheas of Aegina and Hieron of Syracuse. The first four chapters examine convergent and divergent communicative strategies in Pindar’s Nem. 5 and Bacchylides’ 13th Ode for Pytheas of Aegina. Chapters five and six examine laudatory strategies and proverbial wisdom in Pindar’s Ol. 1 and Bacchylides 5th Ode for Hieron of Syracuse. Chapter 1 analyzes the poets’ laudatory strategies in Nem. 5 and Bacchylides 13. I argue that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ praise of named individuals reflects a historical circumstance in which different members of the same family hired each poet. I argue that this process of commissioning accounts for divergent communicative methods at various points in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ poems for Pytheas. However, I also advance the claim that the shared panegyric occasion of Pytheas’ victory celebration triggers complementary laudatory strategies. The following chapters trace this form of poetic engagement in the poets’ proverbial wisdom, self-representations, and mythological narratives. Chapter 2 argues that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ proverbs employ Aegina’s naval commercial network as a framework to conceptualize poetic dissemination. I furthermore suggest that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ gnomai evince a poetics of mutual reinforcement. Pindar, for example, boasts that every ship departing from Aegina will transport the victor’s fame throughout the Greek world. Similarly, Bacchylides describes how Pytheas’ fame itself will steer his song during a naval journey to the world’s end. Taken together, these doubled references to the maritime diffusion of Pytheas’ glory reinforce each poet’s claim to worldwide poetic dissemination. Chapter 3 focuses on the singers’ self-representations. In the absence of clear intertextual engagements, I argue that Pindar and Bacchylides adopt radically different poetic stances and suggest that this reflects a circumstance in which each poet was hired by a different commissioner. Pindar represents himself as a newcomer to traditional Aeginetan athletic celebrations and emphasizes his poetry’s ethicality as a hallmark of his style. By contrast, Bacchylides arrogates three distinct voices for the performance of his poetry. I suggest that by praising Lampon’s xenia and expenditure for Pytheas, Bacchylides obliquely refers to the process of commissioning and represents himself as Pytheas’ hired celebrant. Chapter 4 traces intertextual engagements in the poems’ mythic sections. I argue that Pindar and Bacchylides offer complementary versions of the Aiakid family tree. Whereas Pindar focuses on the first generation of Aiakos’ descendants, Bacchylides narrates the exploits of the second generation at Troy. I argue that each poet’s mythopoeisis reflects the commissioning process and that a macro-textual vantage point presents audiences with a complete family tree of Aiakos’ descendants. Chapter 5 argues that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ use of conventional encomiastic rhetoric embeds their poetry within the musical culture of Hieron’s court in Syracuse. Verbal and thematic correspondences in Ol. 1 and Bacchylides 5 create a composite encomiastic effect, whereby Hieron’s court appears as an all-inclusive literary hub. The chapter closes with a discussion of intertextual engagements between Bacchylides’ and Pindar’s praise of Hieron’s racehorse Pherenikos. I argue that complementary imagery and diction here glorify Hieron’s rule over Syracuse. Chapter 6 argues for intertextual entanglements in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ proverbs for Hieron. I argue that the poets’ gnomai can be understood as comments on each poet’s own narratological technique. I also suggest that the poets’ gnomic statements function on an intertextual level. Pindar, for example, reflects extensively on the nature of poetry, truth, and human speech. He thereby describes how he will truthfully relate a story about Pelops. But Pindar’s is also applicable to Bacchylides’ narratological technique. Similarly, Bacchylides’ proverbs about bliss and human limitations function on an intra- and inter-textual level. His gnome about human limitations is applicable to the central myth of Bacchylides 5. But he also reflects on human bliss in terms that closely resemble Pindar’s praise of Hieron and Pelops’ prayer to Poseidon in Ol. 1
Polyphemus and His World: A Literary History from the Odyssey to the Hellenistic Period
(2022-01-26) Luo, Xiaoran; Hinds, Stephen E
This dissertation traces the development and evolution of Polyphemus as a literary characterfrom the Odyssey to the Hellenistic period, examining extant and fragmentary texts from this stretch of time chronologically, with the help of archaeological evidence on occasions. Although the Odyssey presents the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops from the hero’s perspective, its description of Polyphemus shows his potential to become a full-fledged character, which subsequent writers kept exploiting. Chapter 1 starts with an investigation of the origin of the story and of the figure of the one-eyed monster and argues that different images of Polyphemus and multiple versions of the story existed in the minds of the early Greeks. Later sections of the chapter explore the world of the Homeric Polyphemus while attempting to clarify issues surrounding his relationship with other Cyclopes and with his environment. I end the chapter by demonstrating that the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey anticipates later discussions of what it means to be Greek or the Other. The three sections of Chapter 2 examine the significance of Polyphemus as a dramatic character in the fifth century: from the fragments of Epicharmus, Aristias, Callias and Cratinus we see that he is made more human and is used metaphorically to represent certain types of people; Aristophanes in the Wasps makes Philocleon a human embodiment of Polyphemus; and Euripides’ Cyclops renders understanding Polyphemus as a caricature of Sicily and of Athens both plausible. Chapter 3 demonstrates that in the fourth century writers of different genres, including Philoxenus, Plato and several playwrights of Middle Comedy, keep exploring the metaphorical potential and human aspects of Polyphemus in important and fresh ways. Chapter 4 interprets Theocritus’ characterization of Polyphemus through a psychological lens: the poet reveals the depth and complexity of the Cyclops’ inner world. From then on, Polyphemus’ human sides become the focus of the Hellenistic poets who feature him in their works. This study presents a coherent picture of this character’s metamorphoses, and shows the numerous ways in which it is an integral part of Ancient Greek culture.
Craftsmen, Identity, and Status in the Literature of Flavian Rome
(2021-10-29) Brobeck, Emma Jane; Hinds, Stephen
This dissertation integrates material, literary, and social historical perspectives on crafts to show how Flavian era authors reflect on the status and social value of their writing. The poet Martial is the focus of this study, and I pattern his descriptions of low-status trades and crafts with depictions in other writers of the period, including Pliny the Elder and Juvenal. The four chapters analyze the metaliterary potential of the full range of craft production imagery by looking in turn at materials, objects, and artists in Flavian texts. Chapter 1 traces the social and moral connotations of clay and highlights the use of the Latin word lutum (mud, clay) in Martial as simultaneously a mark of social inferiority as well as a mark of pride in the epigrammatic genre. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the metapoetics and literary significance of clay objects such as tableware and statuettes. Chapter 2 suggests that Martial uses these objects as part of a larger allusive framework to panegyrize and subtly subvert the emperor during the Saturnalia, while Chapter 3 examines how Martial conceives of the epigrammatic poet as an anonymous potter in contrast to renowned canonical artists. The raw material and the finished product are both significant images for imperial writers to organize and overturn moral and social hierarchies, and the artist and craftsman in these texts become catalysts for social approval and denigration. To highlight this phenomenon, Chapter 4 shows how Juvenal adapts Martial’s and Pliny the Elder’s texts to comment on the pitfalls of Roman patronage. Overall, my research highlights the versatility of craft imagery in the construction of identity between elite and non-elite circles in Flavian Rome and provides a counterpoint to grand imperial image-making.
Monstrous Texts and Textual Monsters: Transgressive Hybridity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(2020-10-26) Seidler, Sophie Emilia; Hinds, Stephen E.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses are a treasure trove for marvellous creatures, hybrids, monsters, and deformed bodies. The text itself is a poetic hybrid combining features from different literary genres, including epic, elegy, pastoral poetry, tragedy, and comedy. Ovid’s monsters – Medusa, the Minotaur, Centaurs, or Scylla – embody his poetic program: creating an intricate narrative labyrinth with many heterogeneous components, metareferential puns, and ironic digressions from the well-established classical canon, Ovid follows in the Callimachean tradition that appreciates poetically refined, creative experiments with traditional aesthetics. The monstrous Metamorphoses embrace extraordinary corporeality, alterity, and the subversion of norms. Recent critical theories and gender studies provide the conceptual background for the analysis of Ovid’s poetics of transgressive hybridity in this thesis.
Killer Queen: Clytemnestra as Goddess, Heroine, and Monster
(2020-08-14) Simas, Anna E; Blondell, Ruby
This dissertation examines the mythological figure of Clytemnestra across genre and time. From Homeric poetry through late Greek tragedy, this duplicitous husband-murderer reflects ancient Greek male anxieties about women. I argue that the conceptualization of Clytemnestra shifts over time and according to generic conventions, and that authors portray her as heroic, monstrous, or divine in order to advance their own agendas about the dangerousness of women to male society. We will see that there is no universal conception of Clytemnestra: while many authors treat her as an example of the threat of the feminine, others explore the complexities of her motives, even presenting relatively sympathetic discussions of her situation. Although she is never fully exculpated, her actions are often rationalized as a consequence of her mistreatment by Agamemnon. Such a topic naturally raises questions about structural misogyny in ancient Greece, but as we shall see, many modern scholars have reproduced this misogyny in scholarship on Clytemnestra. Thus, a major goal of this project is to identify and resist the sexism of such scholarship. This is the first comprehensive study of Clytemnestra across time and genre, and integrates both literary and visual sources with the goal of producing an anti-misogynistic, holistic portrait of this important cultural figure.
Repetition and Iconicity in Homer
(2019-10-15) O'Donald, Megan; Levaniouk, Olga
This dissertation investigates the iconic function of repetitions of words and other units of speech in the Iliad and Odyssey as a component of the structural stylistics and aesthetics of Homeric epic. While these works are famously repetitive on a number of scales, I focus on small-scale patterns of repetitions that have received comparatively little attention in modern scholarship and argue that such patterns frequently reflect or enact aspects of the content of the lines or passages in which they appear. Because certain types of patterns pervasively correlate with certain types of content, for example ring composition with language of roundness, the resemblance between form and content allows for an examination of content as an implicit source of information about the Homeric conception of poetic structure and composition. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for the rest of the dissertation by discussing what constitutes a pattern and considering issues of intentionality and perceptibility in an oral-poetic context; Chapter 2 takes a nuanced look at the relationship between sound, structure, and sense by examining the role of paronomasia and other phono-semantic complexities in broader structures; the third and final chapter presents case studies that investigate thematic categories and their correlation with patterns of repetitions, showing how Homeric verse presents itself as a finely-crafted product of virtuosic artistic skill. The intersections of small-scale repetitive structures and content in Homeric epic ultimately reveal a narrative pervasively concerned with itself as a built medium for conveying its traditional content. By refining our understanding of the relationship between form and content, this work strengthens the basis of and broadens the horizon for claims about Homeric epic’s self-awareness and self-referentiality in the use of language.
Lucretius' imagery; |b a poetic reading of the D̲e̲ R̲e̲r̲u̲m̲ N̲a̲t̲u̲r̲a̲
(1957) Sullwold, George John; Jones, Frank W.; Grummel, Williams C.
Philosophical and philological matters have often distracted the reader and the scholar from a poetic reading of the Be Rerum Natura. The philosophy and the language present certain problems and these are worth studying, hut there has been all too frequently an attitude that something called poetry has been grafted on to the philosophical argument, and that the scholar*s task is to separate the philosophy from the poetry. In other words, the poem has not been considered a work of literature and the critical attitude toward it has been inadequate because literature, philosophy, and philology have not been regarded as separate, though interdependent, aspects of the work under consideration. Even those who have sought most eagerly for the philosophy have sometimes been most eloquent in praising Lucretius as a poet. The praise of poetry, so generously offered, is seldom backed up by a satisfactory demonstration of wherein the poetic merit lies. The basic difficulty can be found in the assumption that the philosophical argument and the poetry are two different elements, sometimes alternating in the poem, and sometimes getting in each other's way. If the success of the Be Rerum Natura as a poem is granted, and it almost universally is, it certainly must be shown that the philosophical argument is expressed and projected in the poetry and that the poetry is the vehicle of the philosophical argument.
A study of Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus
(1957) Murphy, Jeanne Thomas;
It is the intention and purpose of this thesis to study the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles. Since there is a real need for an investigation of the Coloneus as a work of art and not as a philosophical treatise or a theological tract, the limitations of my study are strictly defined. I shall direct my attention to the Coloneus, and the Coloneus only, and I do not intend to consider it either as a part of any "developmental" theory of the Sophoclean canon or as a document of any over-all Sophoclean "philosophy of life." No doubt the poet had something to say about human existence in his play, but I have made no effort to fit this into any hypothetical "system" that he may have had.
Roman declamation
(1930) McCharles, John Alestair;
To the student of republican and imperial Rome few studies are more fertile than that of her accomplishments in the field of oratory. Two thousand years lie between our century and the age of Cicero but we ourselves still realize the value of speaking ability. Yet, in our own civilization, a man has so many media for communicating his thoughts to others. He can put his sentiments in print, either in newspapers or books; he can address unseen audiences over the radio. But we still rejoice in being in the presence of a good speaker; of being able to see and to hear him. On the other hand, a Roman who wished to give his opinion on affairs of state had only the one means of expression - that of speaking from the rostra. He had no newspaper columns in which to ezplain his views. Thus speaking was of the greatest importance in Rome from the fabled days of Romulus and Remus to the end of the republic. Oratory continued under the emperors but, as we will see later in thi thesis, it had lost its former robustness and was slowly degenerating.
The reality of the soul in Plato
(1933) De Lacy, Phillip;
Plato's literary style was naturally adapted for the representation of divergent points of view; and the apparently contradictory statements which he puts in the mouth even of hismost important character, Socrates, cause endless difficulty to one who attempts to construct from the dialogues a unified Platonism. Nor is it easy to explain incompatible views by the theory that Plato's thought underwent some sort of evolution, since no doctrine seems to be confined to any one dialogue, or to any one group of dialogues.
Giton's Performance of Status in the Satyrica of Petronius
(2019-08-14) Clark, Konnor Lee; Connors, Catherine M.
The character Giton in Petronius’s Satyrica represents one of the most multifaceted characters in this piece of literature. The thesis of this dissertation is that Giton performs slavery in various ways throughout the novel, and his interactions with others reinforce this claim. Firstly, Giton is represented as performing a variety of tasks and roles typically assigned to enslaved persons: he serves as a bath attendant, he cooks, and he guides. Giton also is sexually objectified by a variety of characters in the novel in ways that are similar to the sexual objectification of slaves. Similarly, the narrator and fellow character Encolpius denies Giton’s subjectivity by objectifying and feminizing the boy. Finally, some of the ways in which Giton performs slavery are emblematic of Roman comedy’s clever slave. This investigation into how Petronius represents Giton’s multifaceted embodiment and enactment of slavery advances our understanding of enslaved persons and their status by analyzing Giton’s actions and interactions as social performances.
The Best of the Olympians: The Character of Apollo in the Homeric Epics and Hymns
(2019-02-22) Bertany, Edward M.; Levaniouk, Olga
This dissertation is primarily a character study of the god Apollo in Homeric poetry. A close analysis of Apollo’s characterization over the course of the Iliad and the Odyssey reveals that this god, who has been the topic of few dedicated Homeric studies, serves a synthesizing function in the overarching narrative of the Homeric Epics. By foregrounding Apollo and enlisting poems where the god is the main focus, such as the Homeric Hymns, I argue that, over the course of the Homeric Epics, Apollo undergoes a type of coming-of-age story that is highly correlated with the depiction of “the Best of the Achaeans,” an epithet that is associated with Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey. Whereas the Iliadic relationship between Apollo and Achilles is characterized by antagonism, misrecognition, and fragmentation, the opposite is true in the Odyssey, during which a symbiosis develops between the same god and Odysseus. This complex progression of Apollo’s story, with its ultimate emphasis on unification, tracks closely with the panhellenic dynamics that were dominant in a crucial period in the evolution of Homeric poetry itself.
Mille simul leti facies: The Allusive Battlefield of Punica 4
(2018-11-28) Conner, Daniel Abraham; Hinds, Stephen E
This dissertation examines the two major battle scenes in book 4 of Silius Italicus’ Punica, Ticinus and Trebia, focusing on the poet’s intricate, purposeful, and programmatic use of inter- and intratextual allusion on the battlefield. I argue that a close and unprejudiced reading of these battle scenes reveals a level of artistic skill and planning not previously associated with combat narrative in Silius. I use detailed analysis of aristeiai, necrologues, and other type scenes, as well as an examination of Silius’ many sources, including primarily Vergil, but also Statius, Lucan, Homer, and (in historiography) Livy, to discuss themes that are integral to the entire poem. Major themes include the compression of history, confusion of identity, self-destructive or suicidal ideation, civil war violence, and theomachy. The first two chapters examine the battle of Ticinus and focus on the establishment of these themes, first through a close analysis of four short death scenes, and then through larger, escalating scenes in the second half of the battle. The second two chapters examine the battle of Trebia and investigate how Silius uses meaningful and varied repetition to establish a pattern of mistakes that looks back to events in the Aeneid and anticipates later scenes in the Punica. Through this reading of Punica 4, I show how Silius’ use of allusion on the battlefield is surprising, inventive and highly significant.

Browse

Recent Submissions