Theses - Classics

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Pastoralists, Peasants, and Politics in Roman North Africa
Shaw, Brent Donald
Pastoralists, Peasants, and Politics is an investigation of the interaction between nomads and sedentarists in North Africa during the period of Roman rule, with concentration on the aspects of the relationship that pertain directly to the extension of Roman political authority over the Maghrib. Following a brief discussion of the place of the subject in modern historiography, the introductory chapters turn to a consideration of the prehistoric origins of pastoral nomadism in the Saharan neolithic, and trace its gradual infiltration into the Maghrib and its relationship to incipient agricultural sedentarism. The last of the introductory chapters reviews the literature of the Mediterranean elites and reveals their attitudes towards the pastoral nomad as a type. The analysis seeks to establish the precise nature of sedentarist prejudices as a necessary precursor to the rational interpretation of the Classical literary sources. In the central chapters of the dissertation the political history of the relations between the Roman state and nomadic groups (viz. the Gaetuli) who inhabited the regions beyond the Roman province is analyzed. The history of the violent encounters between the two is combined with a synchronic typology of the various types of violence in Gaetulia. The narrative culminates with an investigation of the 'rebellion of Tacfarinas', its possible causes, and the supposed responses of the Roman administration to nomad problems (e.g. the myth of tribal reserves). The latter part of the dissertation concludes with a synoptic view of two aspects of the nomad-sedentarist interaction during the period of the full establishment of Rome's African empire. The first aspect is one which has not received due attention in modern scholarship, namely, the degree of symbiosis between nomads and sedentarists based on various types of exchange -- social, economic, and political. The final chapter concentrates on the problem of frontier relations, specifically the place of pastoral nomadism within the framework of the different types of limes systems constructed for the protection of sedentarist communities along the southern frontier of the Roman provinces.
Controlled Access
Statius' Silvan Poetics: A Synoptic Reading of the Silvae
Dell'Anno, Laila
The overwhelming majority of scholarly publications on Statius’ Silvae, a collection of relatively short poems from the first century AD, selectively approach specific themes or individual poems. As a consequence, the overall design of the collection has received at best marginal attention. This thesis proposes the long overdue coherent reading of the five books of Silvae. Close readings of the poems and epistolary prefaces not only reveal connections between the poems but also intertextual relationships with authors from the Augustan age, that function as models for Statius’ poetic project. Concepts from 20th-century anthropology and philosophy further the understanding of the poems’ specifically silvan nature. This study reveals the relevance of the book publication for Statius’ Silvae which no longer appear a fortuitous collection but as a carefully crafted series of poetry books. Of the five chapters, the first two have a conceptual and terminological focus, whereas the latter three approach the collection in terms of structuring elements. Chapter 1 proposes to read the title, Silvae, as a development of the term silva used in the rhetorical treatises of Cicero and, most notably, Quintilian, who appears to have been an important model for Statius’ poetic undertaking. It also traces the use of this title in the wake of Statius. Chapter 2 questions the validity of the label ‘occasional poetry’ and investigates how the silvan occasionality differs from the use of time made by other poets of the classical canon. Chapter 3 continues the line of inquiry on temporality by analysing the character of Statius’ “occasions”: I argue that the Silvae all describe a rite of passage and that they form, as a collection, a new Flavian calendar. This reading is supported by a close analysis of Silv. 1.1 and the entirety of book 1, in which Statius inscribes the Roman festival calendar and extensively echoes Ovid’s Fasti. Chapter 4 shifts the focus from the theme of religion to the author and shows how a unified narrative is constructed around his persona, a narrative which culminates in a closural book 5 as a firm and integral part of the collection. The final chapter 5 considers the place of the Silvae in the framework of Statius’ oeuvre through the concept of liminality. It will emerge that the little poems are considered a delay, mora, of the composition of the epic poems Thebaid and Achilleid. The entirety of this study looks to illustrate the coherence of the Silvae, a poetic work that not only has a clear internal poetic agenda, but also firmly defends its place in the framework of Statius’ oeuvre and the literary canon alike.
Open Access
Some Aspects of Practical Reasoning in Epicurean Ethics
Mcfarland, David
In the introduction I set out the principles and assumptions guiding the thesis, together with the two questions it addresses about Epicurean ethical reasoning: the method for making correct decisions and the education required to be able to do so. The first chapter discusses Epicurus’ version of the hedonic calculus. My view is that he had a formal procedure for making decisions based on pleasure and he used it to formulate his ethical rules and recommendations, but it was different from a Utilitarian calculus. His calculus had two parts. The first was consequentialist - you should consider the advantages and disadvantages of any decision – and the second evaluative - you should recognise that pleasure has a natural limit, namely painlessness. To understand better how Epicurus’ calculus worked, I investigate the role of duration in assessing pleasure and argue that the inconsistencies in his position can be explained as an attempt at reconciling hedonism with a commonly accepted criterion for happiness, completeness; and I then examine Epicurus’ theory that all mental pleasures are derived from bodily ones and propose that it is evidence of a reductive, teleological model of human behaviour. I analyse Torquatus’ discussion in On Moral Ends of his ancestor’s famous exploits and show that it supports my teleological account of Epicurus’ calculus, which I then use to clarify his classification of human desires and the notion of greater and smaller pleasures. I conclude the chapter by arguing that Epicurus’ hedonic calculus is different from the Utilitarian one largely because of the eudaimonism and practical orientation of ancient Greek ethics. The second chapter discusses Epicurus’ idea of a moral education. My view is that the study of physics was the central element in learning to be a good Epicurean. I begin by investigating and rejecting two other candidates for that role: spiritual exercises and memorisation. I then look at Epicurus’ study advice to his followers and his practice of summarising his teachings in letters and conclude that Epicurean education was primarily an intellectual activity and had much in common with modern educational methods. I argue that Epicurus’ physics and ethics covered different ground from their modern counterparts and that physics provided the theoretical support for his ethical positions and contained the knowledge that ethical decisions were to be based on. I use these ideas to present a revised interpretation of the canonic passage at the start of the Letter to Menoeceus. I conclude the chapter by arguing that Epicurus’ view of a moral education implies that he saw philosophy as more akin to a scientific discipline than a humanistic one. In the conclusion I examine Torquatus’ description of Epicurean ethical intelligence in On Moral Ends and show that it is consistent with my analysis of the Epicurean version of the hedonic calculus and a moral education.
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Angelo Poliziano and the Renaissance invention of Greek-to-Latin verse translation, 1430-1589.
Hess, Nathaniel
Greek-to-Latin verse translation is a phenomenon entirely absent from the Middle Ages, and which appears only fitfully and tardily in the 15th century, some decades after prose translation becomes a staple of humanist practice. By the end of the 16th century, however, almost the entire corpus of Ancient Greek poetry had been translated into Latin verse, often several times. This dissertation proceeds from the premise that this remarkable phenomenon merits more direct and specific attention than scholarship has hitherto given it. It seeks to define, in literary and historical terms, the characteristics of this development across the geographical and institutional breadth of the European Renaissance. The argument, broadly speaking, is that Renaissance Greek-to-Latin verse translation develops according to a norm of responsion: though not exclusive, the defining tendency is towards a strict identity – of words, sense, character, and meter – between original text and translation. This tendency runs counter to the theory and practice of translation in Roman antiquity, which generally aspires to creative deformation and appropriation, and it is insufficient to see the Renaissance phenomenon as a mere rediscovery of the ancient one. To understand why discourses and practices of translation develop askance from those around creative imitation, this dissertation takes humanist commerce with antiquity as only one of several crucial determinants, the others including the relationship between humanism and scholasticism, the uses of translation in an education system newly accustomed to Greek, and the impetus and effect of the printing industry. These determinants are instantiated through a particular chain of influence, to which Angelo Poliziano is central. The importance of Poliziano’s 1489 Miscellanea in the history of scholarship is widely acknowledged. The “pene ad uerbum” verse translations contained in this work present a similar picture, and were widely read, imitated, and disputed by his successors; the earliest example of a substantial Greek poem’s being printed alongside its Latin translation, they did much to disseminate a responsion model of verse translation. This thesis outlines the development of Poliziano’s thought and practice in relation to earlier 15th- century attempts at translating verse, and explores the wide ramifications of his example in the following century. To demonstrate this, it directs its attention to a corpus of translators who, like Poliziano, tried their hand at translating Callimachus, whilst also arguing for Poliziano’s influence on important figures such as Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Dorat.
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The Stoic cognitive impression and the Academic Aparallaxia Argument: a study of an epistemological debate.
Zarzar, Cristóbal; Zarzar Munoz, Cristobal
The present study offers a reconstruction of part of the epistemological debate between Stoics and the sceptical Academy, showing that the Stoic views were in part shaped by the philosophical exchange with their sceptical opponents and refined as a result of this confrontation. It focuses on the Stoic doctrine of the cognitive impression (a kind of impression that gives us reliable information about the world) and on the challenge posed by the ‘Aparallaxia Argument’. This argument seeks to establish that there are no cognitive impressions by claiming that, for every true impression, there could be an indistinguishable false impression (Indistinguishability Thesis). The thesis is structured in six chapters. The opening chapter introduces the Stoic theory of perception and the role that rational sense-impressions play in their theory of knowledge, whilst examining how the Stoics understand sense-impressions and their contents. The second chapter presents a detailed analysis of the Aparallaxia Argument and is restricted to only one of the type of cases invoked by the Academics to support their Indistinguishability Thesis, namely cases in which the putatively indistinguishable sense-impressions are caused by pairs of objects that are plausibly perceptually indiscernible, so that the perceiver could not distinguish the impression she is entertaining from a false impression despite being in a normal state of mind. The fact that the Academics seem to have raised this challenge once they had the Stoics agree that a true impression would not be cognitive if there could be a false impression from which it could not be distinguished suggests—so I argue—that, on the Stoic view, cognitive impressions can in principle be experientially distinguished from their false counterparts insofar as they exhibit a distinctive mark that is available to the perceiver’s awareness. The third chapter is devoted to the Stoic doctrine of the cognitive sense-impression. The first sections are concerned with the claim that cognitive sense-impressions exhibit a distinctive mark in virtue of which they can in principle be experientially distinguished from false sense-impressions. On the Stoic account, it is argued, the distinguishability of cognitive sense-impressions is due to the fact that they exhibit a degree of clarity that cannot be also exhibited by their false counterparts, which is ultimately due to their different respective causal histories. In the remaining sections it is explained why the Stoics reject the Indistinguishability Thesis and the cases of perceptually indiscernible objects invoked by the Academics. These sections offer a novel reconstruction of the Stoic theory of how conceptions are activated during the process giving rise to rational sense-impressions so that the corresponding concepts come to constitute the propositional content of these impressions, which allow us to understand better the Stoic reply to the Aparallaxia Argument. The fourth chapter addresses some of the Academic attacks on Stoic metaphysics insofar as they have implications for the Stoic epistemological position. It examines some of the views the Stoics hold with respect to objects and their perceptible qualities, which gives us a better idea of the complexity of the debate and the interconnectedness of Stoic views on metaphysics and epistemology. The fifth chapter shows that the Academics pursued a variety of different argumentative strategies to attack the Stoic epistemological position. This, in turn, supports the view that the Academics were flexible with respect to the strategies they adopted and their arguments could be easily adapted depending on the context and their intended target, which sits well with the noncommittal outlook of their scepticism. Whereas some strategies target the Stoic claim that appropriately-caused true impressions exhibit a distinctive degree of clarity that makes them in principle distinguishable from false impressions, other strategies question the perceiver’s ability to notice degrees of clarity that are only subtly different. The final chapter focuses on the Stoic appeal to the notion of expertise to support their claim that any two objects can be perceptually discriminated. After arriving at the conclusion that for the Stoics cognitive impressions require some degree of expertise, the chapter addresses further Academic attacks invited by this Stoic view.
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The Golden Chain: Redrawing the map of ancient allegory
Winning, William
This PhD thesis discusses the concept of allegory from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. In the first chapter, which discusses the hermeneutics of allegorical reading in the late Archaic and Classical periods, I aim to show that previous discussions have misunderstood both the texts which allegorical readers interpreted and the interpretative claims which these readers made about them. Allegorical readers did not seek to “decode” the hidden meaning of these narratives; they sought to bring to light the pre-philosophical intuitions about the cosmos which are plausibly embedded in them. The second chapter discusses allegorical interpretation in the context of Archaic and Classical thought. Previous approaches have characterised allegoresis either as a mode of literary criticism or as an attempt to maintain the prestige of texts such as Homer’s Iliad in a culture with whose values and ideas they were no longer consistent. My discussion highlights the difficulties inherent in both views and stresses instead the close connections between allegoresis and early Greek philosophical thought. The third chapter is framed as a study of Hellenistic allegoresis, self-consciously challenging the typical rubric of “Stoic allegoresis”. In contrast with previous studies, I argue that allegoresis did not have a clearly defined role in the Stoic philosophical system; the early Stoics’ interest in allegory does have connections with the Stoics’ philosophical views, but it is better analysed in relation to developments in Hellenistic literary culture. The implications of this argument – and of the thesis as a whole – are that philosophical inquiry, literary criticism and anthropology, while partially differentiated, are nevertheless thoroughly integrated in Greek culture in these periods. The history of allegoresis is thus crucial to the formation of the disciplinary categories we use today.
Open Access
From Conflict to Unity: Plato on Well-Ordered Wholes
Stephanides, Stephan
Recent literature has shown an increasing interest in issues pertaining to the theme of ‘parts and wholes’ in Plato. One classic example is Verity Harte’s 2002 monograph Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure (OUP), which revisits the mereological question of what constitutes a ‘whole’ in the philosophy of Plato. The main achievement of Harte’s investigation rests in the notion that structure is ‘irreducible’ to the characterisation of a whole. To be a whole, therefore, is already a normatively value laden concept in Plato, insofar as it presupposes an ordered structure or arrangement of internal parts. Many of Plato’s works are strongly preoccupied with complex wholes. Unlike the objects of the intelligible realm, however, Plato assumes that complex items are prone to internal conflict and stand in need of proper direction. Importantly, complex wholes are able to function better as the kind of entity they ought to be when they acquire their own unique structure and order. Given this normative requirement, Plato is left with the task of explaining exactly how complex wholes are optimally ordered or structured so as to become whole. Whilst recent literature has focused mainly on the ‘mereological question’ in Plato, these aspects of Plato’s engagement with the theme of parts and wholes seem to have gone underappreciated. This thesis aims to fill that gap by exploring the different models Plato puts to work in different dialogues for conceptualising the well-orderedness of complex wholes, with special focus on the city, the soul, and the cosmos. By critically examining Plato’s presentation of these structures in dialogues placed within a chronological framework, this thesis asks whether Plato’s account of ‘well-ordered wholes’ improves over time. This question will be examined with particular attention to the psychological, ethical, and political implications of the different conceptual models of structure Plato offers across the dialogues. In the light of these questions, this thesis will propose that Plato’s later dialogues contain his most successful account of well-ordered wholes by promulgating a holistic conceptual model which offers a more integrated and less hierarchical account of the well-orderedness and unity of complex wholes.
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Justice, Piety, and Slavery in Plato's Thought
Gold, Solveig Lucia
This thesis traces the metaphorical language of slavery across the Platonic corpus, arguing that Plato’s political theory emerges in response to Socrates choosing to die a ‘good slave’ to both the laws and the gods. Socrates makes this choice, I argue in Chapter 1, because of his understanding of justice and piety as outlined in the Euthyphro: justice is voluntary slavery to the laws, and piety is voluntary slavery to the gods. But Plato, unhappy with the death of his mentor, revises this account of justice. According to the Gorgias and the Republic, as I claim in Chapter 2, justice demands that the philosopher be a master, not a slave; piety, meanwhile, takes a backseat. In the Statesman (Chapter 3), piety returns: before a philosopher can rule in accordance with justice, he must first serve the gods as ‘priest’ and ‘prophet’ of dialectic. But since the rule of the priest-king is not practical in the long run, Plato in the Laws revives the Euthyphro’s account of justice and piety and finds a new way to rescue philosophers from Socrates’ fate (Chapter 4): he envisions a city in which all citizens are good slaves to the laws and the gods. And these good slaves will, like Socrates, in death earn manumission and entry into what I describe in the Epilogue as the divine, paradigmatic polis.
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The Epistemology of Artefact Comparisons in Early Greek Natural Philosophy and Medicine
Van Luijn, Nathasja
This thesis examines the epistemology of artefact comparisons in early Greek natural philosophy and medicine. Various thinkers frequently employed the structure and/or functioning of man-made artefacts to improve their understanding of a target domain in which direct observation is hindered or impossible, such as in meteorology, cosmology, or human physiology. My thesis mainly focusses on fragments and reports of the so-called ‘Presocratics’, but also encompasses Hippocratic and Pythagorean texts, thereby placing the use of artefact comparisons as an epistemological tool in the sixth to mid-fourth centuries BC in context. This thesis aims to counter a prevalent scholarly attitude towards these early Greek comparisons in natural philosophy and medicine: regarding them as theoretically unessential. The disregard for the epistemic importance of comparisons can be gauged from the scattered attention they have received. Most handbooks and companions on early Greek natural philosophy only rarely feature comparisons. Whereas some individual comparisons have been the topic of discussion in book sections and articles, many others have barely ever been treated. The obvious exception to the neglect of the significance of comparisons is Lloyd’s excellent Polarity and Analogy from 1966, which remains the most complete study of early Greek (artefact) comparisons to date. My thesis intends to remedy two shortcomings of Lloyd’s landmark study. First, Lloyd’s fairly broad definition of an analogy as ‘any mode of reasoning in which one object or complex of objects is likened or assimilated to another’ (page 175) led to his undifferentiated inclusion of comparisons which work epistemologically in different ways. Second, while the majority of Lloyd’s analyses of individual comparisons are compelling and insightful, Polarity and Analogy does not theoretically explain which properties of the source domain are compared to which properties of the target domain, nor how this process of likening happens. This thesis employs a psychological theory of analogy, called the ‘structure-mapping theory of analogy’, developed in the 1980s by Professor Dedre Gentner. The structure-mapping theory of analogy provides criteria to distinguish between literal similarity and analogy, and to pinpoint the generative, corroborative, and didactive capacities of analogies. Employing this theory, I highlight previously misunderstood or overlooked aspects of those early Greek artefact comparisons, such as additional properties involved in the mapping from the source domain to the target domain and new reasons why thinkers might have included these comparisons with artefacts. This thesis demonstrates that all early Greek artefact comparisons contain heuristic, corroborative, and explanatory functions which are epistemologically essential and could neither (easily) be left out nor be substituted with a more straightforward, non-comparative description. The precise nature of the epistemological advantage offered by these comparisons depends on their locations on the scale of kind of comparison (from literal similarity to analogy) and on the scale of deviation from standard usage (from normal use to extra-ordinary use by construction or adaptation). The first three chapters each discuss a group of comparisons from a different area on those two scales, and the fourth chapter further examines the use of a clepsydra as a source domain for various different kinds of comparisons by different thinkers. In short, this thesis sheds new light on the importance of early Greek artefact comparisons, showing that they are integral parts of the cosmological, meteorological, and physiological Greek theories of the 6th, 5th, and early 4th centuries BC.
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Proclus on Aristotle on Plato. A Case Study on Motion
Marinescu, Rares
My PhD thesis focuses on Proclus (412–485 AD) and his engagement with Aristotle’s theory of motion with a specific focus on Aristotle’s criticism of Plato. There are two main goals. (i) I refute the widespread view that Proclus – in line with other Neoplatonists – adheres to the idea of an essential harmony between Plato and Aristotle. (ii) I illuminate Proclus’ views on motion, which is a central concept in his thought, by examining his Aristotelian background. The thesis is divided in four chapters. The first chapter deals with Proclus’ little studied treatise Elements of Physics where he sums up in an axiomatic manner Aristotle’s theory of motion from Physics VI, VIII and De Caelo I. I demonstrate that Proclus’ project is embedded in an exegetical tradition and show how he omits certain parts of Aristotle’s works which might conflict with his Neoplatonist views. Additionally, I provide evidence for the view that Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics proved to be influential for the axiomatic structure of Proclus’ treatise. The second chapter concerns the origin of motion in the universe. While Plato assumes a self-moving soul as origin, Aristotle posits an unmoved intellect. Proclus brings these two views together by regarding the unmoved intellect as ultimate source of motion and the self-moving soul as an intermediate entity. I demonstrate that his harmonisation effort goes beyond previous Platonist attempts due to the philosophical reasoning he provides. I also defend Proclus’ assumption of both unmoved intellect and self-moving soul as sources of motion against concerns brought up in scholarship. In the third chapter, I focus on the concept of self-motion which is tied to the definition of soul in Plato. Aristotle famously criticises this view in De Anima I.3, showing that the soul is unmoved. I offer the first lengthy discussion of Proclus’ repudiation of Aristotle’s criticism which differs from other Neoplatonist responses. Most importantly, I demonstrate how Proclus develops his own views on self-motion by using Platonic and Aristotelian insights. The fourth chapter examines the problem of the causality of the unmoved intellect. This issue is central in scholarship on Aristotle and goes back to late antiquity. I argue that here Proclus’ non-harmonist stance towards Aristotle emerges most strongly: not only did Aristotle fail to make the intellect an efficient cause of the cosmos’ being but his metaphysics generally is deficient since he did not recognise the Platonic One as highest principle. I contrast Proclus’ view with the position of Ammonius and Simplicius who see a complete agreement between Plato and Aristotle.
Controlled Access
Beauty of Form and Concept: The Aesthetics of Late Euripidean Tragedy
Ellis, Marcus Trystan
Euripides’ late tragedies represent some of the most controversial works in the Greek tragic corpus. This thesis explores their aesthetics – that is, stylistic features of language, characterisation, and concept, together with the impact these might be expected to have on an audience. Each of the first three chapters treats one of the most difficult tragedies: "Phoenissae", "Iphigenia in Aulis", and "Orestes". A final chapter analyses "Bacchae", which has commonly been understood as a reaction against the avant-gardism of Euripides’ other late works. The focus throughout is on the most contested features of these plays – their lyric elements. I offer a close analysis of the texts themselves, with a particular emphasis on self-referential and self-conscious passages. Comparison with the work of other tragedians and with non-dramatic lyric, especially the New Music, and readings of contemporary comic reception also feature prominently. In doing so, I consider the significance of their intellectual and philosophical associations. I take inspiration from theoretical material ranging from ancient aesthetic concepts to modern cognitive theory. A number of interconnected themes emerge. Most prominently, these plays represent broadly analogous negotiations of the ‘gap’ between the audience and the subject matter of the play, in which aestheticisation marked by a distancing effect and a conspicuous artificiality predominates. This takes several forms, ranging from the presentation of the characters, setting, or chorus to various iterations of formal ornamentation in language and concept. In many cases a tension arises between the effect of such aestheticisation and the horror aroused by the grim action of the tragedy in which it occurs, although it can sometimes also be understood to deaden the emotive impact of the content expressed. The high artistic complexity of these works also becomes apparent, not only in their frequent virtuosic combination of stylistic features traditional and progressive, but in their exploration of novel aesthetic spheres – most strikingly manifested in what I identify as the inherent visuality of the text. The sheer dominance of aesthetics in late Euripidean tragedy – including in the "Bacchae", which combines many of the characteristics of his other late work with more traditional elements – is remarkable. An appreciation of their aesthetic features is vital for a truly profound comprehension of Euripides’ late tragedies, which have often been subject to criticism for many perceived faults: principally insufficiently ‘tragic’ tone, excessively florid ornamentation, and the ‘irrelevance’ of their choral odes. My thesis breaks the mould of such scholarship – which can be understood to have its roots in a lengthy tradition of misappreciation of the aesthetic qualities I identify – and also of the current predominance of the socio-political approach to Euripides’ work (and indeed to Greek tragedy in general). It opens new vistas onto the artistry of these plays, allowing us to appreciate them on their own terms, revitalising our understanding of them, and broadening our conception of what Greek tragedy could be.
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Political Debate in the Age of Justinian I
Hassall, Matthew
This thesis examines how Romans in sixth-century Constantinople debated politics. It begins by observing that Justinian I ruled in a political culture far more open to conflicts of views and criticism of the régime than is often appreciated. It conducts intertextual, contextualist close readings of the texts of thirteen contemporary authors to explain how this culture of debate operated. This literary evidence is marked by highly creative, tactical uses of discourse. The care and ingenuity with which these tactics were formulated confirms the importance that contemporaries placed on mobilising the opinions and expectations of imperial subjects to exert (or defuse) political pressure on the emperor. Chapter One introduces the two defining ideological conflicts of the period, a political debate about Roman tradition and a culture war about classical and Christian culture, and the régime’s strategic need to navigate them. Chapter Two remodels the operation of Justinian’s propaganda as an ecosystem in which a devolved network of propagandists amplified and tailored imperial messages but simultaneously inflected them to suit their own agendas. Chapter Three explores the debate about this propaganda culture that developed within Constantinople’s civil bureaucracy, as traditionalists became concerned with the disjunction between imperial representations and reality. Chapter Four turns to the period’s central debate, tracing how the régime and its opponents dialectically developed new tactics for advancing unchanging conceptions of the extent of imperial authority to intervene in the Roman legal tradition. The whole thesis demonstrates the value of a synchronically intertextual methodology for reading sixth-century political literature.
Open Access
Democracy in the Peloponnese, c.550–146 BCE
Frullini, Stefano
This thesis is a study of the nature and development of democratic constitutions in the Peloponnese between the late archaic and the mid-Hellenistic period. It investigates the emergence and permanence of democratic government in three major Peloponnesian poleis (Elis, Mantinea, Argos) and one federal state (the Achaean League), as well as the way in which those institutions effectively operated in those specific contexts. Its overarching aim is to reevaluate the impact of popular rule in the shaping of the historical trajectory of the polities examined and, to an extent, of the Peloponnese as a whole. Chapter 1 provides an outline of the general features of Greek democracy, followed by a survey of the local specificities that may have had a bearing on how democratic institutions actually worked in the context of the Peloponnese. I also list the main relevant sources for a study of Peloponnesian democracy and review the existing scholarship on both non-Athenian democracy and the political history of the ancient Peloponnese from a regional angle. The following three chapters (2–4), devoted respectively to Elis, Mantinea and Argos, follow in broad terms the same tripartite structure. In each of these chapters, the first section explores the late archaic, pre-democratic context to illuminate the environment in which democracy would later emerge; the second section reconstructs the creation and consolidation of democratic institutions, reappraising the innovative and disruptive nature of the processes of democratisation concerned; the third section follows ‘democracy in action’, i.e. how these democratic poleis navigated the complex international environment of the early fourth century BCE and how being democratic shaped their policy decisions. Chapter 5 investigates the democratic elements in the constitution of the Achaean League from its foundation in 280 BCE to the Roman conquest in 146. This chapter follows a thematic structure, although each of its three sections deals with diachronic change. While the first section lays out the theoretical groundwork for a study of the League’s federal institutions and makes a case in favour of their democratic nature, the following two sections explore how – respectively – the Achaean dēmos and its leaders were both empowered and constrained in their political behaviour by the constitutional framework in which they operated. The concluding chapter (6) draws from the theory of the ‘democratic advantage’ to argue that the historical performance of the democracies examined can be explained by interpreting their processes of democratisation as processes of rearrangement of the relations between internal sub-groups on a more egalitarian basis.
Open Access
The Long Augment in Homer: a formula-based approach
Chiattelli, Edoardo
In ancient Greek, past tenses of verbs starting with a consonant are prefixed with the vowel epsilon, but some verbs in Homer show an eta instead. These forms were linked to Vedic instances of long augments by part of the relevant literature. Other scholars preferred to explain the Greek instances as inner developments, while others denied any philological validity for the long augment as an actual morpheme, and rather explained its presence in some Homeric verbs as the product of analogical processes. My thesis focusses on specific Homeric forms within the heterogeneous set of evidence offered by ancient Greek. I take these long-augmented verbs to be artificial creations of the Homeric language. This line of interpretation is supported not only by considerations of historical phonology and morphology, but also through an innovative formula-based method. Its aim is to describe, through an analysis of the Homeric traditional language, the possible reasons and dynamics for the creation in the Kunstsprache of artificial long-augmented forms. More specifically, it might be possible to explain them as part of analogical modifications of pre-existent formulaic patterns, so as to provide an accurate description of how (and why) their artificial structure was used as a metrical alternative to their counterparts in the spoken language. The focus of my thesis is on ἠείδη ‘she/he knew’ (and ἠείδης ‘you knew’), ἤϊκτο ‘she/he resembled’, ἀπηύρα ‘she/he took away’, and the trisyllabic forms of the imperfect of εἶμι, i.e. ἤϊα ‘I went’, ‘ἤϊε ‘she/he went’, ἤϊσαν/ἤϊον ‘they went’. A detailed analysis of historical morphology shows that none of them can be assumed to be the result of linguistic processes in the ordinary language. This is also confirmed by their attestations limited to Homeric diction or later poetry imitating it. Furthermore, I show through the formula-based method how most of these long-augmented forms are part of analogical modifications derived from formulaic patterns, which contain forms of the same paradigm but without long augment (i.e. ᾔδεε ‘she/he knew’, ἐϊκυῖα/ἔϊκτο ‘resembling’/‘she/he resembled’, ἴσαν ‘they went’). This suggests that long-augmented forms are used primarily as metrically functional alternatives, which is a feature typical of artificial creations in Homer. Since the results of the method confirm the artificial nature of these forms, they cannot be compared with the Vedic data, nor can their long augment be deemed a genuine morpheme of ancient Greek. It is rather the product of analogical processes within the Homeric Kunstsprache. In particular, I provide a possible narrative for the origin and analogical use of a Homeric long augment in the pluperfect of οἶδα and imperfect of εἶμι, while explaining the initial long vowels of ἠειδ- and ἤϊκτο as analogical temporal augments used by the Homeric poets for metrical purposes. As for ἀπηύρᾱ, this morphologically controversial form is best explained as another analogical use of temporal augmentation, applied by the Ionian bards to original *ἀπεύρᾱ despite its metrical irrelevance. My method shows how forms like ἀπηύρᾱ, which had become extraneous to the Ionian bards, could nonetheless undergo analogical reshaping through the influence of structural connections among formulaic patterns.
Open Access
Ancient theories of wind, and the physical principles on which they are based, from the earliest times to Theophrastus
(1969-09) Hall, John James
Open Access
Latin Satire, Ars Sermonis
Goldman, Oscar
This thesis examines the construction and function of dialogue and pseudo-dialogic structures in the satiric poetry of Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Dialogue is analysed as, to greater and lesser degrees, mimetic of, or informed by, turn-taking structures in multi-speaker communication. Analysis is undertaken using methodologies adapted from the field of Conversation Analysis, as well as recent sociolinguistic studies on Graeco-Roman prose and poetry. In addition to these ‘novel’ tools, traditional philological exegesis is used to explore the inter and intra-textual relationships between forms of speech and speaker. The combination of these approaches generates a multi-layered exegesis of sermo in Latin satire, revealing stylistic patterns and innovations, nuanced characterisation of specific speakers, and the narratological function of mimetic structures. Chapter I introduces the concept of persona as relevant to this thesis through an analysis of certain extracts of Lucilius’ poetry. Despite the fragmentary nature of the evidence, I demonstrate that what remains evinces a variety of dialogic modalities, as well as notable sermonic stylistic quirks seen in later representations of sermo. I also demonstrate how Cicero’s reception of Lucilius can inform our reading of the author-narrator continuum, and apply my turn-focussed methodology to the study of the ‘Scaevola v Albucius’ debate. Chapter II introduces the quantitative aspects of this thesis and applies the complete set of analytical tools to the satiric works of Horace. I uphold and advance Freudenburg’s reading of a dichotomy between Epicurean and Stoic sermo, and provide detailed exegesis on many forms of dialogue existing in both books of satire. I argue that multiple speakers are given specific idiolects which have, until now, passed unnoticed by scholarship, and that dialogic interactions between the narrator and various interlocutors are critical to reading Horace’s poetic and satiric agendas. Chapter III continues the full application of socio-linguistic and philological exegesis on the works of Persius. I argue throughout for specific speaker-line attributions — necessary for conducting my analysis — and through doing so note important moments of intertextuality between Persius and Horace. In my analysis of Persius 3, I make significant contributions to the question of speech/speaker (a debate ongoing for more than a century), and argue that Persius is, generally, subversive of the modalities utilised by Lucilius and Horace. Chapter IV completes the quadriptych through analysing the role of sermo in the works of Juvenal. While modern scholars may claim that Juvenal is less ‘conversational’ than his predecessors, I argue that dialogue not only remains an integral part of much of Juvenal’s poetry, but even undergoes innovation through the inclusion/creation of new interlocutorial archetypes (the female satirist) and iterated use of multi-speaker ( > 2) interactions.
Open Access
The Female Body in Roman Visual Culture
Sheard, Sarah
This thesis examines the representation of the female body in Roman visual culture, exploring a range of images from mainland Italy that date between the late 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD, from three specific contexts of display: the public, domestic, and funerary. It seeks to understand how the two parts of its title – ‘the female body’ and ‘Roman visual culture’ – intersect, examining female bodies as they are represented, and how these bodies are shaped by the act of representation itself: i.e., the limitations, conventions, and priorities of their representative medium, and the context in which they were viewed. Images of female bodies could reify normative expectations of women or, alternatively, carve out space for more fantastical concepts of femininity within Roman culture. As these gendered expectations were relational, this thesis also puts the female body into dialogue with the male and sexually indeterminate body to understand how these images constructed and explored a relative spectrum of femininity and masculinity in terms of appearance, gesture, and behaviour. In this sense, this thesis is interested in Roman ideas about gender, and, critically, how gender was constructed within and through visual representation.
Open Access
The Syntax of Relative Clauses and Related Phenomena in Proto-Indo-European
Ram-Prasad, Krishnan
In this thesis, I reconstruct the syntax of relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Syntactic reconstruction, particularly in the case of PIE, has presented a perennial challenge to Comparative Philologists. I demonstrate that Minimalist reconstruction provides a viable methodology through which we may address this challenge, integrating the specific task of reconstruction into the broader field of historical syntax. The methodology necessarily demands a discussion of Minimalist theories of relative clause structures, which I provide in relation to the synchronic analysis of ancient Indo-European (IE) languages. I then undertake a philological survey of descendants of the putative relative pronouns in PIE: *yó- and *kʷí-/*kʷó-. The debate on which (if either) of these was the “original” relative pronoun in PIE has lasted for over a century. I argue that neither form can be excluded as a relative pronoun in PIE, and that together they reflect what was a unitary functional category: the relative pronoun, *REL. Relative clauses across the ancient IE languages exhibit grammaticalised fronting of the relative pronoun, traditionally referred to as “wh-movement”. To analyse the nature of this movement, I provide a detailed reconstruction of the PIE left periphery. Because of the additional role of discourse-driven movement (Topicalisation and Focalisation) and clisis (“Wackernagel’s Law”) in the left periphery, my reconstruction has implications beyond relative clauses, shaping our understanding of the significant role pragmatics plays in the ordering of constituents in PIE, as well as the syntax-phonology interface. On the basis of all the above, I reconstruct the syntax of relative clauses in PIE. I argue that PIE had what I refer to as an “anaphoric” relative clause, that could generate a variety of surface forms, including correlatives and postnominal relatives. The “anaphoric” relative clause was adjoined to the matrix clause at the CP level, and could either precede or follow the matrix clause. I argue further that we cannot exclude embedded relative clauses from our reconstruction of PIE, but that it is possible to derive them diachronically from an earlier “anaphoric” relative clause. This thesis thus demonstrates that Minimalist reconstruction is not only a viable methodology, but a fruitful one, allowing us to establish concrete conclusions about PIE syntax.
Controlled Access
Visual Power and Elite Subjectivity in Private Portraiture from Imperial Greece
Koukovasilis, Georgios
This doctorate investigates portrait sculptures erected in Greece from the reign of the first Roman emperor Augustus at the end of the first century BC into late antiquity to ask how private individuals, in different ways, in different locales and contexts, brought Greek and Roman visual languages into conversation to situate themselves in history and within complex power dynamics. To explore what this sculpture did with, and contributed to, its Greek background, and, in consequence, how personal and local identities were expressed in actu and in situ, this thesis examines both male and female portraits. It brings together published and unpublished data from fieldwork undertaken in Rome, the centre of a unique multicultural Empire, and Athens, a hotspot of Greek intellectual activity in the Roman period. The thesis is structured around highly visible public contexts (temples, gymnasia, agorae, theatres) to examine the variables that affected modes of self-presentation in marble. It speaks not only to art historical concerns but, by virtue of its contribution to identity-studies, to questions of politics and class. The manifold expressions of local identities and the macro-identity of imperial Hellenism are mutually supportive in highlighting the problem of subjectivity and visual power in Roman Greece. Rather than cashing out portraits as unequivocally Greek or tokens of Romanization, this thesis understands portraiture as a powerful medium which shored up local elites’ currency and created common ground between Greece and Rome in tandem. This thesis investigates the ways in which local elite families developed their own sense of self around an eclectic version of Greekness, as well as how the act of looking at the portrait galleries of disparate spaces provided stimulus for the creation and structuring of a shared elite subjectivity.
Open Access
Serving the Patris in the Roman Empire: Civic Patriotism in Basil of Caesarea, the Emperor Julian, and Gregory Nazianzus
Langley, Thomas; Langley, Thomas [0000-0001-9572-5300]
This thesis is a study of civic patriotism in the fourth-century Roman Empire in the East. Civic patriotism is often viewed as dead or irrelevant in late Antiquity. This thesis argues that civic patriotic language remained a powerful force, being endorsed, adapted and contested by a variety of elite thinkers, three of whom this thesis studies in detail. The thesis employs the methodology of a ‘language of politics’ to model this process of adaption, redefinition and contestation. In particular, this thesis demonstrates that Julian and his Christian contemporaries addressed similar theological and political concerns and were part of the same debates – though providing different answers. At times, Julian’s position on civic issues was closer to either Basil or Gregory than either of the two Christians were to each other. Religious allegiance thus did not entirely determine the intellectual positions even of committed late-antique religious reformers. Structurally, this thesis examines civic patriotism from three angles: a secular political language, a foil for religious reformers, and a way of linking local belonging and religious allegiance. Firstly, elites adapted the language of civic patriotism to the new political circumstances of the expanded late Roman state. They refashioned service to the patris as participating in elite networks and promoting local men to government office, advertised in literary culture through letters, poems and panegyrics. This effort was cross-confessional. Julian’s enthusiasm for civic patriotic language, rather than an anachronism that, reflected mainstream fourth-century political culture. Secondly, however, ascetic and universalist ideas springing from contemporary philosophy offered significant challenges to the place of civic patriotic language in elite political thought. Basil and Gregory adapted civic terminology to describe heavenly, ecclesiastical, and monastic belonging. As a result, earthly patris had to be rejected entirely. By contrast, while Julian shared some of their theological assumptions due to his theology he did not reject the patris outright. Thirdly, Basil, Julian, and Gregory attempted to combine these attitudes by elaborating a ‘spiritualised’ vision of civic patriotism. They claimed civic patriotism either for Christianity or for Neoplatonic paganism, redefining civic identity and rewrite elite obligations to encourage citizens to view their patriotic and religious duties as identical. This spiritualised form of patriotism had substantial later influence on the culture, politics and society of the medieval Christian world. Overall, this thesis showcases the continuing significance of civic patriotic language in late Antiquity, and the productive tensions it fostered in political thought, practical politics, and religious culture.