Theses - Classics

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Curating the Dead: Bodies and Matter in Early Mycenaean Burials
Phillips, Rachel
This thesis examines the relations between bodies and objects in early Mycenaean burials, between 1700 and 1400 BCE on mainland Greece. It adopts an artistic approach to these burials, which treats the burial context as an intentional representation, centred around the creative actions of selection and deposition. It combines these ideas with theories about aesthetics, as the perception and evaluation of material properties on the part of the viewer. It therefore focuses on the visual impressions created in the deposition, and the ways that these impressions structured past experiences and interpretations of the burial. It asks how death was transformed into visual experience: what shaped and directed the viewer’s perception of the tomb context? How can we access the intended impact of these burials based on the selection of specific visual and material properties? In asking these questions, this thesis aims to address the limitations of current approaches to Mycenaean burials. It moves beyond questions about social and cultural hierarchies to think about burials as mediators of ritual, emotion, and narrative. Rather than focus on the socioeconomic functions of these burials or their relations with Minoan Crete, this thesis uses five case studies to show that early Mycenaean burials were intended to transform human bodies into representations, to grant the dead a status more akin to an artwork. In doing so, it reframes these contexts as complex processes of image-making and story-telling, centred around the figure of the deceased. It first examines the manipulation of human bodies within early Mycenaean tombs, with a focus on the Vayenas tomb at Pylos and Tholos 2 at Routsi, two well-preserved and well-documented burial contexts in Messenia. It then looks at the materialisation of the body through the examination of two burial contexts in the Argolid, Shaft Grave IV in Grave Circle A at Mycenae and the Kazarma tholos. Next, it examines the narrativisation of the dead, with the Vapheio tholos in Laconia as its primary case study. The final chapter unites these different themes and contexts, to connect the twin strands of bodies and objects around an artistic approach. Ultimately, this thesis aims to reintroduce art and aesthetics as useful analytical tools for archaeological research. It offers new perspectives on the role of visual culture in burial and thus shows that there is much to be learned from the re-examination of old data with new approaches.
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Constructing the Coast in Imperial Greek Periplography
Hanigan, Daniel
This thesis undertakes the first serious study of the extant corpus of imperial Greek periplographic literature. It focusses, in particular, on the way that these texts construct coastal space, arguing that they are bound together by a shared recognition of the shore as a symbol of the territorial limitation of the Roman Empire. The thesis opens with an introduction surveying the history of scholarship and proposing a novel, *processual* approach to reading periplographic texts that foregrounds their common approach to the textual construction of the seacoast. Chapter One ("Memory") focusses on Dionysius of Byzantium's *Anaplous of the Bosporus*. It argues that Dionysius engages in a form of local resistance to global empire by figuring the symmetrical shores of the Thracian Bosporus as material archives that preserve fragments of the contested pre-Roman history of the region. Chapter Two ("Boundary") turns to the anonymous *Periplous of Hanno King of Carthage*. It shows that this text holds up a quasi-historical mirror to the expansionist imperialism of Rome by offering a fictive vision the shore as both a boundary preventing the city-founding Carthaginians from carrying out their colonial commission and a guideline dictating the progression of the fleet away from the civilised world of the Mediterranean and into what it constructs as the alien alterity of Africa. Chapter Three ("Archive") closes by looking at Arrian of Nicomedia's *Periplous of the Euxine Sea*. It shows that Arrian, in this gubernatorial dispatch to the emperor Hadrian, frames the coastline of the Black Sea as a space of unrealised opportunity upon which to stage the future consolidation and expansion of the intellectual and territorial dominance of Rome. The thesis closes with a conclusion that situates these presentations of the coast within a framework of Greek resistance to the rhetoric of universal domination central to the self-presentation of the Roman Empire. It ends by suggesting a number of conceptual and methodological directions for future research on both the periplographic genre and the ancient coastal imaginary.
Open Access
Thinking about Acting: The use of causal knowledge for the sake of intentional action in Heraclitus, Hippocratic On Regimen and Democritus
Audra, Zoë
In my thesis, I explore the role of knowledge in intentional action within the scope of early Greek philosophy and medicine. I investigate how knowledge influences both the intention behind an action and its successful delivery. Specifically, I look at the works of authors who discuss a particular type of knowledge that I refer to as 'knowledge of causes', a knowledge which offers explanation in terms of causes. I am particularly interested in understanding how a knowledge of causes which is holistic, general, and separable from action, is employed to justify or inform intentional actions. My research draws from various sources, including Heraclitus, who presents an implicit theory of action in his account of '*logos*'. This theory proposes a framework in which the success of decision-making including ethical and political decision-making hinges upon a comprehensive grasp of *logos*. The stronger a grasp of *logos* the more unified larger decision-making bodies become, the firmer a plan may be grounded in an understanding of contextualising information, and the more control an agent will have over the delivery of their plan. Additionally, I examine the Hippocratic treatise *On Regimen*, who presents a holistic knowledge of causes represented by a reductive physical explanation in terms of the powers of fire and water. This framework supports medical decision-making by providing a comprehensive understanding of both bodily and cosmic systems in causal terms. Furthermore, it recognises the significance of dream diagnosis as a reliable source of information about patients, thereby enhancing its explanatory potential. Finally, I delve into the perspectives of Democritus, for whom holistic knowledge of causes serves as fundamental ethical principles expressed through guiding maxims for ethical decision-making. Agents must grasp the underlying fundamental ethical principles within these maxims to effectively apply them to their own circumstances. Failure to do so results in blindness towards the right information required for action, the wrong desires and ultimately, unsuccessful ethical action.
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Encounters with Londinium: Nineteenth-Century Responses to London’s Roman Past
Wardle, Sophie
In the nineteenth century, vast civic construction projects transformed London into a visibly modern capital. But as construction workers dug the foundations for London’s future, they also discovered its Roman past. In their trenches, these accidental archaeologists unearthed fine tessellated pavements and worn-out leather shoes. This thesis explores how these archaeological remains infiltrated the lives of Londoners, playing a part in shaping ideas, identities, and livelihoods in a shifting modern city. Based on new archival research and neglected popular and antiquarian publications, it reveals how Londinium became embedded in contemporary London in four important ways: as a reference point for understanding life during a period of rapid and alienating change; as a productive comparison when responding to emerging social and cultural debates; as a tool in (re)negotiating identity on both a civic and a personal scale; and, as an intellectual and material commodity to be traded in by some of London’s poorest citizens. By investigating a wide range of responses to Londinium—including interpreting, collecting, selling, displaying, reproducing, and even faking its remains—my work reveals how encounters with London’s Roman past helped to make its Victorian present. Contemporary responses to the well-known Bucklersbury Mosaic—discovered in the very heart of the city in 1869—provide the frame for this wider investigation. Along the way we will discover the mosaic’s role in securing a new civic museum for the capital; meet a stonemason turned civic dignitary who built his monumental new home around a replica of this ancient pavement; and uncover in the city’s trenches a brisk trade both in archaeological information and in pieces of fake Londinium.
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The Enemy Within: Combatants, Commanders, and Comparative Models in Julio-Claudian Recollections of Late Republican Civil War
Slingsby, Elisabeth
This thesis analyses parallels between the civil wars of late Republican Rome and episodes about non-Roman historical figures, which were drawn in Latin, and occasionally in Greek, literature composed throughout the Julio-Claudian period. I argue that these parallels provided a key apparatus through which writers active in the century between Augustus' consolidation of power in 27BC and the resumption of civil conflict in 69AD after the death of Nero conceptualised, constructed, and communicated the contentious history of Roman-on-Roman violence. In the last two decades, there has been a renewed scholarly interest in the ways in which armed hostilities between members of the same community have been remembered and retold. From conflicts labelled *bellum civile* and *stasis* in the ancient Mediterranean, to their reception in the modern day, research in this area has repeatedly demonstrated that there was an endeavour to come to terms with lingering memories of brutality, division, and adversity at all societal levels, long after the swords of civil war were sheathed. With respect to the recollection of civil war between Romans, illuminating research has been undertaken on several key periods of Roman history, including the final decades of the Republic, under the Flavians and the Tetrarchs, and in Late Antiquity. However, there is no comparable study of civil war memory under the Julio-Claudians. Rather, scholarship in this area has tended to focus on the representation of late Republican civil war in the literature and visual culture produced under Augustus, and in Lucan's Neronian epic *De Bello Civili*. In this thesis, I use methodology drawn from another burgeoning area of research, ancient exemplarity, to examine the portrayal of late Republican civil war across the Julio-Claudian period. I contend that the frequency with which Julio-Claudian writers drew parallels between civil war Rome and individuals from the non-Roman past, who had previously been depicted in Greek and Roman historiography, is testament to a shared outlook on how memories of the late Republican civil wars should be expressed. Furthermore, the remarkable consistency between these parallels, regardless of whether a writer was looking back on civil war from the perspective of a survivor or after almost a century of peace, attests to a common understanding of which aspects of civil warfare should be remembered. Yet, those writing under the Julio-Claudians did not seek to understand late Republican civil war as a single entity. Through a series of case studies on parallels which treat the Triumviral, the Caesarian and the Sullan civil wars, I demonstrate that each of these three major conflicts had its own distinct legacy. By comparing deeds undertaken in the midst of each conflict with those of non-Romans in other contexts, Julio-Claudian writers grappled with challenging and often confronting memories of civil war, from its all but forgotten victims, to its most famous generals. Overall, I argue that the Julio-Claudian period constituted a critical juncture in the reception of the late Republican civil wars. Although Rome no longer cowered under swords wielded by enemies from within, Roman-on-Roman violence cast a long shadow. In the endeavour to impose order on the chaos of the past, writers with vastly different frames of reference and intended audiences used parallels to paint a remarkably uniform portrait of each major late Republican civil war. Yet, when civil conflict returned to Rome once again in 69AD, many of the comparative models used under the Julio-Claudians were supplemented, even superseded, as a more recent civil war eclipsed the brutality and betrayal of the late Republic. This thesis aims to cast light back onto the writers active during the Julio-Claudian period, their memories of combatants and commanders, and above all their endeavour to come to terms with the horrors of Roman civil war through comparison with events quite literally foreign to it.
Open Access
Lucretius and the Problem of Attention
Lentricchia, Maeve
Book 4 of Lucretius’ de rerum natura (DRN) contains the most complete Epicurean account of perception and thought to survive from antiquity. In the course of the book’s detailed discussion of psychology, Lucretius responds to a variety of philosophical challenges to his physiological account: the nature of the relation between external objects and perception, the cause of mental visions, the difference between wakefulness and sleep, and the selectivity of attention. For this last topic he outlines a complex physiological process whereby either the mind or a sense organ (1) voluntarily, or actively, selects an image, or (2) involuntarily, or passively, is absorbed in a particular train of images. Lucretius’ account of attention (marked by expressions such as ‘se parare et contendere’), its varieties and their effects, is the subject of this dissertation. My primary aim is to extract from the DRN a framework for understanding how and under what circumstances attention structures various types of intellectual and perceptual experience. The ‘how’ pertains to the physiological mechanism of attention. I show that Lucretius has at his disposal sufficient resources to account for the selectivity of attention entirely in terms of physical contact. The ‘under what circumstances’ turns on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary attention, a distinction which, I argue, Lucretius applies to both intellectual and perceptual attention. Not only does this distinction, hitherto unnoticed in the literature, unify Lucretius’ treatment of attention in Book 4 (4.794-817), it also illuminates a major philosophical problem for materialist psychology by explaining the manner in which intentional states (e.g., desire) that originate in the mind, motivate and guide the activities of the sense organs. Accounting for such a process puts a strain on the already limited resources of ancient atomism. To make matters even more difficult, any solution offered by an interpreter must be consistent with the demands of Epicurean epistemology. On this point, the question concerns the epistemic status of attention. Can the mind, by way of its desires, have a role in shaping the content of perceptual experience without impugning the claim that perceptions are veridical? I argue that Lucretius has sufficient resources in his physics to respond positively to this challenge: the use of perceptual attention, even when it is voluntary, does not introduce manipulation or interpretation into the perceptual process. It is, therefore, truth-preserving. On Lucretius’ account, voluntary perceptual attention is best understood as a genuine cognitive capacity (its mechanism involves the mind transmitting an atomic motion to the relevant sense organ), but the mind’s involvement in the attentive process does not prompt the perceiver to form an opinion about incoming images from the environment. Thus, Lucretius’ understanding of attention, once properly qualified, offers a corrective to a long-standing assumption that mind can have no meaningful role in the Epicurean account of perception, if perceptions are to be a reliable foundation for knowledge. On the contrary, I defend an alternative thesis that a perceiver’s desires and interests—past and present—affect the content of perceptual experience by determining what that perceiver notices. In Part One, I extract from the *DRN* a taxonomy of forms of intellectual attention. I begin with the mind because Lucretius initially presents the mechanism of attention as a solution to why, given the abundance of images (*simulacra*, *imagines*) in the surrounding environment, we can think of one thing without also thinking of all things. In Part Two, at Lucretius’ invitation, I apply this taxonomy to Lucretius’ account of perceptual attention. In conclusion, I address the connection between Lucretius’ understanding of attention and Epicurus’ notion of *epibolē*, a much-vexed term, the meaning and significance of which is hotly debated in the literature.
Open Access
Studies in the Ancient Reception of Seneca the Younger
Pliotis, George
The present thesis re-examines the reception of Seneca the Younger within the first hundred years after his death (60s–c. 160s AD), focusing particularly on the late first and early second centuries AD. It is the first concerted study on Seneca’s ancient reception in over fifty years, the first such study in English, and the first, too, to adopt a fully intertextual approach. Not content, that is, to stick with the explicit references to Seneca in the historical record that have already dominated so much scholarly discussion, this thesis unpacks the wealth of allusions – many of which have gone unnoticed – to Seneca’s works and takes these as a crucial part of the story of Seneca’s reception in antiquity. The principal consequence of this is that the period of Latin literature so often simplistically characterised as one of stylistic aversion to Seneca can now be appreciated as one that engaged frequently and closely with the philosopher’s work and thought. A second consequence is broader still: in focusing primarily on the reception of Senecan prose in later prose texts, this thesis functions as an object lesson in the allusive artistry and density of Roman prose. The Introduction sets out the limitations of the scholarship so far conducted on Seneca’s ancient reception before delineating the intertextual methodology that will remedy these limitations. The subsequent three chapters then put this methodology into practice, analysing the rich Senecan intertextuality on show in some of the most important Latin prose texts of this period – chiefly Quintilian’s *Institutio oratoria* (Ch.1), Pliny’s *Epistles* (Ch.2), and Tacitus’ (Neronian) *Annals* (Ch.3), but also Pliny’s *Panegyricus* (Ch.3.4a), Suetonius’ *Nero* (Ch.3.4b), and Fronto’s letters (Ch.2.*fin*.). All of these authors exhibit a hitherto underestimated familiarity with Seneca’s works and often allude to them in a pointed, significant manner, thus using Seneca as a voice to think with, an interlocutor in their own meditations on various ethical and political issues. These interpretive findings are summarised in the Conclusion, which also broaches some further horizons opened up by the thesis: the reception of Seneca’s more technical philosophical writings, and, ultimately, the his reception among more strictly philosophical authors in both Greek and Latin (Epictetus, Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, and Marcus Aurelius).
Open Access
A commentary on selected passages of Statius, Thebaid 6
Puente Gamero, Pablo
Book 6 of Statius’ *Thebaid* narrates the climax of the Argive army’s stay at Nemea: the funeral of the royal prince Opheltes, who had been killed by the serpent of Jupiter in Book 5, and the athletic games held in his honour. This thesis contains a line-by-line commentary on the opening section, which gives an aetiology of the Panhellenic Games (1-24), the funerary pyre of Opheltes (54-83), the felling of the Nemean grove (84-117), the lament of Eurydice (135-92), the cremation of Opheltes (193-237), the footrace (550- 645), the discus contest (646-730), and the wrestling match (826-910). Throughout, the commentary elucidates the book’s role as a microcosm of the *Thebaid* as a whole: the funeral rites for Opheltes encapsulate the suffering wrought by the Theban war while the athletic contests foreshadow the deaths of the Seven princes which occupy the second half of the poem. The commentary also brings out the characteristic features of Statian language, such as the compression of syntax, extension of conventional semantics and an in interest in the paradoxical affecting every aspect of his poetry. Although the text used for this thesis is based on the edition of Hall and his collaborators (2007-2008), the notes frequently espouse diverging editorial decisions, which are reflected in the corresponding lemmata. The commentary takes a more conservative view of the poem’s transmission, rejecting many of Hall’s interventions, and argues against Statian authorship for most of the book’s suspected interpolations.
Open Access
The Dialect of Hellenistic Inscribed Epigrams from Doric-Speaking Areas
Pratali Maffei, Dalia
My thesis explores the dialect of Hellenistic Inscribed Epigrams from Doric-speaking areas, a corpus not yet analysed in its entirety. The aim of the research is twofold: to fill a gap in the scholarship, through a systematic and comprehensive description of the dialectal features from the collected inscriptions; to understand the diachronic change of the dialect of inscribed epigrams from the Archaic/Classical age to the Hellenistic age, and the role played by the local dialects and the newly spread Koine, as well as the new-born genre of literary epigrams. Thus, I argue that it is possible to disentangle local and supra-local factors that shape dialectal choices in epigrams, and I reconsider the importance of inscribed Hellenistic epigrams and their local context in the making of the genre. In the introduction, I give an overview of the debate surrounding the dialectal mixture attested in inscribed and literary epigrams, outlining the selected corpus and methodological framework. In the first chapter, I provide a description of dialectal features and their frequency by linguistic level and morphemes, to be used as a reference tool throughout the thesis. I then reject the idea of previous scholarship that epigrams have a ‘dialectal base’, as well as the formal classification of features by dialectal categories. Rather, I propose a new method that accounts for the dialectal features based on their distribution and usage in epigrams, and I argue that these factors can be assessed only through the linguistic and cultural context of inscriptions. The following three chapters unfold this research hypothesis by providing a contextual analysis of epigrams from the Peloponnese, North-West Greece, and the Aegean Islands. In each chapter, the dialect of epigrams is compared with features attested in contemporary prose inscriptions and in pre-Hellenistic epigrams from each area: I thus reconsider the importance of the spoken varieties and the local context, so far believed having little or no impact on the epigrammatic dialect of the Hellenistic age. In the chapter dedicated to North-West Greece, I further offer a new understanding of the diachrony of the epigrammatic genre by comparing the results with the literary epigrams composed by Damagetus and Posidippus, and therefore by considering the interaction between the inscribed and literary production. I conclude with a brief discussion of the methodology of the study and its potential implementation across sources exhibiting dialectal mixture.
Open Access
The Rhetoric of Athenian Public Finance in Demosthenes
Sing, Robert John
Athenian public finance underwent significant reform in the wake of the financial crisis that accompanied the Social War (357–5). Scholarly analysis of these changes, and of Athenian financial decisions in general, tends to pay little attention to the process of mass deliberation which produced them. Existing work on financial debate concentrates on the availability and communication of technical information, emphasising the control either of professional elites or the collective citizenry. The evidence of Demosthenes, by far our most important source of actual Athenian financial rhetoric, shows that these models distort the nature of financial deliberation. Moreover, they overlook the key dilemma of financial decision-making in Athens: how to reconcile the conflicting ideological claims of rich and poor, and how to reconcile an ideology of amateurism with an increasing need to concentrate administrative power in financial experts. Far from a sideshow or a hindrance, rhetorical debate was central to successful financial decision-making because it enabled the ideological negotiation of these fundamental conflicts, and so allowed the democracy to adapt to the difficult fiscal conditions of the fourth century. Part 1 examines Demosthenes’ rhetoric of tax reform in the 350s. Demosthenes defends the traditional notion of taxes on the rich, as a reciprocal exchange of benefactions for charis, against aggressive new initiatives that stressed the fiscal entitlement of the majority in times of need. He does so by associating tax-as-benefaction with other, more popularly compelling examples of reciprocal exchange: between family members, citizens, and elite philoi who are philotimos (‘honour-loving’). In his effort to democratise the elite virtue of philotimia, Demosthenes illustrates the first stage in the eventual re-establishment of honorific language and the ideology of benefaction around this concept. Part 2 examines Demosthenes’ construction of his authority as a financial advisor in the wake of the unprecedented centralisation of financial responsibility in the theoric treasurer. This presentation is analysed in terms of Demosthenes’ construction (and deconstruction) of moral character (êthos), and his articulation of detailed arguments - both with numbers and without. Whereas rhetorical debate led to changes in the ideology of taxation, the strength of the ideology of amateur government meant that the notion of a single, supreme financial official as a permanent fixture of government was never fully accepted. Popular ambivalence towards expertise, and anxiety over the danger of rhetorical deception, gave Demosthenes scope to problematise the power of Eubulus, his allies, and by extension Eubulus’ cautious foreign policy. It is within this overarching claim to authority based on superlative moral integrity that Demosthenes also demonstrates his grasp of technical information, and his capacity to combine relevant popular beliefs with specialist knowledge. Demosthenes ultimately failed to explain how Athens could afford to return to an interventionist foreign policy, but the critical positions he adopts reveal the scope that existed for ideological contest. As such, Demosthenes’ rhetoric not only clarifies the significant changes that took place in the honours system and in financial administration during the 350s, but provides us with a better understanding of the nature of Athenian financial deliberation. Athenians were sensitive to the long-term political consequences of strategic fiscal decisions and were prepared to prioritise these over short-term profit. Athenians also required financial arguments to be intelligible and credible, and so limited the extent to which the superior technical knowledge of orators translated into control over the deliberative process.
Open Access
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.
Embargo
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.
Embargo
The Stoic cognitive impression and the Academic Aparallaxia Argument: a study of an epistemological debate.
Zarzar, Cristóbal
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.
Open Access
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.
Open Access
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.
Open Access
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.