Browsing by Author "Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-"
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- ItemA Slippery Matter: Reproduction and a Radical Hierarchy of Gender in the Apocryphon of John(2018) Eduardo Espinoza, Cristian; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-In this thesis I argue that the “Gnostic” text the Apocryphon of John expresses a radical hierarchy of gender previously unexplored in this manner. It is unique even among its fellow “Gnostic” texts and its high valuation of androgyny at the top of this hierarchy is an unexpected extension of the via eminentiae method of describing an ineffable God. By analyzing the series of reproductions within its narrative, I argue that the shifts in the gender of its characters is a manifestation of the ontological slippage involved in the very process of reproduction. I also argue that its language of consent serves as an anti-slippage mechanism. My findings lead me to also assert a new understanding of the Divine Triad instead of its traditional configuration.
- ItemCorrupted and Corrupting: Thucydides' Critique of Democracy in the Sicilian Expedition(2021) Fanikos, Jack; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-In Books VI and VII of his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides writes his account of the Sicilian Expedition, a massive Athenian campaign in Sicily against Syracuse, its allies, and, eventually, Peloponnesian reinforcements. While it is a military campaign, Thucydides' portrayal is political as well. Athenian commanders make decisions on the battlefield that will have political implications for them in the future. Thucydides uses this military and political environment to level a specific criticism against the democracy at Athens. Throughout his account, Thucydides argues that democracy pressures and corrupts military leaders because, if they are to retain their prominent positions, they must prioritize the political considerations over military ones. In this environment, the individual leaders matter less than the democratic system because they will all have the same political considerations. One of the prominent political considerations is how to please the people. To please the people, military leaders make decisions based on what the people believe or would believe to be true rather than what is actually true, and as a result, they often underestimate their enemies and over estimate their own military capacities. This pattern is most easily discernible by examining four moments in the Sicilian campaign: the debate on whether to send an army, the attack on Epipolae, the debate on whether to retreat after Epipolae, and the army's final retreat and collapse. In each of these examples, the Athenian leaders Alcibiades, Nicias, and Demosthenes make errors because they try to please the people rather than make sound military decisions.
- ItemIt’s Complicated: Relations Between Greek Settlers and Indigenous Sicilians at Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, and Leontinoi in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE(2019) Sterngass, Aaron; Farmer, Matthew C.; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-; Kitroeff, Alexander; Hayton, DarinGreek interactions with indigenous Sicilians in the Archaic Period have traditionally been examined through the lens of violent colonization by historians from Ancient Greece all the way through the mid-20th century. Recently, postcolonial studies and a new emphasis on material evidence have led scholars to change this narrative, highlighting the possibility of more peaceful and synergetic exchanges between Greeks and natives. This paper examines the relations between Greeks and native Sicilians in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE at Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, and Leontinoi, three sites at which Thucydides recorded early interactions between Greek settlers and native communities/authorities. To supplement the evidence found at these sites, native communities and other Greek settlements associated with these sites were also analyzed. Through the analysis of ancient sources, material evidence, and modern interpretations which combined both, this paper argues that the earliest Greek settlers at Syracuse, Leontinoi, and Megara Hyblaea had far more complex relations with indigenous Sicilians than is described in the ancient texts and the all-but-recent scholarship. However, it also concludes that while the modern model of more peaceful and cooperative encounters is useful in studying Greco-native relations, it does not fully account for localized differences in these interactions, which often varied widely over short distances and periods of time. The paper advocates for an historical portrayal of indigenous Sicilians as dynamic and innovative whose influences on the Greeks are often overlooked in textbooks, but also encourages the depiction of both Greeks and indigenous peoples as active participants in systems of exchange instead of maintaining static, one-dimensional relationships such as “cordial” or “hostile.”
- Item“Legends Malleable in His Intellectual Furnace”: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonder Book, Mythological Adaptation, and Children’s Literature(2013) Horn, Jacob; Roberts, Deborah H.; Schönherr, Ulrich; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, published in 1851, occupies an important position in the history of children’s literature because of its novel approach to the adaptation of classical mythology and its attitudes towards children as readers. While myth was commonly presented to children in the form of dictionaries or schoolbooks, Hawthorne was the first to use it as the inspiration for pleasurable storytelling. Writing stories intended for children to enjoy in a non-instructional setting, perhaps even along with their parents, Hawthorne heralded a shift in attitudes towards young readers that helped to define how juvenile literature has been written by future authors. My thesis examines the Wonder Book’s creation and impact from multiple perspectives. Part I, “Juvenile Literature Matures,” provides a basic account of the beginnings of children’s literature and Hawthorne’s history with the juvenile market in order to pinpoint the Wonder Book’s significance. In part II, “The Bright Stuff,” I analyze the author’s use of a frame narrative to effectively address an audience of children and adults, and to realize his goals for the stories. This discussion extends into part III, “Hawthorne’s Pandora, Unboxed,” in which I identify strategies of adaptation employed in the Wonder Book, with a particular focus on its interpretation of the Pandora myth, entitled “The Paradise of Children,” and the episode’s reception of its ancient sources. Part IV, “Beyond Hawthorne’s Intellectual Furnace,” closes the paper with a brief look at Hawthorne’s influence on later authors, who have continued to employ his adaptive strategies as myth has become a widely popular form of storytelling for children.
- ItemThe Battlefield of History: Megara, Athens, and the Mythic Past from 600 BC to 250 BC(2014) Horn, Shannon; Hayton, Darin; Smith, Paul J., 1947-; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-In ancient Greece, history and myth were intertwined. The mythic past was a realm where heroes walked alongside gods to found the cities of the classical period. Diplomatic relations, military endeavors, and local identity were justified and created using the mythic past. Myth was not a static body of stories, however. Mythology, and the mythic past, was malleable. Local identity was created through an active and constant process of selection that rewrote the content of the mythic past to create the history best suited to the needs of the present. The cities of Athens and Megara were two such cities that engaged in this process of identity formation through myth. The mythic discourse between the cities shows, however, that the alteration of myth was also an act of aggression that would be met with retaliation and resistance. Myth was used to create local identities, and it was in a city's best interest to undermine the identity of its enemies. Through iconographic remains and fragmentary textual evidence, the mythic discourse of Athens and Megara can be reassembled from its disparate parts. The most prominent and frequently contested myths were those most important to the political process of identity formation and attack. This thesis examines the evolution from 600 BC to 250 BC of the myths of Pandion and Nisus, Theseus and Skeiron, Athena Skiras, and Theseus and Ariadne to show that the mythic past in Greece was a political tool used to express hegemony over and attack the foundation of other cities. Control over the mythic past demonstrated a city's political control over a region. Economic, political, and military action was accompanied by an ideological war waged on the battlefield of the mythic past.
- ItemThe Pivotal Theios Aner: (Re)invented Conservatism in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana(2011) Lopatin, Alexander J.; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-; Germany, RobertThe eponymous hero of Philostratus’ first work, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, uses his status as a unique representative of perfected and divinely ordained Hellenic philosophy on earth—that is, as the quintessential theios aner—to articulate and implement Philostratus’ own ideal world order. This order was in some ways deeply conservative in its vision of political, economic, social, and religious systems--a reflection of Philostratus’ status as an establishment elite figure, but equally radical in others--a reflection of the counter-cultural philosophical tradition that Philostratus and his “Second Sophistic” milieu were channeling. Philostratus successfully uses Apollonius as a pivot, or link, between the heavenly and mortal realms. This enables the author to defend the infusion of ethical philosophy from the former realm into the latter one as a fundamentally tradition-upholding move. The changes that Apollonius effects are not new; rather, they represent a return to a long-forgotten era of Hellenic philosophical purity. The effect of this “orthodox” infusion is that ethical philosophy legitimizes and defends the established world order--political, socioeconomic, and religious--insofar as the latter adjusts to meet the demands of the former. When tensions between the two systems arise, Philostratus cleverly takes advantage of the oscillating “active” and “marginal” nature of his theios aner to prevent a collision. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana is a well-crafted, contingency-anticipating synthesis of Hellenic “culture” and “counter-culture” that makes a valiant attempt to inject new life and new direction into the author’s civilization.
- ItemThe Platonic Defense of Homeric Allegoresis in Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs(2019) Kwon, Jake Samuel; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-With the emergence of new ethical critiques driven by dialectic and rational discourse in Greece, the beloved Homeric poems began to fall under heavy criticism, most notably by Plato, who has Socrates launch a more comprehensive attack on Homer than previous thinkers, banishing Homer from his ideal state in Republic X for conjuring falsehoods and misleading the masses. This paper will examine the ways in which the earlier Neoplatonist, Porphyry of Tyre, makes an implicit defense of Homeric myth in his allegorical reading of Homer, On the Cave of the Nymphs, against the criticisms that Plato raises in his Republic, while still attempting to construct his arguments within a Platonic metaphysical system. Porphyry refutes this criticism that certain myths – including those of Homer – should be dismissed due to their mimetic nature, by demonstrating that the obscurities in Homer’s cave are symbolic, rather than imitative; he also contends that many of Plato’s insights have already been articulated by Homer and other ancient traditions. While Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs has been noted mainly for its usage of ancient symbol and for its place in the history of Homeric allegoresis, this paper addresses the relevance of this treatise to the centuries-long conversation that has struggled to assess the moral and intellectual standing of Homer in light of the criticisms made by Plato.
- ItemΠολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ Love in Thucydides and Plato(2013) Olin, Nicholas J.; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-My senior thesis, titled Πολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ Love in Thucydides and Plato, concerns the decline of Athenian politics during the late 5th century BCE and the Peloponnesian War. I argue that Thucydides attributes Athens’ success under Pericles to the ideal erotic relationship between the citizen and the πόλις that the general sets forth in his famous Funeral Oration. This relationship is based off of the educational and sexual relationship that prevailed between older male lovers and younger male beloveds in the classical period, what I call the ἐραστής-ἐρώμενος relationship. I examine the structure of this homoerotic relationship, the gender norms that constitute it, and how it informs Pericles’ Ideal. I then show how Thucydides attributes Athens’ decline from Pericles’ wartime leadership to the kind of erotic relationship Alcibiades cultivates with the Athenian people, or δῆμος. This relationship was fundamentally one of erotic ambiguity, in which Alcibiades took on perverted roles as ἐραστής and ἐρώμενος of the people. I use Plato’s depiction of Alcibiades’ and Socrates’ ambiguous relationship to determine the extent to which Alcibiades transgressed the norms of behavior of model ἐρασταί and ἐρώμενοι as they constitute Pericles’ Ideal. In sum, after detailing Pericles’ Ideal and the ἐραστής-ἐρώμενος relationship, I first detail Alcibiades as a bad lover of the δῆμος and of Socrates, then his erotic ambiguity in Plato, and then his courting the δῆμος as a bad beloved. I then examine Thucydides’ lengthy digression on the myth of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton. He comments on how the Athenians err in their response to widespread sacrilegious vandalism on the eve of their fateful departure for Sicily due to a faulty interpretation of the myth. As a consequence, they ultimately exile Alcibiades, and in doing so, precipitate their failure in subduing Sicily and their failure in the wider war with the Spartans. I link their love for Alcibiades with their overwhelming desire to invade Sicily, with their failure to adequately (i.e. rationally) respond to the sacrilegious vandalism, and with their exile of their foremost general.