Classics

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 59
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    "To Share in the Roses of Pieria:" Relationships to the Muses' Gift in the Epic Poets and Sappho
    (1992) DiLorenzo, Kate
    Comparing the epic poets, Homer and Hesiod, to the lyric poet Sappho, this paper will explore the complex relationship of these poets to memory and poetry.
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    Making Sense of Socrates in a Dialogue of Contradictions: Studies in Plato's Protagoras
    (2008) Rodriguez, Evan; Hamilton, Richard, 1943-
    Examines Plato's Protagoras as a masterpiece of writing where literary and dramatic elements constitute its philosophical import. Part one, "A Dialogue of Contradictions," helps us understand the Protagoras as an exploration of the differences between philosophical and sophistic method through an analysis of its complex cast of characters. Part two, "Making sense of Socrates," focuses on a close textual reading of the last fifteen pages of the dialogue to clarify the significance of the confrontation between Socrates and Protagoras.
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    Complex Unity: “Self” and Deliberation in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad
    (2008) Lebowitz, Willy
    My thesis concerns scenes of deliberation in the Homeric epics. The language of psychological motivation that Homer employs is vastly different from our own. The goal of this thesis is to attempt to understand the complex nature of the Homeric "self" (if there is such a thing) and to remove years of philosophical misinterpretations from our analysis of the Homeric corpus.
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    Educatio et alimenta puellis: Munificence or political tricks of emperors?
    (2009) Derbew, Sarah; Germany, Robert
    I aim to explore Trajan's motive for providing grand munificence to poor girls by examining depictions of poor girls on coins and his arch in Beneventum. I also explore the use of education as part of this political agenda of emperors to create this debt. Through my examinations, I suggest that Trajan used his munificence to create an obligatory debt to reduce the possibility of poor girls gaining freedom and autonomy. Emperors depended on these poor girls because when they became older, they had the ability to populate the Empire with their children. Their children then could become laborers and soldiers, or future vessels of more children for the Roman Empire.
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    Love as Recollection in Plato's Symposium
    (2010) LeFrancois, Meghan; Mulligan, Bret
    In Plato's Symposium, the interlocutors take turns giving speeches about love. The careful reader can draw several parallels between love as it is discussed throughout this dialogue and recollection as it is presented in Plato's Meno and Phaedo. According to the recollection thesis, humans have latent, innate knowledge, and throughout our lives, we recollect it, making it explicit and articulate. In the Symposium's culminating speech—that of Socrates—I argue that we learn that love is, in fact, a kind of recollection; we learn that love is the recollection of the form of beauty. In this speech, Socrates argues that love is an ascent. When we love correctly, we complete this ascent, and recollect the form of beauty. When we love incorrectly, we only ascend partially and so we partially recollect; in the process, we give birth not to knowledge, but to ideas. Socrates' speech invites us to reconsider the dialogue's other speeches. I argue that each speech not only shows parallels between love and recollection, but contributes to Socrates' argument that love is a species of recollection. The speeches of Pausanias and Eryximachus, for example, anticipate the distinction Socrates later draws between a correct and an incorrect kind of love. Alicibiades' speech—the only speech after Socrates'—reiterates, in a story, Socrates' argument for love's being a kind of recollection. I argue that this reading of the dialogue supports an interpretation of the recollection thesis according to which not only philosophers, but all humans recollect. Finally, I provide a possible reason that Socrates is the first interlocutor to explicitly mention recollection; perhaps he is the only interlocutor with something like explicit knowledge of what love is.
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    Married Mortals in Ovid's Metamorphoses
    (2010) Keogh, Aileen; Baertschi, Annette M.
    The myths of ‘Procne, Tereus, and Philomela’, ‘Procris and Cephalus’, and ‘Ceyx and Alcyone’, all tales of very different and doomed relationships between mortals in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, provide structure for the poem. Ovid uses narrative techniques, intertextual clues, tragic and epic devices, and metamorphosis, to increase emotional pull of each myth. The three myths are set against the backdrop of the famous couples of epic and the divine relationship of Juno and Jupiter. The relationships are progressively more successful with each story but end in tragedy and transformation, while Juno and Jupiter’s contrasting relationship is immortal and improving throughout the work. Each of the three myths differs greatly from the others in content and themes aside from the fact that they revolve around mortal relationships. Nevertheless, the stories are not as distinct from each other as they initially appear. Each story appears as a single narrative at the end of its respective book and is introduced by a series of shorter yet related episodes and each is an example of the creative liberty that Ovid takes with familiar myths. By changing the emphasis, or picking and choosing the plot of each story, Ovid reveals that he is telling each for a specific purpose. Ovid develops and changes well-known myths to create his own moving stories driven by character, love, and revenge that explore the power dynamics between mortal husbands and wives.
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    Amazons in the Amphora: Traces of the Defeated Other in Wonder Woman Comics
    (2010) Pollack, Lara; Roberts, Deborah H.; Mulligan, Bret
    References to the Amazons, a mythical race of warrior women, are widespread in ancient literature. They were generally represented as a defeated Other in their relations with the Greeks, reaffirming the patriarchal nature of Greek society. Amazons have also been received into modern literature, with the most prominent example being Wonder Woman, a comic book character created by William Marston in the early 1940s. Wonder Woman has generally been hailed as a feminist icon. The widespread representation of bondage and other sadomasochistic elements throughout the Wonder Woman comics, however, argue that she and other female characters are still represented as a defeated Other, retaining traces of the misogyny widespread in ancient accounts of Amazons.
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    Aeneas in the New World: Reshaping the Interpretive Motif in Barlow's Columbiad
    (2010) Carroll, Thomas Eliot; Mulligan, Bret
    Barlow's Columbiad evokes Virgil's Aeneid by using the motifs of revelation and interpretation to explore the role of the past in informing the present. Virgil creates an opposition between Aeneas, who receives prophecies and signs but is prevented from interpreting them by his shock and fear, and his father Anchises, who interprets the prophecies and guides the Trojans. Aeneas learns to use his father's interpretive ritual but must utilize this technique to craft forward-looking interpretations and lead his people into the unknown, in order to fulfill his destiny. This combination of traditional ritual with a progressive outlook reflects symbolically the new political circumstances of Virgil's Rome. In the Columbiad, Columbus views scenes from early American history, and presents Hesper with the problems and criticisms he sees in the nation's development, relying on Hesper to explain them. Through their intermittent dialogue, the two advocate cyclical and linear models of historical development, respectively. Hesper's interpretation of mankind's progressive improvement prevails, reflecting Barlow's vision of post-revolutionary America as distinct from and improving upon its Old World predecessors. The two epics' common motif reveals the complexity of Columbus' character and reinforces Barlow's democratic message.
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    Divine Embodiment and Cosmic Tragedy in Prometheus Desmotes
    (2011) Reisman, Asher Jacob; Roberts, Deborah H.
    In this thesis I posit a new reading of the dramatic structure of Prometheus Desmotes, in which the textual and visual features of the play's performance are principally oriented towards the impression of a keen awareness of Prometheus' body in the attention of the audience. This impression is initially produced by the horrific violence of the prologue. This opening scene describes the body of Prometheus and its violation in the unrelentingly corporal terms from the language of human embodiment, while also powerfully affirming his immortality and godhood in the extent to which the violence surpasses all human endurance. These features of Prometheus' body (pitiable physical suffering and divinity) are sounded in a corresponding and intensified manner in the play's cataclysmic finale and more finely articulated and reiterated through the play's otherwise static middle by comparison to other figures whose bodies will share some but never all of these attributes. The significance of this conceptual depiction of a divine body is made clearer by situating Desmotes in relation to its chief predecessors, Homer and Hesiod, in the literary treatment of divine bodies and divine existence more generally. The revisions Desmotes makes to these earlier views is to amplify the prominence of divine violence and suffering and to destabilize the narrative structures which govern it; overturning Homer's program of an Olympus existing in blissful stasis and Hesiod's Zeus-centered cosmic history. These changes open the possibility for genuine tragedy among the gods. Desmotes demonstrates the profound power of such a tragedy first in its long, complex meditation on the body of Prometheus, broken and eternal, and also in the cosmic alterity it envisions in the drama's apocalyptic finale.
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    The Pivotal Theios Aner: (Re)invented Conservatism in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana
    (2011) Lopatin, Alexander J.; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-; Germany, Robert
    The 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.
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    Reconciling Fratricide: The Narration of Violence in the Roman Foundation Myth
    (2011) Glick, Frances R.; Roberts, Deborah H.
    In the earliest versions of the Romulus and Remus myth (as reported by later authors) Romulus kills his brother, Remus, when he jumps over the newly built walls of Rome. In ensuing narrations of the Roman foundation myth, the suppression of certain elements of the myth is common; the violent death of Remus in particular is treated as an unwanted complication. How can one reconcile a murderous foundation myth with a cityʼs subsequent greatness and prosperity? In this thesis, I explore the narrative techniques writers use in recounting or alluding to this problematic foundation myth as well as the myths connection with the civil wars of the late Republic. By examining seven writers chronologically, I trace the evolution of the Romulus and Remus mythʼs treatment through a variety of literary genres and through several periods of Roman history.
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    Imagining an Italian Stallion: Natural Imagery and Ethnic Identity in the Aeneid
    (2011) Keogh, Abby; LaLonde, Danielle
    I argue that in the Aeneid natural imagery establishes Aeneas’s deep-rooted bond to Italy and Turnus’s ties to foreign lands, thus undermining Turnus’s claim to the Latin throne. Through close readings of specific passages I demonstrate that each time Aeneas goes ashore on a new land he describes the landscape of the place with ominous language; however, upon reaching Italy, the narrator, focalized through Aeneas, describes the environment in joyful language. Thus the poem exhibits how Aeneas’s responses to landscape illustrate his attachment to no other land but Italy. Through the animal imagery on the armor of Turnus and that of Aeneas, as well as through the extensive similes likening Turnus to animals or elements of the natural environment, the poem associates Turnus with foreign beasts and lands, thus distancing him from his Italian heritage. As a result of this manipulation of the natural environment, the poem gives credence to Aeneas’s, not Turnus’s, entitlement to the Latin throne.
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    Hated Hades and Provoked Pluto: Characterizing Hades, Pluto, and the transition between the Greek and Roman Gods in antiquity and in the modern works of Rick Riordan
    (2012) Lee, James; Mulligan, Bret
    This thesis investigates and analyzes the portrayal of the ancient Greek god Hades and his Roman counterpart Pluto in the ancient Greek and Roman literature and in Rick Riordan’s modern children’s literature novel series: Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Heroes of Olympus. Ultimately Rick Riordan’s Hades and Pluto show an inversion of the gods’ personalities from antiquity: in antiquity the Greek god Hades is depicted as a fearsome and law-abiding god while the Roman god Pluto is similarly law-abiding but is also angry, embittered, and rage-driven. In Riordan’s novels Hades is the embittered and angry god while Pluto is very calm and dignified.