Although Persius tackles a variety of themes in his six satires – the contemporary
literary climate, religion, overindulgence, self-knowledge, and self-sufficiency – a
culinary thread runs through all of them and serves ...
The aim of this thesis is to give a new reading of sections 1.16-18 of Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo (published in 1098) that argues against the almost unanimous opinion of previous interpreters that this passage ...
If, as the popular saying goes, we are what we eat, then what nature of beast is the Thebaid, an epic that participates in a consumption most extreme – cannibalism? This perverse and perverted consumption is not limited ...
In this paper I suggest that Atlanta rather functions as a repoussoir for the inherent homoeroticism of the male athletic spaces and practices in which the various episodes of her myth take place. Her unexpected presence ...
This thesis examines surprising parallels between the figure of Vergil’s Ascanius and the historical figure of Octavian, later known as Augustus Caesar, which have been overlooked. A close examination of the text reveals ...
Cicero’s Cato Maior and Laelius, just a “pair of minor dialogues,” have struggled not only to secure consistent names for themselves but even a dependable characterization of their genre. However much the variations of ...
Helen of Troy, arguably the most famous adulteress in literature, has captivated audiences
for millennia. She stands at the crux of many intellectual debates which were occurring in Classical Athens, such as the unresolvable ...
Vergil’s Aeneid has enjoyed continuous popularity with readers, scholarly and otherwise,
since even before its publication following the poet’s death in 19 B.C.E.1 From antiquity to the
present day, the portions of ...
The "Visions", a spiritual alchemical text by the Late Antique alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, abounds in bizarre and violent imagery: a sacrificing priest is dismembered harmonically, people are boiled alive and transformed ...
Sophocles’ Electra ends with the chorus’ declaration that the House of Atreus is now free.
ὦ σπέρμ᾽ Ἀτρέως, ὡς πολλὰ παθὸν
δι᾽ ἐλευθερίας μόλις ἐξῆλθες
τῇ νῦν ὁρμῇ τελεωθέν. Sophocles, Electra 1508-1510
O seed of Atreus, ...
Archilochus’ life and the lethal effects of his poetry are legendary. Lycambes, having
promised his daughter Neoboule in marriage to Archilochus, breaks his oath. Archilochus writes
venomous iambics against Lycambes and ...
Claudian‘s De Raptu Proserpinae, an unfinished epic poem which treats the god of the underworld‘s abduction of the eponymous maiden and her mother‘s frantic search for her missing daughter, is a departure from the poet‘s ...
Polyphemus is a dynamic character appearing in multiple genres across Greco-Roman literature such as Homer’s Odyssey, Theocritus’ Idylls, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Within these works, there is a tension between his dual ...
In Lucian’s Philosophies for Sale, representatives of various philosophical
schools are paraded in front of buyers in the manner of a slave auction. One buyer
carefully considers in turn the ‘purchase’ of a Pythagorean, ...
This 2012 master’s thesis argues, contra the previous work of Karl Popper and Gregory Vlastos,
that the role of philosophical eros, and love more broadly, in Plato’s political philosophy is
worthwhile and beneficial for ...
The perennial problem of reconciling the character of Seneca the philosopher and Seneca the playwright is both my concern in this thesis, and not my concern at all. While Seneca the Stoic preaches a strict control of ...
In CHAPTER I, I briefly review previous scholarship that focuses on mimesis in classical literature. I argue in CHAPTER II that Seneca’s plays strongly display mimetic syntax, a feature previously ascribed to his poetic ...
In this study I employ a literary approach to analyze the poet’s presentation of Demeter
and Aphrodite as divine representatives of gender paradigm in the Homeric Hymns to Demeter and Aphrodite. To begin, the notion of ...
At the very outset of his Protrepticus, Clement of Alexandria runs through a short
list of mythical musicians and alludes to their magical powers: Arion and his
enchantment of the dolphin, Amphion and his musical assembly ...
That the Iliadic Hector possesses a pair of epithet-phrases—ÜEktorow éndrofÒnoio and
ÜEktorow flppodãμoio—that violate Milman Parry’s law of economy has been known since
Parry invented his law of economy. He addressed ...