Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Early Pyrrhonism As A Sect Of Buddhism? A Case Study In The Methodology Of Comparative Philosophy, Monte Ransome Johnson, Brett Shults

Comparative Philosophy

We offer a sceptical examination of a thesis recently advanced in a monograph published by Princeton University Press, entitled Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. In this dense and probing work, Christopher I. Beckwith, a professor of Central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, argues that Pyrrho of Elis adopted a form of early Buddhism during his years in Bactria and Gandhāra, and that early Pyrrhonism must be understood as a sect of early Buddhism. In making his case Beckwith claims that virtually all scholars of Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy have been operating under ...

How We Built A Scholarly Working Group Devoted To Classical Legal Rhetoric (And How You Can Do The Same Thing With Other Legal Writing Subjects), Brian Larson, Kirsten K. Davis, Lori D. Johnson, Ted Becker, Susan E. Provenzano

Brian Larson

Extraordinary Episodes Of Ancient Money, Francis Louis Kailey

Honors Theses

The spread of coins, which occurred throughout the archaic and classical periods of Greece, was a foundational advancement toward forms of the modern economy. Modern theory has sought to explain the invention of coins with a variety of narratives. Generally, these narratives fall into two broad categories: market-driven monetization or state-driven monetization. On the one hand, some theory argues that coins developed from reducing private transaction costs. On the other hand, some theorists argue that the state benefitted from reductions in administrative costs from the use of coins and therefore undertook the cost of minting them. This thesis problematizes these ...

Women’S Erotic Desires And Perspectives On Marriage In Sappho’S Epithalamia And H.D.’S Hymen, Amanda Kubic

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In her collection Hymen (1921), the modernist poet H.D. engages in a collaborative, composite reception of the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. H.D. draws on Sappho as a source of lyric power and lesbian erotic authority, and brings together the various women’s voices and perspectives represented in Sappho’s poems—especially those that have to do with marriage—into her own present poetic moment. As the title Hymen suggests, of particular significance to H.D.’s Sapphic reception work is the genre of the epithalamium, or “wedding song.” Sappho, in her epithalamia, constructs a woman-centered and woman-identified ...

Good Rhetoric From The Classical To The Jesuits; Or On Αγαθός Λόγος, Andrew J. Wells

The Criterion

Labeling rhetoric as ἀγαθός (good) or κακός (bad) might appear subjective. The Jesuit rhetorical tradition suggests otherwise. Once I place the pursuit of eloquentia perfecta within the context of ancient rhetoricians: Socrates, Gorgias, the author of Dissoi Logoi, and Quintillian, I attempt to find a definition for ἀγαθός λόγος (good speech/rhetoric).

A Song Of Arms And Of The Woman: Confronting Cleopatra In The Augustan Era Through The Carmen De Bello Actiaco, Rachel Dubit

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project consists of a translation and literary analysis of the Carmen de Bello Actiaco, a fragmentary Latin epic from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum. The epic describes the events surrounding the battle of Actium and Octavian's conquest of Egypt. This analysis explores the importance of the Carmen as a product of a distinctly Augustan ideology, regardless of the exact date of its writing. The first chapter addresses the character of Cleopatra VII and how her portrayal is indicative of the contemporary Roman imperialistic conceptualization of Egypt and other foreign territories. The second chapter explores the theme of ...

Queens Of Failing Nations In Classical Tragedy, Katie L. Toledano

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis will compare the role that queens in failing nations, motivated by revenge, play as tragic heroes in Classical tragedy. Focusing on the classical tragedies of Euripides’ Medea and Hekabe to Seneca’s Medea and Trojan Women, this thesis compares the roles that these queens play as tragic heroes in both the Greek and Roman renditions. As politically significant characters and tragic heroes, Medea and Hecuba both operate as both poison and cure, representing nations and houses that are failing, on the basis of their identity and their actions. I have focused on how Euripides and Seneca offer queens ...

Four Facets Of Diminishment In Cicero's Pro Caelio: Dilemma, Irony, Understatement, And Comedy, Donald Matthew Pasko

Graduate Theses and Capstone Projects (excluding DNP)

No abstract provided.

Satyrs, Syphilis, And Sailors: The Influence Of Gaius Petronius’ Satyricon Liber On Samuel Taylor Coleridge’S “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”, Spencer Fugate

English Honors Projects

For generations, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” has befuddled readers. This project argues that many of its apparent puzzles disappear once we recognize its base text as the Satyricon Liber, Gaius Petronius’ first-century vulgar comedy. Attending to Coleridge’s broader literary corpus alongside images of sexual dysfunction in “The Rime” itself to justify this foundational claim, I then explore how a comic source transforms the reader’s experience of “The Rime” and its criticism. “The Rime” refutes cohesive readings as a horror-poem because it was never intended as pure horror: rather, the poem is Coleridge ...

Guilt In Vergil’S 'Aeneid' And Lucan’S 'Bellum Civile', Michelle Sugar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is a comparative analysis that focuses on the portrayal of guilt in Vergil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Bellum Civile. I use Greek and Roman concepts of emotions and modern theories from psychology and psychoanalysis to argue that many of the emotions that seemingly pervade these poems, such as anger and despair, should be read as being partly related to a hero’s experience of guilt. I examine different types of guilt, namely legal and psychological guilt, to better understand how Vergil and Lucan use guilt to develop the emotional landscapes of their poems and how they represent ...

Learning To Read In The Theaetetus: The Recuperation Of Writing In Plato's Philosophy, Luke Lea

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In my thesis, I take up the popular question of the status of writing in Plato’s dialogues, but from a fresh perspective. Instead of approaching the question of writing head-on, I attend to the philosophical message about reading presented by two dialogues, the Phaedrus and the Theaetetus. My thesis offers interpretations of two individual dialogues whose emphasis on writing and reading as both literary themes and philosophical problems ensure that the overall meanings of these dialogues cannot be reached without attention to this subject.

Although I examine the dialogues in isolation, believing that the setting and characters unique to ...

Drama As Dream: Sophoclean Tragedy And The Cult Of Asclepius, Molly C. Mata

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explores tragic drama as a corresponding ritual to the incubation ritual in the cult of Asclepius and theorizes that this ritual is psychologically cathartic and healing. I argue that in Ajax and Philoctetes, Sophocles marks this cathartic ritual through nosological language, setting, and social context. In my first chapter, I explore Sophocles’ use of the language of madness (mania) and illness (nosos) in Ajax to show the exacerbation of the audience’s psychological state. Next, I show that catharsis is achieved through the negotiation and subsequent burial of Ajax. In my second chapter, I argue that Sophocles uses ...

Negotiation And The Construction Of Intimacy In The Letters Between Fronto And Marcus Aurelius, Sarah C. Keith

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project analyzes the letters between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and his student Marcus Aurelius as works of literature, rather than merely sites for historical mining. The letters, I argue, contain carefully constructed tropes of rhetoric and feature intentional polish that serve as opportunities for discussion about the virtues of philosophy and rhetoric during the Second Sophistic. Topics of discussions between both parties range between the imagery of sleep, and intimate spaces, like bedrooms, to substantive allusions to Plato’s philosophy and his dialogue Phaedrus. By looking beyond the identification of concrete names and dates to the literary, referential, and personal ...

The Death Of Tragedy: Examining Nietzsche’S Return To The Greeks, Brian R. Long

Honors Bachelor of Arts

In what follows, I will demonstrate how necessary the balance between Apollo and Dionysus is, how it exists in tragedy, and how it is destroyed. In my first chapter, I will discuss the Apolline and Dionysian powers, giving some background on Apollo and Dionysus. I will then explore the struggle between the two powers, noting the specific role of the Silenic wisdom. In the second chapter, I will examine several tragedies in light of these two powers, culminating in a discussion of Euripides’ Bacchae. This discussion will demonstrate how the Apolline and Dionysiac powers were at work on the tragic ...

Emblematic Eating: Reading The Feasts Of The Iliad As Models For Social Order, Erin Welty

Senior Theses

This paper analyzes the Iliad’s feast scenes as sites that amplify the sociopolitical and economic tensions that permeate the wider plot of the epic. Through a literary analysis of the major feasting scenes of the Iliad, I show how the epic’s presentation of the dais collectively displays particular emblematic values of social equity and fair distribution of resources that manifests in the formulaic language that repeats in each feast scene and produces a sense of stable social organization. At the same time, however, I display how the narrative contexts of the feasts and the narrative presentation internal to ...

Applying Jung's Archetypes And Theory Of The Collective Unconscious To Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lindsay Covington

Senior Theses

The premise of this thesis is to explore the concepts of Carl Jung’s collective unconscious and archetypes using myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In exploring the archetypes of the Animus, the Mother, the Hero, the Child, the Trickster, and Rebirth through these myths, I aim to demonstrate their relevance to modern psychology by directly connecting them to related psychopathologies as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Behavioral and Mental Disorders V. Through this, the validity of the concept of the collective unconscious will be demonstrated in how the enduring archetypes of stories that are over two thousand ...

Founded Upon Death: A Structural Analysis Of Tacitus' Annales, Nicholas Rudman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Between its abundant murders, executions, and suicides, the Roman historian Tacitus' account of the Julio-Claudian principate, titled the Annales, is filled with death. The reader cannot help but wonder why. This project attempts to provide an answer to this question through a systematic analysis of death scenes within the Annales, arguing that they serve as structural elements around which Tacitus organizes the other elements of his history. The thesis develops this main point through two smaller ones. The first is that death scenes mark points of transition within the Annales, highlighting changes in Rome's balance of power, the introduction ...

Democracy Vs. Liberty: The Telos Of Government, Ryan C. Yeazell

Honors Bachelor of Arts

Democracies are known for being relatively stable and ensuring freedom for their citizens. However, those assumptions are called into question by the various failures of modern democracies to both maintain authority and enshrine liberty. Are the institutional checks and balances failing to prevent some of the expected issues with governments based on popular voting? Or is there some other cause of failure outside of the institutional structures themselves?

To examine these questions, I will be comparing a few examples of failed modern democracies with arguably history’s longest lasting democratic government: the Roman Republic. Although separated by over two thousand ...

Philosophy And Politics Perfected: Aristotle’S Greatness Of Soul Embodied In Plutarch’S Alexander The Great, Raquel Grove

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

In this paper, I examine the value of Aristotle’s “great-souled man” and the narrative structure of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander as political and philosophical exempla designed to lead men to virtue on a large scale. The confusing, apparently contradictory nature of Aristotle’s virtue “greatness of soul” must be read in the context of the Ethics as a deeply political work. Likewise, Plutarch’s description of Alexander the Great demands examination from a narrative, as well as historical, perspective. Despite their differences in emphasis and method, Aristotle and Plutarch produce writings characterized the same end––each work unites ...

Mysteries Of Paradise Revealed & Concealed, Brittany Bryant

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

No abstract provided.