Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

The Kings Are Dead. Long Live The Kings: The Legacy Of Roman Kingship In The Republican And Imperial Periods, Dylan Hillebrand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From Romulus through Tarquinius Superbus, Rome’s kings occupied a major place within the collective cultural imagination of the ancient polity long after the office was abolished. For generations, no accusation was as odious as “king” and the entire period was seen as a cautionary tale. While the legacy of the kings remained an essential part of Roman identity, how the people related to that legacy changed eventually resulting in a restoration of kingship. A complete picture of the establishment-rejection-restoration cycle becomes clear through examination of the works of Roman (and Greek) historians. Central questions which guide this study: Why were …

No Reply: The Exclusus Amator Through Ancient And Modern Love Poetry, Ayla Wing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the exclusus amator, or “shut-out lover” trope as it appears in Greek and Roman texts, surveying the many examples of this motif and picking out its main elements: Intense Pain, Strong Emotions, Rejection, Interaction with the Door. It also notes the universality of the trope (anyone of any sexuality from any walk of life can be an exclusus amator) and the many references to the motif in other types of ancient media, including in graffiti, which shows that the exclusus amator was a real-life occurrence. This paper then examines modern songwriting, a genre chosen for its similarities …

A Description Of Zhao Zhang’S Nature No. 2 And Xiaoxuan Xu’S An Unusual Feast Of East, Sicheng He

Dissertations, 2020-current

This research presents a new path in the development of Chinese music by aiming to incorporate both modern Western and ancient Chinese influences in form, texture, tonality, topic, and other dimensions of style and structure. Two Chinese composers whose recent compositions for the piano share similar characteristics: Zhao Zhang (b. 1964; Nature no. 2, 2013) and Xiaoxuan Xu (b. 1990; An Unusual Feast of East, 2022). The research will discuss how Zhao Zhang and Xiaoxuan Xu accomplish this fusion of old and new in their recent piano works Nature no. 2, (2013) and An Unusual Feast of East, 2022. …

A Puff's Exploration Of Wayne Hopkins, Ethan G. Mullen, Leon Wiebers

Honors Thesis

This thesis is a synthesis of modalities I have studied during the course of my Theatre Arts degree, applied to the realization of the principal character, Wayne Hopkins in the award-winning play Puffs (Or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic) a LMU Theatre Arts Department production. This work is divided into three major sections. First, I reflect on how I applied acting tools I have studied at LMU to the development of my character and performance. These include script analysis, story structure analysis, breath work, and Viewpoints training. Second, I share media displaying my …

Religious Ramifications: An Analysis Of Ancient Religious Mythologies And Their Effects On Societal Gender Roles, Christina E. Burkhalter

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

An analysis of the effect of ancient religious writings in the Mediterranean on local gender culture with a specific focus on the texts deities.

Romulus As A Rhetorical And Historiographical Tool In Imperial Roman Literature, Jaden M. Perry

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study exames the figure of Romulus in imperial Roman literaure as neither a fixed mythological nor historical subject, but as a flexible rhetorical and historiographical tool. Surveying a range of authors from the late first to fourth centuries CE, inlcuding historians such as Florus, Tacitus, Justin, Suetonius, and the Historia Augusta, as well as literary authors like Juvenal, Silius Italicus, Valerius Maximus, and Seneca, the thesis argues that references to Romulus and his deified counterpart Quirinus are deliberately manipulated to serve distinct authorial purposes. Rather than merely recounting Rome’s foundational myth, these writers employ Romulus to construct comparisons, …

Final Report For Clas 485 Capstone Vōx Antīqua, Aaron Moreno

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This report summarizes and details the process of creating the capstone project Vōx Antīqua, a Greek and Latin pronunciation web course. The site layout, methodology, and creative process are all covered with detailed endnotes, followed by a complete bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted. This Digital Humanities resource contains hundreds of audio files covering Greek (in Classical Attic and Post-Classical) and Latin pronunciation, along with sixteen examples of Greek and Latin literature with full audio and original translations. Introduction to syllabification, accentuation, and prosody in both languages is also included.

Prometheus The Trickster: Prophecy, Power, And Deception, Chris Griglack

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This article interprets Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound through the lens of trickster mythology, arguing that Prometheus functions as an atypical trickster deity whose primary tool is not deception of appearance but foreknowledge of fate. Rather than opposing Zeus through force, Prometheus manipulates divine power by controlling access to prophecy, transforming knowledge itself into a means of resistance. His gift of fire to humanity and his refusal to disclose the prophecy of Zeus’s downfall are shown to be parts of a single strategy: the calculated use of foreknowledge to constrain a tyrannical ruler. In this reading, prophecy operates less as an immutable …

The Power Of A Woman’S Charm: Analyzing The Presence Of Onahal In Oroonoko, Kristyn Haney

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is a story that places great emphasis on the importance of the power of beauty, but it isn’t perhaps the strongest force at work in the novel. Onahal is a minor character in the story who contrasts the idea that beauty is the only way to obtain power. As a former wife of the King, it is noted that while she once possessed beauty, she is now older and has therefore lost her beauty to the passage of time. Though her beauty is diminished, she still has her charm, which grants her power within her space. In …

Beasts Of Burden: Human Dignity And Roman Slavery In The Silver Age Latin Literature, William Deloach

Ex Sapientia Loqui

This article evaluates rhetoric used to describe enslaved persons in Petronius's Satyricon and Statius's Silvae through the lens of human dignity. Human dignity is evaluated through ancient and modern lenses, drawing upon Cicero's conception of civilitas and contemporary views by luminaries such as George Kateb and Michael Rosen. Silvae and Satyricon utilize conceptions of dignity to uplift the value of slaves, though in some cases the opposite is also observable. Overwhelmingly, the two works lean towards recognizing enslaved persons' dignity rather than rejecting it.

The Red Bag Of Distance: A Scene Analysis Of Anna Karenina’S Suicide, Camille Bewley

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Playing Hard To Get: Limerence And The Psychology Of The Amator In Latin Love Elegy, Carson Carpenter '26

Honor Scholar Theses

This thesis seeks to further bridge the gap in the literature between the fields of psychology and Latin literature. Specifically, it examines Latin love elegy through modern psychological frameworks of limerence. Limerence is a descriptive psychological condition in which an individual experiences an involuntary, often uncontrollable obsessive attachment to another person known as the limerent object. Drawing from the works of Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, and Catullus, the thesis argues that the elegiac amator consistently parallels the cognitive andemotional patterns associated with limerence, including idealization, uncontrollable ruminative thinking, emotional volatility, and fixation on reciprocated attention. Using Verhulst’s five stage model and …

Time And Actual Infinity In Aristotle's Physics, Atanas Georgiev Iliev

Classics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between the existence of infinity and the nature of time as presented in Aristotle’s Physics, arguing that his two theories come into tension at two points. The Introduction sets out the purpose and methodology of the study and offers an overview of the historical reception and influence of Aristotle’s teaching on the infinite. Chapter I outlines this teaching, examining Aristotle’s reasons for categorising instances of the infinite through several dichotomies, most notably the distinction between actual and potential existence, before presenting his arguments for rejecting the existence of an actual infinity. Chapter II turns to …

Parallel Concepts Found In The Thousand And One Nights And Sufi Hagiography, Walaa Kamal Emam Kamel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that The Thousand and One Nights functions as more than mere populist entertainment; rather, it constitutes a literary corpus imbued with Sufi mystical epistemologies that reflect the spiritual quests and Sufi concepts evident in hagiographical traditions. Through discourse and intertextual analysis of two Nights stories, “The City of Brass” and “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” alongside Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, this study demonstrates how shared rhetorical strategies—specifically David Pinault’s Leitwörter analysis and L.A. Paul’s Transformative Experience concept—reveal a narrative and rhetorical emphasis on the metamorphosis of the self from worldly attachment toward …

A Crown In Death: An (Expanded) Dramaturgical Approach To The Trojan Women Of Euripides, Stephanie Lester

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

In the action-packed, visually-oriented market for modern media, some may assume a 2,400-year-old Greek tragedy to be slightly past its expiration date, especially if it features little to no action onstage like in Euripides’ The Trojan Women. However, it is important to remember that literature is lost when the world fails to cherish it, so if a text survives that long, it may be worth another cursory glance. In this case, that glance involved a full dramaturgical study featuring qualitative script analysis of multiple translations of The Trojan Women with related texts to explore context, themes, common literary devices, and …

Reinterpreting The Kutika Manuscript: A Buginese Ethnoecological Perspective, Rahmatia Ayu Widyaningrum, Priscila Fitriasih Limbong, Titik Pudjiastuti, Mamlahatun -. Buduroh -

International Review of Humanities Studies

This article offers a reinterpretation of the Kutika manuscript from a Buginese ethnoecological perspective. Departing from a philological study of the Lontara’ Kutika text in the National Library of Indonesia (PNRI) collection (code VT 129), this research examines how Buginese communities articulate their interaction with nature through this manuscript. The Kutika text has generally been understood merely as a book of time calculation, yet its background is imbued with philosophical values that show how the Buginese talk to nature, read signs, and treat nature as an equal element rather than a mere object. Using the framework of human ecology, this …

Making Sense: Envy In Libanius' Declamation 30, Andrew Scholtz

Middle Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (MEAMS) Faculty Scholarship

Declamation, a genre famous for its sometimes extravagant fictions, has lately been approached as a vehicle for declaimers to reflect on realities familiar to them and their audiences. Reading Libanius' rarely discussed Declamation 30 in just such a self-reflective key, I argue that it explores the mindset of the phthoneros, the "envious man," as a way to make sense of risks posed by unscrupulous rivals. To shed light on this sense-making, I analyze High- and Late-Imperial emotion scripts foregrounding envy’s power to catalyze the formation of dysfunctional networks within and around competitive situations.

By The Light, Desiree Galamgam

CMC Senior Theses

On the island of Helios, the sun god, a water nymph finds comfort tending to the flora along  riverbanks. Clytie avoids her oceanid sisters’ poisonous proclivities. Modeling herself after the sun god’s incessant responsibilities, she spends her existence working. Only taking breaks to perch herself at the top of her alcove’s hill to watch Helios drive his chariot to rise and set the sun, she sees him as the epitome of perfection and freedom.

Her tranquil life is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Helios himself at the footsteps of her isolated cave. Clytie begins to feel new emotions as …

Creation Of A New Roman Identity: Encounters, Conflicts, And The Establishment Of Multicultural Order In Virgil’S Aeneid, Caleb Butler

Classics Honors Papers

Virgil composed the Aeneid at a moment when Roman cultural identity experienced a thorough reevaluation. This thesis argues that the Aeneid does not merely reflect the cultural moment in which it was written but rather presents a model for the formation of this new Roman identity. The second half of the Aeneid centers almost entirely upon the interactions and developing relationships between the different peoples who reside within Latium. It is only through the formation of alliances – built upon equal treaties (foedera) and cultural exchange – that peace is able to be formed between those peoples. The …

“Legendary Comebacks”:The Refiguring Of Iliad 2’S Thersites, Steven A. Heil

UNH URC Open (2026 and after)

“Legendary Comebacks”: the Refiguring of Iliad 2’s Thersites