Classics Commons^™

A Silver Service And A Gold Coin, Justin St. P. Walsh

Art Faculty Articles and Research

The published history of a set of silver and gold objects acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1975 contains an unusual reference to a gold coin, supposedly found with the set but not purchased by the museum. The coin, which is both rare and well dated, ostensibly offers a date and location for the ancient deposition of the silver service. Almost five years of research into the stories of the Getty objects and the coin has revealed important information about these particular items, but it also offers a cautionary example for scholars who might hope to reconstruct the …

Textile Terminologies From The Orient To The Mediterranean And Europe, 1000 Bc To 1000 Ad, Salvatore Gaspa, Cécile Michel, Marie-Louise Nosch

Zea E-Books Collection

The papers in this volume derive from the conference on textile terminology held in June 2014 at the University of Copenhagen. Around 50 experts from the fields of Ancient History, Indo-European Studies, Semitic Philology, Assyriology, Classical Archaeology, and Terminology from twelve different countries came together at the Centre for Textile Research, to discuss textile terminology, semantic fields of clothing and technology, loan words, and developments of textile terms in Antiquity. They exchanged ideas, research results, and presented various views and methods.

This volume contains 35 chapters, divided into five sections: • Textile terminologies across the ancient Near East and the …

A Mathematician Reads Plutarch: Plato's Criticism Of Geometers Of His Time, John B. Little

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This essay describes the author's recent encounter with two well-known passages in Plutarch that touch on a crucial episode in the history of the Greek mathematics of the fourth century BCE involving various approaches to the problem of the duplication of the cube. One theme will be the way key sources for understanding the history of our subject sometimes come from texts that have much wider cultural contexts and resonances. Sensitivity to the history, to the mathematics, and to the language is necessary to tease out the meaning of such texts. However, in the past, historians of mathematics often interpreted …

Trade, Interaction And Change: Trace Elemental Characterization Of Maltese Neolithic To Middle Bronze Age Ceramics Using A Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, Frederick S. Pirone

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The insular nature of the Maltese archipelago provides a unique opportunity to explore trade and cultural change from the Neolithic to the Bronze Ages in the central Mediterranean. I hypothesize that, during the period in which the Maltese islands were experiencing a form of isolation—owing either to their distance from Sicily and other populated regions, to the collective formation of an inwardly-focused culture, or to a combination of these factors—it is unlikely that pottery played a significant role as either an import or export in the archipelago’s exchange relationships with other communities in the central Mediterranean. I accordingly propose that …

Differentiating Averroes’ Accounts Of The Metaphysics Of Human Epistemology In His Middle And Long Commentaries On Aristotle’S De Anima, Caleb H A Brown

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

Averroes (an Islamic Andalusian philosopher in the 12^th century) discusses the metaphysics of human epistemology extensively, and his socio-religious context sheds light on this discussion. Several of his works, most prominently his three commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, attempt to explain how finite, particular minds interact with universal, eternal intelligibles. Current scholarship focuses on the two longer commentaries, the Middle Commentary and the Long Commentary, but there is no consensus regarding which of these presents Averroes’ final articulation of the metaphysics of human epistemology. Those who maintain that Averroes wrote the Middle Commentary last tend to minimize …

Dante And The “Dead White Dude” Dilemma: Exploring The Complexities Of Diversity And Controversy In Medieval Literature, Grace Therrell

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Recently, one of the goals on the English discipline has been diversification. Students and scholars alike call for program requirements that are inclusive instead of imperialistic. They want to read texts written by non-white, non-male authors and to hear voices that are less represented in literature. In short, they want to eliminate the focus on literature written by the “dead white dude.” While literature programs should be more diversified, it is still possible to hear from marginalized voices and discuss current controversial issues through older canonical texts. Dante Alighieri does this exceptionally well in his Divine Comedy as he tends …

An Excerpt From The Latin Ladies, Julia Gomez-Cambronero

Best Integrated Writing

In this excerpt, Gomez-Cambronero offers an editorial about the effect of U.S. involvement in Central America’s politics on the children of the region. It also contains Gomez-Cambronero’s essay on a poem by Rubén Darío.

Best Integrated Writing 2017 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

Recognizing Freedom: Manumission In The Roman Republic, Tristan Husby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Roman manumission was at the center of three different groups: the Roman state, Roman slave-owners, and freeborn Romans who did not own slaves. I draw upon G.F.W. Hegel, Orlando Patterson, Judith Butler, and Pierre Bourdieu to describe Roman manumission as a ritualized practice that transforms a slave’s life from unlivable to livable. The term “unlivable” comes from the philosopher Judith Butler, who developed it in conversation with Hegel’s master/slave dialectic and the term “social death,” which sociologist Orlando Patterson used to describe slavery. Hegel and Patterson’s thoughts on the movement and experience of freedom are useful for theorizing Roman slavery …

A Survey Of Athenian Block Grants Of Citizenship, Mary Jean E. Mcnamara

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, the Athenians awarded block grants of citizenship to several groups of allies who had served to protect and defend Athenian democracy. This paper examines some examples of these block grants and the degree to which foreigners were afforded the same protections and privileges awarded to native-born Athenian citizens.

The Needed Man: The Evolution, Abandonment, And Resurrection Of The Roman Dictatorship, Mark B. Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite being an integral institution of the Roman state, employed frequently and routinely from the Republic’s earliest crises to the last days of the climactic fight with Hannibal, the Roman dictatorship is profoundly misunderstood. Perplexed by the idea of the Roman Republic—a state born out of the rejection of the preeminence of any one man—nonetheless investing the power of the state in a single unelected individual, and reacting to the anomalous first-century BCE dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar, both late-Republic historians and modern scholars have consistently described the office in ominous and fundamentally mythological terms that are largely contradicted by …

A Partner In Their Suffering: Gustav Klimt's Empowered Figure In Hope Ii, Hannah Elizabeth Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Although much of Gustav Klimt's work is well recognized, his painting Hope II (1907-1908) has received little attention in academic studies. Rejected by his peers on its initial exhibition, this work was found offensive by even his staunchest supporters. Second wave feminists have also been critical of his painting, finding in it an objectification of women. This is likely due in part to the central subject of the piece involving pregnancy. Klimt was unafraid to paint images that shocked and diverged from traditional aesthetic styles. During a time of rapid social change and development of the feminist movement, Klimt offered …

The Unexpected Symbol Of The New Woman: Ella Ferris Pell's Salome, Megan Ashley Snow

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that Ella Ferris Pell's 1890 painting, Salome, provides a unique interpretation of the ideals of the New Woman, specifically in terms of reclaiming female power through Salome's confidence in her sexuality. By examining the cultural context in which Pell exhibited her painting, as well as her background as an artist, I hope bring to the light the significant ways in which Pell's Salome participates in the construction of the New Woman in late nineteenth-century culture. Since Pell was an American woman who trained and exhibited in both the United States and France, this paper explores the …

From The Mountains To The Lowlands: Depictions Of Gender Roles In The Films Of Leni Riefenstahl, Sean R. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

Critics have analyzed Leni Riefenstahl's four feature length films from 1932 to 1954 largely for their depictions of fascist ideals while often neglecting how they represent gender. Viewing Riefenstahl's films using the theoretical gender models of Judith Butler and R.W. Connell provides a greater understanding of gender roles in Germany during both the Weimar and Nazi eras. Beginning with Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932), and continuing to Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), Olympia (1938), and concluding with Tiefland (The Lowlands, 1954), there is a clear evolution of how Riefenstahl …

Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Literary Theories of Circumcision” investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organizes literary experience. In every period of English literature, major authors have employed the penis’s hood as a figure for thinking about reading and writing. These authors belong to a tradition that defines textuality as a foreskin and interpretation as circumcision. In “Literary Theories of Circumcision,” I investigate the origins of this literary-theoretical formulation in the writings of Saint Paul, and then I trace this formulation’s formal applications among medieval, early modern, and modernist writers. My study lays the groundwork for an ambitious …

Aeschylean Drama And The History Of Rhetoric, Allannah K. Karas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation demonstrates how the playwright Aeschylus contributes to the development of ancient Greek rhetoric through his use and display of πειθώ (often translated “persuasion”) throughout the Oresteia, first performed in 458 BCE. In this drama, Aeschylus specifically displays and develops πειθώ as a theme, a goddess, a central principle of action, and an important concept for his audience to consider. By tracing connections between Aeschylus’ innovations with πειθώ and later fifth and early fourth century conceptions of Greek rhetoric, I argue that Aeschylus plays a more important role in the development of practical principles and concepts of the …

Sophrosyne In Aeschylus, Konstantinos Karathanasis

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This is a study on the semantics of sophrosyne, and the importance of this culturally significant term for the political vocabulary of Aeschylus. The author argues that the core of the semantics of sophrosyne is the status-based behavioral propriety within a hierarchy. By examining all the occurrences of the term’s cognates in the Aeschylean corpus, the author concludes that Aeschylus used sophrosyne as a tool in a pro-democratic rhetoric. Given that the deviance from status-based propriety in Aeschylean tragedy results in socio-political catastrophes, the monarchic societies of Greek myth and Persia are presented as political environments that endanger sophrosyne …

Revolution In The Divided City: The Plebeian Social Movement, Secessions, And Anti-Government In The Roman Republic During The 5th Century Struggle Of The Orders, Christopher Schley Saladin

Classics: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This paper examines the formation of the plebeian movement and government in the Roman Republic during the 5^th Century BC of the Struggle of the Orders. The Struggle of the Orders was a political conflict between the plebeian and patrician classes of Rome that lasted from the 5^th-3^rd Centuries BC of the Republic. Most of this period is shrouded in legend, but later Roman historians provide evidence that suggests a major social and political revolution occurred during the early years of this struggle. Using kernels of evidence from these histories, namely that of the 1^{st …}

Redefining Virtue In Shakespeare's Merry Wives Of Windsor, Melissa Rose Piccinonno

Theses and Dissertations

Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor is a play of social justice. It is a staging of the type of power that women can harness in spaces of extreme limitation and violation. The female characters in this play, specifically Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, are able to use tools of oppression meant to keep them subordinate to men to achieve their personal objectives.

Phoenix In The Iliad, Kati M. Justice

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper analyzes evidence to support the claim that Phoenix is an narratologically central and original Homeric character in the Iliad. Phoenix, the instructor of Achilles, tries to persuade Achilles to protect the ships of Achaeans during his speech. At the end of his speech, Phoenix tells Achilles about the story of Meleager which serves as a warning about waiting too long to fight the Trojans. Achilles rejects Agamemnon's embassy and Phoenix's pleas; therefore, he faces the consequence of Patroclus's death. By using his speech in "Book 9," as the main primary source to analyze Pheonix as a character, the …