Classics Commons^™

Khirbat Jābir: The Sculptured Decorations From The Bathhouse, Rivka Gersht

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation of the bathhouse at Khirbat Jābir yielded twelve marble items: a female head and eleven architectural members; among them a small Corinthian capital, a bracket ornamented with a lion head, a richly decorated small pediment and a champlevé revetment plaque. All twelve items were found out of their original display context; almost all are reused spolia or recycled pieces. The workmanship of the recycled items indicates that the craftsmen employed at the Khirbat Jābir bathhouse were skilled stone carvers but had no experience in shaping figural images. The rather good workmanship of the capital and the champlevé revetment …

Khirbat Jābir: The Pottery Finds / ח'ירבת ג'אבר: ממצא כלי החרס, Aviva Bouchenino

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation at Khirbat Jābir yielded pottery dating from the Byzantine period through the Early Islamic period, indicating continuous activity at the site during these periods. Most of the pottery was characteristic of the Byzantine period, including local wares typical of both northern and southern Israel, as well as imported wares from North Africa, Asia Minor and Cyprus. Byzantine-period clay pipes, apparently associated with the bathhouse water-supply system, were also found. The pottery assemblage from this period enables dating the activity in the bathhouse to the fourth–seventh centuries CE. A smaller portion of locally produced pottery vessels dates to the …

Khirbat Jābir: A Late Byzantine Bathhouse, An Early Islamic Building And Ottoman-Period Remains / ח'ירבת ג'אבר: בית מרחץ משלהי התקופה הביזנטית, מבנה מהתקופה האסלאמית הקדומה ושרידים מהתקופה העות'מאנית, Orit Segal

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

Excavations at Khirbat Jābir in Zikhron Ya‘akov revealed three strata (III–I). The earliest Stratum III yielded a well-preserved bathhouse dated to the late Byzantine period (sixth–seventh centuries CE), likely a public complex lavishly decorated with marble elements, which served a small, well-established community comprising several households in the area. In Stratum II, dated to the beginning of the Early Islamic period, the bathhouse was converted into a manor house or a farmhouse. Its plan was slightly altered with the construction of new walls, and its rooms were paved with stones robbed from the original phase of the bathhouse. The latest …

Selene And Pleiades Labor To Keep Watch Over A Lonely Night - Sappho, Maksim Astashinskiy

Faculty Papers and Publications

The title is the translator’s; the poem is popularly referred to as the “Midnight poem,” Wikipedia, accessed July 19, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_poem; the Greek text is transcribed from The Digital Sappho: Text and Commentary, accessed July 17, 2026, https://digitalsappho.org/fragments/fr118-168/. For an expansive compilation of translations of this poem, see: “Sappho’s Moon and Pleiades,” Brief Poems: An irregular anthology of tweet-size poems (blog), November 22, 2015, https://briefpoems.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/sapphos-moon-and-pleiades/. The unattributed two-line poem text is featured in Hephaestion (ca. 2nd century C.E.), see: Hephaestionis Enchiridion, cum commentariis veteribus edidit Maximilianus Consbruch. Accedunt variae metricorum graecorum reliquiae (Lipsiae: B.G. …

Vestitus Auctoritate: Visual Representations Of Power In Late Roman Sicily, Angela L. Costello

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Late Roman iconography of dress and appearance acted as visual bolsters of elite identity in the province of Sicily by engaging with two villas and their mosaic corpora: the Villa Romana del Casale, and the Villa Romana del Tellaro. Traditional Roman scholarship on power have focused on monuments, military achievements, and imperial building programs, and while these are all necessarily facets of Late Roman identity, there are valuable avenues left unexplored. Some, but not enough, attention has been given to the role of dress iconography during Late Antiquity. This study addresses this gap by investigating how …

Staging Reception / Perception: Transhistorical Bi-Directional Dialogues Between Etruscan Visual Cultural Objects And Giuseppe Penone's Contemporary Sculptures, Shelby Morgan

University Honors Theses

I use the occasion of the March 2024 exhibit,"Vulci. Goods for Mankind. Goods for Gods." at Milan's Luigi Rovati Foundation to consider how the museum's staging of Etruscan visual material cultural objects and contemporary sculptures by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone prompts viewers to perceive transhistorical bi-directional dialogues between the viewer and material culture as well as between the ancient and contemporary objects themselves.

Via a close reading of the exhibition while leveraging the three frameworks of aura, imprint and classical reception I analyze how the staging of the hypogeum creates a place of atmosphere. I argue this is done through …

Forced Dependency: The Subjugation Of Women Through Medicine In Ancient Greece And Rome, Evelyn J. Polovich

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

In the ancient Mediterranean men were in charge of every facet of life, including women’s medicine. They forced women out of the oversight of gynecology and reformed it into a method of control that they could assert in order to force women into a position of submission. This paper aims to bring the ways in which ancient medicine was influenced by cultural ideas and worked to subjugate women and allow men to gain further control over their autonomy. This research was inspired by the works of ancient physicians like Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen, as well as contemporary sources that critique …

The Technology Of Tradition And Biology Of Narrative: New Analogies For The Study Of Homer And Epic, Eunice Kim

Open Access Fund Publications

In two separate, timely books Bozzone and Christensen draw from a wide range of scientific disciplines and modern parallels to consider how Homeric language and epic stories are in some ways living and alive. For Bozzone, who analyses the various formal features of Homer’s poetic technique by incorporating cognitive and linguistic frameworks, Homeric language is ‘living’ insofar as it operates on mechanisms analogous to those a speaker uses for natural languages and other kinds of speaking performances. Christensen, on the other hand, applies a series of biological analogies to epic poetry and imagines that the narrative of Homeric epic is …

Antigone And Oedipus In The Early American Theater, Lauren Mceldowney

McNair Culminating Research Projects

The first production of a Greek drama in North America has been a subject of scholarly debate for at least the last century. Some reference late eighteenth-century theater productions of Medea as the origin of the trend, some the Bowery’s 1834 Oedipus, some the 1845 Philadelphia Antigone, and many Harvard University’s 1881 Oedipus Tyrannus. Due to the large number of sources claiming Harvard’s Oedipus as the kickoff production, likely in part because of its massive success and subsequent inspired productions and news articles, there lacks sufficient discussion on what earlier North American stagings of Greek plays can …

Tel Shor: Jewelry, Dress And Cosmetic Articles From Three Persian Burials, Amir Golani, Eli Yannai

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation northwest of Tel Shor exposed the partial remains of a Persian-period cemetery. Within the burial site were three intact tombs, two belonging to adult females and one to a child of undetermined sex. The burial goods include a rich corpus of jewelry, comprising earrings and finger rings, pendants, beads for necklaces and a few dress and cosmetic articles. The good state of preservation of the tombs allowed the funerary items to be studied in their archaeological context. Two of the tombs were exceptionally rich in finds, indicating the high social status of the deceased.

Tel Shor: The Glass Vessels, Tamar Winter

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

Among the glass vessels from Tel Shor is a cast bowl adorned with beaded decoration, dated to the late Hellenistic period, which contributes to the currently meager data on the distribution of this quite rare type. A third-century CE bottle, unearthed alongside a Roman-period clay bottle, supports the attribution of the tomb in which they were found to the Roman period.

Tel Shor: Stamped Amphora Handles, Donald T. Ariel, Tania Panagou

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation at Tel Shor yielded three closely dated stamped amphora handles: two Rhodian, dating to 158–137 BCE, and one Knidian, dating to the third quarter of the second century BCE.

Tel Shor: A Cemetery From The Persian Period And Finds From The Late Chalcolithic–Roman And Ottoman Periods In The Western Jezreel Valley / תל שור: בית קברות מהתקופה הפרסית וממצאים מהתקופות הכלקוליתית המאוחרת–הרומית והעות׳מאנית במערב עמק יזרעאל, Eli Yannai

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

A salvage excavation c. 50 m northwest of Tel Shor uncovered a cemetery dating to the Persian period, as well as two Iron Age graves and one Roman-period grave that overlies a Persian-period cist grave. Pottery sherds dating from the late Chalcolithic period, the Early, Intermediate and Middle Bronze Ages and the Iron Age were also found, indicating settlement at the site from the fourth millennium BCE through the Persian period. Above the Persian-period cemetery stratum were a settlement surface and refuse heaps dating from the Hellenistic period. The Roman-period grave may indicate that the area continued to serve as …

De Astronomiā: A Comparison Of Kepler’S Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae And Ancient Astronomical Literature, Jillian Lees Darcy

Classics Undergraduate Senior Theses

My thesis is part translation and part analysis. I chose to translate an early modern astronomical text written in Neo-Latin and analyze this text through ancient writing on astronomy and cosmology. I chose to translate Kepler’s Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae because of the many ancient allusions he makes in the introduction. While this text is valued for its scientific content and contributions, but I was interested in Kepler’s literary strategies, specifically how he engages in authorial self-fashioning, and how classical strategies of knowledge construction are distorted or mirrored in their style and content.  After my translation, I will analyze Kepler’s literary …

Teaching Telemachus: Learning To Live And Lead In A Flawed World, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

A review of The Odyssey By Homer. Translated by Emily Wilson.

The Historical Persistence Of Working-Class Culture: How Laborers Created The Ethical Foundation Of Western Civilization, Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

This article highlights four historical events that shape our present: the world’s first industrial strike in ancient Egypt to protest workers’ health and safety; working-class efforts to improve labor conditions during the Roman Republic and Middle Ages through strikes and the creation of guilds; the social justice activism of the prophets of Western religions (all working-class folks!); and the creation of the selfie and the transition from a culture of character to our present obsession with celebrities and individualism that began during the Renaissance. Each case highlights unique features of working-class culture, working class reactions to societal changes, and the …

Aphrodite In Movement And Miniature: Knidian Statuettes Of The Ancient And Modern, Jacqueline M. Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines Hellenistic statuettes of the Knidian Aphrodite as independent works of art with distinct ancient contexts and modern collecting histories. Drawing on archaeological evidence from Delos, archival and public records from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a comparative framework that places Hellenistic and modern collecting cultures in dialogue, this thesis aims to present the Knidia within the dynamic, interactive history of statuettes. Evaluated on its own terms rather than in relation to a lost original, Knidian Aphrodite statuettes illuminate both the richness of Hellenistic domestic religious life and …

The Hope Dionysos (After Augustus): A Post-Actian Reading Of Dionysian Imagery, Jane Horman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the center of the Roman court at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York stands an almost seven-foot-tall statue of an androgynous looking figure, leaning on a smaller statue of a woman. This piece, formally known as Statue of Dionysos Leaning on a Female Figure, has been nicknamed the Hope Dionysos for both the archaic statue he is leaning on, as well as the family to whose collection he belonged for many years. However, in its day, the statue occupied a complicated place in Roman culture. This paper will examine the ways in which Dionysos, specifically through …

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 …

Inaugural Lmu Prize For Social Justice For Fiction — Closing Ceremony Remarks: 20th Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, Katerina Zacharia

Classics and Archaeology Faculty Works

This document comprises the closing ceremony remarks delivered by Professor Katerina Zacharia on May 31, 2026, at the 20th Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF). The award, funded by the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Department of Classics & Archaeology at Loyola Marymount University, recognizes outstanding fiction films that engage with themes of migration, displacement, identity, and social inclusion in contemporary Greece and the Greek diaspora. The remarks present two inaugural LMU Prizes for Social Justice in the fiction categories. The first award — Best Fiction Short Film — goes to The Wolves Return, written and directed by Stelios …