Classics Commons^™

The Unspoken Bond: The Complex Relationship Between Etruria And Greece, Christopher S. Saladin

Classics: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The Greeks of the Archaic and Classical periods clearly knew about and interacted with the Etruscan people, who contemporaneously dominated the Italic peninsula. Yet, despite the evidence of heavy interaction between the two civilizations, there is little mention of the Etruscans in our Greek sources. In this essay, I examine surviving Greek sources to determine the extent of Greco-Etruscan relations and how the Greeks perceived identity. Through my research, I found that the Greek and Etruscan societies were quite interconnected and had a tremendous impact upon each other, yet their interaction with each other remains strangely undocumented and mysterious.

Review Of The Imagery Of The Athenian Symposium, Justin St. P. Walsh

Art Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Kathryn Topper's The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium.

Agamemnon’S Human Resources: An Examination Of Mycenae’S Palatial Workforce, Lynne. Kvapil

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Abstract of paper presentation from: Annual Meeting of CAMWS, Iowa City, IA, April 2013.

The Cypriot Ceramic Cargo Of The Uluburun Shipwreck, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The ship that sank at Uluburun was carrying about 130 pieces of Cypriot pottery in its cargo, mostly fine bowls and juglets but also lamps and wall brackets. Some coarse-ware bowls, pitchers, kraters, and the pithoi may also have been intended as cargo. This ceramic shipment is diverse in substance and unassuming in quality. By tracing how the Cypriot vases spilled and broke apart during the shipwreck, it has been possible to determine that they were originally packed into three pithoi for transport. The odd assortment of vases suggests that this cargo was not acquired at a manufacturing center. More …

An Exemplary Heroine In The Hippolytos, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In this paper I examine the link between cultic and dramatic heroes, and more particularly the status of cult heroes as exemplary figures for protagonists in tragedy. A hero in ancient Greek cultural terms is a human being who becomes heroized after death, a figure of cult, that is, who requires worship and sacrifice. Heroes are also central to epic and tragedy, yet because of the local nature of hero cults, heroes' status as objects of worship is rarely explicit in poetry. Poets typically avoid references to particular local practices, and focus instead on the figure of the hero before …

The Hero Beyond Himself: Heroic Death In Ancient Greek Poetry And Art, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The modern mind likes its heroism served with death. "They died heroes" begin news reports of death in battles and disasters, man-made or natural. Altruism, self-sacrifice, and disregard for danger define the modern hero, both in life and in death. Sometimes heroes are defined by the fact of their survival: war heroes return home after enduring the trauma of battle, captivity, or torture. Regardless of individual circumstances, to be a modern hero entails joining a community of individuals defined by the same essential qualities of selflessness and courage: to be a hero is to be willing to sacrifice oneself and …

Navigation And Transportation, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Water was the most efficient means of transportation and travel in the ancient Greek world. Evidence of the movement of commodities and people comes from a combination of literary, iconographical, and archaeological sources.

The "Ultra-Modern" Euripides Of Verrall, H.D., And Macleish, Thomas E. Jenkins

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This essay explores the modernity of ancient Greece. If this concept seems a paradox, it is; and it is that tension between antiquity and modernity, between constructions of classical rationalism and modern angst, that fueled three extraordinary adaptations of Euripides from the early 1890s to the mid 1960s. Drawing on a perception of Euripides as the most "modern" of ancient (perhaps even modern!) playwrights, A. W. Verrall, H(ilda) D(oolittle), and Archibald MacLeish all fashioned Euripides-inspired works that challenged contemporary perceptions of Euripides as a classic. As H.D. explains in her Notes on Euripides, "[W]e are too apt to pigeon-hole …

Found In Transition: Orality-Literacy Cues Discovered In A Rhetorical Examination Of Platonic Dialogues, Barbara Jane Clopton-Blackwell

English Theses & Dissertations

The shift from an oral society to a literate one occurred in Ancient Greece with the advent of the alphabet (Ong, Orality 90). The Greek culture is generally considered to be a unique example of a culture which developed literacy internally (Havelock Muse 1), Details of the cultural transformation remain unclear, just as the history of the development of the Greek alphabet is rife with rumors of foreign influence and predecessors. The shift was, nevertheless, a strongly internal process, an evolution of culture as much as of technology.

The transition from orality to literacy brought many conflicts. As a philosopher …

Vases Marked For Exchange: The Not-So-Special Case Of Pictorial Pottery, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Large, bold marks are painted or incised on the handles or bases of thirty-seven pictorial vases. These same kinds of marks and same patterns of marking are found on non-pictorial Mycenaean pottery. In general, marks on Mycenaean pottery are rare and the circumstances of their use are not yet fully understood. It is clear that they are associated with Cyprus, and it is most likely that they are associated with Cypriot traders. The marks do indicate that pictorial vases were handled through the same channels and documented in the same manner as the trade in linear and pattern-decorated Mycenaean pottery.

Caveat Emptor Collecting And Processing Pottery In Western Rough Cilicia, Nicholas K. Rauh, Richard M. Rothaus

Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project, 1996-2011

This paper furnishes a preliminary assessment of the field and laboratory procedures used to obtain ceramic field data by the participants of Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project in western Rough Cilicia (Gazipasha District, Antalya Province, south coastal Turkey). Between 1996 and 2004 the pedestrian team of the Rough Cilicia Survey conducted pottery collections and otherwise processed field pottery as its principal operation. Through nine consecutive field seasons the pedestrian team identified and processed an aggregate of 7313 sherds.

This is a self-archived copy of the paper that was presented in 2004 and published in 2006 as

Rauh, Nicolas K., and …

Singing Heroes: The Poetics Of Hero Cult In The Heroikos, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In this essay, I explore the poetic, emotional, and ritual dimensions of hero cult as presented in Philostratus's Heroikos. After a short digression on hero cult in the Greek period, I focus on the emphasis placed on the emotional bond between worshiper and hero, as well as the important role played by hymns and laments in the narrative. l propose to investigate these twin themes in depth by focusing on examples provided by Philostratus himself, and particularly the cult of Melikertês. Because Philostratus associates hymns and laments with initiation or mystery cults, I also consider the link between hero …

Hippocratic Pharmacology: Investigations Into The Theoretical Assumptions And Function Of Drug Therapy In The Corpus Hippocraticum, Edward G. Soltesz '94

Fenwick Scholar Program

The topic of this thesis is Hippocratic Pharmacology. While I intended to examine drugs and their efficacy in therapeutics, I soon realized the gravity of this undertaking: John Riddle and John Scarborough have been working on this for decades; my year's work would accomplish little. Instead, I found that work needed to be done in investigating the theoretical assumptions which the Corpus authors held about drug use: how did they believe these medicines worked? What were their underlying concepts? The methodological difficulty in answering these questions is evident at once. I decided to pursue this topic in two ways: first, …

Review: One Hundred Years Of Homosexuality: And Other Essays On Greek Love, John F. Makowski

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This, the most significant study of Greek homosexuality since the pioneering work of K. J. Dover, does not aim for an exhaustive or systematic treatment of Greek love but rather to formulate a theory of the erotics of male homosexuality and to apply it to a selected number of aspects in literature, philosophy, and Athenian social life. Accordingly, part one presents a lucid exposition of the two currently competing theories of homosexuality, essentialism and constructionism. Halperin is firmly in the camp of the latter and argues forcefully that homosexuality, and indeed all sexuality, is a social construct rather than an …

Research Note: A New Perspective On Revenge And Justice In Homer, Judith Stanton

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

3. Athens: Greek Civilization, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section I: Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem: Background of Western Civilization

The importance of the Greeks lies in the fact that they sketched out many, although of course not all, of the broad foundations upon which Western Civilization rests. This may seem a bit strange in view of the fact that each city-state was independent and often jealous of the others, but the Greeks were bound together by a common language, by common gods, by belief in their descent from a common ancestor and in their superiority to non-Greeks, and by many common customs. Although the name of Athens has been chosen in the title of this chapter to represent the …

2. Athens: The Polis, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section I: Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem: Background of Western Civilization

Within the Greek city-states as they developed in the first millennium B. C . there were several different forms of government, ranging somewhere between the two extremes represented by Sparta and Athens. During the early period of their history the Spartans, who had conquered and reduced to serfdom the Laconians among whom they settled, chose to meet the increasing pressure of population by treating their neighbors to a similar fate, in this way becoming the largest of the city-states. After crushing a long and serious revolt, they turned themselves into a military society in order to maintain control over these …

7. Athens: Summary, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section I: Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem: Background of Western Civilization

The Golden Age of Greece was confined to the relatively short period of two centuries. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B. C., the vast empire he had built fell apart, and his generals tried to pick up the pieces. By that time the Greek polis no longer possessed the vitality that was reflected in the funeral oration of Pericles. Something like cultural lethargy began to settle upon the descendants of Herodotus and Socrates. The center of learning switched from Athens to Alexandria, in Egypt. [excerpt]