Classics Commons^™

Designing Digital Antiquity: Classical Archaeology In New Virtual Applications, William Loder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that the combination of existing archaeological theory with game design theory offers an innovative avenue for creating serious 3D applications of archaeological sites in virtual reality that can be productively used for pedagogical, research, and outreach solutions. In this thesis, I engage with the archaeological theories of phenomenology and sensory studies, briefly touching on structure and agency as well as discussion of some current digital applications in use in the field. For this project, I am interested in game design theory as it relates to education and I view Virtual Reality as an important tool …

Mythic Background, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Myth, according to a well known formulation by Walter Burkert, “is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance” (1979: 23). Andrew von Hendy, who declares Burkert’s definition the “gold standard” in classical studies, offers a Marxist reformulation, so that myth “is traditional narrative with a high degree of ideological saturation” (2002: 269, 277). This definition accords with the fact that muthos, the Greek word that most closely approximates myth, also designates “story” generally, and, as we might expect in an oral culture, “speech” (its meaning of “fiction” is post-Homeric). It also allows …

Friends, Barbarians, Future Countrymen: Clientela And Caesar’S De Bello Gallico, J.T. Godfrey

Honors Papers

Imagine a Roman citizen of the 50s BCE unrolling Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico. They might expect a dramatic tale of barbarians rushing naked against Roman shields with faces painted blue, blonde mustaches adorning their faces, their hair like horses’ manes flowing in the wind. Our Roman would probably believe Gallic society to be even more mysterious than their battle tactics; after all, they counsel with druids, they count by nights, and they believe in a never-ending cycle of life and death. Although some Romans possibly read Posidonius’ account of Gallic society (which dispels some of these prejudices), most would …

Theoria As Practice And As Activity, Julie Ward

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Book X chapter 7 of Nicomachean Ethics (henceforth, EN), Aristotle reaches two decisive conclusions: frst, the activity of our intellect which he terms θεωρία is the highest kind and comprises “complete happiness” (ἡ τελεῖα εὐδαίμονια, EN 1177a19); second, a theoretical life, being divine, counts as the highest, and is the one to aim at (EN 1178a5-7). These are compelling claims, rightly generating much scholarly comment, particularly about the balance of excellent theoretical and moral activity in the best human life.2 Yet the present paper proposes to follow a diferent standard, one with a broader, thematic approach to θεωρία. My …

In Memoriam Leslie S. B. Maccoull, James G. Keenan

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Dr. Leslie S.B. MacCoull, papyrologist, Byzantinist, and historian, died at her home in Tempe, Arizona, on August 26 at age 70. MacCoull was born in New London, Connecticut, on August 7, 1945, attended St. Mary’s School in Peekskill, New York, and received her A.B. in Classics from Vassar College in 1965, summa cum laude, as class salutatorian; she had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She received an M.A. in Classics in 1966 from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America in Semitics in 1973 with a dissertation on Coptic papyri in …

P.Lund 4.13.1-2, James G. Keenan

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Attention was redirected to the first two lines of this piece by Klaas Worp’s note in BASP 51 (2014) 198. For easy access to the image I recommend proceeding through APIS into the Lund collection and entering the number 27. As confirmed by my attempt on 13 May 2015, this will bring up a link to Pap. Choix 25 (with image), one of the Lund papyrus’s subsequent editions; the other is SB 6.9349.

Gender, Democracy, And The Justice Of Athena’S Vote To Acquit Orestes, Jacqueline Long

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay examines closely how Athena by chartering the Areopagus court resolves the succession of violence on which Aeschylus centered his Oresteia. Neither historical nor dramatic and poetic conventions determine whether Athena calls an odd or even number of human jurors, and does or does not vote with them to create their quitting tie. The interaction of :Orestes', the Erinyes', and Apollo's arguments," together with Athena's reactions, demonstrates that an even-numbered human jury splits equally over whether a human child owes duty more to father or mother. Athena's birth bars her from testing this question on her own sensibility and …

Epiphany In The Homeric Hymn To Demeter And The Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In the following essay I investigate the Odyssey’s sustained engagement with the theme of epiphany. Within the poem’s own narrative, the central epiphanic moment is the recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope, and it resonates powerfully with a series of other such moments throughout the poem, beginning with Athene’s epiphany to Telemakhos in Book 1. But I also hope to show that these Odyssean scenes resonate just as powerfully with Demeter’s epiphanies in the Homeric hymn to the goddess.

"So Say We All"—Reimagining Empire And The Aeneid, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Battlestar Galactica, a television series that aired on the SyFy Channel from 2003 to 2009, tells the story of the Twelve Colonies, a human society whose home planets have been destroyed by a race of robots, the Cylons. These androids, originally created by mankind as a slave workforce, have at the moment of their revolution evolved to become physically indistinguishable from humans, and, after they turn against their creators, as the Internet Movie Data Base tag line puts it: "The fight to save humanity rages on." While the series presents itself as a traditional science fiction narrative with the …

Almodóvar's Female Odyssey, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Although Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver does not refer to Homeric epic, Odyssean motifs are ubiquitous in the narrative. As they must be, insofar as Homer's poem is the foundational text in Western culture of the very idea of homecoming, or nostos. A meditation on the notion of return (Spanish volver), the film focuses on the modern experience of the family, the connections between husbands and wives, parents and children, memory and identity. Irrespective of intention on Almodóvar's part, to raise and to represent the phenomenon of return is to start a conversation with Homer's Odyssey, which …

Cypro-Minoan, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

There are approximately two hundred identified Cypro-Minoan inscriptions (excluding potmarks). Most are very short (one or two sequences totaling fewer than ten signs). They are impressed, incised, or painted on a variety of objects and materials in an assortment of lengths and formats and are found in a diversity of contexts widely dispersed across the island of Cyprus and at Ras Shamra-Ugarit on the mainland. They span the entire Late Bronze Age (16th-11th centuries BC) and perhaps continue into the very early Iron Age.

The earliest discoveries were made at the end of the 19th century; most recently, Cypro-Minoan has …

Roman Law And The Legal World Of The Romans, James G. Keenan

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A review of Andrew. M Riggsby's book, Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans.

A Referential Commentary And Lexicon To Homer, Iliad Viii [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

A 14,305 page Iliad commentary? That is what we get if we multiply the pages Adrian Kelly lavishes on Book 8 with the poem’s dimensions. And, Book 8? This is never really explained, though I suspect the long scholarly tradition that the book strays from Homer’s typical compositional practices and standards is one reason. For Adrian Kelly’s stated objective is to recreate at least part of the rich network of associations available to the early auditors of epic, with the result that Book 8 is shown to be as traditional as any other.

"That's What I'Ll Remember": Louise Glück’S Odyssey From Nostos To Nostalgia, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

From Vergil’s Aeneid to James Joyce’s Ulysses and Derek Walcott’s Omeros, writers have used the Odyssey as a framework to explore the meaning of memory, home, and homecoming. When the American poet Louise Glück looks at a marriage unraveling in her collection of poems entitled Meadowlands (Glück 1996), she too turns to the Odyssey. Some of the poems in the collection refer directly to their ancient model as Glück gives voice to Circe’s regrets and anger, Penelope’s grief, and Telemachus’ ambivalence towards his parents. Other poems allude less transparently to their Homeric antecedents, but also go back to …

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 …

Kingship In The Mycenaean World And Its Reflections In The Oral Tradition [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Shear undertakes a detailed comparison of archaeological evidence from Mycenaean Greece, the surviving Linear B tablets, and the Homeric epics with the aim of showing that, contrary to the reigning scholarly consensus, Homer preserves a detailed and accurate portrait of the age he purports to describe. Indeed, Shear believes that both epics and much of Greek myth took shape during this period and reflect actual historical events (hence the reference to "oral tradition" rather than "Homer" in the title). Thus, because Pelops is the eponym of the Pcloponnesos, "he should logically belong to the early tradition that evolved soon after …

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.

The Raft Of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination Of Homer's Odyssey [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In The Raft of Odysseus, Carol Dougherty wishes to read several major episodes of the Odyssey as ways of imagining colonial experience, and as informed by the discourse of colonial foundation. Odysseus can be compared to an ethnographer, who gains self-knowledge through a process of “decoding” a foreign culture and “recoding” it for one’s own, so that “the strange becomes familiar and the familiar strange” (p. 10). At the same time, he is also a colonist, whose experiences among the Phaeacians and Cyclopes offer complementary images of colonial encounters, and a traveling poet, who trades his stories for commercial …

The Returns Of Odysseus: Colonization And Ethnicity [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The Returns of Odysseus will be essential reading for specialists in Homer, early Greek history, and ancient ethnology. They and others willing to expend the time and energy necessary to read this densely argued and worded book will win a perspective on Greek (pre)colonization and its mythology unavailable from any other source. I myself required a full week for a careful reading, after which I noted to my surprise that I had taken over 50 pages of notes, many of which now belong to my permanent files. If, in what follows, I concentrate on some illustrative problems with Malkin's (M.) …

War Games: Odysseus At Troy, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This paper examines two aspects of Odysseus' behavior that fundamentally set him apart from the other Greek heroes in the Iliad. Odysseus at Troy superficially appears to share many traits with the other Homeric heroes: he is a prominent participant both in assemblies and in combat, and he takes part in many of the decisive episodes of the narrative. He shares in the kleos ("glory") of the other renowned warriors by association, but closer examination shows that he speaks and behaves in an idiosyncratic, often unconventional, manner, and that many of his words and deeds reflect a stance of …

The Cypro-Minoan Corpus Project Wins Best Of Show Award, J. S. Smith, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The tum of the millennium also marks a century of study of the undeciphered Late Bronze Age script of Cyprus, Cypro-Minoan. In 1909, Sir Arthur Evans labeled it "Cypro-Minoan" based on its visual similarity to the linear scripts he found at Knossos on Crete. We began to discuss the need for a detailed corpus of Cypro-Minoan a decade ago when we both attended a seminar on ancient Cypriot writing conducted by Thomas G. Palaima of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP) at the University of Texas at Austin. We went on separately to pursue specific problems in the …

Ways Of Exchange In The Lba Eastern Mediterranean: The Evidence Of Marked Vases, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Thousands of Late Bronze Age vases were traded among the nations of the eastern Mediterranean littoral. At least 900 still preserve marks incised or painted on their handles, bases or bodies. At first sight, the variety of mark-types, the range of vases marked, and the wide dispersal of the marked vessels yields an impression of jumble. But on closer inspection, patterns of marking begin to become evident. The fact that patterns do appear lends credence to the task of trying to discover what those marks might mean.

Heroism, Suffering, And Change, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Today I will address the issue of identity in the Odyssey. To do so I need to make a few general observations about the structure and content of the poem. It is immediately apparent that the Odyssey is organized by three narrative sequences: the story of Telemachus in Books 1-4, including his journey to Pylus and Sparta, the journey of Odysseus from Ogygia to Scheria in Books 5-12, and the return of Odysseus and his revenge on the suitors in Books 13-24. It is well recognized that Books 1-4 recount Telemachus’ coming of age, and that his journey plays a …

Homer, His Art And His World [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

First let me say what this book is not. Although the dust-jacket claims that the book includes "sections on the relevance of Homer to modern issues in literary criticism", it cannot be said to offer anything approaching a representative, let alone a comprehensive, survey of modern criticism, even as it is currently applied to Homer (H.). It does, in 34 pages, outline "the historical background to Homer and his poetry", but only for those who share the author's assumptions on the time, place, and circumstances of composition.

Appendix G: Trireme Warfare In Thucydides, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Ships, sea battles, and naval policy are key features in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides—who served as a general and commanded a squadron of triremes himself (4.104.4-5; 4.106.3)—clearly viewed naval power as the key to supremacy in the Aegean (1.15); Athens' rise to empire and fall from glory was inextricably bound with her fortunes at sea. [par 1]

A Note On Odyssey 3.216-38, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Incised Marks (Post-Firing) On Aegean Wares, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The practice of incising potmarks into LH and LM III vessels after firing is not only distinctive but also a peculiar and limited Cypriot phenomenon. A close examination of the types of vessels marked in this way and their distribution should provide some clues to patterns of trade between the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. The work I present here is still very much in progress, and I welcome suggestions and criticisms.

The Ferrymen Of Elysium: Nostratic Eschatology And The Homeric Phaeacians, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Belief that the Homeric Phaeacians belong to the afterlife is old; but its supporters have always found themselves in the minority. Friedrich Welcker, who first argued the point in 1833, held that the Phaeacians were ferrymen of the dead, and that Scheria was set in or near Elysium. Wilamowitz accepted Welcker's identification of the Phaeacians, and maintained that Arete and Alcinous were modeled on the underworld rulers Persephone and Hades. Rehearsal of the arguments advanced by these scholars reveals that the evidence has been incompletely and on occasion incorrectly applied; however, a modified version of their theory is still viable …

A Note On The Text Of Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. 7.131, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

No abstract provided.