Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons^™

What Can Copyright Law Learn From Greek Tragedy?, Mira Moldawer

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None.

The Fifth (202-195 Bce) And The Sixth (170-168 Bce) Syrian Wars In The Dead Sea Scrolls: Implications For Understanding The Origin Of The Maccabean Revolt, Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

The rulers of the Seleucid and the Ptolemaic Empires fought six wars for control of the region known as Coele-Syria during the third and the second centuries BCE. These conflicts weakened both powers, allowing them to be conquered by the Roman Republic. For the Jews of Judea, the Fifth Syrian War witnessed increased conflicts in the country among its high priests regarding the nature of Hellenistic reforms and how to deal with the Seleucid Empire. These difficulties continued and led to the Maccabean Revolt at the conclusion of the Sixth Syrian War, which would eventually culminate in Judean independence from …

Fans In Ancient Egypt: Iconographic And Contextual Study Of Fans In The Predynastic, Old, And Middle Kingdoms, Nadra Zaki

Theses and Dissertations

A variety of fans existed throughout ancient Egyptian history. They had several forms and were made of different materials. They appear in two- and three-dimensional representations, as well as in texts. They relate to royalty and high officials and also feature in domestic settings, both out- and indoors. Fans were used for creating breeze, and providing shade in real life, and also during the journey to the afterlife, where they combined physical and metaphysical protection. Several names were associated with fans, depending on their functions, both in the secular and sacred world.

Earlier studies have either generally examined fans …

Examining State Development In West Africa, Through Senegal And Nigeria, Kasandra L. Housley

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper studies the relationship between the state and armed conflict in West Africa with an emphasis placed on the value, influence, and role of social institutions on the long-term stability of the West African state. The countries of the Republic of Senegal and Nigeria represent the primary focus of the paper. Comparisons are made of the history of each country/state and experience with socio-political conflict in an effort to explain the penultimate place of social as opposed to legalistic or political influences responsible for the long term survival of the independent state in West Africa. The central question explored …

Resurrecting The Muse: Kithara And Lyric Poetry Performance Practice In Greco-Roman Antiquity, Abigail Petersen

Honors Projects

Both students and pedagogues of classical studies are familiar with the inherent musicality of Greek and Latin poetry, and they also widely accept the idea that poets sang their works to accompaniment on a kithara, or large lyre. However, little work has been done to perform works of poetry according to this tradition, and thus many modern attempts at oral recitation feature a forced and pedantic rhythm that bores the listener and fails to do justice to the revered art of Greco-Roman poetry. Through a review of primary and secondary sources, I examine the construction of the kithara, the context …

“City On A Hill”: The Superiority Complex Of Ancient Athens And The United States, Caroline Soergel '28

Best First-Year Seminar Writing

After times of intense conflict, both ancient Athens and the United States were left to rebuild their states. Athenians and European settlers had the opportunity to reestablish their government and unify their people by building key monuments. Athenians were recovering from around 50 years of fighting in the Persian Wars, and the United States was recovering from wars with Great Britain. Visual rhetoric, the use of visual elements to communicate meaning, was employed in Athens and America for two purposes: 1) to eulogize their impressive victories over their foes and 2) to establish a common enemy. For ancient Athens, their …

Cultural Memory And The Search For Identity In Victorian Fantasy Fiction, Sadie Boggs

Honors College Theses

Fantasy literature's origins can be traced through myths and folktales, medieval romances, enlightenment fairy tale fantasy, and Romanticism, before finally taking firmer root in the Victorian period and blooming into its own genre in 20th century modern fantasy. Victorian thinkers reacted to the Enlightenment’s realism and technological innovation by “rediscovering” the Middle Ages as a time of beauty, simplicity, and moral virtue. Simultaneously, Psychology developed as a recognized field of study, and theories emerged about the psychological process of memory formation and retrieval, as well as its reliability and relation to identity.

Considering these psychological theories, Victorian fantasy's cultural memory …

The Pagan Reception Of Judaism From The Sibylline Oracles: Insights From Pseudo-Seneca’S Octavia Regarding The Creation And Circulation Of Oral Sibylline Oracles By The Plebs, Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

According to tradition, the original collection of Sibylline Books ac­quired by the Roman monarch Tarquinius Priscus, which were kept in the Temple of Jupiter in the capital, were lost in the fire of 83 BCE. In 76 BCE, the Senate ordered the college of the quindecimviri to travel to the traditional centers of Sibylline activity in the East to find Sibylline Oracles to replace those destroyed in the fire. According to Lactantius, these officials collected many Oracles from private individuals. This reference suggests that Sibylline Oracles circulated widely. However, based on the witnesses regarding their consultation, it appears that the …

Roman History In Sibylline Oracle 13: A Palestinian Jewish Perspective On Emperors, Usurpers, And Saviors During The Third Century Ce (Part Two: From Decius To Odenath Of Palmyra), Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

Sibylline Oracle 13 is a remarkable historical document that contains a unique perspective on the poorly documented period of Roman history known as the “Crisis of the Third Century (235-284 CE), which began with the assassination of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander (222-235 CE), the last ruler of the Severan dynasty. This turbulent era was marked by nearly fifty years of civil wars, barbarian invasions, rebellions, and approximately twenty-six claimants to the throne. Although the end of this turmoil under Diocletian (284-305 CE) is well known, we have little information about much of this century, particularly its first decades. The …

Immigration: Ancient Counterparts And Processes, Monica Souza Sue

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

This project sought to inspect parallels between modern and ancient societies, and the commonality of certain events and political markers. This project makes mentions of power dynamics, the position of immigrants as a source of labor, and their commodification as a force. Research used a 'compilation of materials' method. In which, is performed the examination and studying of different materials in relation to the question, compiling findings, and crafting commentary based on the discoveries of the medias. The experiences of immigrants in the United States are strongly comparable to the experiences of metic (immigrant) women in ancient Athens. A small …

Experiments In Love: Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe And Henry De Vere Stacpoole’S The Blue Lagoon, L. Kirsten Day

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Despite a chronological gulf of nearly two thousand years, the second century C. E. Greek romance writer Longus and the early twentieth century Irish novelist Henry de Vere Stacpoole were prompted to produce their best works by a similar motive: an urge to explore the world, and particularly the phenomenon of love and desire, from a standpoint of complete innocence. Although the resulting novels, Daphnis & Chloe and The Blue Lagoon respectively, have no evident direct connection, they exhibit surprising similarities not only in plot, setting, and characterization, but also in the values, perspectives, and worldviews they advance. The striking …

Ovid And Mel Gibson: Power, Vulnerability, And What Women Want, Geoff Bakewell

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Knowledge of Ovid is invaluable for analyzing Nancy Meyers’s film What Women Want (2000). Advertising executive Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) is a sexist, chauvinistic ladies’ man who acquires the ability to hear what women are thinking. He is in effect a second Tiresias, and this article examines him in light of the gender-bending seer from the Metamorphoses. Meyers links Nick’s miraculous transformation to his attempt to listen to women while simultaneously cross-dressing. He subsequently becomes an intermediary between the genders, especially on sexual matters. The article further examines the Nick/Tiresias parallel in light of Ovid’s treatment of other Theban …

The Labyrinth Of Memory: Iphigeneia, Simonides, And Classical Models Of Architecture As Mind In Chris Nolan’S Inception (2010), Benjamin Haller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Chris Nolan’s 2010 film Inception uses architecture as a language whereby to comment upon the relationship of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, with his deceased wife, Mal. This paper argues that three classical models – Homer’s tomb of Myrhine described in the Iliad, Iphigeneia’s dream of the collapse of the house of Agamemnon in Euripides’s Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, and Simonides’ Memory Palace mnemonic technique – manifest parallel uses of architecture as a metaphor for mind.

The film identifies each of its main characters – Dom, Mal, and Ariadne – with different architectures and with different modes of cognition. The …

300 And Fellini-Satyricon: Film Theory In The Tertiary Classroom, Leanne Glass

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Pedagogical practices in Reception-based courses on ancient Greece and Rome in film often focus on an individual film’s connections to its historical themes and meta-narrative. In contrast, courses based on Film Studies often focus pedagogical discourses on filmic techniques or the filmmaking process per se. Regularly, the two approaches remain discrete and discipline-based.

In view of this disjuncture in teaching approaches and foci, the intention of this paper is to explore the benefits of film theory, including its consideration of film technique, within Classical Reception courses. Therefore, the suggestion offered herein is that more emphasis on the pedagogies of Film …

Theseus Loses His Way: Viktor Pelevin’S Helmet Of Horror And The Old Labyrinth For The New World, Alison Traweek

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores the relationship between the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Viktor Pelevin’s 2006 adaptation of it, The Helmet of Horror, particularly how it can serve as a case study for the nature and significance of adaptation. It examines the idea of memory, a central theme of the novel, and considers how three aspects of the original myth – the Minotaur, Ariadne’s thread, and the labyrinth itself – shape and inform Pelevin’s retelling. Each of these is unique to this myth in antiquity, and together, they structure the story. Each is also fundamentally connected to the …

The Odyssey And Its Odyssey In Contemporary Texts: Re-Visions In Star Trek, The Time Traveler’S Wife, And The Penelopiad, Mary Economou Bailey Green

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Homer’s The Odyssey is the archetypal quest story. The dialogue began with Homer, and contemporary texts and popular culture media have continued the tradition of deconstructing and recreating stories, addressing issues related to the human psyche. As Hardwick and Stray note, the relationship between ancient and modern is “not merely inherited but constantly made and remade,” one that we see in the following varied genres and versions that retell the Odyssean myth, relating re-visions of characters, relationships, structures, and themes. The original Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” is an allegory of the Odyssean quest for human knowledge, while …

O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching The Iliad And The Odyssey Through Popular Culture, Mallory Young

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Like so many of my academic colleagues, I spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting our students’ lack of engagement, discipline, and preparation. The problems are naturally exacerbated when the subject is literature and the literature in question is, by its nature, far removed in time and place from students’ daily lives. At the same time, requirements to study literature have become compressed, if not eliminated entirely. Ancient Greek works, in particular, seem to pose special problems for unmotivated or unprepared students. As our students become less likely to have a prior context from which to approach ancient texts, the …

Wounds That Will Not Heal: Heroism And Innocence In Shane And The Iliad, Carl A. Rubino

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

George Stevens’ film Shane, which dates from 1953, remains an especially successful version of the heroic paradigm that is established in Homer’s Iliad. Just as Achilles, the hero of Homer’s poem, considers abandoning the war at Troy in favor of a long and uneventful life at home, the film’s mysterious hero makes a futile attempt to abandon his violent past for a “normal life” as an ordinary farmer in the American west. In the end, however, the threatened status of the domestic world Shane is trying to enter makes it impossible for him to renounce his heroic nature and violent …

Fallen Kingdoms And Ancient Monoliths: The Influence Of Atlantis And Egypt In Tolkien’S Númenor, Charlotte J. Brockway

Journal of Tolkien Research

In light of the recent publication of The Fall of Númenor, my essay aims to focus on Tolkien’s, somewhat underappreciated, influences on Gondor; particularly Ancient Egypt. This essay looks at Plato's Timaeus and Critias, Ignatius Donnelly's theories, and examines the Atlantean and Egyptian motifs in Tolkien’s version of Westernesse, in particular, the remnants of Atlantean civilization survived by Egyptian colonists which mirror the Realms of Exile (Gondor and Arnor).

Denigration Of The Body In Plato’S Philosophy, Jamie Alexander

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The denigration of the body is a common feature of Western religions, but its origins can be traced back to Plato. His teacher, Socrates, proposed a separation of body and soul, but careful reading of Plato's Dialogues suggest Plato took a particularly negative view of the body compared to his predecessor. Analyzing the effects of the Peloponnesian War on Plato's life and society, this article looks at reasons Plato may have had a developed an unfavorable view toward the body by comparing "war bodies" with "intellectual bodies," and discussing the impact democracy had on Plato's worldview.

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Scientists As Citizens: The Role Of The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists In The Postwar Era, 1945-1949, Elizabeth Baker Given

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In mid-August 1945 the dropping of the uranium and plutonium bombs devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing Japanese leaders to surrender to the United States. World War II had finally come to a close. However, the manner in which the war ended also marked the beginning of a new age. The detonation of the atomic bomb prompted unprecedented challenges in controlling the destructive weapon. Manhattan Project scientists, who had created the bomb in the midst of wartime secrecy and understood its grave dangers, were deeply concerned about the future of their brainchild. In a world that had been …

The Coronation Of An Historic Process: Franco And Spanish History, 1937-1947, Patrick Moran

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

History is not a whim, Francisco Franco declared to a youth group in January 1945. "It was not chance that many centuries before other nations Spain had forged its nationality and obtained its personality, nor that the undertakings of its sons had amazed the world with their heroic deeds." Six years had not yet passed since the end of the Spanish Civil War. World War II was drawing to a close, Spain faced an uncertain diplomatic and political future as one of the last of Europe's ultra-rightist political regimes, and the Spanish dictator was choosing to open his speech to …

Examining The Early Influences On England's First Female M.D.: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Audra Bollard

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1859 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson returned home from a short vacation. At this time she made an announcement so shocking her mother cried for days in humiliation and her father declared it disgusting; she had simply informed them she was going to be a doctor. Victorian women of the upper-middle class were expected to prepare for domestic lives as wives and mothers. In mid-nineteenth century England, professional careers were unheard of for females. Although the British-born Elizabeth Blackwell had become the first female to earn an M. D. in America, where she set up a practice, measures were quickly taken …

Glasnost, Perestroika And Big Mac's: The Significance Of Mcdonald's In The Changing Face Of The Ussr, Theresa Bartholomew

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Early on the morning of 30 January 1990, George Cohon, president of McDonald'sCanada, left his hotel room and drove to Pushkin Square in Moscow. Nervous about the international press that would be covering the opening of the first McDonald's in this nation and anxious to make the opening perfect, he arrived to see the streets empty in front of the fast-food restaurant except for a lone policeman. Wondering where the anticipated crowds of Muscovites were, Cohon approached the officer, concerned by the apparent lack of interest in the first McDonald's opening in the Soviet Union. After a short conversation with …

Re-Defining Thainess: Negative Identification During The Franco-Thai Border Conflict, Shane Strate

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On the night of 15 October 1940 over three thousand university students and city residents marched, torches in hand, through the streets of Bangkok to protest the latest incident in the long-standing border dispute with France. Local newspapers had organized the demonstration and a few journalists accompanied the demonstrators, standing in the back of trucks and making speeches designed to incite the crowd. The march was part of a newspaper campaign to convince the government to deliver an ultimatum to French Indochina: either return territories formerly belonging to Siam or face military retaliation. Among the banners carried by the students …

Preface, Rachel Cope

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This year the production of The Thetean has undergone significant changes. For the first time we have obtained our own equipment and are solely responsible for the publication of the journal. Although exciting, producing this work has also been a long and often cumbersome process; if things could go awry, they did! Yet despite the difficulties encountered, we have met our goals and will always remember the moments of cooperation and success we shared.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

A Rifle Totin' Cartoonist: In Memory Of Bill Mauldin, 1921-2003, Casey Sullivan

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In late 2002, Jay Gruenfeld, a veteran of the Pacific Theater of World War II, set out on a mission to give comfort to a man who unknowingly had done the same for him many years before. During the war, Gruenfeld was an infantryman in the Philippines. In the ensuing battles, his squad was decimated with close to one hundred percent American casualties. Gruenfeld was injured and sent to a hospital to recover, where he felt alone. While there, his father sent him a copy of Up Front, a collection of cartoons by Bill Mauldin. This was the first contact …