War-mongering politicians. Dispatched weapons inspectors. Faulty intelligence dossiers exaggerating threats. Domestic deliberations surrounding the necessity for war. Previous and complicated histories of combat. If one …
This thesis explores dreams in the works of the ancient Jewish authors Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus. Although the two wrote in different cities, …
The Adriatic Sea both connected and divided the shores of the Italian and Balkan peninsulas in the Hellenistic period (fourth to first centuries BC). The …
Collective identity, as is now well established, is a subjectively understood and socially constructed phenomenon that is subject to change; a single individual has multiple …
This study explores how Early Christian Latin hymns written between the fourth and sixth centuries harnessed the power of song for instruction. I argue that …
This dissertation reappraises the relationship between dithyramb and tragedy by examining the two Dionysiac choral performance-genres against the backdrop of Athens’ vibrant and rapidly growing …
Athens in the fourth century BCE faced many economic and military pressures, to which the Athenians responded with a multitude of political experiments. This dissertation …
From Polybius in the second century BCE to Delbrück in the twentieth century CE, scholars have devoted significant energy to understanding how the Roman army …
Questions regarding immortality and death have been subjects of human inquiry for hundreds of years. The ancient Romans, influenced by Greek, Persian, and Egyptian predecessors …
This dissertation studies the relationship between contradiction and truth in the tragedies of Euripides, focusing especially on the Euripides’ use of mutually incompatible versions of …
This dissertation looks at Athenian public finance in the period between 403 and 322 B.C. from the perspective of contemporary Athenian ideas about democracy. Although …
This dissertation reappraises the use of hyperbole by the exiled Roman poet Ovid through close readings of his Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto, and Ibis that …
In a world riddled with earthquakes and plagued with epidemics, how did the Ancient Greeks cope with, and conceptualize, disaster? This study focuses on the …
This dissertation employs contemporary dress theory to reappraise narratives concerning the construction of normative gender roles that appear in Homeric, Classical, and Hellenistic sources. My …
This dissertation offers a re-reading of the work of Augustine of Hippo as a case study of philosophical and rhetorical education in the Greco-Roman world. …
The scholarly consensus on war and the Greek city-state in the Hellenistic era has recently shifted, and scholars now recognize that military institutions continued to …
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation into the relationship between pregnant and pre-gravid women and their fetuses in the Roman Empire. It examines the cultural …
Beginning from Mark Payne's recent argument that Theocritean fiction does not adhere to real-world patterns, this study contends that Theocritus use of fiction is consistently …
This dissertation explores the topic of fictive kinship – defined as a deep, personal connection between two or more individuals which is not biologically or …
This dissertation brings to bear a statistical method and the tools of pragmatics and discourse analysis on an examination of the language of Roman comedy. …
This dissertation answers the question of what it means for an outstanding representative of the long Second Sophistic to have decisively shaped Christian festival rhetoric. …
Violence and violent language have long been associated with Classical invective. Archilochus for instance is said to have driven the Lycambids to suicide through the …
This dissertation explores how the anonymous historical drama, Octavia, restages a brief moment in Neronian history as a powerful challenge to the Julio-Claudians' claim to …
This dissertation describes a conception of the lyric poet�s role as advisor, which Alcaeus adopts in his use of traditional elements of Wisdom Literature and …
This dissertation retraces the early history and features of what the Byzantines, in hagiographical contexts, called metaphrasis. Literally translated as paraphrase, metaphrasis is a form …
Ancient Greeks regarded their gods as beings with whom they could interact in either helpful or harmful ways. The negative dimension of human-god interaction has, …
This thesis explores the practice of displaying oaths in Hellenistic Greece when negotiating civic privilege. Citizenship oaths, or oaths of allegiance, are familiar to us …
This dissertation employs a comparative sociological framework to consider how the economically- and culturally-entangled peoples of the Mediterranean and Near East constructed social distinction and …
This dissertation explores the role of mystery cults and other religious rituals in Petronius’ Satyrica. One of the most complex issues in the study of …
John of Salisbury (c. 1115/1120-1180) is known for his treatises in which he conveyed his ideas about education, society, virtue, and several other topics to …
This dissertation is an attempt to make Plato’s _Lesser Hippias_ more accessible to students of Plato and Ancient Greek. It consists of two main parts: …
Plutarch has often been studied as an essayist and biographer, but he has been insufficiently studied as a dialogist. This dissertation aims to illuminate Plutarch’s …
This dissertation analyzes the poetic strategies of primacy and subsumption, and their interactions, in epic poetry across four authors in the Greco-Roman epic tradition. I …
Abstract of "Remembering the Persian War Differently" by David Yates, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2011. The Persian War, culminating in Xerxes' invasion of Greece in …
Though many of Plato's contemporaries wrote Socratic dialogues of their own, Xenophon is the only one of them whose work has survived intact. Yet, much …
Ancient novels, represented by the so-called “ideal” Greek romances (Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, Xenophon’s Ephesiaca, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Cleitophon, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, and …
Abstract of ‘The Latin Poetics of Modern Greek Prose, 1821-1945’, by Christopher Jotischky, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2024 Although Latin was compulsory for many students …
Abstract of (THE OUTSIDER WITHIN: SELF-SECLUSION BY THE ROMAN ELITE FROM TIBERIUS TO HADRIAN), by (Darrel Janzen), Ph.D., Brown University, May 2018. This dissertation examines …
This dissertation argues that Valerius Flaccus explores the difficulties of imperial history and elite achievement under the Roman principate through his mythological epic, the Argonautica. …
This dissertation is the first major study to examine the history of Greco-Roman classical reception within Vietnamese contexts. Previous scholarship in classical reception has overlooked …
This dissertation examines allusive correspondences between simile and narrative within the Aeneid. Rather than illustrating a limited tertium comparationis, the similes of the Aeneid engage …
This thesis explores the portrayal of Carthage through the lens of Hannibal in the works of Polybius and Livy. First, this thesis explores Hannibal in …
This dissertation offers the first paradigmatic study of Latin poetry written in colonial Latin America in the style of Virgil. The aim of this project …
Though there have recently been many examinations of ancient Romans' moral and aesthetic visual practices, Juvenal, the most vivid Roman verse satirist, has up to …
The question of compositional unity has intrigued Pindaric scholarship for centuries. I seek a new approach to the question by examining the role which the …