Thesis (MPhil (Ancient Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The main purpose of this thesis is to examine examples of information-gathering and political intelligence in Herodotus' Histories. In Herodotus' account, dialogues, anecdotes, and even inserted authorial commentary describe how leaders obtain politically relevant and timely information about other individuals and nations (intelligence). Herodotus links political decisions, based on gathered information, with his presentation of historical causation. In his multi-themed account, Herodotus provides tales of commissioned information-gathering missions, espionage, secret messages, and even disguises as nations and political leaders attempt to find out about their enemies and their allies. While the various anecdotes of information-gathering may not be historically precise, they may, in fact, infer real goals and problems of ancient Greek intelligence practices. The second purpose of this thesis is to explore Herodotus' use of cultural information within decision-making and statecraft. Herodotus presents nomos (culture or custom) as a compelling force for human behavior and military action. By articulating the importance of cultural information to political and military intelligence, Herodotus' work foreshadows modern intelligence theories and practices. This nomos-aspect of Herodotus' information-gathering anecdotes is especially relevant to current post-modern trend of culturally-based intelligence solutions to western counter-insurgency efforts. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die hoofdoel van hierdie tesis is om voorbeelde van inligtingversameling en politieke intellegensie in Herodotus se Histories te ondersoek. In Herodotus se verslae, dialoë, anekdotes en selfs ingevoegde ouktoriele kommentaar word daar beskryf hoe leiers polities relevante en aktuele inligting oor ander indiwidue en nasies (intellegensie) verkry. Herodotus verbind politieke besluite, gebaseer op ingewinde inligting, met sy voorstelling van historiese kousaliteitsleer. In sy vertellings met meervoudige temas, verskaf Herodotus verhale van opdragte wat gegee is vir inligtingsinwinningsendings, spioenasiewerk, geheime boodskappe en selfs vermommings waarmee nasionale en politieke leiers gepoog het om uit te vind oor hul vyande en bondgenote. Terwyl die verskeie anekdotes van inligtinginwinning moontlik nie histories presies is nie, is hulle dalk in werklikheid afgelei van regte doelstellings en probleme van antieke Griekse intellegensiepraktyke. Die tweede doel van hierdie tesis is om ondersoek in te stel na Herodotus se gebruik van kulturele inligting in besluitneming en regeerkuns. Herodotus stel nomos (kultuur of gebruik) as ‟n dwingende krag vir menslike gedrag en militêre aksie voor. Deur die belangrikheid van kulturele inligting vir politieke en militêre intellegensie te artikuleer, is Herodotus se werk ‟n voorafskaduwing van moderne intellegensie teorieë en praktyke. Hierdie nomos-aspek van Herodotus se inligtingsinwinningsanekdotes is veral relevant vir die huidige post-modernistiese neiging van kultuur-gebaseerde intellegensieoplossings vir westerse teen-insergensie pogings.

When looking at Dark Age Greece, one of the most important sites to consider is Athens. The Dark Age was a transitional period between the fall of Mycenaean Greece of the Bronze Age, and Archaic Greece of the Iron Age. This period is called the Dark Age because the palaces that ruled the Mycenaean age collapsed, and with them fell civilization in mainland Greece. Writing, fine art, massive architecture, trade, and luxury goods disappear from mainland Greece. But Athens survived the fall of the Mycenaeans. In order to understand the reason why Athens survived one must look at what the causes of the fall of the Mycenaeans were. Theories range from raiders and invasion, to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, droughts, and plagues. One must also examine Greece itself. The landscape and climate of Greece have a large impact on the settlement of the Greeks. The land of Greece also affects what Greek communities were able to do economically, whether a city would be rich or poor. It is because Athens is located in Attica that it survived. Attica had the poorest soil in the Mycenaean world, and was the poorest of the major cities, therefore, when looking at the collapse of the Mycenaeans being caused by people, there would be no reason for said people to raid or invade Athens and Attica. It is because Athens survives that it is such an important site. Athens survived the fall of the Mycenaeans and in doing so acts as a refugee center and a jumping off point for the remaining Mycenaeans to flee east, to the Aegean islands and Anatolia. Athens also stayed occupied during the Dark Age and because of this it was able to make some advancements. In particular Athens was a leader in mainland Greece in the development of iron. Not only this, but Athens became a cultural center during the Dark Age, inventing both proto-geometric and geometric pottery. These styles were adopted by the rest of the Greek world, and Athens was looked to as the influence for these styles. It is because Athens was the poorest city and Attica the poorest area during the Mycenaean age that it survived. Because it survived it was able to continue to develop and in turn influence the rest of mainland Greece.

This thesis is an examination of how Greek tyranny in the fourth century and the early Hellenistic age was influenced by Achaemenid Persia and the Ancient Near East. The introduction lays out the problems of interpreting the Ancient Near East through Greco-Roman sources, via Ephippus' description of Alexander the Great, as well as discussing two important examples of Persianisation that have been examined in detail in the past: Pausanias of Sparta and Alexander the Great. The relevant Classical Greek and Achaemenid sources concerning Persian kingship are then considered, in order to establish four categories by which to examine the tyrannical dynasties chosen as case studies: Appearance, Accessibility, Dynasty and Military Function. Using these four categories, the dynasties of the Dionysii of Syracuse, the Clearchids of Heraclea Pontica, the Hecatomnids of Caria and Agathocles of Syracuse, chosen for their geographical and temporal variance, are examined individually over the next four chapters. Appearance concerns the ruler's dress and body presentation, the use of status items such as crowns and sceptres, and the display of luxury. Accessibility concerns the use of architecture and fortifications, as well as court protocol and bodyguards, in order to control access to the ruler. Dynasty concerns family trees, marriages and the role of women, and the role of close family and subordinates in important administrative positions. Military Function concerns the role of the ruler in warfare as well as power symbols, titles and epithets. The analysis of the tyrannies taken altogether using the same categories forms the basis of the subsequent chapter, and allows for comparison with the Achaemenid Persian evidence in order to determine whether there is any significant correlation. This chapter also examines the potential methods of transmission. The thesis concludes that there are significant similarities in some aspects of tyrannical rule with that of Achaemenid kingship, and demonstrates that tyrants were engaging in the political and philosophical discourse of the era. The 'royal nature' as demonstrated by Xenophon proves to be something that tyrants aspire to, without becoming kings in name. The thesis also concludes that thinking of Greek tyrants in rigid characterisation is no longer acceptable, whether temporally as alter and junger tyranny, or geographically as Greek rulers of Greek cities with no contextual influence.

In the following study I reappraise the nineteenth century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897). Burckhardt is traditionally known for having served as the elder colleague and one-time muse of Friedrich Nietzsche at the University of Basel and so his ideas are often considered, by comparison, outmoded or inapposite to contemporary currents of thought. My research explodes this conception by abandoning the presumption that Burckhardt was in some sense "out of touch" with modernity. By following and significantly expanding upon the ideas of historians such as Allan Megill, Lionel Gossman, Hayden White, Joseph Mali, John Hinde and Richard Sigurdson, among others, I am able to portray Burckhardt as conversely inaugurating a historiography laden with elements of insightful social criticism. Such criticisms are in fact bolstered by virtue of their counter-modern characteristic. Burckhardt reveals in this way a perspicacity that both anticipates Nietzsche's own critique of modernity and in large part moves well beyond him. Much of this analysis is devised through a genealogical approach to Burckhardt which places him squarely within a cohesive branch of post-Kantian thought that I have called heterodox post-Kantianism. My study revaluates Burckhardt through the alembic of a "discursive" post-Kantian turn which reinvests many of his outré ideas, including his radical appropriation of historical representation, his non-teleological historiography, his various pessimistic inclinations, and additionally, his non-empirical, "aesthetic" study of history, or "mythistory," with a newfound philosophical germaneness. While I survey the majority of Burckhardt's output in the course of my work, I invest a specific focus in his largely unappreciated Greek lectures (given in 1869 but only published in English in full at the end of the twentieth century). Burckhardt's "dark" portrayal of the Greeks serves to not only upset traditional conceptions of antiquity but also the manner in which self-conception is informed through historical inquiry. Burckhardt returns us then to an altogether repressed antiquity: to a hidden, yet internal "dream of a shadow." My analysis culminates with an attempt to reassess the place of Burckhardt's ideas for modernity and to correspondingly reexamine Nietzsche. In particular, I highlight the disparity between Nietzsche's and Burckhardt's reception of the "problem of power," including the latter's reluctance - which was attended by ominous and highly prescient predictions of future large-scale wars and the steady "massification" of western society - to accept Nietzsche's acclamation of a final "will to power." Burckhardt teaches us the value of history as an active counterforce to dominant modern reality-formations and in doing so, his work rehabilitates the relevance of history for a world which, as Burckhardt once noted, suffers today from a superfluity of present-mindedness.

This thesis proposes to evaluate the impact of factors such as trade, circumscribed resources, and growing militarism upon the development of social complexity in LBA Argolis, and to what extent these factors may be invoked as triggering mechanisms--or prime movers--in the rise of palatial society in the Argive plain towards the end of the 15th century B.C., during the LH III A-B period. / It is argued that the most plausible model for the rise of palatial society in LBA Argolis is one which acknowledges the interrelations and processes of feedback between these factors, of which trade and militarism may have been original motivating factors. / Finally, it is suggested that the need to organize resource procurement and distribution were instrumental in the emergence of the Mycenaean palatial centers of LBA Argolis.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation analyzes the interplay between imperial messaging or self-representation and legal activity in the Roman Empire under the Severan dynasty. I discuss the unusual historical circumstances of Septimius Severus’ rise to power and the legitimacy crises faced by him and his successors, as well as those same emperors’ control of an increasingly complex legal bureaucracy and legislative apparatus. I describe how each of the four Severan rulers—Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Elagabalus, and Severus Alexander—employed different approaches to imperial legislation and adjudication in accordance with their idiosyncratic self-presentation and messaging styles, as well as how other actors within Roman legal culture responded to Severan political dynamics in their own work. In particular, this dissertation is concerned with a particularly—and increasingly—urgent problem in Roman elite political culture; the tension between theories of imperial power that centered upon rulers’ charismatic gifts or personal fitness to rule, and a more institutional, bureaucratized vision that placed the emperor at the center of broader networks of administrative control. While these two ideas of the Principate had always coexisted, the Severan period posed new challenges as innovations in imperial succession (such as more open military selection of emperors) called earlier legitimation strategies into question. I posit that Roman law, with its stated tendency towards regularized, impersonal processes, was a language in which the Severan state could more easily portray itself as a bureaucratic institution that might merit deference without a given leader being personally fit to rule. This dissertation begins by discussing the representational strategy of Septimius Severus, who deployed traditional imperial messaging tropes in strikingly legalistic forms. I then explore how this model of law as a venue for or language of state communication might explain otherwise idiosyncratic features of the constitutio Antoniniana, an edict promulgated by Septimius Severus’ son Caracalla that granted citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire. I next discuss two unusual features of the corpus of rescripts issued by Severus Alexander, the last Severan emperor: specifically, the relabeling of rescripts issued by Elagabalus, Alexander’s cousin and predecessor, as products of Alexander’s reign; and the idiosyncratic frequency with which rescripts issued under Alexander’s authority cite prior imperial (and particularly Severan) precedent. Finally, I discuss how jurists responded to Severan (and particularly late Severan) political and legal culture: late Severan jurists are particularly inclined to justify their legal decisionmaking in terms of the desirable consequences of a given decision’s universal promulgation, and similarly likely to justify their opinions by citing to an impersonal ‘imperial authority’ rather than to named figures. I argue that these changes reflect both state and scholarly attempts to wrestle with increasingly unstable imperial selection processes, and to articulate a vision of Roman governance that might function in the new world of the third century C.E.

Today, ceramic, polymer, and composite nanofibers are among the most charming materials for nanotechnology. Because of their small characteristic dimension, high surface area, and microstructural features, they provide unique mechanical, optical, electronic, magnetic, and chemical properties for an extensive variety of materials applications. Electrospinning provides an effective way of the nanofiber production in a nanometer scale. This technique utilizes a high voltage DC to create a strong electric field and a certain charge density in a viscous solution contained in a pipette. As a result, fibers with diameters ranging from the micrometer to nanometer are formed from this charged solution. This study deals with, the fabrication of alumina borosilicate ceramic nanofibers using electrospinning technique. Alumina borosilicates contain important components having intriguing characteristics for many applications and have been widely studied with different compositions. In this study, alumina borosilicate/PVA solution was prepared using the conventional sol-gel method. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) was added into this solution to increase the viscosity for electrospinning. After the alumina borosilicate/PVA solution was electrospun into fibers, high temperature sintering was carried to obtain ceramic alumina borosilicate fibers. The products were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffractometry (XRD), Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and thermogravimetric/differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) techniques.

The reaction of potassiumtetrachloroplatinate with 2-aminothiophenol, yielded a dark blue solid product. This work is about the characterization of this dark blue solid and the investigation of its binding interaction to DNA and enzyme activity. The blue solid product or the &ldquo / blue complex&rdquo / (as we called it in this work) is soluble in acetone, acetonitrile and DMSO yielding a blue solution. It is stable in solution and has a very strong absorption band at 724 nm. The product is paramagnetic and displays one kind of platinum in XPS (platinum binding energies were obtained at 71.1 and 74.6 eV, respectively). The elemental (C, H, N, S, Pt) analysis indicated that the platinum to ligand (2- aminothiophenolate) mole ratio is 1:2. The interpretation of the data collected from elemental analysis and ESR, XPS, NMR, CV measurements leads to conclude that the blue complex prepared in this work is a new platinum blues. This is the first example of platinum blues, in which the bridging ligand is a nitrogen and sulfur donor one. The proposed structure can be visualized as a dimer of binuclear head-tohead isomer of the green product, with C2h symmetry. The band at 724 nm is assigned to an allowed electronic transition from a metal-5dz orbitals based MO to metal-6pz orbitals based MO in tetranuclear core. In order to determine the binding mode of the blue complex to ct-DNA, electronic absorption spectroscopy is employed and hyperchromism about 17.5 percent is observed, which indicates a weak binding of the blue complex to DNA, such as electrostatic interaction of metal ions or H-bonding through the hydroxyl group of the complex. Voltammetric titration carried out in solution suggested the preferential stabilization of Pt(III) to Pt(II) on binding to DNA. The blue complex inhibits the GSTs activity between 45-200 micromolar, in sheep liver GST enzyme. The GST enzymes causes drug resistance, therefore inhibition of this enzyme suggests that this complex can be used in combined chemotherapy.