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A society that regards nature as divine is constantly reminded of its dependence on the gods. It comes, therefore, as no surprise to find the sanctuary as major focus of the Greek community, in Athens literally occupying the centre of the city, the Acropolis. A central part of ancient religious life was the practice of offering gifts to the gods. The abundance of dedications on the Acropolis - which includes the full range from the simple terracotta figurines to exquisitely decorated pottery and life size marble sculpture - gives ample evidence of this. The Acropolis offers a unique opportunity to study the dedications of Athens' city sanctuary in its most important period of growth and power. The continued use of the sanctuary over centuries is not on all accounts a blessing. The history of the Acropolis and its buildings has yet to find a conclusive interpretation owing to the destruction of earlier evidence by later building phases. In Chapter II I give a brief summary of the different theories and their limits in satisfying all the evidence. The chapter is not intended as a detailed architectural study, but to establish as closely as possible when cults were introduced on the Acropolis and when building activity might have influenced the storage and disposal of dedications. The survival of the dedications themselves has been affected by the length of the sanctuaries' use. Different classes of objects have better chances of survival than others, some classes will have left no record in corpore. In Chapter III I introduce all sources: the objects (pottery, bronzes, sculpture, terracotta, etc.), the epigraphic and the literary evidence, and assess their value and completeness. The chapter is also an archaeological and iconographical study of the dedications. The objects are classified by type, and changes in decoration and shape of chosen dedications are explored. Flow charts show numerical changes in classes and types of objects during the centuries. In some cases it is also possible to make more conclusive statements about the dedicators. Inscribed names give the opportunity to recognize persons we know from history. I enquire into the identities and status of some of the dedicators and their motive for dedication and try to show how these motives might have changed with time. In Chapter IV the evidence concerning the placing of the dedications on the Acropolis is collected. What kind of dedications were stored in temple treasuries and if they were in the open (as statues), where were they placed on the Acropolis? In the conclusion I try to point out how changes in society and religion are reflected in the dedications.

Pr. - Lyceum zu Dillingen. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1988. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 337-[345]).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, February 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1911. / "Reprinted from the University of Texas bulletin, Austin, 1913. Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-152) and indexes. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The expected role for women in 5th century Athens as presented in evidence from myths, rituals, medicine and religion was socially and biologically conceived of in strict terms, but it was also perceived as conflicted. This conflict will be explored by investigating women in real life and women in myth and ritual. The ideal rites of passage women were intended to pass through in their lives as exemplified in medical texts required women to shed their blood at appropriate times from menarche to marriage to motherhood. These transitions are socially signified by certain rituals designed to highlight the change in the individuals' status. This medical conception of the female body and its functions was affected by social expectations of the proper female role in society: to be a wife and mother. Myths presented extraordinary women as failing to bleed in the standard socially expected transitions from parthenos to gyne. The discrepancy between the presentation of women in social and medical thought and the presentation of women in myth indicates the ambiguities and difficulties that surround the development of girls into complete women often explored in rituals. These two provinces, women in everyday life and women in myth and ritual, overlap, relate and interpenetrate in the presentation of the goddess Artemis. Artemis operates in a place where myth and real life function together in the form of rituals surrounding women bleeding in these rites of passage. The methodology of social anthropology adopted in this study allows the interpretation of myth in action in women's lives and investigates where social ideals, mythology and the goddess Artemis overlap to inform the lives of women. Rather than merely describe what occurred in myth and ritual or what a woman's life was meant to be, this model will illustrate how such elements combined to affect a woman's life and the functioning of the society in which she lived. The picture which is created of the position of women when this evidence is considered in conjunction with the precepts of social anthropology illustrates part of a discourse about the position women and reveals how the social structure of their place in society was produced and reproduced.

By the time Dionysius of Halicarnassus came to compose the brief biographies that introduce his essays on the ancient Athenian orators common histories of a variety of literary figures had already been assembled by earlier compilers of bioi into a collection known as the koine historia. This anonymous collection of biographies was the source that rhetoricians and other writers turned to for a standard account of an orator's life. This dissertation sets out to examine the development of the biographical tradition behind the common history, as it came to be preserved in a collection of bioi known as Ps.-Plutarch. In ancient times a canon of the ten best Attic orators was recognized. In Plutarch's collection of essays, the Moralia, is preserved a set of brief biographies of the orators of the canon, but this collection is no longer considered a genuine work of Plutarch. The introduction provides an extensive review of past scholarship on the problems of the nature and authorship of this collection, generally known as Ps.-Plutarch. It shows that the biographies are composites that were expanded through centuries of additions from a primitive core. The basic biography, which is still discernible and was originally composed by a grammarian, perhaps Caecilius of Caleacte (30 B.C.), was modeled on the biographies of the koine historia. The biographies found in this anonymous collection are themselves the product of Alexandrian scholarship. Chapter 1 examines the common history as the source of the biographies of Dionysius and Ps.-Plutarch. A comparison of their lives of Isocrates shows that the author of Ps.-Plutarch not only used the same source as Dionysius but also made a number of substantial additions, particularly of an anecdotal kind, to his account. These additions were taken from two places: from the same common history and f r om the biographer Hermippus. But the same comparison reveals that this biographer was an important source not only of the anecdotes on Isocrates, but also of much of the common history as it was preserved by Dionysius and Ps-Plutarch. Hermippus proved an important source for the compilers of the common history, since he himself gathered together and transmitted existing traditions on the orators. Chapters 2 and 3 examine and evaluate the historicity of the earlier contributions of Demetrius of Phalerum and Idomeneus of Lampsacus. The former treated Demosthenes in a treatise on rhetoric; the latter the orators Demosthenes, Aeschines and Hypereides in his polemic on the Athenian demagogues. The evidence indicates that Hermippus picked up, incorporated into his own biographies and transmitted into the later tradition their treatments of these orators. The final chapter (4) is devoted to Hermippus himself. He was a highly respected biographer and scholar in antiquity and his biographies were characterized by their rich mixture of anecdote and erudition. In particular attention was paid to his collection of biographies On the Isocrateans, which was schematically arranged into a diadoché as a construct of the history of 4th century Attic prose. From there attempts were made to reconstruct the scheme and content of his biographies of Demosthenes, Hypereides and Isocrates. From this study it became apparent that the type of biography written by Hermippus was essentially antiquarian in approach. Much of the research was into literary sources. That is to say much of the biographical information was inferred from texts, whether of the orator under consideration or of contemporary comic poets, or even from other antiquarian works, such Demetrius' work on rhetoric. In the end this type of biography was itself a product of same antiquarian interests that characterized much of the scholarship of the Alexandrian period. / Arts, Faculty of / Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of / Graduate

There is no exact parallel for the ancient office of the proxeny: the closest analogy is found in the modern consulate. Proxenoi were citizens of one state appointed by a second state to serve its interests in their home-state; in return for these services they received various honours and privileges. These were enumerated in the decrees appointing the proxenoi, or in subsequent decrees passed after a period of service. At Athens it appears that the inscription of such decrees, usually at public expense, upon marble stelai that were then set up on the Akropolis, was itself a privilege not granted to every proxenos. There is some evidence that, in the fifth century at least, these stelai were erected near the Erechtheion. One hundred and fourteen fragments have survived from the fifth century; this study contains critical editions of the sixty-nine proxeny-decrees that they comprise, including the first publication of four fragments, together with a survey of the privileges therein enumerated. Since it is seldom possible to date these documents upon other criteria, an analysis of the changes that occurred in Attic letter-shapes during the fifth century forms a major part of the study. Also included are photographs of all but five of the fragments studied, many of which have never before been photographed. / Arts, Faculty of / Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of / Graduate