This thesis offers an interdisciplinary approach to the period between c. AD 400 and 650 in the Lincoln region, considering in depth not only the archaeological evidence, but also the historical, literary and linguistic. It is argued that by using all of this material together, significant advances can be made in our understanding of what occurred in these centuries, most especially with regard to Anglian-British interaction in this period. It is contended that this evidence, when taken together, requires that a British polity named *Lindēs was based at Lincoln into the sixth century, and that the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindsey (Old English Lindissi < Late British *Lindēs-) had an intimate connection to this British political unit. In addition to investigating the evidence for Anglian-British interaction in this region and the potential legacies of British *Lindēs, this thesis also provides a detailed analysis of the nature of the Anglo-Saxon population-groups that were present in the Lincoln region from the mid-fifth century onwards, including those of *Lindēs-Lindissi and also more southerly groups, such as the Spalde/Spaldingas. The picture which emerges is arguably not simply of importance from the perspective of the history of the Lincoln region but also nationally, helping to answer key questions regarding the origins of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the nature and extent of Anglian-British interaction in the core areas of Anglo-Saxon immigration, and the conquest and settlement of Northumbria.

The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa is the primary Armenian-language historical source for the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Matthew was a monk who lived in the ethnically mixed city of Edessa; within his Chronicle, he describes the apogee of independent Armenia, its fall to piecemeal Byzantine annexation, the subsequent loss of Byzantium's eastern territory to the newcomer Saljuq Turks, and the sectarian tension that accompanied the First Crusade. This thesis sets out the methodology adopted for the construction of a critical edition of the text, addresses the approach that Matthew took to the composition of the Chronicle, and gives the edited text of the prophecies attributed to Yovhannēs Kozeṙn and the author's prologues to Books Two and Three of the Chronicle. Chapters 2 and 3 comprise a review of the scholarship to date on the Chronicle, and a discussion of the approach taken to a critical edition of the text. The Chronicle survives in a large number of relatively recently copied manuscripts; it was therefore necessary to devise an approach to text collation and editing that takes full advantage of recent advances in computational methods of philology. I have developed a set of software tools to assist in the task of editing the Chronicle; these tools are useful for the creation of text editions in any language that can be represented through the TEI XML standard. Chapters 4–8 give an examination of the overall framework of Matthew’s Chronicle, and of his interpretation of recent history within that framework. Following a long tradition of the use of prophecy to explain Armenian history, Matthew uses two prophecies attributed to the eleventh-century clerical scholar Yovhannēs Kozeṙn, themselves extended in the twelfth century under the influence of the Apocalypse attributed to Methodius, to frame his argument that both the Byzantine emperors and the Armenian kings had abandoned their responsibility toward the Armenian people. His attitude toward recent history, and particularly toward the Latins of Outremer, may be used to demonstrate that he wrote the Chronicle no later than 1137.

The influence of the Roman Republic and Empire is visible everywhere in the contemporary United States government. Some even propose a “democratic legacy” that the United States has inherited from the Roman Republic, a legacy that dooms modern America to a similar “decline and fall.” These arguments reached their apex in journalism surrounding the 2016 presidential election. A comparison between American Presidents and Roman Emperors proves that these assertions are false, employing case studies in each society’s democracy, interactions with deliberative bodies, public image management, and demagoguery. The distinctness of Roman and American social and political culture in each of these areas suggests a fundamental incongruity between the political figures of the two cultures. Even apparent commonalities can be misleading, as there are significant structural or cultural discrepancies that prevent scholars from drawing conclusions about Presidents using the Roman Imperial example. The argument of this thesis is therefore historiographical in nature: The findings this thesis contains suggest that modern scholars should not read history, specifically Roman history, to predict or justify present political circumstances. The comparisons made between Emperors and Presidents instead serve to prove the distinctness of contemporary American political culture as well as ancient Roman political culture. Acknowledgement of the uniqueness of both of these societies allows scholars to better understand both Presidents and Emperors within their own context. This separation will also lead to more directed, better informed study in the field of Roman history and in the field of modern American governmental policy.

My thesis examines the function and development of the cult of saints in Coptic Egypt. For this purpose I focus primarily on the material provided by the texts forming the Coptic hagiographical tradition of the early Christian martyr Philotheus of Antioch, and more specifically - the Martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch (Pierpont Morgan M583). This Martyrdom is a reflection of a once flourishing cult which is attested in Egypt by rich textual and material evidence. This text enjoyed great popularity not only in Egypt, but also in other countries of the Christian East, since his dossier includes texts in Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic. This thesis examines the literary and historical background of the Martyrdom of Philotheus and similar hagiographical texts. It also explores the goals and concerns of the authors and editors of Coptic martyr passions and their intended audience. I am arguing that these texts were produced in order to perform multiple functions: to justify and promote the cult of a particular saint, as an educational tool, and as an important structural element of liturgical celebrations in honour of the saint. Another aim of this work is to stress the entertainment value of such texts. I explore the sources used by Coptic hagiographers for creating such entertaining stories, as well as the methods they used to re-work certain theological concepts and make them more accessible to the audience. The thesis begins with description of the manuscript tradition of Philotheus and a brief outline and comparison of its main versions. The second chapter discusses the place of the Martyrdom of Philotheus in Coptic hagiography and its connection to the so-called cycles. The next two chapters explore the motifs and topoi characteristic of Coptic martyr passions, especially the legend of Diocletian the Persecutor and the image of Antioch as the Holy City in Coptic hagiography, as these two motifs appear in one way or another in the majority of the martyr passions. Chapter 5 is dedicated to one of the focal points in the Martyrdom - the miracle of resurrection and the tour of hell – and its literary and theological background. Chapter 6 discusses representations of magic and paganism in Coptic hagiography and some of the concerns of Coptic hagiographers. In the last chapter I explore the geography of the cult, its iconographic and hymnographic dimensions and the transformation of the perception of the saint; the second part of this chapter discusses the questions of performance, authorship and audience.

The Roman festival of the Lupercalia is one of the most discussed issues in the field of pre-Christian Roman religion. Hardly a year goes by without an article on the subject appearing in a major Classics journal. But the festival presents a range of issues that individual articles cannot address. This thesis is an attempt to present a modern analysis of the phenomenon of the Lupercalia as a whole, including literary, archaeological and historical evidence on the subject. The first section presents the ancient sources on the Lupercalia, and is divided into five chapters, each analysing a particular aspect of the festival: fertility, purification, the importance of the wolf and the foundation myth, the mythology of Arcadian origins, and Caesar's involvement with the Lupercalia of 44 BC. The second section places the Lupercalia in a wider context, discussing the festival's topography and the course of the running Luperci, its relationship to other lustration rituals, and its position in the Roman calendar, ending with an appraisal of the changes it underwent in late Antiquity. The third section employs methods from linguistics, anthropology and comparative religion to show that the Lupercalia involved a ritual of initiation, which was also reflected in the Roman foundation myth. The central chapter of this section discusses the methodology used in comparative Indo-European mythology, and offers a case study that parallels the god of the festival (Faunus) with Rudra of Vedic Hinduism. The last chapter considers other parallels with Indian religion, especially the relationship between flamen and brahmin. The thesis challenges a number of established theories on the subject and offers new evidence to show that the festival has Indo-European origins, but also that it played an important role throughout Roman history.

La tesi intende fornire un contributo agli studi sulle modalità di lettura e di analisi dei testi messe in atto dagli autori cristiani del secondo secolo, in costante confronto con le stesse pratiche applicate dai contemporanei rappresentanti delle élites intellettuali non cristiane. La testualità riveste un ruolo centrale nel processo di formazione di un’identità cristiana e nella costruzione di un discorso che ne sia espressione e legittimazione. Ci si propone, dunque, di approfondire se e quanto la definizione di una normatività testuale, specificamente cristiana, sia debitrice a un confronto che si svolge a livello della lettura come base per l’interpretazione di un testo. I passi selezionati seguono la scansione dei diversi momenti di analisi testuale propri della τέχνη γραμματική: i dibattiti in merito alle variae lectiones, agli errori grafici e alle interpolazioni volontarie dei copisti, l’uso della tropologia, le riflessioni sulla dispositio e sull’ordo verborum, lo studio degli etimi, le valutazioni morfologiche e sintattiche. Questo metodo favorisce un tentativo di campionatura dei testi volto a far emergere l’utilizzo delle modalità di lettura tradizionali nelle opere degli autori cristiani del secondo secolo. / This thesis aims at contributing to the studies on reading practices of text analysis applied in the second century by Christian authors, in comparison with the same tools used by contemporary non-Christian intellectuals. Textuality had a key role in the process of formation of Christian identity and construction of the discourse through which Christianism was expressed and legitimized. It is therefore important to examine how textual debates influenced the constitution of a normative canon of Scriptures. The selected passages are gathered according to the different steps of text analysis in ancient grammar: discussions on variae lectiones, graphic errors and voluntary interpolations made by copyists, the use of tropology, reflections on dispositio and ordo verborum, studies in etymology, morphological and syntactic analysis. This method fosters an attempt to textual sampling in order to identify the use of traditional reading practices in the works of second-century Christian authors.

Les Prénotions de Cos sont l’un des traités du Corpus hippocratique. L’ouvrage, anonyme, qu’on peut dater des environs du dernier tiers du IVe siècle av. J.-C., se présente comme la réunion de 640 propositions, le plus souvent de style aphoristique, reprises pour plus de la moitié à des traités hippocratiques comme les Aphorismes, le Pronostic, le Prorrhétique I, les Epidémies, le groupe des Maladies I-II-III, ou encore Plaies de la tête. Le contenu de la compilation est exclusivement orienté vers le pronostic médical. Le traité n’a connu qu’une postérité limitée dans l’Antiquité, et n’a été transmis ni en syriaque, ni en arabe ; aucune traduction latine n’est connue avant celle de Calvus, en 1525, qui inaugure le retour des érudits vers les manuscrits transmettant le texte. L’introduction donne une présentation de l’ouvrage (titre, datation, lectorat supposé, rapports avec les autres œuvres du Corpus hippocratique, structure et procédés de composition, théories médicales exposées, style, histoire du traité, traditions directe et indirecte, éditions, dialecte). L’étude s’attache à mettre en évidence la fonction didactique du traité, fonction qui explique tant l’organisation générale que certaines spécificités formelles du texte. L’édition opère un retour systématique vers le manuscrit le plus ancien et le plus conservateur, le Parisinus graecus 2253 (A), et s’appuie également sur la tradition indirecte (traités hippocratiques qui constituent les sources du traité, et commentaires de Galien principalement). Le texte critique, présenté avec les Testimonia, est accompagné d’une traduction, d’un commentaire philologique, historique et médical, et d’annexes. / The Coan Prognoses are one of the treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus. The work is anonymous and can be dated from about the last third of the IVth century b.C. It is presented in the form of a collection of 640 propositions, most often written in a aphoristic style, that are for more than half of them taken from Hippocratic treatises like Aphorisms, Pronostic, Prorrhetic I, Epidemics, Diseases I-II-III, or On head wounds. The content of the compilation is exclusively devoted to the medical prognosis. The treatise had only a very limited tradition in the Antiquity, and was translated neither in Syriac nor in Arabic. Any latin translation is known before the Calvus translation (1525), which represents the starting point of the scholars return to the manuscripts which pass down the text. The introduction presents the work (title, datation, readership, relationships with the others Hippocratic treatises, structure and devices of composition, medical theories, style, history of the treatise, direct and indirect traditions, editions, dialect). The edition itself is mainly based on the more ancient and conservative manuscript, the Parisinus graecus 2253 (A), and also on the indirect tradition (Hippocratic treatises which represent the sources of the work, and Galenic commentaries). The Greek text, presented with the Testimonia, is accompanied by a French translation, by a philological, historical and medical commentary, and by appendix.

This thesis examines the changing form and function of non-funerary cult buildings in early Latial and Etruscan settlements in order to better describe and understand the advent of monumental temples in the archaeological record. It draws on a significant quantity of material excavated in the past forty years and developments in relevant theoretical frameworks to reconstruct the changing appearance of cult buildings from huts to shrines and temples (Chapters 2 to 4), and to place monumental examples within wider religious, topographical, and functional contexts (Chapters 5 to 7). This broader perspective allows a more accurate assessment of the extent to which monumental temples represent continuity and discontinuity with earlier religious architecture, and furthermore clarifies the respective roles of Latium and Etruria in the transformation of cult buildings into distinctive, prominent parts of the built environment. Although it is possible to find many different accounts of religious monumentalisation in existing scholarship, this thesis holds that traditional narratives no longer accurately reflect the archaeological evidence. It sets out a sequence of developments in which early religious architecture was a dynamic, rather than conservative, phenomenon. It demonstrates that temples were not the inevitable product of a natural progression from open-air votive deposition to monumentality, or simply an imported concept, but rather a deliberate response to the opportunities offered by an increasingly mobile Mediterranean population. It also contends that Latium played a more important role in formulating the characteristic components and functions of central Italic temples than previously thought. This thesis consequently offers a new account of early religious architecture in western central Italy as well as an alternative interpretation of its monumentalisation.

Between the fourth and the seventh centuries CE, Christian patrons erected thousands of churches, chapels, and monasteries in cities and villages across the Mediterranean, decorating the apses, walls and floors of many of these structures with figural and geometric mosaics. These late antique Christian mosaics have been studied for their iconography, their Graeco-Roman components, and as evidence for the religious beliefs of newly-Christian patrons. However, art historians largely have ignored the ways that texts, inscribed within the visual field and composed of the same mosaic material, functioned as images in Christian spaces. For the first time, this thesis assembles the foundations of a comprehensive catalogue of early Christian mosaic inscriptions, places them back into the physical spaces in which they were meant to be read, and analyzes how these texts functioned both verbally and visually for the late antique reader/viewer, against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman traditions. I first examine the ekphrastic components of Christian inscriptions and look more closely at the different ways in which texts work with and against images and spaces, encouraging the viewer to react physically and mentally. Second, I study the language of light used by the inscriptions, and argue that this language linked text to the material of mosaic and enabled patrons to make complex statements about their cultural erudition and religious affiliation. Third, I investigate the functions and visual forms of short tituli which label scenes or name figures to simplify, authenticate or transform static images into narratives in motion. Finally, I turn to the frames of the inscriptions and contend that different forms conveyed powerful visual arguments. By writing these texts back into their mosaics, this thesis argues that texts and images were inseparable in the period, and that text written into images performed and played in more complex ways than has been previously thought.

This thesis investigates the first poetry written in Castilian by intellectuals, the 'mester de clerecía', ‘craft of clerics’. Exploring the unique circumstances of Iberia in the Middle Ages as a hub for the intellectual vanguard and a holy territory for encounters with saints, pilgrimage and Reconquest, I examine the canonical texts of an alleged thirteenth-century poetic school as the Castilian bedrock of a wider Iberian and European literary movement. Notably including analysis of the fourteenth-century "Libro de buen amor", a canonical work in its own right thought to parody the earlier poems, I also reassess the significance of the verse form 'cuaderna vía' for the 'mester de clerecía', in which the thirteenth-century poems are exclusively written. Over an introduction and four chapters, I combine close reading of the "Libro de Alexandre" (Chapter 1), Berceo’s Vidas of Millán, Domingo and Oria (Chapter 2), the "Libro de Apolonio" and "Poema de Fernán González" (Chapter 3), and the "Libro de buen amor" (Chapter 4), with research into intellectual, pedagogical, and religious contexts. Notably, I have found the poems analyzed to be especially concerned with the landscape of the reading mind. The result is an expanded view of the 'mester de clerecía' as theological and philosophical poems that offer ways of understanding and approaching the life of the mind as well as that of the body that are thought-provoking and informative to this day. Concluding that the thirteenth-century, canonical poems are the witnesses of a 'textual community' of authors rather than a poetic school, I advocate an inclusive definition of the 'mester de clerecía'. The 'mester de clerecía' are of extremely rich intellectual scope and are of potential interest to scholars of all European literatures, and literary, intellectual, and social history, as well as theology and philosophy.