The Iliad in certain key passages construes the Olympian gods as an internal epic audience offering and exploring multiple configurations of audience response to the poem. Chapter 1 explores the special features of the divine audience in general terms and considers previous scholarship. Chapter 2 reads Zeus' provocation of Hera and Athena in Book 4 as a "metaperformative" provocation of the poet's audience. Chapters 3 argues that the audience's mental "viewing" experience is construed as attendance at a live spectacle where the gods also attend, a spectacle for which the duel in Book 3 provides a paradigm. Chapter 4 interprets the duel in Book 7 as a reevaluation of that paradigm, motivated intratextually by the internal audience of Apollo and Athena. Chapter 5 shows that the climactic duel in Book 22, and especially the passage describing Hector and Achilles circling Troy as the gods watch and discuss, problematizes the ethical stance of the extratextual audience. Chapter 6 argues that in the Iliad as a whole the poet uses "the gods" to model a shift in audience sympathy from pro-Achaean bias to pity for the Trojans.

This dissertation analyzes Socratic ethics in three Platonic dialogues: the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and the Republic. The purpose is twofold: 1) to question the standard view that what is the defining characteristic of Socratic ethics in the Protagoras and the Gorgias is its intellectualism and that the Republic represents a correction to, or deviation from, such intellectualism, and 2) to offer an alternative account of Socratic ethics in these dialogues. The alternative account this dissertation proposes is that what makes Socrates a compelling ethical figure is his unique understanding of what constitutes an agent's self-interest. Moreover, the contention will be that the uniqueness of Socrates' ethical views comes into focus when we consider them vis-à-vis the views and concerns of his interlocutors, particularly the sophists.

This dissertation analyzes the three main protagonists of Lucan's Bellum Civile through their attempts to utilize, resist, or match a pattern of action which I call the "formula." Most evident in Caesar, the formula is a cycle of alternating states of energy that allows him to gain a decisive edge over his opponents by granting him the ability of perpetual regeneration. However, a similar dynamic is also found in rivers, which thus prove to be formidable adversaries of Caesar in their own right. Although neither Pompey nor Cato is able to draw on the Caesarian formula successfully, Lucan eventually associates them with the river-derived variant, thus granting them a measure of resistance (if only in the non-physical realm). By tracing the development of the formula throughout the epic, the dissertation provides a deeper understanding of the importance of natural forces in Lucan's poem as well as the presence of an underlying drive that unites its fractured world.

Despite the long-recognized connection between poverty and charity, and the scholarly attention paid to the culture of charity, there have been very few studies that have yielded the kind of quantitative results that would enable scholars of antiquity to assess the sources and impact of church wealth gained from non-elites. I ask three questions: (1) Who was asked to give? (2) Who could afford to give? (3) Who did, in fact, give? Three bodies of evidence offer answers: (1) The the patristic corpus suggests targets of solicitation as well as a rhetorical strategy for encouraging donation, (2) household economic models give a sense of how potential donors could generate disposable in- come through ascetic practice, and (3) a selection of small donations, specifically Christian small silvers, can be valued in a way that permits conjecture regarding the social profile of donors in late antiquity. Pursuing charity in this way offers the opportunity to get past ecclesiastical self- representation and gaps in evidence by looking at the underlying structures of the phenomenon. This in turn promises a clearer idea of the relationship between charity and philanthropy, placing church institutions back in their social context.

Multiple natural philosophers in antiquity proposed that nature possessed considerable technical skill. Yet, the specific conceptual implications of this assertion were quite different in fourth century BCE Athens--with its pots, bronze tools and cisterns--than in second century CE Rome--where large-scale aqueducts, elaborate water machines and extensive glassworks were commonplace. This dissertation assesses the impact that these different technological environments had on philosophical and scientific theories. In short, it argues that contemporary technologies shaped ancient philosophers' physical assumptions by providing cognitive tools with which to understand natural phenomena. As a result, as technologies evolved--even in relatively modest ways--so too did conceptual models of the natural world. To explore these assertions, this dissertation focuses on two main fields of explanation, the vascular system and vision, and includes investigations of such technologies as pipes, pumps, mirrors, wax tablets, diagrams and experimental apparatuses. It demonstrates the ways in which scientific theorists use the specific material technologies around them as heuristics to conceptualize physical processes.

In Athens in the early 5th century BCE, a new genre of funerary vase, the white-ground lêkythos, appeared and quickly grew to be the most popular grave gift for nearly a century. These particular vases, along with their relatively delicate style of painting, ushered in a new funerary scene par excellence, which highlighted the sorrow of the living and the merits of the deceased by focusing on personal moments of grief in the presence of a grave. Earlier Attic funerary imagery tended to focus on crowded prothesis scenes where mourners announced their grief and honored the dead through exaggerated, violent and frenzied gestures. The scenes on white-ground lêkythoi accomplished the same ends through new means, namely by focusing on individual mourners and the emotional ways that mourners privately nourished the deceased and their memory. Such scenes combine ritual activity (i.e. dedicating gifts, decorating the grave, pouring libations) with emotional expressions of sadness, which make them more vivid and relatable. The nuances in the characteristics of the mourners indicate a new interest in adding an individual touch to the expression, which might “speak” to a particular moment or variety of sadness that might relate to a potential consumer. To facilitate a meaningful discussion of the range of ways that white-ground painters articulated grief and lament in their vases, the dissertation is divided into six chapters, each of which concentrates on a particular type of mourner: women, men, elderly men, infants, vocal visitors and the deceased. Discussing the visual iconography across these different groups demonstrates that the shared and individual, public and private, intentional and candid aspects of grief and mourning can be shown simultaneously and that it was of interest to the Athenians to look at images that incorporated all of these aspects.

The double-pipe reed woodwind known as the aulos was the most pervasive instrument in ancient Greek life. Despite recent attention to affect and the senses and advancements in ancient musicology, there remains no comprehensive study of this cultural phenomenon. Bringing the burgeoning field of sound studies to bear on the diverse range of evidence, this dissertation offers the first cultural history of aulos performance, focusing on a crucial period of its activity spanning the sixth through fourth centuries BCE. I propose an interpretive model that works across textual and material sources to account for the ineffable, affective ways in which the instrument acts upon the embodied listener. When we consider the aulos as a sonic medium that works beyond the structural and semantic boundaries of music and language, we can identify how the instrument communicates across contexts through certain structures of feeling its sound. By exploring the world-building capacities of the instrument’s sound effects and harmonics, I chart the history of these embodied ways of knowing its sound. I argue that the aulos operates through a culturally conditioned interface with the body, exerting an agency that impacts social and civic identity, drives musical innovation, and poses a cultural threat to discursive ways of knowing and rational persuasion. The five chapters identify the interplay of tradition and innovation across the contexts of aulos performance, between musical and theatrical genres as well as civic practices involving corporate movement. Meanwhile, with the rise of prose, the emerging critical discourse on the aulos analyzes its effect on the body specifically and aims to expose how the listener is tricked into the “enchanting” soundworlds it constructs. This interdisciplinary media-based approach to ancient Greek performance thus presents a new register of meaning-making that articulates unexplored aspects of the artistic, literary, and philosophical works that preserve this culture.

The question as to where ethical philosophy ought to end and oratory begin was an abiding interest for the rhetorician-philosophers of Antiquity. This study considers the relationship between the two now distinct disciplines in the theory and practice of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the United States, through the lens of transformative education. A “classical,” primarily Roman model of rhetoric that centered the teaching of ethics predominated in American higher education until the late 19th century; as evidenced through both qualitative and quantitative data, when the classics fell it took the ethical model of rhetoric along with it. Discourse around rhetorical ethics has not ceased, however, and there is indication that interest might be on the rise. Relevant scholarship among compositionists gives a glimpse as to the direction of that still nascent discipline. Given their complex influence on later theory, the focus of this study remains on the treatment of ethics and rhetoric among ancient sources, namely Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. By examining both their theories and the complex socio-political circumstances in which they wrote them, we can develop a richer understanding of the role ethics play in the teaching of rhetoric, past, present, and future.

Despite a renewed interest in scholarship about archaic warfare, hoplites, Homeric society, and several other related areas, archery in Archaic Greece has managed to escape comprehensive study for half a century. Scholarship on the subject stands in urgent need of update and revision. Certain erroneous beliefs about archery have become canonical and are dangerous impediments to academic progress in those areas of study that require an accurate and nuanced understanding of archers or archery. I conclude that, contrary to popular opinion, there was no point in Greek history when the bow was not used. Rather, it was used in a variety of ways to support, supplement, and complement heavily armed infantrymen. Although archery could be effective, especially against horses and light-armed men, the bow was not as effective against heavily armed infantrymen for the simple reason that arrows would not often have been able to penetrate Greek armor. This factor did not, however, mean that the bow was impotent or "the feeble weapon of a worthless man." My study of wounds, their treatment, infection, and the potential use of arrow toxins adds a fruitful and previously unexplored perspective on the risks involved with facing an archer and some of the psychological considerations of doing so. In a form of warfare wherein armies were so heavily dependent upon morale and so easily compromised by fear, an arrow was a weapon of terror. Moreover, dying six days after a battle of tetanus did not accord with the hoplites' ideal of a `beautiful death' - one of the prospects that fortified a warrior as he girded himself for what was surely a horrifying ordeal. I also argue that the identity of archers changed over time. Early on, warriors might use a variety of weapons and the bow might have been used by just about anyone. Later, with the advent of the hoplite phalanx, archers became light-armed specialists. While convention holds that these archers were Scythian or Cretan mercenaries, I prove that there is no compelling reason to believe that this was so. The archers were Greek and likely derived from the lower classes of citizens. Moreover, despite its ideological demotion among the elite, the bow did not carry an actively negative association until the Persian Wars in the early 5th century B.C.E. In sum, the treatment of archery in the Archaic period is considerably more nuanced than many scholars have allowed.

This dissertation explores what images of ghosts in Roman art can reveal about the very limits of representation and the act of seeing itself. My approach differs from that of many previous studies on the supernatural, therefore, in that it ultimately has little to do with the question of whether or not the ancients were truly convinced that ghosts exist. While not discounting the importance of belief, I am interested rather in how modalities of belief (or unbelief) developed within a prescribed framework of possibilities--particularly with regard to the historical transformation of ideas about the nature of vision and representation--in which images played a crucial role. While much work has been done on aspects of death that touch upon the supernatural in discrete areas of research on folklore, magic, religion, or theater, for example, the ghost itself has never been the focus of a synthetic study in Roman art. This project is therefore intended to cut across these discussions to arrive at a more rounded picture of how the Romans went on living with the dead.