This dissertation concerns the sculptural representation of divinity in Hellenistic Central Italy, ca. 200 BCE-100 BCE. In so doing, it tackles the question of the role images played in Roman religion as well as the question of the relationship between Aegean Greek and Central Italian sculpture. Recent publications related to Roman divine images have respectively: a) suggested that the form of images was incidental to their functioning as sacred sculpture; b) proposed that images were not a necessary part of Roman religion; and c) considered the divine images themselves primarily significant as ideological statements on the part of their patrons. Furthermore, most scholarly treatments of sculpted images in Hellenistic Central Italy have to-date siloed architectural from freestanding sculpture, impoverishing the study of both categories of material. Most of these sculptures play little to no role in anglophone histories of ancient art. This project analyses the divine images of Hellenistic Central Italy through the lenses of scale, materiality, and body language. These analytical frames are used to show how the representation of the gods in freestanding and architectural sculpture was meaningfully differentiated from the appearance of sculpted images of mortal people. These differences, as well as the similarities, are highlighted in order to suggest patterns of response, and thereby to propose ways in which the category of ‘the divine’ was constructed in image form. The three lenses of scale, materiality, and body language likewise allow the significant differences, as well as the frequent points of similarity, between ‘Roman’ representations of the gods and the divine images of the Greek world to be elucidated. Chapter 1 presents the evidence from certain key sanctuaries, offering new reconstructions of fragmentary evidence and showing the interrelation between divine images of different kinds in these spaces. Chapter 2 compares divine images with sculpted representations of people through the lens of scale, showing that sculpted images of the gods were crafted at an intentionally ‘inhuman’ scale in Hellenistic Central Italy. Chapter 3 tackles the materiality of divine images, charting the new materials used to embody the gods in the second century BCE and, at the same time, stressing the ways that the use of materials differentiated divine from mortal images. A major theme, across media, is the production of composite, multi-material sculptures of the gods. Chapter 4 assesses the body language of divine images, showing the modifications made to existing sculptural types to make the bodies of the gods more dynamic and interactive to their viewers. The three key elements of divine body language exhibited by the sculpted representations of the gods are grandeur, ease, and engagement with a viewer. The results of this study demonstrate that images of the gods in Italy were constructed so as to differ significantly from the images of mortals. Through these means, images are shown to have embodied a ‘visual theology’, allowing conclusions to be drawn by their viewers about the nature and workings of the divine. In this way, images played an essential role in Roman religion, despite their non-appearance in ritual prescriptions. Further, Roman divine images are revealed to have been significantly different from the images of the gods in the Greek world. This project re-orients the study of the Central Italian images of the gods, focusing on the viewers of sculpture as well as the patrons. The conclusions reached reveal the central role of images in Roman religion in the Hellenistic Period and the value of visual evidence for anthropological approaches to the Roman world. These results regarding divine images provide as yet under-exploited evidence for the relationship between Greek and Roman sculpture.

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In this dissertation I have offered studies on selected aspects of the third book of the Georgics, the second 'published' work of Vergil. The Georgics is a didactic poem in four books in which Vergil presents a discussion of various aspects of farming, advice on the maintenance of the land, the planting of crops with special attention to the cultivation of the vine and the olives and the keeping of livestock and bees. At various points in his presentation, Vergil suspends his didactic approach to offer comment on contemporary problems, the political corruption and chaos evident throughout all of Italy. These editorial intrusions by the concerned poet have prompted modern critics to transcend the limited critical approach which views the Georgics as nothing more than an agricultural manual in verse, and to appreciate the broader philosophic design of the poem. Within the technical framework of his poem Vergil is offering a vision of civilization with important moral and political implications for his age. In spite of this enlightened critical approach to the poem as a whole, the third book of the Georgics has suffered from scholarly neglect. Structurally its position in the poem is crucial: Vergil abandons the preoccupations with the vegetable world and inanimate Nature which characterize books I and II, and turns to animate representatives of Nature, cattle, horses, sheep, and goats, whose lives are marked by passionate involvement and turmoil. The principal themes of book III are love and death, and although Vergil never directly abandons his preoccupation with animals, I believe that he does intend his discussion to have important moral and political implications for men as well. In my study of the third Georgic I have emphasized a vital political direction for Georgic III: Vergil uses his agricultural material as metaphor and the principal representatives of the domestic agrarian world as symbols in his vision of concern for the fate of Rome and all of Italy. I have begun my study with a consideration of the changing agricultural patterns in the Italian peninsula during the last two centuries of the Republic in order to expose the glaring discrepancy between patterns of land utilization in peninsular Italy in the late Republic and the simple, subsistence farming which Vergil discusses in the Georgics. Vergil was aware of the agricultural conditions of his age and obviously did not intend his treatise to be interpreted literally as a technical manaal. A close comparison of his technical material with the agricultural discussion provided by Varro in the De Re Rustica, Vergil's principal source for his agricultural precepts, offers strong evidence of a basic disparity between the sophisticated artistic presentation of the third Georgie and the uninspiring prosaic aspects of his subject matter, and additional proof that Vergil intends a broader design for the third Georgie, a philosophic statement about man and the world. This broad direction is confinned by a consideration of the echoes of Lucretius' philosophic poem, the De Rerum Natura, which we find in Georgie III. Lucretius introduced a discussion of sex and plague into his own poem and Vergil profitsfran the example of his predecessor. But he never resorts to slavish imitation, but leaves behind Lucretius' preoccupation with abstract philosophical principles to offer his own vision of hope in a living ruler, Octavian. The ultimate message of Georgie III is intrinsically connected with the final book of the series. With his discussion of apiculture Vergil offers a vision of order, control, and political comnunity which cancels his earlier concerns with disorder and divisive passion. In the epyllion which concludes the poem, Vergil turns directly to the world of men, Aristaeus, the farmer, and Orpheus, the poet. With the miraculous tale of bougonia, the resurrection of a swarm of healthy new bees from the rotting corpse of a steer, Vergil offers a dramatic representation of regeneration which dispels the pessimistic obsession with death with which book III concludes, and signals optimistic hope for the political future of Rome. The tragic story of Orpheus, on the other hand, confirms Vergil's earlier judgment on passion and its destructive hold on the lives of men. At the same time, with the figure of Orpheus, Vergil considers the role of the poet in society and raises an issue which is not resolved concerning the possibilities for creative expression in the new regime. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this dissertation, I trace the different lives and afterlives of Octavia Minor, Augustus’ sister. I offer a comprehensive study of the ancient literary representations of Octavia; through the course of four chapters and an epilogue, I demonstrate how she occupies a defining space in the public imagination of the early principate. The purpose of this dissertation is to make the literary lives and afterlives of Octavia more visible and to examine how such representations may relate not only to Octavia’s time but also to the times of the sources, from antiquity to the Renaissance. In Chapter 1, I start by pointing out how late Republican customs of marriage and female alliances influence Octavia’s life and its representations and monitor the influence that Octavian had on his sister, and vice versa. Here as throughout the dissertation, I examine how different authors represent Octavia, her widowhood, and her betrothal at the Treaty of Brundisium. In Chapter 2, I trace Octavia’s travels through Greece and the Hellenistic influences in representations of her. This chapter concludes with how she is presented in treatments of the Treaty of Tarentum, where she grows into her role either as mediator or political pawn, according to which sources are followed. Chapter 3 begins with the honours of 35 that both Octavia and Livia receive. Thereafter, I argue for Plutarch’s Octavia as the subject of a mini-parallel life as Cleopatra’s foil. After her divorce with Antony, the literary Octavia seems to negotiate the boundaries between the public and private sphere habitually: we will trace this phenomenon in depictions of Augustus’ victorious return, Octavia’s mourning of Marcellus, and, ultimately, in her own state funeral. In Chapter 4, I examine the different ways in which Octavia’s continuing influence is felt and expressed through the different areas in her life, such as lineage, education, and culture, in what I call “the Octavia Factor.” The epilogue recognizes the historical Octavia as a point of intertextual reference in the pseudo-Senecan Octavia and explores the possibilities of future work on renaissance reception of Octavia. It is in this way that I shed new light on the development of “the Octavia narrative” in the literary sources.

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The dissertation re-examines a fragmentary and understudied group of nearly 150 portrait statues representing Hellenistic kings. The surviving portrait statuary comprises a small fraction of those originally produced for kings in marble, bronze, gilded bronze, and other materials during the Hellenistic period. The corpus of extant statuary presents many interpretive challenges, from fragmentary conditions to often uncertain provenance, and from unrecognizable physiognomies of rulers to unstandardized royal iconographies. Most previous scholarship was concerned with identifying kings in their portraits, unfortunately without much success. As a result, the portraits have received relatively little attention over the past few decades, despite robust and relevant scholarly advances related to Greek portraiture and Hellenistic kingship. While most studies have focused on identifying faces and interpreting portraits in thecontext of specific reigns, the present study collates the art historical, archaeological, and textual evidence for royal portraits’ forms, iconographies, and original placements to gain a fuller understanding of the corpus. Analysis of surviving royal statue bases, literary accounts, honorific decrees detailing royal portrait commissions, and royal portraits in other media (e.g., coins, seals, bronze figurines, mosaics, etc.) reveals that royal portrait statues were often more diverse, conspicuous, theatrical, and divinizing than portrait statues representing non-royal individuals. The study demonstrates the resonances between these portrait features and the marvelous bodily adornments, choreographed movements, and calculated performances of kings' real bodies in royal rituals and spectacles, ultimately revealing that like the staged appearances of kings, Hellenistic royal portrait statues were conceived as conspicuous material syntheses of royal actors and royal roles.