This dissertation examines Cicero’s contribution to the rise of astronomy and astrology in the literary and cultural milieu of the late Republic and early Empire. Chapter One, “Rome’s Star Poet,” examines how Cicero conceives of world building through words to connect Rome to the stars with the Latin language. Through a close study of the Aratea, I consider how Cicero’s pioneering of Latin astronomical language influenced other writers, especially his contemporaries Lucretius and Catullus. In Chapter Two, “The Stars and the Statesman,” I examine Cicero’s attitudes towards politics. By analyzing Scipio’s Dream and astronomy in De re publica, I show how Cicero uses cosmic models to yoke Rome to the stars. To understand the astral dimensions of Cicero’s philosophy, in Chapter Three, “Signs and Stars, Words and Worlds,” I provide a close reading of Cicero’s poetic quotations in context in the De natura deorum and De divinatione to show how Cicero puts the Aratean cosmos to the test in Academic fashion. Ultimately, I argue that Cicero profoundly shaped the Roman view of the stars and cemented the link between cosmos and empire.

Orientador: Carlos Alberto Sampaio Barbosa / Banca: José Luis Bendicho Beired / Banca: Carolina Amaral de Aguiar / Resumo: A Guerra Hispano-Americana (1898) aconteceu em decorrência da expansão imperialista dos Estados Unidos no momento em que sua industrialização crescia em ritmo acelerado. Eliminando os últimos resquícios da colonização espanhola no continente americano, Cuba e Filipinas foram os primeiros alvos de uma política agressiva dos nacionalistas estadunidenses para assegurar o slogan proposto pela Doutrina Monroe, "América para os Americanos". Nos principais centros urbanos dos Estados Unidos, a modernidade atingia a percepção dos indivíduos por meio da inovação tecnológica que dimensionava o tempo e o espaço, a velocidade da máquina mesclava o orgânico e o mecânico. Nas ruas, inúmeras propagandas visuais atordoavam os olhares, os jornais impressos traziam notícias sensacionalistas de interesses políticos e o comportamento dos cidadãos se padronizava através das revistas periódicas. Os vaudevilles, teatros de variedades, canalizavam essa sociedade caótica através da miscelânea de espetáculos e shows, o cinema se desenvolvia neste ambiente. Quando o conflito entre a Espanha e os Estados Unidos entrou em vigor, o cinema participou pela primeira vez de uma guerra, se misturando com todas as formas de comunicação do período e exercendo, de forma inédita, uma postura ativa na formação da opinião pública. O trabalho a seguir compreende como foi a participação dos filmes produzidos pela Edison Company e pela American Biograph e Mutoscope, diante desse enredo. Utilizando 68 filmes presentes... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The Spanish-American War (1898) happened as a result of the United States's imperialist expansion at the time its industrialization grew at a accelerated pace. Eliminating the last remnants of Spanish colonization in the American continent, Cuba and the Philippines were the first targets of an American nationalists's aggressive policy to ensure the slogan proposed by the Monroe doctrine "America for Americans". In the main United States's urban centers, modernity reached the individuals perception through technological innovation that dimensioned the time and the space, the machine's speed merged the organic and the mechanic. In the streets, countless visual advertisements stunned the looks, the printed newspapers brought sensationalist news of political interests and the citizens behaviour was standardized through periodic journals. The vaudevilles, variety theaters, channeled this chaotic society through the miscellaneous of performances and shows, the cinema was being developed in this environment. When the conflict between Spain and the United States came into effect, the cinema participated for the first time in a war, mingling with all forms of communication in the period and exerting, in an unprecedented way, an active posture in the public opinion formation. The following work compromises how was the participation of the films produced by the Edison Company and the American Biograph and Mutoscope, before this plot. Using 68 films present in the Spanish American War... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

This dissertation assesses the significance of luxury dining ware within Roman society by analyzing the economic and socio-cultural value of these objects. Specifically, I focus on silver and gold tableware from the Roman Republic through the third century CE. Precious metal vessels are particularly well-suited to a study of socio-economical value because they are somewhere between an art object and a commodity. Because these objects are made from silver and gold, they have material value, but they are also valuable for their functionality within the dining context, particularly for hosting guests at the convivium. Their utility is, therefore, expressly social in nature. In the Roman world, silver and gold vessels were also highly decorative and as such served as display pieces and objects of attention. Their ability to communicate was not limited only to their material or their functionality; they were neither mere utilitarian commodities, nor simple stores of wealth. Scholars often note that precious metal vessels were status symbols and stores of wealth, but they rarely analyze the way that these objects functioned within those roles. I seek to address this issue by considering the different forms of attention and the processes of valuation which were applied to luxury products in the Roman period. I will ask how social and cultural contexts affected the value of precious metal tableware and how the monetary value of these items determined the social contexts in which they were used. Additionally, this dissertation includes a study of the epigraphic habits on surviving silver and gold tableware in order to better understand how these vessels were used and exchanged. The inscriptions give a sense of the kinds of attention that was given to these objects and the way in which owners or makers might use them to communicate. I will approach these questions through an analysis of four primary types of value: economic, cultural, social, and aesthetic value. Value can be an economic measure achieved by quantifying the significance of an object and expressing this as price. But value can also be applied through cognitive processes via the attention paid to objects and the attitudes of people towards them. By looking at the significance of tableware as a luxury product, utility object, and display piece, I take account of the different ways in which these vessels could be used to communicate within social contexts. I will show that the value of precious metal tableware, in both an economic and cultural sense, provided its owners with opportunities to convey particular messages aimed at navigating the fraught networks of status that existed in Roman society. Gold and silver dining ware could be a store of wealth, but not one which produced financial returns like other assets. Rather, the benefits of storing wealth as luxury dining products were social in nature. The use of precious metal dining ware at communal dinners, or for display, could project an image of wealth, taste, and, most of all, generosity. The return on assets of silver and gold dining ware was social rather than financial capital. Luxury commodities like silver and gold plate were enmeshed in the social interactions and behaviors of elite Romans and so become agents in defining the social personas of their owners.

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Historiska strategispel som Europa Universalis IV och Civilization V försöker på olika sätt representera historia samtidigt som de försöker skapa engagerande spel. I följande studie jämförs historierepresentationen med fokus på spelmekaniker som representerar imperialism. Genom en utförlig analys av båda spelens mekaniker och en efterföljande jämförelse har deras likheter samt skillnader inom representation av imperialism belysts. Resultatet har visat att Civilization V har enklare och mindre utförliga mekaniker för imperialistiskt agerande i jämförelse med Europa Universalis IV. Däremot måste spelaren i Civilization V interagera med dessa mekaniker medan i Europa Universalis IV är dessa mekaniker inte nödvändiga att interagera med. Vidare forskning kan utföras genom att vidga definition av imperialism som spelen undersöks med för att inkludera intern imperialism då studien huvudsakligen fokuserat på extern imperialism. Vidare forskning skulle även kunna utföras genom att undersökas fler spel inom genren som därmed skulle kunna öppna möjligheten att göra resultaten generaliserbara.

This dissertation provides a model for understanding the relation between shifting imperial and post-imperial geopolitics and cultural change in diverse local communities. Specifically, I offer a new perspective on the debate in ancient history regarding “Hellenization,” i.e., the adoption and adaptation of Greek cultural idioms by non-Greek communities. Despite recent advances in emphasizing local communities’ agency in the “Hellenization” process, scholars tend to maintain a rigid dichotomy of monolithic “Greek” vs. “local” culture, and do not offer a comprehensive model accounting for variations in changes, and continuity, by region or time. I propose such a model for the late- and post-Seleucid Levant, and offer significant insights into Hellenistic, Phoenician and Jewish history. I argue that following the Seleucid conquest in the early second century BCE, diverse local communities began competing against each other for imperial favor by often resorting to a form of particularistic ethnic discourse, which emphasized claims to ancestral, pre-Hellenistic identities. In a paradoxical process, however, competing communities often adopted Greek cultural idioms to support these particularistic claims. While it is shown how the specific Greek cultural idioms adapted, varied according to sub-region and period, leadership, and geopolitical situation, it is argued that the idiosyncratic competitive dynamic, fostered by Seleucid power, incentivizing both particularistic discourse and the adoption of new Greek cultural idioms, proved pivotal in allowing diverse communities to develop a Greek cultural “infrastructure.” The political-cultural analysis allows us to broaden and nuance our understanding of subsequent Seleucid disintegration. By better integrating the literary and epigraphical sources with a fresh approach to the numismatic evidence (including the study of some unpublished collections) and taking into account the dramatic archaeological advances of the past two decades, I propose a new model for Seleucid decline. The “concessionist” dynamic outlined by recent scholarship, according to which local elites exploited Seleucid dynastic rivalries to extract privileges, needs to be qualified. While describing well the situation in some communities, such as Hasmonaean Judaea, it is not adequate for cities on the Phoenician coast. Rather, I propose an alternative “loyalist-secessionist” model, stressing the greater importance of external actors, especially the underappreciated role of the Ptolemies and a new understanding of Rome’s indirect involvement. The cultural implications for this novel political-historical model come to the fore following a watershed in Seleucid political history, the death of King Antiochus VII in 129 BCE. In an anarchic late-Hellenistic world, smaller cities, such as Tyre and Sidon, upon becoming independent, sought new alliances by re-utilizing their Greek cultural “infrastructure” towards greater institutional and cultic homology with Greek peer polities. In the absence of Seleucid pressure towards particularism, by contrast, traditional elements were rendered obsolete or even counterproductive to these new efforts. Thus, only at this stage of independence from Hellenistic empire non-Greek cultural elements atrophied, explaining the loss of Phoenician language in this period and the decline in sites of native cult. In other words, it was not a long, linear process of “Hellenization” but concrete, largely contingent, historical factors that explain this development in the specific time and place. In the neighboring Hasmonaean kingdom, by contrast, a series of contingent events (e.g., the “Judaization” of the Idumaeans) created a power-multiplier that put the kingdom onto a different trajectory. Prioritizing imperialistic ambitions, and shifting their own Greek “infrastructure” accordingly, they were not incentivized to similarly abandon traditional language and cult. Rather, by adopting a new ethos of a Hellenistic court, the kingdom facilitated the coalescing of newly-Judaized elites around the Hasmonaean dynasty and Jerusalem, fostering a metrocentric imperialistic outlook which paradoxically complemented and cemented rather than replaced the Yahwistic cult and a sense of Jewish particularism. This, I argue, is a key, hitherto overlooked, factor in the continuity of particularistic Jewish identity, which may help historicize and elucidate the seeming Jewish “exceptionalism” in the region. Put differently, the observed cultural divergence between Levantine communities, clearly apparent by the Roman period, can, in fact, be traced to, and elucidated by a specific historical moment, the common experiences of Seleucid imperial domination and the contingent effects of it collapse in the course of the 2nd century BCE.

[pt] Com esta tese, busco problematizar a dimensão racialista de textos pioneiros da discussão da ideia de pátria e de nação, gestados na esteira dos debates independentistas emanados do Rio de Janeiro, durante a primeira metade do século XIX. Considerando a hipótese de que esta dimensão constituiu aspecto determinante para a orientação das ações e do imaginário da dita boa sociedade da época, analiso os escritos de José Bonifácio, Gonçalves de Magalhães, Torres Homem, Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos, Januário da Cunha Barbosa e K.F.P. von Martius. A partir desses textos, discuto os usos e apropriações feitas por esses autores da ampla retórica de hierarquização dos povos, associados às suas expectativas de definição do Brasil e do brasileiro. Assim, procuro demonstrar os modos pelos quais esses autores mobilizaram, cada qual a sua maneira, o vasto repertório da retórica da branquitude autorreferenciada e identificada à civilização. Mais ainda, demonstro como puderam ser atualizadas, simultaneamente, noções seculares de inferiorização moral e fenotípica daqueles outros identificados como negros e índios, ao longo da construção desse Estado e da definição de sua subjetividade nacional. / [en] I seek, in this dissertation, to problematize the racialist dimension of pioneering texts referred to the discussion of the idea of patria (homeland) and nation, in the wake of the independent debates that emanated from Rio de Janeiro during the first half of the 19th century. By considering the hypothesis that such a dimension constituted a decisive aspect in the guiding of the attitudes and imaginings of those who pertained to the better sort of society at the time, I analyze the writings of José Bonifácio, Gonçalves de Magalhães, Torres-Homem, Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos, Januário da Cunha Barbosa and K.F.P. von Martius. I discuss the uses and appropriations these authors made of the broad rhetoric of hierarchizing peoples, in accordance with their own expectations concerning the definition of Brazil and of Brazilians. Therefore, I try to demonstrate the ways in which these authors have mobilized, each one in its own way, the vast repertoire of the rhetoric of a self-referent whiteness identified with civilization. In addition, I demonstrate how centuries-old notions of moral and phenotypic inferiority of those others, namely the Negroes and the Indians, along the State-building process and its definition of what nationhood should mean.

Figures who turn their heads frontally and gaze outwards from Archaic Greek artworks look back at the viewer and destabilize the typical relationship between viewing subject and viewed object. These frontal characters were especially effective for viewers who encountered them during the Archaic period, when the profile perspective was conventional and vision was understood to be a tactile sense. Frontal-facing figures have often been interpreted as carrying protective power or having the ability to threaten the viewer with their attention. While some frontal figures are intimidating, frontality and the represented gazes it engenders do not provoke a single, universal reaction. Instead, these images’ interactions with ancient viewers were shaped by the type of frontal figure represented, the figure’s representational context, and the real context in which the figure was originally encountered. This dissertation takes a contextual approach to the study of Archaic frontal figures to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of their functions and effects. The frontal figures that are represented on vases made between 700 and 480 BCE are comprehensively examined. Frontal-facing characters that decorated temples in the same period are also considered. By inspecting each individual type of frontal figure in turn, we can better comprehend the differing responses the figures elicit, which include humor and horror in addition to terror. This project also examines how frontality was employed by innovative vase painters to create images that directly engage viewers and shape their viewing experiences. While a few figures were conventionally frontal in the Archaic period, the majority were represented frontally only by the most experimental artisans who were eager to surprise their viewers and distinguish their work from that of their colleagues. This investigation of Archaic frontality in multiple media demonstrates the power of the perspective in its original context and the inventiveness of the craftsmen who used it.

Civilization games can depict imaginative and sophisticated perspectives on the future. Yet some scholars have critiqued civilization games for their replication of dominant, limited ideologies. Game designers often learn about design directly or indirectly from frameworks, such as the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework which contains a very idiosyncratic definition of aesthetics. Given that aesthetic thinking can unlock the sociological imagination, the aim of this dissertation was to discover opportunities to expand civilization game design by understanding the aesthetic experience of designers. A qualitative interview study was conducted of 13 game designers who created at least one civilization game based in the future. The interview and analysis had an ontological focus, to better understand how aesthetics fit into the existing puzzle of game design knowledge. The findings showed that designers employ their perspective in game design; this sense of self and perspective is not captured by current ontologies of game design. Furthermore, designers are limited in their ability to explore the boundaries of civilization games by task complexity, emotionality, and reliance on player experience. Resultantly, they may focus intensely on known aspects of game design in order to deliver a product. The dissertation proposes two primary solutions. Firstly, a game design framework that integrates the self into game design and more clearly delineates the game as an artifact. Secondly, cultivate truer senses of vision in game design for those who want to push civilization games and games as a whole, while understanding the practical realities of game design. These implications can be used by educators to reconsider game design program curricula, as well as affirm game designers’ pursuit of their own perspective.

My study explores the pervasive theme of physical binding in ancient Greece, utilizing visual, literary, and archaeological evidence to uncover its broader cultural and ideological implications. Traditionally, scholarship has scrutinized these sources to reconstruct historical practices such as incarceration, enslavement, and torture. Addressing the performative aspects inherent in the sources under investigation, I complicate this perspective by pairing iconographic analyses and close readings with an interdisciplinary approach informed by theories of affect, embodiment, and neuroaesthetics. This methodology facilitates the interpretation of spaces like the prison, the courtroom, the theater, and the symposium as interconnected cultural landscapes characterized by practices of torture and imprisonment, cursing rituals, bound figures on vases and statues, and theatrical performances featuring actors chained on stage. Within this framework, I argue that the image of the bound body transcends mere representation of societal practices: it actively shapes and crafts social hierarchies and identities. Specifically, male elite control over female and enslaved individuals emerges both as a dominant motif and a symptom of societal anxieties. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that in ancient Greece physical bondage was a real- life issue as much as it was a matter of representation, a cultural assemblage of chains, shackles, and wheels.