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The aim of my thesis is to extend the current discussions of ethnography, epistolarity and the ancient persona, to the text of Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto. It is a particularly appropriate text to extend the ideas of literary and cultural identity and epistolarity as the poems are written as letters by an urban Roman poet who is exiled to the end of the known world. His poems reveal, in the medium he knows best, the varied responses of a sophisticated city-dwelling poet to life in the wilderness on the frontiers of the Roman Empire. I argue that the poet describes his unfamiliar situation by using terms and traditions 'known' or familiar to his readers to illustrate his 'unknown' place of exile. In this thesis, I look at how the poet uses well known ethnographical stereotypes and the letter form, both to illustrate his unfamiliar location in exile in an understandable way, and to blur the distinction between the author as an historical person in a specific geographical location and one who is a literary persona constructed along with poetic geographical and anthropological detail. Although many scholars have written on the subject of Ovid's exile poetry, few have looked at the epistolarity or the letter form of these last poems from exile. I show in this thesis that the Epistulae ex Ponto is a text that repays scrutiny in this light because the poet draws comparisons and writes about his situation in exile using the recognisable literary form of letters. I also show how the poet's increased use of his name, Naso, affects our perception of the persona in the Epistulae ex Ponto. I argue that in these last poems from exile the persona is indistinct as the poet can now only identify himself using letters instead of the spoken word. I show how the poet blends the personal and private sphere of the epistolary genre with the public nature of published elegiac verse, using the names of well known Roman citizens in an attempt to strengthen his appeal for help and support from specific individuals. I conclude that the poems in the Epistulae ex Ponto should be read with the poet's exile firmly in mind. Exile necessitates the use of letters in place of spoken words, so an awareness of literary devices, such as ethnographic stereotypes, epistolarity and emphasis on the author and recipient of these letters rather than on constructed personae, enhances our pleasure and understanding of these poems sent from exile.

This dissertation examines the surviving remains of the two books of Pindar’s Prosodia. The introduction falls into four parts. The first is concerned with gathering the evidence for the books, through a review of their ancient testimonia (Chapter 1) and of the indirect and direct transmission of their fragments (Chapter 2); the second is concerned with the prosodion as a poetic genre, with some introductory remarks (Chapter 3) followed by an investigation of the collected evidence for the notion of prosodion in describing poetic texts (Chapter 4) and in later scholarship and generic theory (Chapter 5); the third combines the results of the first two into an analysis of the surviving fragments of Pindar’s Prosodia and an inquiry on the generic principles that shaped the collection (Chapter 6); the fourth consists of a descriptive catalogue of the papyrus manuscripts that contribute to the text of Pindar’s Prosodia (Chapter 7). The critical text of the eighteen main fragments and groups of fragments is followed by an introduction and line-by-line commentary to six of them, nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, *6, and *7 (= fr. 89 Snell-Maehler and ‘Paeans’ 14, 15, 6.123-183, 17, and 18).

The thesis is a study of the language of Menander Comicus (c.341-292/1 B.C.). The core of the thesis is a partial description of his language. Using a sociolinguistically informed model of koineisation, Menander's language is related to developments in the linguistic history of Greek. The first chapter therefore reviews the literature on Menander's language and details the theory of koineisation that will inform the subsequent chapters; accommodation theory is here of particular importance. The second chapter reviews nominal word-formation, used elsewhere in the literature as a criterion of the Koiné. It is pointed out that word-formation is not a good criterion, as the assessment of productivity patterns in a dead variety is difficult. However, by a detailed philological study of the data in Menander, some conclusions are reached about the productive and non-productive suffixes in Menander. The derivational patterns he attests for the most part look classical, but some changes are detected. The third chapter looks at the phonology and morphology of Menander. It is suggested that the vocalism of Menander betrays some characteristic Koiné developments, while the consonantism is mostly conservative. Noun and pronoun morphology are mostly conservative, while verbal morphology shows some signs of paradigm levelling. This is in line with the developments expected of a koineising variety, which are characterised by levelling. The final chapter is much more descriptive and focuses on syntax, particularly subordinate clauses. Some difficult examples of relative clauses are discussed which may anticipate later developments. Adverbial and complement clauses show that the optative, while morphologically stable, is no longer used in certain syntactic contexts (the oblique optative has more or less disappeared). An overall assessment attempts to distinguish the synchronic and the diachronic conclusions: the thesis deliberately discussed both together. It points out some concrete results establishing some spurious Menandrean texts while discussing the status of Menander's dialect. The main conclusion is that the terms of the debate about Menander's language have been misconceived: 'Attic vs. 'Koiné' is a false dichotomy in fourth-century Attica.

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