This dissertation draws inspiration from one of most iconic exchanges across the Indian Ocean in antiquity: that of Indian spices for Roman gold coins on the Periyar River in Malabar. While previous scholarship has outlined how these goods arrived at various entrepots like that on the Periyar, the larger impacts of Indian Ocean imports within new socio-cultural environments have yet to be explored. "Beyond the Periyar" articulates these impacts from a new perspective, the commodities themselves and the rippling patterns of consumption and industries that contribute to or arise from their importation. Roman coins changed functions as they changed hands, and surviving specimens often show the multiple stages of their long lives as objects through physical adaptations by Indian consumers. Their superficial design further held aesthetic value, provided useful idioms for Indian die-cutters, and inspired an industry of high-quality imitations. Indian spices like black pepper, cinnamon leaf, and ginger contributed to Roman culinary and cosmetic practices, as attested by Roman authors and associated utensils. These products have been discussed in the context of notions of “luxury” in reactionary texts—however, such critiques must be balanced against larger considerations of literary genre and known economic factors like prices vis-à-vis real wages. A hive of human activity throughout the Indian Ocean world underpinned these acts of consumption, which often stands behind the veil of consumer apathy. Human agents range from the investors financing transoceanic ventures and the traders manning oceangoing vessels, to state interests and regional security personnel, to the processors, craftsmen, and vendors who marketed these products to consumers. When we look beyond the Periyar, the consumption of long-distance imports appears not as a marginal force, but as a transformative component of ancient economies and societies with a far wider reach than previously assumed.

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This dissertation is a cultural history of Bithynia, a province of the Roman empire located in northwestern Turkey, in the 1st-3rd centuries CE. In Bithynia, rural settlements dominated the landscape, such that we might speak of cities as “islands” among the countryside. There is substantial evidence for the cultures of these people, in some 1,400 monuments which were carved with text and image primarily for religious and funerary purposes. This dissertation studies these inscriptions in order to write a fuller cultural history of Bithynia. It argues that cultural divides between rural and urban were in fact very permeable, and moreover that geographical boundaries between Bithynia and her neighbor, Phrygia, were also quite fluid. Yet at the same time, cultural differences between the two regions, as well as within Bithynia itself, can also be detected.

This dissertation presents, for the first time, a freestanding account of notions of time and temporality as seen in the visual arts of the late Archaic and Classical Greece and contextualizes it within the larger cultural history of time. There is a growing consensus among scholars regarding a societal shift in fifth-century Greek attitudes towards time, from the authority of the past to the uncertainties and the immediacy of the present. This dissertation explores such changing notions of time in the visual tradition in four different ways: firstly through the personification of the key notion of kairos, which embodies on many levels the manifestation of this new temporality; secondly by investigating the emergent interest of the "historical present" in the artistic subject matter of the so-called Historienbilder; thirdly through a detailed investigation of new pictorial strategies in Greek vase painting that carry specific temporal attributes, by focusing on the motifs of jumping, lifting and dropping; and lastly, by dissecting the anatomy of the popular motif of "erotic pursuits" in vase painting, which embodies the sensory nature of this new temporality that hinges upon the notion of suspense and delay. These investigations employ a new phenomenological framework that centers on the "embodied viewer", connecting the temporality as understood by the viewer with that which is portrayed in the object, bringing together the visible temporality in art and the experienced temporality of the society, which the viewer inhabits. This framework is first sketched out by offering a phenomenological reading of a full 3-D digital reconstruction of the Lysippan Kairos. Such changes in the notion of time in the visual arts, seen as early as the late sixth century BCE and fully manifest in the Classical period, is also put into relief by a brief examination of analogous literary techniques, with a focus on the case of Aeschylus.

This dissertation argues that Seneca’s philosophical program and literary artistry are jointly coordinated to address and redress the pervasive experience of subverted expectations, i.e. the experience of paradoxicality, attributed to the unwise by Seneca’s Stoic philosophy. With a focus on Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, I suggest that Seneca’s oft-noted paradoxical style reveals and is meant to reflect our fundamentally inconsistent (and thus dissatisfying) experience engendered, in his view, by the incoherency of our worldviews. While, as Seneca explores, our minds’ operations hide this distressing contradiction from our attention, Seneca’s subtle but steady exposure of it and its source attempts to work against this self-deception. The intended result for the reader is the recognition of their own role in their dissatisfaction and the resulting commitment to its remedy through philosophical training.

This dissertation analyzes the interplay between imperial messaging or self-representation and legal activity in the Roman Empire under the Severan dynasty. I discuss the unusual historical circumstances of Septimius Severus’ rise to power and the legitimacy crises faced by him and his successors, as well as those same emperors’ control of an increasingly complex legal bureaucracy and legislative apparatus. I describe how each of the four Severan rulers—Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Elagabalus, and Severus Alexander—employed different approaches to imperial legislation and adjudication in accordance with their idiosyncratic self-presentation and messaging styles, as well as how other actors within Roman legal culture responded to Severan political dynamics in their own work. In particular, this dissertation is concerned with a particularly—and increasingly—urgent problem in Roman elite political culture; the tension between theories of imperial power that centered upon rulers’ charismatic gifts or personal fitness to rule, and a more institutional, bureaucratized vision that placed the emperor at the center of broader networks of administrative control. While these two ideas of the Principate had always coexisted, the Severan period posed new challenges as innovations in imperial succession (such as more open military selection of emperors) called earlier legitimation strategies into question. I posit that Roman law, with its stated tendency towards regularized, impersonal processes, was a language in which the Severan state could more easily portray itself as a bureaucratic institution that might merit deference without a given leader being personally fit to rule. This dissertation begins by discussing the representational strategy of Septimius Severus, who deployed traditional imperial messaging tropes in strikingly legalistic forms. I then explore how this model of law as a venue for or language of state communication might explain otherwise idiosyncratic features of the constitutio Antoniniana, an edict promulgated by Septimius Severus’ son Caracalla that granted citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire. I next discuss two unusual features of the corpus of rescripts issued by Severus Alexander, the last Severan emperor: specifically, the relabeling of rescripts issued by Elagabalus, Alexander’s cousin and predecessor, as products of Alexander’s reign; and the idiosyncratic frequency with which rescripts issued under Alexander’s authority cite prior imperial (and particularly Severan) precedent. Finally, I discuss how jurists responded to Severan (and particularly late Severan) political and legal culture: late Severan jurists are particularly inclined to justify their legal decisionmaking in terms of the desirable consequences of a given decision’s universal promulgation, and similarly likely to justify their opinions by citing to an impersonal ‘imperial authority’ rather than to named figures. I argue that these changes reflect both state and scholarly attempts to wrestle with increasingly unstable imperial selection processes, and to articulate a vision of Roman governance that might function in the new world of the third century C.E.

This dissertation considers Aeschylus’ Persae and portions of Herodotus’ Histories as attempts to shape memories of the Greco-Persian Wars by invocation of material evidence at very different moments in the fifth century BCE. Given the literary and archaeological nature of our surviving Greek evidence, this consideration is a necessary part of the larger project towards which I work: a history of Persian interactions with Greek sanctuaries during the Greco-Persian Wars. Greek archaeological evidence offers one set of comparative perspectives on these interactions. I attempt to place Aeschylus and Herodotus in dialogue with this evidence in chapters two and three. Herodotus, unlike Aeschylus, depicts respectful Achaemenid behavior at Greek sanctuaries during the Greco-Persian Wars. To contextualize this depiction, I examine earlier sources from the western Achaemenid Empire in chapter four. In so doing, I build on methodology demonstrated in the introductory chapter to consider a second set of comparative perspectives. Close reading of Herodotus in parallel to these sources provides a basis for fully examining types of behavior which have often been explained away in previous scholarship on the historian. Notably, Herodotus’ depiction, unlike our surviving earlier sources from the western Achaemenid Empire, often considers how such behavior relates to more violent aspects of conquest, and as such provides a contrast to these surviving earlier sources. I suggest that this contrast—Herodotus’ depiction of both sacrilege and respectful behavior—can be understood in his historical moment. And yet this suggestion is but a beginning.

In my dissertation Happiness and Superlative Value in the Eudemian Ethics, I analyze dimensions of the Eudemian Ethics (EE) that, as I see it, make the EE a distinctive contribution to ethics. The EE discusses a superlative excellence called kalokagathia, the virtue of being-beautiful-and-good, which does not figure in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE). The agent who possesses kalokagathia is the best agent of Aristotle’s EE. Scholars tend to hold that the practically wise person, the phronimos, or the theoretically wise person, the sophos, are the best agents of the NE. If my reading of the EE is right, then the EE and the NE conceive differently of the best agent. This is salient in both treatises’ construals of the unity of the virtues. In the NE, the unity of the virtues includes the character virtues and phronêsis. In the EE, it additionally includes the virtues of theoretical thinking, or so I argue. The EE starts with what I call the Superlative Thesis (ST): happiness is what is best, most beautiful, and most pleasant of all. I take this beginning to be programmatic. Aristotle aims to show how these three kinds of value combine in the best human life, rather than coming apart. The Pleasure Thesis (PT) is the most contested aspect of ST: happiness is the most pleasant thing of all. On my reading, Aristotle fully embraces PT. In laying out his proposal for the best human life, the Aristotle of the EE develops a distinctive kind of naturalism, which I call Natural Goods Naturalism. I reconstruct this position in two steps: by interpreting the EE’s function argument; and by exploring the notion of natural goods, which is central to the EE, but does not figure in the NE. In sum, my dissertation argues that the EE contains a distinctive and under-appreciated option within ancient ethics, and that it contains ideas that are relevant to today’s virtue ethics and ethical naturalism.

In this thesis I detail how large-scale public entertainment, in the form of gladiatorial games (munera) and dramatic festivals (ludi), could function as a tool for social control in the Roman West. Using late-Republican and imperial Pompeii as a test case, I argue that these spectacular performances provided local notables with a rare and powerful platform for mass messaging. The chief purpose of this communication within the arena and theatres of Pompeii was not to transmit particular words or gestures from wealthy benefactors to their captive audience, but rather to arrive at a public consensus that implicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of local political, religious, and cultural institutions while also underscoring existing social hierarchies and power relations within the unified community. The local laws, traditions, and setting conditioned the behaviour of the entertainers and spectators, who played central rôles in a series of formulaic rituals at these regular events. The processions that preceded games, for example, and the prize-giving ceremonies after munera were staged as dialogues between benefactor and spectators, structured in ways that celebrated the prosperity, civic identity, and political stability of the community. Such a function was particularly important to ensure stability in periods of great uncertainty. I suggest that the construction and renovation of venues for public entertainment should also be understood in terms of crisis communications, as part of a response to political turbulence following the wars of the late Republic and a string of local catastrophes under Nero. In the highly urbanized regions of early imperial Italy, however, the emphasis on civic politics at mass spectacles risked inflaming tensions between neighbouring rivals. This system of social control was not, however, limited to the duration and location of mass spectacles. The Pompeian council limited freedom of association and the production of formal texts and images concerning mass spectacles to the margins of the city. The unofficial forms of expression that clustered here, often in dialogue with one another, suggest that individuals continued to identify with their rôles as consensus-building spectators beyond the games. In spite of its rich and varied dossier of evidence for quotidian life, genuinely original or subversive content that is independent of official messaging appears only rarely in the archaeological record at Pompeii.

This thesis aims to construct a historical narrative for the region of the north-eastern Aegean (NEA) during the Early Iron Age (1050-700 BCE) and the early Archaic period (7^th century BCE) based primarily on archaeological evidence. Its goals are to investigate the most distinctive material culture elements for the studied period; to explore themes of continuity and connectivity between regions; to trace large- and smaller-scale population movements; to discuss how early communities perceived themselves and each other; and to investigate the social structure and organisation of these communities. Evidence from settlement sites, funerary contexts, and sanctuaries are presented in the first three chapters in that order. Following that, the final chapter presents the primary, overarching conclusions of the thesis, in four sub-chapters. Firstly, it is argued that the NEA was characterised by relative cultural continuity from the Late Bronze Age to well within the Archaic period: when new elements were introduced, they were, generally, integrated into earlier paradigms. Secondly, evidence is provided for an increase in connectivity and maritime traffic peaks during the late 8^th century BCE; shortly afterwards, new population groups from the central and southern Aegean arrived in the NEA, and seem to have cohabited relatively peacefully with earlier populations. Thirdly, it is posited that there is little evidence for overarching NEA regional identities before the 6^th century BCE: communities appear to have developed local identities, through association with specific sites and through references to the communal past in cult practice and funerary contexts. Finally, it is argued that social elites were markedly active in NEA communities of studied period: there is considerable evidence for socially exclusive groups, primarily in funerary and ritual contexts. The thesis concludes with a short chapter containing the author's closing remarks.