This study explores the Greeks' experience of the Dioskouroi before the arrival of the Romans, stimulated by Cicero's assertion (Cic. Nat.D. 3.15(39)) that by his time they were worshipped widely in Greece, possibly more than the Olympians: from the archaeological evidence, a surprising claim. The task is complicated by the brothers' different incarnations in different places and at different times, and the variability and patchiness of the evidence for the period, from Homeric times to c. 146 BC. To address this (explained in Chapter 1), the study is designed around examining the evidence in selected locations over time, with an underlying theme of comparing the archaeological with the literary evidence, much of which is Roman. An overview of the evidence from literature, images and buildings sets the stage (Chapter 2). The association of Kastor and Polydeukes with 'Lakedaimon' in the literature, from Homer onwards, led the study to focus primarily on Sparta and the Peloponnese (Chapter 3), looking closely also at Sparta's near neighbours, Messene and Argos. It then looks at evidence from Thera, Kyrene and Naukratis (Chapter 4), in order to include some of the earliest material evidence we have of cult of the Dioskouroi in Greek settlements, which also have associations with Sparta and Lakonia; evidence from Thasos is included too. The final chapter considers the findings and assesses the usefulness of the methodology. The paucity of architectural evidence for major monuments and buildings specifically dedicated to the Dioskouroi, except in centres where Greeks gathered from different places for trade or religious reasons, may be explained if the primary location of their cult was the individual household, buildings only being needed for dedications to the brothers by Greeks away from home. It could also explain the seeming mismatch between Cicero's statement and the archaeological record.

This thesis discusses the differences in the descriptions of and the attitudes towards female courage in the literature of the Classical period. Male authors of this period wrote extensively of the martial and virtuous courage of men, andreíā, yet in some instances labelled courage instead as tólma or thrásos. Tólma and thrásos are even more commonly used in descriptions of female courage, audacity or rashness. How these three words could be used in relation to men and women is discussed, and the fundamental belief of the Classical period that women were not capable of courage is encountered. As courage was outside the nature, phúsis, of a woman, her actions were always more likely to be viewed as tólma or thrásos. To what extent the literature of the period can reflect the lived experience of the ancient Athenian is unknown. However, it is concluded that literary works both impact and are impacted by social and cultural values, such as the view that women should not or could not be courageous.

This thesis discusses the differences in the descriptions of and the attitudes towards female courage in the literature of the Classical period. Male authors of this period wrote extensively of the martial and virtuous courage of men, andreíā, yet in some instances instead labelled courage as tólma or thrásos. Tólma and thrásos are even more commonly used in descriptions of female courage, audacity or rashness. How these three words could be used in relation to men and women is discussed, and the fundamental belief of the Classical period that women were not capable of courage is encountered. As courage was outside the nature, phúsis, of a woman, her actions were always more likely to be viewed as tólma or thrásos. To what extent the literature of the period can reflect the lived experience of the ancient Athenian is unknown. However, it is concluded that literary works both impact and are impacted by social and cultural values, such as the view that women should not or could not be courageous.

This thesis is a study of embedded song in ancient Greek narrative poetry. The introduction defines the terminology (embedded song is defined as the depiction of the performance of a poem within a larger poem, such as the songs of Demodocus in Homer’s Odyssey) and sets the study in the context of recent narratological work done by scholars of Classical literature. This section of the thesis also contains a brief discussion of embedded song in the Homeric epics, which will form the background of all later examples of the motif. Chapter 1 deals with embedded song in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony. It is argued that the occurrence of embedded song across these poems indicates that the motif is a traditional feature of early Greek hexameter poetry, while the possibility of “inter-textual” allusion between these poems is considered, but finally dismissed. Chapter 2 focuses on Pindar, Bacchylides and Corinna, and explores how lyric poets use this motif in the various sub-genres of Greek lyric. In epinician poetry, it is argued that embedded song is used as a strategy of praise and also to boost the authority of the poet-narrator by association with the embedded performers, who can be seen to have in each case a particular source of authority distinct from that of the poet narrator. Chapter 3 considers the Hellenistic poets Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus, and how their interest in depicting oral poetry meshes with their identity as literate and literary poets. Appendix I gives a list of all the examples of embedded song I have found in Greek poetry. Appendix II gives an account of Pindar’s Hymn to Zeus, a highly fragmentary poem which almost certainly contained an embedded song, analysing this as an example of the difficulties thrown up by lyric fragments for a study of embedded narratives.

This thesis builds on recent scholarship on Dio’s φύσις model to argue that Dio’s view of the fall of the Republic can be explained in terms of his interest in the relationship between human nature and political constitution. Chapter One examines Dio’s thinking on Classical debates surrounding the issue of φύσις and is dedicated to a detailed discussion of the terms that are important to Dio’s understanding of Republican political life. The second chapter examines the relationship between φύσις and Roman theories of moral decline in the late Republic. Chapter Three examines the influence of Thucydides on Dio. Chapter Four examines Dio’s reliance on Classical theories of democracy and monarchy. These four chapters, grouped into two sections, show how he explains the downfall of the Republic in the face of human ambition. Section Three will be the first of two case studies, exploring the life of Cicero, one of the main protagonists in Dio’s history of the late Republic. In Chapter Five, I examine Dio’s account of Cicero’s career up to the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Chapter Six explores Cicero’s role in politics in the immediate aftermath of Caesar’s death, first examining the amnesty speech and then the debate between Cicero and Calenus. Chapter Seven examines the dialogue between Cicero and Philiscus, found in Book 38. In Section Four is my other case study, Caesar. Chapter Eight discusses Caesar as a Republican politician. In Chapter Nine, I examine Dio’s version of the mutiny at Vesontio and Caesar’s speech. Chapter Ten examines Dio’s portrayal of Caesar after he becomes dictator and the speech he delivers to the senate. The Epilogue ties together the main conclusions of the thesis and examines how the ideas explored by Dio in his explanation of the fall of the Republic are resolved in his portrait of the reign of Augustus.

This thesis examines the relationship between speech and action in Dionysius' Antiquitates Romanae. It consists of five main chapters, an introduction and a conclusion. In the introduction I establish the status quaestionis and consider different modes of presenting discourse. Chapter 2 is an intertextual analysis of Dionysius' first preface, AR I.1-8, exploring Dionysius' engagement with his Greek and Roman predecessors. I take one modern theory, concerning Dionysius apparent 'idealisation' of the Roman past, in order to examine the relationship between the Antiquities and Dionysius' rhetorical works. In the four chapters that follow, I trace the changing texture of narrative across the Antiquities, sinking shafts at moments to examine closely what is going on. First (ch. 3), I analyse speech in the Regal Period, focusing on the story of Lucretia and Brutus (AR IV.64-85), and the way that Herodotean allusion meshes with intratextual devices to narrate the fluctuations of the Regal Period. Chapter 4 is a paired reading of (4a) the story of Coriolanus' trial (VII.21-66) and (4b) the story of Coriolanus' encounter with his mother (VII.39-62). Ch. 4a concentrates on Thucydides and Isocrates, and how Coriolanus' trial binds the Greek literary past to the first-century Roman present. In 4b, I examine how Dionysius manages the shift between high politics and family relationships. Chapter 5, on the decemvirate (X.50-XI.44), explores again Roman tyranny, this time in a Republican frame; the power of the senate is consequently in point here. Chapter 6, on AR XIV-XX, probes the questions of Greek and Roman ethnicity and the individual which had arisen in the earlier chapters. In the conclusion I consider the precise question of Dionysius' Augustanism, relating it to Dionysius' apparent status in Rome.

This thesis is a historical and historiographical commentary on Book 57 (Chs. 1-17.8) of Cassius Dio's Roman History. It comprises two sections, an Introduction followed by the Commentary itself. The introduction is sub-divided into three chapters. The first of these introductory chapters (The Roman Historian at Work) presents a discussion of the historical material available for Dio's Tiberian narrative, and a discussion of the factors which were instrumental in Dio's writing and shaping his narrative of the reign of Tiberius. The second chapter (Dio on Tiberius) is an analysis of Dio's portrayal of Tiberius and of the historian’s understanding of Tiberius in the historical context of the early Principate. These chapters are followed by some brief Notes on the Text of Book 57, which considers the manuscript tradition of Book 57, and comments on portrayal of the reign of Tiberius in the Dionian tradition, and in particular the Excerpta Constantiniana, Xiphilinus, and Zonaras. The second part of the thesis, the commentary, presents an analysis of Dio's narrative from both historical and historiographical perspectives.

This thesis explores Hellenistic and imperial Greek texts that represent or discuss the river Nile. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship by examining such texts in he light of the history of Greek discourse about the Nile and in the context of social, political and cultural changes, and takes account of relevant ancient Egyptian texts. I begin with an introduction that provides a survey of earlier scholarship about the Nile in Greek literature, before identifying three themes central to the thesis: the relationship between Greek and Egyptian texts, the tension between rationalism and divinity, and the interplay between power and literature. I then highlight both the cultural significance of rivers in classical Greek culture, and the polyvalence of the river Nile and its inundation in ancient Egyptian religion and literature. Chapter 1 examines the significance of Diodorus Siculus' representation of the Nile at the beginning of his universal history; it argues that the river's prominence constructs Egypt as a primeval landscape that allows the historian access to the distant past. The Nile is also seen to be useful to the historian as a conceptual parallel for his historiographical project. Whereas Diodorus begins his universal history with the Nile, Strabo closes his universal geography with Egypt; the second chapter demonstrates how Strabo incorporates the Nile into his vision of the new Roman world. Chapter 3 presents a diachronic study of Greek discourse concerning the two major Nilotic problems, the cause of the annual inundation and the location of the sources. It examines first the construction of the debates, and second the transformation of that tradition in Aelius Aristides' Egyptian Oration. The functions of the Nile in Greek praise-poetry are the subject of chapter 4; it is shown that the Nile and its benefactions are used by poets to lay claim to political, religious or cultural authority, and to situate Egypt within an expanding oikoumene. The fifth and final chapter turns to Greek narrative fictions from the imperial period. The chapter demonstrates that the Nile is more familiar than exotic in these texts. It is shown that Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles Tatius play with the trope of 'novelty' in this very familiar literary landscape, while Heliodorus articulates a more profound disruption of the expected Egyptian tropes, and ultimately replaces Egypt with Ethiopia as a new Nilotic environment.

This thesis compares the interaction of philosophy and literature in Plato and Lucretius. It argues that Plato influenced Lucretius directly, and that this connection increases the interest in comparing them. In the Introduction, I propose that a work of philosophical literature, such as the De Rerum Natura or a Platonic dialogue, cannot be fully understood or appreciated unless both the literary and the philosophical elements are taken into account. In Chapter 1, I examine the tradition of literature and philosophy in which Plato and Lucretius were writing. I argue that the historical evidence increases the likelihood that Lucretius read Plato. Through consideration of parallels between the DRN and the dialogues, I argue that Plato discernibly influenced the DRN. In Chapter 2, I extract a theory of philosophical literature from the Phaedrus, which prompts us to appreciate it as a work of literary art inspired by philosophical knowledge of the Forms. I then analyse Socrates’ ‘prelude’ at Republic IV.432 as an example of how the dialogue’s philosophical and literary teaching works in practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider the treatment of natural philosophy in the Timaeus and DRN II. The ending of the Timaeus is arguably an Aristophanically inspired parody of the zoogonies of the early natural philosophers. This links it to other instances of parody in Plato’s dialogues. DRN II.333-380 involves an argument about atomic variety based on Epicurus, but also, through the image of the world ‘made by hand’, alludes polemically to the intelligently designed world of the Timaeus. Through an examination of Plato’s and Lucretius’ polemical adaptation of their predecessors, I argue that even the most seemingly technical passages of the DRN and the Timaeus still depend upon literary techniques for their full effect. The Conclusion reflects briefly on future paths of investigation.

After graduating from the Literae Humaniores course, which after the mid-nineteenth century came to revolve around Plato’s Republic, Walter Pater’s (1839-1894) professional duties spanning thirty years at Oxford were those of a philosophy teacher and lecturer of Plato. This thesis examines Pater’s deep engagement with Platonism in his work, from his earliest known piece, “Diaphaneitè” (1864), to his final book, Plato and Platonism (1893), treating both his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth. Plato is an ideal philosopher, critic, and artist to Pater, exemplifying a literary craftsman who blends genres with the highest authority. Platonism is a point of contact with several of Pater’s contemporaries, such as Arnold and Wilde, from which we can take new measure of their critical relationships regarding aestheticism and Decadence. Pater’s idea of aesthetic education takes Platonism for its model, which heightens one’s awareness of reality in the recognition of form and matter. Platonism also provides a framework for critical encounters with figures across history, such as Wordsworth, Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola in The Renaissance (1873), Marcus Aurelius and Apuleius in Marius the Epicurean (1885), and Montaigne and Giordano Bruno in Gaston de Latour (1896). In the manner Platonism holds that soul or mind is the essence of a person, Pater’s criticism, evident even in his fiction, seeks the mind of the author, so that his writing enacts Platonic love. Through close reading, we highlight his many references to Plato, identify Platonic subjects and themes, and explore etymological nuances in the very selection of his words, which often reveals a Platonic tendency of refinement towards immateriality, from seen to unseen beauty. As a teacher and an author Pater helped shape Oxonian Platonism, and through his writing we examine how Platonism informs his philosophy of aesthetics, history, myth, epistemology, ethics, language, and style.