your words your words / The Classics

This dissertation examines Galen of Pergamon's text On Anatomical Procedures (De anatomicis administrationibus) and considers its audience and purpose. The first chapter presents the audience of the text as Galen perceived it; I use Galen's explicit rhetoric about his readers to paint a picture of his ideal envisioned audience and then measure this against the concrete expectations that he conveys through the explicit and implicit prerequisites he demands of his readers. The second chapter, by contrast, makes strides towards uncovering the actual audience of the work by examining the ramifications of Galen's expectation that his readers will actively participate in the studies he describes; I study the availability of the books, tools, and animals that he expects his audience to be able to purchase, in order to understand the financial and social implications. The third chapter considers the text itself, taking into account the manner and timing of its composition, Galen's linguistic choices vis-à-vis his audience, and the details of his specific directions; I use this analysis to define the nature of the text and how the audience was expected to interact with it, thus necessarily engaging with the norms in ancient medical education and the role that books found there. The fourth and final chapter compares the text to his other anatomical writings, particularly his more descriptive and philosophically oriented treatise, De usu partium, as a final way to determine the purpose of this highly unusual work and its place both in his oeuvre and in its contemporary environment. / The Classics

Virgil's Aeneid departs from his earlier pastoral poetry in featuring herdsmen as agents of violence. His Eclogues characterize herdsmen as musicians who are helpless against the violence of outsiders. In the Aeneid, in contrast, herdsmen both unwittingly catalyze and deliberately take part in acts of war; they never make music. In similes in the epic, the hero Aeneas is compared to a herdsman engaged in activities that are not typically pastoral. Partial studies of pastoral elements in the epic have focused on evaluating Aeneas in moral or political terms or on the aesthetic function of pastoral motifs in "reducing" the subject matter of heroic epic to an Alexandrian scale. I take a different approach, examining pastoral motifs in the Aeneid in relation to Greek models in epic and tragedy. The tragedians regularly use pastoral figures, language, landscapes, and music to set up ironic contrasts between peace and its violation. Identifying this tragic use of pastoral offers insight into Virgil's strategy of intensifying the shocking effect of violence by juxtaposing it with images of pastoral peace. Virgil develops the tragic ambiguity of characters, landscapes, and musical language with pastoral associations to express the underlying tragic tension between Aeneas' constructive aims as a leader and his inevitably destructive methods. / The Classics

<p> The dissertation explores the phenomenon of long-running border wars, which are believed to have been ubiquitous in Archaic Greece. Two most famous confrontations are examined in depth: the war between Eretria and Chalcis over the Lelantine Plain, and the struggle between Sparta and Argos over the territory of Thyreatis. It is suggested that in the Archaic period these disputed territories were contested in recurrent ritual battles. The battles took place in the framework of peace agreement between the neighboring cities, so that the disputed territory constituted a sacred common space for the opposing cities. The participants in ritual battles belonged to the social class of <i> hippeis,</i> for whom the battles both expressed their local identity and reaffirmed the Panhellenic values, underlying aristocratic inter-<i> polis</i> ties. The ritual battles reenacted mythical destructive confrontations, which were imagined to result in death of all combatants; however, the ritual battle themselves, which were normally non-lethal, were led according to strict rules and represented the enactment of the hoplite ideal. The tradition of the aristocratic ritual battles began to break down in the middle of the sixth century, when, following the adoption of a more aggressive style of warfare, the border territories that had been ritually contested became annexed by one city-state. However, the myths of confrontations between neighboring cities did not lose their ideological power. In the Classical period, these myths constituted a contested ideological territory in the inter- and intra-<i>polis</i> struggles between democratic and oligarchic political camps. In particular, the myths about the confrontation between neighboring cities were adopted by democratic regimes as their foundational narratives. </p>

This dissertation investigates speech, silence, and power in the Tereus, Procne, and Philomela myth in four sources: Sophocles’ Tereus, Aristophanes’ Birds, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the Pervigilium Veneris. I pose three questions about each work: 1. Whom does the author allow to speak, and whom does he silence? 2. How do speech and silence influence characterization, authority, and power? 3. How does the author’s socio-cultural environment influence the construction of those power hierarchies? Each author constructs a hierarchy of agency determined by communicative and silent roles. Sophocles’ Procne, Aristophanes’ Tereus, Ovid’s Philomela and Procne, and the Pervigilium’s Venus and swallow possess a heightened level of narrative agency that cannot be taken away, even if the ability to speak disappears; on the other hand, conspicuous silencing by the author reduces the narrative agency of characters like Aristophanes’ Procne, Ovid’s Tereus, or the Pervigilium’s narrator. These authorial decisions regarding speech and silence evince shifting engagements with each author’s socio-cultural environment and opportunities for artistic output. Moreover, these four authors also engage in an escalating series of mythic reversals and re-appropriations as they mold the details of the Tereus, Procne, and Philomela story into their narratives. First, Aristophanes reverses Sophocles’ empowerment of Procne and Philomela by effacing the violence of Sophocles’ tragedy; he mutes and objectifies Procne, erases Philomela entirely, and elevates Tereus into the bird-man-ruler paradigm that Peisetaerus hopes to emulate, thereby presenting a normative relationship of vocal man with silent woman in service of the movement of his plot. Then, in Augustan Rome, Ovid comments on the princeps’ increasing control over artistic output by acting as an arbiter of speech and silence, as he affords Philomela and Procne eloquent voices while conspicuously silencing Tereus; he “corrects” the Aristophanic “correction” of Sophocles. Finally, in Late Antiquity, the narrator of the Pervigilium laments his silence caused by constraints within panegyric, a genre that lacks a personal voice, such as that possessed by the swallow. He “corrects” Ovid’s presentation of the swallow’s song as the result of Philomela’s brutalization by casting it as a positive exemplum for his own poetry.

This dissertation examines the place of Catullus' poetry in the iambic tradition and its innovation within that tradition. By the Classical period, the genre iambos had been distilled down to invective content in iambic meters, despite the much greater variety of features found in the canonical Archaic iambographers (particularly Archilochus and Hipponax, 7th-6th C BCE). Catullus, familiar with these poets not only in their own right but also through the lens of Hellenistic authors such as Callimachus, partakes in and expands this tradition in novel ways. Catullus affirms the connection between invective and iambic meters in some of his poems (25, 29, 37, 39, 52, 59, 60). In others, he subverts his readers' expectations, creating mismatches between meter and content. He employs iambic meters without invective content once in iambic trimeters (4) and in half of his choliambic poems (8, 22, 31, 44). Conversely, he uses unaccustomed meters for invective, including hendecasyllables and elegiac couplets. Scholarly efforts to explain the mismatch of meter and content in Catullus' invective-free iambic poems and in his invective poems in other meters have largely been piecemeal; this study represents a more sustained approach to the problem. I argue in Chapter One that the speed of the skiff in poem 4 enables it to outpace obstacles representing iambos' traditionally dominant feature, invective; against generic expectations, Catullus introduces speed as a pointed alternative to abusive content. Chapter Two demonstrates that Catullus employs his non-abusive choliambic poems in the diagnosis of literary-critical and medical problems, tapping into a strain of aesthetic criticism and complaint found in Callimachus' Iamboi and in Hipponax himself. Chapter Three presents Catullus' hendecasyllables as a flexible meter without a strong ethos, allowing Catullus to link it to both the iambic tradition and love poetry. Finally, Chapter Four explores Catullus' use of elegiac epigram as an open form primarily for invective, matching the longstanding but uneasy coupling of hexameter and pentameter to vignettes of unbalanced relationships. With carefully considered mismatches of form and content, Catullus extends iambos beyond tradition.

Readers of Homer’s Iliad immediately confront the anger of Achilles; the first word of the poem, μῆνις, forefronts the hero’s godlike wrath. Yet little attention has been paid to the important relationship that exists between Achilles’ anger and his grief. In this dissertation I identify language in the poem unique to Achilles, linking his grief for Patroklos with a longing, ποθή. The most important interpretive consequence of this link between ποθή and grief, I argue, is the proper understanding of the insatiable roots of his subsequent anger. Achilles experiences the death of Patroklos as a rending of the fabric of his life. In this state of restless volatility, we see that Achilles’ anger is one more response to an underlying experience of rupture and thus is both aimless and fruitless. Although Achilles succeeds in ensuring the future sack of Troy by killing Hektor, his behavior remains insatiate, since his deeds of anger are motivated by a desire for what cannot be achieved, life shared with Patroklos. The persistence of his attempted vengeance beyond the slaying of Hektor reveals the futility of his underlying longing, such that, according to the poem, the only end he can make of his grief-driven anger, finally, is to let it go. The Trojans’ grief for Hektor is never described with the language of longing, and this surprising exclusion underscores the contrast between Achilles and Hektor. Where Achilles has a uniquely independent status, Hektor is continuously tied to the city as a whole and part of a rich network of close relations. Rather than exploring the rupture of a single, highly personal relationship, perhaps typical of a warrior far from home many years, with Hektor’s death the poem depicts the impending destruction of an entire civilization. Thus every expression of grief for this warrior refers not only to personal loss but to the multiple relationships that will be impacted by his death. The Trojans’ grief for their defender cannot linger on the sense of rupture in the present, but rather their grief is shaped by a forward-looking sense of doom. / 2022-07-31T00:00:00Z

In this dissertation, I consider Euripides’ tragedies of 415 (Alexandros-Palamedes-Troiades) and 412 (Helen-Andromeda), and books 6-8 of Thucydides’ Histories (on 416/15-411), with attention to particular thematic elements in each text. These include: ritual and religious impiety; infighting and power struggles between the upper-classes; and personal or collective abandonment to erotic impulses. I propose that during the period in question (or when writing about the period in question, in Thucydides’ case), both authors place novel emphasis on the combined effect of all three elements. This novelty expresses itself in two major ways. First, the authors treat religious indecorum, aristocratic jockeying, and erotic impulsivity as a set, with a consistency that exists neither in Euripides’ previous works, nor in Thucydides’ Histories 1-5. Second, both authors develop a particular vocabulary for these religious and socio-political struggles. Thucydides introduces new terms, or prefers alternative definitions for some that he regularly employs. The result is a section of text that is at once consistent with the material that precedes it, yet outstanding for its peculiar thematic and verbal elements. The focused consistency of Euripides’ thematic and verbal choices in his trilogy of 415 supports the argument that the tragedies of this year must be read as an interdependent set, in which the first two works hold the keys to the content and reading of the third. In his works of 412, choice terms signal Euripides’ unique engagement with the mythical tradition; choice themes link Helen and Andromeda while separating them from Euripides’ other works. My aim in considering these innovations is to offer a fresh way into a wide-ranging conversation regarding Euripides’ and Thucydides’ shared historical context and the similarities between their respective texts. A focused perspective calls attention to the exceptionality of the narrative subset in question, the perception of which can be dulled by generalizing, comprehensive approaches. Euripides and Thucydides appear to have shared certain literary sensibilities that set them in close alignment with one another — and apart from their contemporaries — as men whose contributions to the broader literary landscape were remarkable for the precise features of their construction and expression. / 2020-10-08T00:00:00Z

Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium, composed in the third or fourth century, was an esteemed work of travel and natural history throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Although scholars since the early Enlightenment have criticised this work as an unoriginal compilation of earlier sources, Solinus’ skill in selecting and organising information, and his book's influence throughout much of western history, cannot be denied. The first chapter argues that Solinus designed his book to have wide appeal, so as to entertain and educate the greatest possible audience. No previous English or French scholarship has addressed Solinus’ book as a fundamentally entertaining work, but there are many indications that it would be considered a fashionable and amusing informational text by the elite class. By drawing on several highly respected genres, frequently citing received authorities, and writing in a flowing discourse, Solinus presents information about worldwide wonders, of no immediate use to the average Roman, as though it were beneficial and even necessary to the educated reader. The second chapter looks closely at Solinus’ literary technique, then considers him in the context of three other encyclopedic authors: Aulus Gellius in the second century, and Macrobius and Martianus Capella in the fifth. The third chapter examines the Collectanea as a work of imperial literature. I argue for the novel claim that Solinus’ depiction of the Macrobian Ethiopians seems to associate them with his contemporaries, the Axumites. His portrayal of the Macrobians shows that although on the surface the book adheres to Romano-centric literary traditions, in subtle ways it reflects its contemporary context and Solinus’ own perspective. By examining the text itself as well as the context in which it was created and received, this thesis contributes to a new understanding of the Collectanea’s value as a work of literary and historical significance.

While scholars have noticed important allusions to Hesiod in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, there is still a need to explain Hesiod’s relevance in a poem that is so overtly Homeric. I argue that an understanding of Hesiod’s reception, especially during the Second Sophistic period, will lead to a deeper appreciation of the Posthomerica and the world that produced it. Hesiodic allusions appear at key moments in the narrative and invite us to see Quintus of Smyrna as reading Homeric epic and ethics through a Hesiodic lens. Rather than read the Posthomerica solely as a work of Homeric emulation, I propose that Quintus of Smyrna relies on Hesiod’s reputation as Homer’s rival to articulate his critique of Homeric poetics and heroism. Chapter One argues that Quintus of Smyrna reorients his reader’s gaze from Homer to Hesiod right when he seems to ape a Homeric practice, namely the ekphrasis of Achilles’ shield. Chapter Two asserts that Quintus of Smyrna’s use of Hesiod contributes to the Posthomerica’s narrative structure and highlights his revision of the Homeric idea of virtue (arete), such that Iliadic force must be joined with Hesiodic wisdom. Chapter Three examines Quintus of Smyrna’s Hesiodic self-portrayal and argues that the Posthomerica may be read as a telling of the Trojan saga through a Hesiodic lens. Chapter Four discusses Quintus of Smyrna in the context of Hesiodic reception. And Chapter Five places Quintus of Smyrna’s reception of Homer and Hesiod within the broader landscape of Second Sophistic and Late Antique literature, comparing his allusive practices to those of Greek hexameter poets of his era. This study concludes that Quintus of Smyrna’s revision of Homer reflects a trend among some Second Sophistic authors who re-write and critique Homeric narratives. Moreover, his direct and pervasive engagement with the works of Hesiod is unique when compared to his fellow Greek hexameter poets, whose allusions to Hesiod are mediated through a Hellenistic filter. By bridging studies of the Posthomerica and studies in Hesiod’s reception, my work enables us to gain a better understanding of Quintus of Smyrna’s dynamic engagement with his archaic literary tradition.