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This study is about one of the most ubiquitous and yet little studied aspects of ancient Greek religion, the offering of so-called ‘first-fruits’ (aparchai) and tithes (dekatai) in Archaic and Classical Greece (c.700-300 B.C.). A widespread and traditional custom all over Greece and the Greek Mediterranean, the offering of ‘first-fruits’ and tithes entailed using a portion of the proceeds from a diversity of human activities (such as craft-work, fishing, trade, military expeditions) to present something to the gods. I look at the different kinds of aparchai and dekatai offered to the Greek gods by individuals and states under various circumstances, the various contexts in which the language and practice of making such offerings were used, the deployment of this religious custom in politics, and the transformation of a voluntary practice into a religious obligation. Ultimately, however, my major concern is with questions of religious psychology: why people should bring aparchai and dekatai to the gods, and what motivations and expectations they might have had. Because it was such a commonplace practice, the custom has been taken simply as a given in both ancient and modern scholarship; and no attempt has been made to explain its religious significance. By drawing on current anthropological studies of gift-giving, I argue that that aparchai and dekatai do not merely give to the gods, but give back to the gods some of the benefits granted by the divinities in the first place, reflecting first and foremost a sense of dependence on the divine. I suggest that the offering of aparchai and dekatai may be thought of as a means of settling men’s debts to, and thereby maintaining good relations with, the gods, who were considered the sources of both goods and evils. I challenge the emphasis, common in modern scholarship, on material returns as the central motive behind the act of bringing gifts to the gods. Instead I suggest that the study of gift-giving between humans and the divine should embrace the possibility that psychological feelings of dependence on and gratitude to the gods might also have been involved.

<p>This dissertation interrogates existing scholarly paradigms regarding aetiology in the Histories of Herodotus in order to open up new avenues to approach a complex and varied topic. Since aetiology has mostly been treated as the study of cause and effect in the Histories, this work expands the purview of aetiology to include Herodotus’ explanations of origins more generally. The overarching goal in examining the methodological principles of Herodotean aetiology is to show the extent to which they resonate across the Histories according to their initial development in the proem, especially in those places that seem to deviate from the work’s driving force (i.e. the Persian Wars). Though the focus is on correlating the principles espoused in the proem with their deployment in Herodotus’ ethnographies and other seemingly divergent portions of his work, the dissertation also demonstrates the influence of these principles on some of the more “historical” aspects of the Histories where the struggle between Greeks and barbarians is concerned. The upshot is to make a novel case not only for the programmatic significance of the proem, but also for the cohesion of Herodotean methodology from cover to cover, a perennial concern for scholars of Greek history and historiography.</p><p>Chapter One illustrates how the proem to the Histories (1.1.0-1.5.3) prefigures Herodotus’ engagement with aetiological discussions throughout the Histories. Chapter Two indicates how the reading of the proem laid out in Chapter One allows for Herodotus’ deployment of aetiology in the Egyptian logos (especially where the pharaoh Psammetichus’ investigation of the origins of Egyptian language, nature, and custom are concerned) to be viewed within the methodological continuum of the Histories at large. Chapter Three connects Herodotus’ programmatic interest in the origins of erga (i.e. “works” or “achievements” manifested as monuments and deeds of abstract and concrete sorts) with the patterns addressed in Chapters One and Two. Chapter Four examines aetiological narratives in the Scythian logos and argues through them that this logos is as integral to the Histories as the analogous Egyptian logos studied in Chapter Two. Chapter Five demonstrates how the aetiologies associated with the Greeks’ collaboration with the Persians (i.e. medism) in the lead-up to the battle of Thermopylae recapitulate programmatic patterns isolated in previous chapters and thereby extend the methodological continuum of the Histories beyond the “ethnographic” logoi to some of the most representative “historical” logoi of Herodotus’ work. Chapter Six concludes the dissertation and makes one final case for methodological cohesion by showing the inextricability of the end of the Histories from its beginning.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of this play is to dramatize the change of government in ancient Greece from a matriarchy to a patriarchy and from rule by the Ionian to rule by the Dorian Greeks through the last years of Helen of Troy. Faced with a challenge by her husband, Menelaus, who wants his sons to rule, Helen manages through intrigue to arrange for her daughter to gain the throne. Helen herself becomes a "goddess."

M.A. / The aim of the present essay is the study of the Resistance which took place in the area of Kalavrita and Egialia between 1941-1944 and how it is re-lated to the Resistance in the rest of Greece, using everyday people’s memo-ries. More specifically, we are going to find the impact of the geomorphology of the area on the development of the Resistance and the importance of the lo-cal history and traditions on the development of the patriotic feeling of the ar-ea’s citizens. Moreover, we are going to study the factors which led to the crea-tion and development of Resistance, the impact of the Communist party and ideas and of other factors, and the role of the allies’ diplomacy. Although many books and essays have been written about that period of time, the history of Greek Resistance is not complete yet, as they used to em-phasise the patriotic aspect, minimizing the importance of the Resistance in so-cial aspects, and the impact on the lives of everyday people. Moreover, most of the local history talks about the facts in the town of Kalavrita, and less is known about the Resistance in the rest of Achaia. However, there are still un-exploited sources, like interviews, diaries and photos. Their study will result in a more complete understanding of the local history and also in the preservation of these important memories of the people who were alive at that time. For this study, the quality methods of interviews and field study will be used. Qualitative analysis will be used to extract similarities and differences with other studies, so as to generate new evidence for the local history. This essay will contain 3 major parts. In the 1st part, we are going to discuss what was happening in Greece just before the beginning of the 2nd World War. More specifically, we will speak about the position of the Greek expedition from the day of capitulation (April 1943), till the organisation of the Resistance towards the German and Italian expeditions. Then we are going to find out what was going on in the same period in the regions of Kalavrita and Egialia (summer 1943) during the first years of the war. Moreover, we are go-ing to explore the everyday life of the Greek people, how the Greek society changed due to German and Italian army and the more or less important facts which helped in the organisation of the local Resistance, as these facts were presented in the local newspapers. In the first part, we are going to speak exten-sively about the birth of the Greek Resistance. We will also speak about the re-sisting organised teams, armed or not, in the local area and in the whole of Greece which were related to the Resistance. More specifically, we are going to speak about the people who took part in these teams, the way they were or-ganised and the relations they had with each other and similar European teams. Also, we are going to find out the relations with the political parties, so as to discover the political ideas of these teams. Moreover, we will talk about the le-gal and illegal mass media of the time, the way they were organised and their importance in the development of Resistance, through the newspapers and the testimonies of the people who lived of that time.

This thesis stakes out to reframe the debates surrounding a widely criticised chapter in the cultural history of modern Greece: the receptions of the classical past under the Dictatorship of 21 April (also known as 'the dictatorship of the Colonels') during the period 1967 to 1973. Informed by the hermeneutics of classical reception studies, I aim to provide a new perspective on the dictatorship, one that focuses on the contemporaneity of its discursive and visual renderings of antiquity, but which departs from a conceptual framework that is dictated by the master narrative of the Cold War (by the polarisations between Right and Left). The project converges on the ideological discourses, educational policies and the mass spectacles of the Colonels, each of which has been designated as fraught with 'ancestoritis' or 'pseudoclassicism' in the literature. In breaking away from value judgments and notions of misappropriation, it is my intention that the project functions as an exercise in a critical levelling with the dictatorship's multifold classicisms. Concomitantly, I propose that in order to better understand the politics of reception of the Aprilians, which have often seemed impenetrable, it is necessary to branch out into more cross-disciplinary methods of enquiry than those that have been employed in the past. My own approach borrows analytical tools from theories of counter-intelligence, cultural studies, political theory, educational sociology and performance studies. With this exploratory patchwork, the present study hopes to contribute toward opening up a field on which it is possible to examine the dictatorship on its own terms, while taking into account the composite articulations of antiquity with power, upward social mobility, economic development, and entertainment and leisure culture in 1960s Greece.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the concept of military loyalty in the armies of Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms, combining ancient evidence with the use of modern theories of organisational structures and combat motivation. It presents a basic contrast between Polis armies, which displayed high levels of loyalty, and Royal armies, which suffered from frequent cases of non-compliance and disloyalty, and argues that this contrast is a consequence of two fundamentally different ways of generating compliance and loyalty. Polis armies, it will be shown, predominantly exercised normative power, i.e. they relied on a combination of symbolic incentives and rewards, and a civic ideology of sacrifice for the common good; correspondingly, the soldiers, over whom this power was exercised, predominantly displayed moral involvement with their army, that is they complied voluntarily, out of a belief in the righteousness of their cause and in the alignment of their own benefit with that of their organisation. Royal armies, on the other hand, primarily utilised remunerative power, i.e. the allocation and manipulation of material rewards, which in turn was met by predominantly calculative involvement from the soldiers, i.e. a utilitarian assessment of risk and reward. These two compliance relationships - normative-moral and remunerative-calculative - lay at the heart of the different levels of loyalty we find in Polis and Royal armies. Nevertheless, at times this distinction broke down, revealing areas of overlap and a complex layering of motivations and types of power. The argument will be developed over the course of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides the theoretical framework. It explains Amitai Etzioni's Compliance Theory, detailing the three congruent compliance models organisations may use. These models are based on the type of power the organisational elites (generals and officers) apply, and the type of involvement present in the lower participants (soldiers): normative power and moral involvement, remunerative power and calculative involvement, and lastly, coercive power and alienative involvement. I will also stress the importance of the socio-political system over that of primary groups for the generation of compliance and loyalty. Chapter 2 presents the evidence for the different levels of loyalty in Polis and Royal armies, showing how citizen forces were robustly cohesive in the field, whereas the armies of the Successors and Hellenistic kings frequently succumbed to treachery, non-compliance, and disloyalty. I argue that one of the main reasons for this contrast lay in the powerful socio-political system that enveloped Polis armies, allowing them to develop a normative-moral compliance relationship. At the same time, however, it caused intense political infighting. Chapter 3 will explore one feature of the socio-political system: funerary practices. We shall analyse how armies and societies commemorated their soldiers, and witness the effects of civic ideology on the expressive content in soldiers' epitaphs. The evidence suggests strong normative elements for Polis armies, but does not allow us to draw firm conclusions regarding Royal armies. Chapter 4 will discuss the third type of congruent compliance relationship, i.e. coercive-alienative. I describe how neither army had access to, or need of, an effective coercive apparatus, as both had found other ways to create and maintain compliance. Chapter 5 will analyse the reward structures of Polis and Royal armies, and I will draw attention to the overall symbolic nature of rewards in citizen armies, and the largely material aspects of Royal army rewards, while pointing out ways in which Royal army elites strove to exert normative power through settling soldiers. This reflects the predominant types of power and involvement that characterised these organisations. Finally, a concluding section highlights the contrasts that were revealed in this thesis, but also discusses areas of convergence where the 'Polis army vs. Royal army' dichotomy broke down: creating and maintaining loyalty is a complex task, and military organisations employ more than one way to achieve it.

Master of Philosophy / The purpose of this study was to examine the adolescent novels that were awarded in Greece from 1985 till 2005 by four major organizations. The primary focus was to outline the main characteristics of the awarded adolescent novel that developed during the last 20 years in Greece and secondly, to examine the main characteristics of those awarded novels so as to understand the importance of this newly formed genre and the important role it can play in the development of the adolescent. In the first part of the study we outlined the development and the main characteristics of the adolescent novel while we focused on the different criteria that are used by the four major organizations that award and promote this literary genre in Greece. The second part of the study analyzes the various stages of the buildingsroman as it’s seen through the themes of the novels, while a major component of it deals with the way the Greek identity is portrayed and promoted as well as the model of the adolescent hero. The study suggested that adolescence is the period between childhood and adulthood, during which the adolescent changes both biologically and psychologically and those changes are directly related to his/her future personality. The study also indicates that the adolescent novel describes that period that coincides with the final stages of the maturation of the teenager. Therefore, the adolescent readers identify themselves with the heroes, their emotions, and the various problems with references to the surrounding environment and the every day life. It was also suggested that the adolescent reader can discover a role model in the novel’s heroes and heroines which could lead to a self evaluation and an evaluation of the others around him, while at the same time he/she can enjoy the entertainment and aesthetic values of the novel.

The following dissertation sets out to explore the evolution of a handful of civic institutions in the Hellenistic era. The first chapter focuses on the institution of the ephebeia and citizen-training. It centres on three documents: the gymnasiarchic law of Beroea (I. Beroeae 1 [ca. 167 BCE]), the oath of the agelaoi of Dreros (I. Cret. 1.9.1 [ca. 200 BCE]) and the honorary decree for Menas of Sestos. It argues first that citizen training programs of the Hellenistic period had higher rates of participation than the Athenian evidence seems to suggest, and second that three virtues of gymnastic training, euexia, eutaxia and philoponia, were also political and social virtues. The second chapter focuses on Zosimos of Priene (I. Priene 113 [ca. 100 BCE]) and the connection between his two most important reforms: instituting a system of duplicate record-keeping and funding rhetorical training for ephebes. It argues that the speeches of envoys and ambassadors (presbeutic rhetoric) constituted the dominant mode of Hellenistic rhetoric; within that genre, arguments based on history and on official records were considered the most effective. The third chapter focuses on Fabius' letter to Dyme (Syll.3 684 [144 BCE]). It argues that the destruction of Dyme's public archives was not part of a 'socialist' revolution, but rather was a means of rejecting changes to the citizen body forced on the city by Rome. The final chapter turns to the island of Kos. It explores Diokles' decree (IG XII.4.1 75 [ca. 200 BCE]) as an example of how the balance between self-interest and communal interests were negotiated.

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