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This thesis is an examination of the dialogues of Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Chapter I opens with a brief introduction to the Cyr. - its genre, date, epilogue and place in modern scholarship. The second half of the chapter is devoted to an overall survey of the work's dialogues. The dialogues are listed and divided into seven main categories; various formal features of the dialogues - their length, number of speakers, presence of an audience, dramatic background etc. - are noted. The second chapter deals with the "Socratic" or didactic dialogues of the Cyr. These conversations are first compared to Xenophon's actual Socratic dialogues, particularly those of the Memorabilia, and are shown to have several of the same characteristics: a leading didactic figure, discussion of ethical questions, the use of analogies and a series of brief questions and replies etc. A detailed commentary on the "Socratic" dialogues of the Cyr. follows; some of these dialogues are seen to be livelier and more dialectical than Xenophon's genuine Socratic conversations and his hero Cyrus is not always assigned the role of teacher. Symposium dialogues are the subject of the third chapter. These conversations are shown to have several features or themes in common, such as a blend of serious and light conversation, a discussion of poverty and wealth, a love interest and rivalry among the guests. The symposia of the Cyr. are compared to earlier literary symposia, including those of Plato and Xenophon, and some of the more Persian features of these parties are pointed out. Chapter IV deals with the novelle or colourful tales of the Cyr. - the stories of Croesus, Panthea, Gobryas and Gadatas. The characters and plots of these stories are found to have much in common with the novelle of Ctesias and Herodotus. Nonetheless, it is argued in a detailed commentary on these dialogues that Xenophon displays considerable skill and originality in the telling of these tales. The fifth chapter is a brief commentary on the remaining categories of dialogues: short or anecdotal conversations, negotiation, planning and information dialogues. These dialogues are compared to similar conversations in other works by Xenophon. Finally, there are three appendices. The first questions whether Cyrus is portrayed as an ideal hero even after the conquest of Babylon, and the second discusses the problem of Persian sources in the Cyr. The third appendix is a list of the speeches of the Cyr.

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.

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 rise of Late Antiquity as a separate discipline, with its focus on social history, has meant that the vast homiletic corpus of John Chrysostom has received renewed attention as a source for the wider cultural and historical context within which his sermons were preached. Recent studies have demonstrated the exciting potential his sermons have to shed light on aspects of daily life, popular attitudes and practices of lay piety. In short, Chrysostom's sermons have been recognised as a valuable source for the study of 'popular Christianity' and the extent of Christianization at the end of the fourth century. This thesis, however, will question the validity of some recent conclusions drawn from Chrysostom's sermons regarding the state of popular Christianity. A narrative has been developed in which Chrysostom is often seen as at odds with the congregations to whom he preached. On this view, the Christianity of élites such as Chrysostom had made little inroads into popular thought beyond the fairly superficial, and congregations were still living with older, more culturally traditional views about religious beliefs which preachers were doing their utmost to overcome. It is the argument of this thesis that such a portrayal is based on a misreading of Chrysostom's sermons, and which fails to explain satisfactorily the apparent popularity that Chrysostom enjoyed as a preacher. What this thesis sets out to do, therefore, is to reassess how we read Chrysostom's sermons, with a particular focus on the harsh condemnatory language which permeated his preaching, and on which the image of the contrary congregation is largely based. To do this, this thesis sets out to recover a neglected portrayal of Chrysostom as a pastor and preaching as a pastoral and liturgical activity, through an exploration of four different but overlapping aspects of the socio-historical context within which his preaching was set. A consideration of the scholastic, therapeutic, prophetic and liturgical nature of his preaching will shed light on the pastoral relationship between the preacher and his congregation and will, significantly, provide a backdrop against which his condemnatory language can be explained and understood. It will become clear that his use of condemnatory language says more about how he understood his role as preacher than about the extent of Christianization in late-antique society. Through focussing on the issues of the social composition of the congregation and the level of commitment to (Chrysostom's) Christianity, it will be argued that sermon texts are in their nature resistant to being used as sources for this kind of social history. Despite this, however, glimpses will also emerge of a very different picture of late-antique Christianity, in which Chrysostom's congregation are rather more willing to listen and learn from their preacher than is often assumed.

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This thesis is concerned with the pseudo-Hesiodic Aspis, also known as the Scutum or Shield of Herakles (Heracles). It is divided into two halves: the Introduction, consisting of four chapters, is followed by detailed line-by-line commentary on a portion of the Greek text. Chapter I surveys the evidence for the poem's origins and dating before moving on to its scholarly reception since Wolf. It then argues that, for a proper understanding of the Aspis, the methodologies of oral poetics must be balanced with an awareness of its responses to fixed texts (in particular the Iliad). Chapter II examines the author as a poet within the oral tradition, focussing on: narrative style and structuring; type-scenes; similes; poetic ethos; the poem's position relative to the Hesiodic corpus; the use of formular language; and the growth of the poem in the author's hands. These problems are most fruitfully approached by taking account of the interplay of tradition on the one hand and of allusion to specific texts on the other. Wider points about the advanced stages of the oral tradition also emerge; in particular, from an analysis of narrative inconsistencies in the Aspis it is suggested that writing played a role in the poem's composition. Chapter III positions the poet within the literary tradition: his interactions with other songs and tales are sometimes sophisticated engagements of a kind more often detected in Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The presentation of the protagonist of the Aspis evinces the poet's skilful handling of myth, here manipulated for political purposes. Chapter III concludes with a survey of the poem's reception in early art and in literature up to Byzantine times. In Chapter IV the central section of the poem, the description of Herakles' shield (vv. 139-320), is examined in detail, both in relation to the Homeric Shield of Achilles and within the context of the Aspis. The second half of the thesis comprises a critical edition of and lemmatic commentary on vv. 139-237.

D.Litt. et Phil.

This thesis raises and explores questions concerning the popularity of the Homeric poems in ancient Greece. It asks why the Iliad and Odyssey held such continuing appeal among the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical age. Cultural products such as poetry cannot be separated from the sociopolitical conditions in which and for which they were originally composed and received. Working on the basis that the extent of Homer’s appeal was inspired and sustained by the peculiar and determining historical circumstances, I set out to explore the relation of the social, political and ethical conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece to those portrayed in the Homeric poems. The Greeks, at the time during which Homer was composing his poems, had begun to establish a new form of social organisation: the polis. By examining historical, literary and philosophical texts from the Archaic and Classical age, I explore the manner in which Greek society attempted to reorganise and reconstitute itself in a different way, developing original modes of social and political activity which the new needs and goals of their new social reality demanded. I then turn to examine Homer’s treatment of and response to this social context, and explore the various ways in which Homer was able to reinterpret and reinvent the inherited stories of adventure and warfare in order to compose poetry that not only looks back to the highly centralised and bureaucratic society of the Mycenaean world, but also looks forward, insistently so, to the urban reality of the present. I argue that Homer’s conflation of a remembered mythical age with the contemporary conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece aroused in his audiences a new perception and understanding of human existence in the altered sociopolitical conditions of the polis and, in so doing, ultimately contributed to the development of new ideas on the manner in which the Greeks could best live together in their new social world.

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