Persuadé de l’intérêt pédagogique de la littéraire dans l’acquisition des fondamentaux des jeunes élèves grecs et désireux de rendre cette matière obligatoire, j’ai examiné trois auteurs de la fin du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle, I. Kondylakis, G. Xénopoulos et C. Théotokis d’après leurs portraits des bourgeois. Les modes de vie, la sphère professionnelle et familiale ainsi que le comportement des élites athéniennes, corfiotes et zantiotes, dont ils narrent les aventures, révèlent l’hétérogénéité de cette classe, ses prérogatives et ses valeurs. Il ressort que les bourgeois de cette époque soignaient leur apparence pour afficher leur opulence et leur puissance et que le mariage, qui était souvent un acte arrangé et intéressé, assurait leur reconnaissance sociale. Néanmoins, grands et petits bourgeois veillaient au contrôle des naissances pour préserver leur patrimoine et préparer l’avenir de leur descendance dans une période politiquement et économiquement instable. Malgré quelques distorsions et emprunts à des auteurs français, l’attachement de ces écrivains à leur pays et leur volonté d’éveiller les consciences en dénonçant les maux qui le rongent sont perceptibles. Tout en offrant un nouvel éclairage sur cette époque, leurs œuvres invitent à reconsidérer la place de la littéraire patrimoniale dans les programmes scolaires. Quelques extraits regroupés thématiquement, commentés et assortis d’exercices variés démontrent que ces textes sont accessibles aux jeunes élèves et fort enrichissants à condition que l’enseignant maîtrise et apprécie son corpus et qu’il s’adapte à sa classe. / Persuaded of the pedagogical interest of literature in the acquisition of the basics by Greek pupils and with the aim of making this subject compulsory, I have examined three authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I. Kondylakis, G. Xenopoulos and C. Theotokis and their representations of members of the middle classes. Ways of life, both in professional and family spheres as well as the behaviour of the elites of Athens, Corfu and Zante whose adventures they recite, reveal the varied nature of this class, its prerogatives and its values. It is thus possible to see that the middle classes of this period paid attention to their appearance as a way of demonstrating their opulence and their power and that marriage, which was often arranged and motivated by self-interest ensured social recognition. Nevertheless, both upper and lower middle classes paid attention to birth control to protect their assets and to prepare the future of their children during a period that was both politically and economically unstable. Despite some distortions and borrowings from French authors, the attachment of these writers to their country and their wish to prick the consciousness by criticising the evils that damage it are noticeable. While offering a new light on this period, their works invite us to reconsider the place of cultural literature in school curricula. Some extracts, grouped together based on themes, commented and accompanied by various exercises show that these texts are accessible to young pupils and are very enriching on condition that the teacher is familiar with and understands the body of work and adapts it to his or her class.

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.

Can we consider Plutarch's Parallel Lives a historical work? Can we read them as a unitary series? These are the initial questions that this thesis poses and that are investigated in the Introduction, five main Chapters, and the Conclusion. In the Introduction, a preliminary status quaestionis about ancient biography is presented before clarifying the methodology adopted for reading the Parallel Lives as a unitary historical work and the reasons for choosing the Lives of Lycurgus, Lysander, and Agesilaus as the case studies to examine in detail. Chapter 1 discusses the historiographical principles that emerge from the De sera numinis vindicta: for Plutarch history is primarily the history of individuals and cities, based on the interpretation of historical events. Chapter 2 tries to verify the hypothesis that the Parallel Lives correspond to the historical project delineated in the De sera numinis vindicta. This Chapter, moreover, reassesses the literary form of the Parallel Lives by employing the concepts of 'open macrotext' and 'cross-complementarity' between the Lives. Chapter 3 analyses the Life of Lycurgus, focusing on the formation of the cultural identity and the political model of Sparta. In the Life of Lycurgus, Plutarch indicates already the intrinsic weaknesses of Sparta and the probable causes of Spartan decline in the fourth century BC. Chapter 4 is devoted to the Life of Lysander, where Plutarch narrates how after the Peloponnesian War Sparta established its hegemony over the Greeks and, simultaneously, began its rapid moral and political decline into decadence. Plutarch also seems to suggest that in this historical period of extraordinary changes not only Sparta and Lysander but all the Greeks were guilty of distorting moral values. Chapter 5 concentrates on Agesilaus, who could have led Sparta and the Greeks to great success against the Persians, but, instead, had to save Sparta from complete destruction after the Battle of Leuctra. The Conclusion recapitulates the main points of the thesis and proposes possible arguments for future research on Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.

This thesis investigates the concept of leadership in four comedies of Aristophanes. In the first chapter (Lysistrata) I focus on the relationship of the female leadership with religious rituals and medical pathology, and I show that the power of women lies in their important biological role and their ability to conceive and (re)produce life in the context of marriage. In chapter two (Knights) I examine the operation of leadership through the alimentary and sacrificial codes of the play. I argue that the Sausage-seller gradually manifests himself as the sacrificial cook Agorakritos who sacrifices Demos. In this way he puts an end to the politics of savage, raw consumption as they were employed by Paphlagon (and, occasionally, by Demos himself), and saves the day by inaugurating a new era of political practice. In chapter three (Birds) I focus on the political competition between the former leader of the Birds, Tereus, and the newcomer Peisetairos. I argue that Peisetairos captivates his audience through the abuse of rhetoric and sophistry, and gradually adopts more brutal ways, by perverting the ritual of hospitality, committing cannibalism, and becoming sexually aggressive. In this respect, Peisetairos is assimilated to the tragic Tereus of the Sophoclean tragedy, but finally emerges as a more successful version of both the comic and the tragic Tereus. In the fourth and last chapter (Ecclesiazusae) I discuss the women’s disruption and overturn of the normal social order by focusing on the practice of cross-dressing and on love-magic rituals: the exchange of costume between the two sexes, as well as the control of magic practices by the women over men, empower women and, by contrast, disempower and ridicule men, who are finally reduced to a state of impotence, infertility and almost death.

This thesis examines the reception of Pindar in Hellenistic poetry. More specifically it examines texts of three major Hellenistic poets: Theocritus of Syracuse, Callimachus of Cyrene and Posidippus of Pella. The texts discussed have been selected on the basis of two principles: (i) genre and (ii) subject matter. They include texts that inscribe themselves in the tradition of encomiastic, and more specifically, Pindaric poetry either through the generic discourse which they partake in or through the employment of myths that Pindar had used in his own odes. Throughout the thesis it is argued that the connections with Pindaric passages are carried out on the basis of ‘allusions’ which are picked up by the readers. This term is employed to describe one of the ways in which intertextuality functions. Following the model of Conte and Barchiesi, the discussion insists on the distinction between allusions to specific Pindaric passages and allusions to epinician generic motifs that can best be illustrated through Pindaric passages. The aim of the discussion for each case of textual correspondence suggested is to describe the means whereby this connection is suggested to the reader and to propose a ‘meaning’ for it. In this sense, equal emphasis is given to the detailed examination of all texts that partake in the intertextual connection suggested, i.e. to Pindaric and Hellenistic alike.

The aim of this project is to account for the widespread reception of the epics of Homer and Virgil by American poets of the twentieth century. Since 1914, an unprecedented number of new poems interpreting the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid have appeared in the United States. The vast majority of these modern versions are short, combining epic and lyric impulses in a dialectical form of genre that is shaped, I propose, by two cultural movements of the twentieth century: Modernism, and American humanism. Modernist poetics created a focus on the fragmentary and imagistic aspects of Homer and Virgil; and humanist philosophy sparked a unique trend of undergraduate literature survey courses in American colleges and universities, in which for the first time, in the mid-twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of students were exposed to the epics in translation, and with minimal historical contextualisation, prompting a clear opportunity for personal appropriation on a broad scale. These main matrices for the reception of epic in the United States in the twentieth century are set out in the introduction and first chapter of this thesis. In the five remaining chapters, I have identified secondary threads of historical influence, scrutinised alongside poems that developed in that context, including the rise of Freudian and related psychologies; the experience of modern warfare; American national politics; first- and second-wave feminism; and anxiety surrounding poetic belatedness. Although modern American versions of epic have been recognised in recent scholarship on the reception of Classics in twentieth-century poetry in English, no comprehensive account of the extent of the phenomenon has yet been attempted. The foundation of my arguments is a catalogue of almost 400 poems referring to Homer and Virgil, written by over 175 different American poets from 1914 to the present. Using a comparative methodology (after T. Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns, 1993), and models of reception from German and English reception theory (including C. Martindale, Redeeming the Text, 1993), the thesis contributes to the areas of classical reception studies and American literary history, and provides a starting point for considering future steps in the evolution of the epic genre.

This thesis takes as its starting point current views on the relationship between man and god in Archaic and Classical Greek literature, according to which mortality and immortality are primarily temporal concepts and, therefore, mutually exclusive. This thesis aims to show that this mutual exclusivity between mortality and immortality is emphasised only in certain poetic genres, while others, namely those centred on extraordinary achievements or exceptional moments in the life of a mortal, can reduce the temporal notion of immortality and emphasise instead the happiness, success, and undisturbed existence that characterise divine life. Here, the paradox of momentary immortality emerges as something attainable to mortals in the poetic representation of certain occasions. The chapters of this thesis pursue such notions of momentary immortality in the wedding ceremony, as presented through wedding songs, in celebrations for athletic victory, as presented through the epinician, and at certain stages of the tragic plot. In the chapter on the wedding song, the discussion focuses on explicit comparisons between the beauty of bride and bridegroom and that of heroes or gods, and between their happiness and divine bliss. The chapter on the epinician analyses the parallelism between the achievement of victory and the exploits of mythical heroes, and argues for a parallelism between the victory celebration and immortalisation. Finally, the chapter on tragedy examines how characters are perceived as godlike because of their beauty, success, or power, and discusses how these perceptions are exploited by the tragedians for certain effects. By examining features of a rhetoric of praise, this thesis is not concerned with the beliefs or expectations of the author, the recipient of praise, or the surrounding milieu. It rather intends to elucidate how moments conceived of as extraordinary are communicated in poetry.

Clement of Alexandria, active in the second half of the second century AD, is one of the first Christian authors to explain and defend the nascent religion in the terms of Greek philosophy and in relation to Greek paideia. His major work, the Stromateis, is a lengthy commentary on the true gnosis of the Christian faith, with no apparent overarching structure or organisational principle, replete with quotations from biblical, Jewish, Greek 'gnostic' and Christian works of all genres. This thesis seeks to read this complex and erudite text in conversation with what has been termed the ‘Second Sophistic’, the efflorescence of elite Greek literature under the Roman empire. We will examine the the text as a performance of authorial persona, competing in the agonistic marketplace of Greek paideia. Clement presents himself as a philosophical teacher in a diadoche from the apostles, arrogating to himself a kind of apostolic authority which appeals to both philosophical notions of intellectual credibility and Christian notions of the authentic handing down of tradition. We will also examine how the work engages key thematic concerns of the period, particularly discourses of intellectual eclecticism and ethnicity, challenging both Greek and Roman forms of hegemony to create a space for Christian identity. Lastly, this thesis will critically examine the Stromateis' intertextual relationship with the Homeric epics; the Iliad and the Odyssey are used as a testing ground for Christian self-positioning in relation to Greek culture as a whole. As we trace this variable relationship, we will also see the cross-fertilisation of reading strategies between Homer and the bible; these developing complex allegorical methods not only presage the rise of Neoplatonism, but also lay the foundations for changes in cultural authority which accompany the Christianisaton of the Roman empire in the centuries after Clement.

La notion de « bile », exprimée par le substantif χολή, représente l’un des plus importants et des plus célèbres concepts de la médecine hippocratique, inséparable dans la pensée moderne de la fameuse théorie humorale. Au premier abord, les choses semblent donc claires. Cependant, lorsqu’on se plonge dans la lecture des écrits hippocratiques, la notion de cholè s’avère moins simple et évidente. Notre analyse des textes hippocratiques montre, en effet, que la cholè diffère d’un traité à l’autre et que chaque auteur hippocratique élabore sa propre notion de cholè. Nous nous sommes posé alors la question de l’origine de ce concept médical, ainsi que de l’origine de son cadre, qui est la théorie humorale. Notre quête des origines nous a amenée jusqu’aux idées homérique de chólos et aristophanique de cholè, qui se présentent toutes les deux comme fondamentalement différentes de l’idée médicale de cholè, unissant en elles-mêmes les notions de substance et d’état d’esprit. C’est justement cet écart entre les concepts non-médicaux et les concepts médicaux qui nous a intéressée au plus haut point, car il permet de voir comment les médecins hippocratiques élaborent leurs idées et leur discours. L’essentiel de notre travail consiste, donc, en un examen approfondi des procédés par lesquels les hippocratiques s’approprient des idées non-médicales : ce qu’ils retranchent, ce qu’ils rajoutent et ce qu’ils remanient. Nous espérons ainsi mettre en évidence les chemins par lesquels passe la pensée médicale ancienne, dans son processus d’émancipation de la culture traditionnelle, mais aussi des autres « sciences » de l’époque, telle que la philosophie. / The notion of « gall », expressed by the noun χολή, is one of the most important as well as the most celebrated concepts of the hippocratic medicine, inseparable for the modern mind from the humoral theory. At first sight then, the idea of « gall » seems fairly obvious. However, reading hippocratic treatises in detail, one realizes that the notion of cholè turns out to be far more complex and intricate than expected. Our analysis of the most relevant hippocratic texts shows indeed that the concept of cholè varies according to the texts involved, as every author tends to develop his own concept of cholè. We tried to find out whether the complex nature of the medical concept known as cholè could be elucidated by a survey of its origins, and a survey of the origins of the humoral system as a whole. Our search for the origins of cholè has led us to the Homeric concept of chólos and to the Aristophanic concept of cholè. The prerequisites of both notions conspicuously differ from the medical concept of cholè, because they unite the substance with a state of mind. This discrepancy between medical and non-medical concepts was of utmost importance for us, since it helped to understand how hippocratic authors developed their ideas and their discourse. The main asset of our work consists, therefore, in an in-depth analysis of the ways in which hippocratic authors take over some non-medical ideas to frame concepts of their own : what are the components they cut out, add or modify. Our goal is to show how ancient medical thought proceeds, in its endeavour to emancipate itself from the tradition as well as from the other contemporary “sciences”, as philosophy.