Abstract not available.

This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part is a compiled Syriac text and English translation of a fourth-century document from Edessa known as the History of John, which appears in the appendix of this project. This original Syriac narrative traces the acts of the apostle John the son of Zebedee in the city of Ephesus. I have combined all extant Syriac witnesses and have updated the old English translation from the nineteenth century. The second part—which is the main body of this project—consists of the first detailed analysis of the text since its publication in 1871. I argue that the narrative originated in fourth-century Edessa and is a product of a Nicene Christian community in a struggle with other religious traditions in the city. Using Bruce Lincoln’s theories of myth, I argue that the History of John should be understood as an ideological narrative that attempted to establish the primacy and authority of Nicene Christianity as the only true religion at Edessa. In particular, the narrative targets groups like Manichaeans and the cult of Atargatis in establishing the dominance of Nicene Christianity over these groups and their traditions. The authors of the History of John sanctified early traditions about the apostle and invented a new history for Edessa, situating themselves and the Nicene community at the center. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / June 22, 2018. / Christian Apocrypha, Edessa, Fourth Century, History of John, Syriac / Includes bibliographical references. / Nicole Kelley, Professor Directing Dissertation; Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, University Representative; David Levenson, Committee Member; Matthew Goff, Committee Member.

<p> The Grand Cameo for France is the largest cameo surviving from antiquity. Scholars have debated who is portrayed on the stone and what its scene means for centuries, often, although not always, limiting their interpretations to this narrow area and typically only discussing other causes in passing. This pattern can and should be broken, allowing the stone to be what all objects truly are: windows to the lives that that objects have lived, just as all physical things are; evidence of an experience part of the world went though, whose meanings have and continue to be part of a wider network of object-meanings. The underlying purpose of this thesis is to use the Grand Cameo to prove this point. It does so by asking why the Grand Cameo came into being using Aristotle's four-part fragmented "Why" to widen this meaning broadly enough to expand the scope of what cause means from the vernacular use of the term to include material, formal, efficient and final causes. This allows for a sufficiently satisfactory exploration of many elements of the ancient world. </p><p> This thesis comprises an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The first chapter discusses the material sardonyx itself, its possible origin points and how it would have been seen and used in its time in both the India and the west. It discusses the development of trade routes through the Indian ocean and Hellenistic and Egyptian ties to the east which were later taken over by Rome, as well as the Ptolemies, who they replaced. The second chapter discusses the relationship between Rome and Egypt, how their imagery and materials were usurped, and how this connects to the cameo, a medium that became Roman. Chapter three discusses Rome's absorption and reuse of Hellenistic kingdoms, their people and their culture to see how these influenced images of Roman Rulers in the transition from the Republic to the Julio-Claudians. The fourth chapter details the nature of Julio-Claudian power in Rome, the roles the family took over, and how they made themselves essential to the state, especially in how this relates to imagery from the Grand Cameo. Finally, the fifth chapter allows for the exploration of final cause by using a process of elimination based on living number of family members to establish a coherent narrative for the stone's scene, allowing an interpretation of message and intent. It seems most likely to be justifying the handing over of power to Emperor Claudius as intended by the heavens regardless of the plans of his relatives. </p><p> A roughly chronological understanding of this stone's role from being plucked from the ground to the imperial court is presented by assessing available material. The expansive nature of the question "Why?" allows for an explanation of the stone both broader and more satisfactory than the intentions of one emperor alone, however interesting. The Grand Cameo intersects with the highly international and interactive dynamics of the ancient world as well as specific elements therein which earlier interpretations do not allow for room to explore. </p><p>

The milestones, curbstones, and stone roadbeds that appear as discontinuous fragments in the Transjordanian landscape are identified as the remains of constructed Roman roads. The major Roman highway in Transjordan, built by the emperor Trajan in 111-114 CE and known today as the via Traiana nova ("Trajan's new road"), has many gaps in its material remains, particularly through the Madaba Plains. This lack of remains marking the route is an obstacle to research because the route of the via Traiana nova is thought to provide clues to the routes of pre-Roman highways. This research assumption, formulated as a hypothesis that constructed Roman roads followed the course of the natural, indigenous routes, conflicts with many of the Roman remains that appear as bridges, tunnels, and rock-cut steps that significantly changed the landscape. The via Traiana nova's route through Transjordan provides a unique opportunity to test the relationship between the routes of Roman and indigenous roads because its construction can be dated precisely, thereby providing evidence for dating the preceding, pre-Roman road. Modeling the via Traiana nova through Transjordan, using a new approach that includes GIS technology to synthesize the disparate archaeological and suggest that the via Traiana nova, when it was new, incorporated both indigenous Nabataean highways and new Roman sections that provided direct, paved roads through the Wadi al-Mujib and the Wadi al-Hasa. These new, Roman shortcuts eventually effected changes in the demographic and economic systems of Transjordan in Byzantine times.

The task of this dissertation is to answer the question, "Of all the parts of the best whole life, where, according to Plato, does pleasure fit in?" While Plato believes that pleasure is neither the good nor a good, he nonetheless believes that pleasure does have an important place in the good life. In the dissertation, I show what this "important place" is. For Plato, although pleasure is not a good it has value inasmuch as it both reflects an agent's commitment to virtue and reinforces it. I develop this evaluation of pleasure, and amplify it in two connected ways. First, I show how this evaluation of pleasure is related to Plato's conception of the human good, or "final end," which for Plato is to "become like God." I argue that "becoming like God" is for Plato an especially illuminating way of understanding the virtuous life, which both explains why pleasure cannot be a good and shows more clearly how pleasure is related to virtuous activity: a fundamental part of virtue is the proper harmonization of pleasure with reason. Hence pleasure is a part of the life of virtue, because pleasure is a part of virtuous activity itself. Second, I locate Plato's evaluation of pleasure within his moral psychology. Plato's ethical evaluation of pleasure seeks to make pleasure something transformed by virtue. However, in order for pleasure so to be transformed by virtue, it must be in harmony and agreement with virtue. But in Plato's moral psychology the capacities in virtue of which the soul experiences pleasure are not able to agree with virtue, but must be merely controlled or contained by it. Consequently, this tension in Plato's moral psychology places a severe limit on Plato's attempts to provide a more satisfying account of the place of pleasure in the good life.

<p> This dissertation examines the relationship between the institutions of Roman provincial administration and the economy of the Roman imperial diaspora in the Eastern Mediterranean in the second and first centuries BC. Focusing on the landed estates that many members of the imperial diaspora acquired in the territories of Greek cities, I argue that contestation over the allocation of resources in the provinces among Roman governing classes, the members of the imperial diaspora, and the elites of Greek cities decisively shaped the contours of what we would late recognize as the institutions of provincial administration. </p><p> Setting the Roman Empire within a new comparative framework, Chapter One suggests that ancient cities around the Mediterranean, including Rome, often used their imperial power to help their own citizens infringe upon the exclusionary property regimes of other cities, which insisted that&mdash;unless they decided otherwise&mdash;only their own citizens could acquire this land. Chapter Two combines semantic history with archaeological case-studies to argue that Roman ownership of agricultural resources in the territories of provincial cities was wide-spread and in fact often underpinned the movement of products for which the members of the diaspora are more commonly known. Chapter Three uses epigraphic documentation and Cicero's writings to examine how provincial governors responded to the economic concerns that Romans brought before them, maintaining that law became the most prominent response because it was able to perform a separation between the empire as state and the potentially problematic actions by members of the diaspora, while at the same time not abandoning these Romans' concerns. Chapter Four investigates the contestation over the terms on which members of the diaspora were able to acquire land in Greek cities and vindicates the contributions that Roman jurists and the elites of Greek cities made to the institutional architecture of provincial administration and the political economy it enshrined.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4823. Adviser: Eric Robinson. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 22, 2008).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-337). Also available online.

This work explores how writers of the late Roman Republic use the concept of nature rhetorically, in order to talk about and either reinforce or challenge social inequality. Comparisons between humans and animals receive special attention, since writers of that time often equate social status with natural status by assimilating certain classes of person to certain classes of animal. It is the aim of this study to clarify the ideology which supported the conflation of natural and social hierarchy, by explicating the role that nature was thought to play in creating and maintaining the inequality both between man and man, and between man and animal. In investigating this issue, this study also addresses the question of whether the Romans took a teleological view of human society, as they did of nature, and ultimately concludes that they did not. It proposes, rather, that the conceptual mechanism which naturalized social inequality, and which drove the assimilation of human to animal, was the belief that there is one, natural measure of worth and status for all creatures: utility to the human community. Chapter 1 identifies some pertinent beliefs, commonly found in Republican texts, about nature, animals, humans, and the relationship of all three to each other. Chapter 2 considers whether these beliefs have a philosophical provenance, by discussing Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery and Stoic views on the institution of slavery, and their possible relation to the ideas expressed in Roman sources. Chapter 3 returns to Republican texts, including popular oratory, and examines comparisons between domestic animals and humans in the treatment of slavery and wage-earning. Chapter 4 examines comparisons between wild animals and humans in discussions about violence and primitive peoples, and in political invective. / Classics

This dissertation reads the Pastoral Epistles alongside imperial propaganda, monumental inscriptions, and philosophical writings of the Roman period to determine how claims to piety (Greek: εὐσέβεια, Latin: pietas) advanced socio-political aims and reinforced cultural values and ideological assumptions among its audiences. Coins celebrating the pietas of the imperial households of Trajan and Hadrian, the honorary inscription of Salutaris in Ephesus, and the writings of Philo and Plutarch evidence that appeals to piety functioned rhetorically to naturalize hierarchies of power and social orders, recognize the honorable status of citizens, signal expertise in knowledge about the divine, and delineate insiders from outsiders. Moreover, the prevalence of appeals to piety indicates the virtue’s broad cultural currency and prestige, which was traded upon for legitimating authority. This dissertation argues that the author of the Pastorals strategically deploys piety in his attempt to negotiate an imperial situation marked by prejudicial perceptions of Christians as a foreign and seditious superstitio, to reinforce (gendered) social values, to intervene in Christian debates over the status and authority of benefactors in the ekklēsia, to build confidence in and solidarity around the legitimacy of his vision of the ideal ekklēsia, and to denigrate the beliefs and practices of rival teachers.