Thesis advisor: David Gill / The idea that mankind's history is one of regress rather than of progress has been seen as central to the classical outlook on life. Bury and others have gone so far as to state that the idea of Progress in its modern sense could not have even occurred to the Greeks. This is perhaps too extreme, but it does reflect an important point: if regression over time was not the only idea for the Greeks, it was at least the dominant one. No story in classical literature reflects this idea more clearly than the Myth of the Ages. The earliest extant version of the story comes in Hesiod's Works and Days (c. 700 B.C.), after which it appears dozens of times throughout ancient literature. The myth in its standard form tells that the history of mankind takes the form of four ages, each represented by a metal: the first is a happy and virtuous Golden Age; the next is a less perfect Silver Age, followed by a warlike (and even worse) Bronze Age; and the last, the most impious and wretched of all, is the current Iron Age. The early Hesiodic version uses this framework merely as a means to show man that he has fallen from divine favor and is left with a life of hardship that he must deal with through honest work and reverence for the gods. As other authors pick up the myth, alluding to it in genres as diverse as philosophy, theology, humor, and panegyric, the story changes in several ways. Each author of course uses it for his own purposes and alters it accordingly. In addition the Myth of the Ages undergoes an overall change: after Hesiod authors such as Aratus, Ovid, Seneca, and Maximus use the myth as a means to pair material progress with moral regression. These authors do not merely tell a story; they present a model, a simple and pre-civilized way of living that they see as vastly superior to modern “advanced” society. These authors look at the results of technological progress and see only negatives; for them the ship and the sword have brought nothing but greed and violence. They present a simple and virtuous Golden Age that lacks the fruits of civilization and a wretched and bloodied Iron Age that is flooded by them. The implication is clear: mankind has fallen from a life of primeval bliss at its own hands as a direct result of technological and societal advances. This becomes the dominant message of the Myth of the Ages, so much so that by the time of the Romans the myth had become little more than a literary cliché for criticizing civilization. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Classical Studies. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Decipherment is the tool used to uncover several types of hand signs that played vital roles in the creation of hidden messages in classic artwork. A 3,100 B.C. bas-relief of The 'Kaph' Telescope, formerly named The Narmer Palette, and Michaelangelo Buonarrotte's Battle of Cascina of 1506 were two key works of art that show certain similarities even though separated by 4,500 years. It is evident that Renaissance humanists provided artists with certain knowledge of the ancients. Results of incorporating a number of minor works of art showed that the competence of ancient Egyptians, Cretans and Australian Aboriginals, to name a few, as astronomers, was underestimated. Some deciphered Indus seals attested to a global understanding of the universe, with Gemini and the star of Thuban at the center of their attention. Certain forms of secrecy had to be undertaken for various reasons throughout the millennia. Three examples are: (1) In Italy, to keep controversial and truthful teachings discreet and hidden, artists embedded them in artwork long before the plight of Galileo Galilei and his discoveries. (2) Among Jewish Kabbalists, a well-known design was obscured in The Arnolfini Wedding painting for fear it would be lost due to persecution. (3) Michaelangelo Buonarrotte indicated several meanings through the hands of The Statue of Moses. They were overlooked by several societies, including the gesticulating culture of Italy, because they oppressed the value of signed languages. Spatial decipherment may testify to a need for the restoration of a spatial writing system for expanded linguistic accessibility. A 21st century model community for sign language residents and employees will benefit visual learners, particularly visual artists and non-phonetic decipherers, to better uncover, understand and perhaps use ancient hand forms to restore ancient knowledge. Moreover, the National Association of Teaching English (NATE) has recently endorsed the addition of two skills, viewing and visual representing, to the traditional list of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Students will master these two new skills far more effectively when they are exposed to such a signing community.

Historians have commonly associated the standardization and simplification of Ch'in characters with bureaucratic expansion. The Ch'in empire's need for communicative efficiency has motivated character transformation from more pictographic, symbolic figures to more abstract, logographic patterns. This hypothesis is evaluated through (1) a critical analysis of bureaucracy and its impact on communication, and (2) a detailed examination of the formal properties of Ch'in characters and their effects on perception. The present thesis performs these tasks by taking a three-fold approach. First, I discuss the merits and demerits of bureaucracy with respect to its functions. Then, I elaborate upon aestheticism and writing materials as possible alternatives to communication for character transformation. Finally, I examine formal properties of Ch'in characters with regard to their communicative efficiencies.

Erchempert, a ninth-century Lombard monk attached to the monastery of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy, wrote the History of the Lombards of Benevento around 889, a history intended to contrast with Paul the Deacon's earlier History of the Lombards by including the Carolingian conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774 and by showing Lombard failings rather than achievements through narrating the decline of Lombard rulership in the South, which had flourished for three centuries in the Lombard duchy (later principality) of Benevento. Three known aspects of Erchempert himself--as Lombard, monk, and chronicler--connect him to his society and provide a basis for examining his History. As a Lombard, his primary concern is loss of unified rule at Benevento following civil war and splitting of the principality into three more or less autonomous rulerships at Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, a division which weakens the Lombards' ability to resist the competing claims of Carolingian and Byzantine rulers and the attacks of Islamic invaders. As a monk, Erchempert is present during events which occur following Monte Cassino's destruction by Muslims in 883, when the monks are exiled to Teano and Capua and the abbey suffers loss of its property. As a chronicler and known grammaticus, Erchempert is an evident participant in the widespread system of monastic education; he later applies elements of this education to the writing of his History, which falls within the Christian chronicle tradition. A translation of Erchempert's History from Latin into English is included in this study.

The subject of this dissertation is the awareness of linguistic diversity in the Hebrew Bible—that is, the recognition evident in certain biblical texts that the world’s languages differ from one another. Given the frequent role of language in conceptions of identity, the biblical authors’ reflections on language are important to examine. Of the biblical texts that explicitly address the subject of linguistic diversity, some are specific, as in references to particular languages (e.g., “Aramaic”), while others refer to linguistic multiplicity generally, as in the Tower of Babel episode (Gen 11:1–9). Linguistic difference is also indicated implicitly, as when the speech of Laban in Gen 29–31 exhibits Aramaic-like features that emphasize his foreignness. Building on previous studies of limited scope, my approach is to collect and analyse the evidence for awareness of linguistic diversity in the biblical books comprehensively. Drawing on concepts from sociolinguistics, including style-switching, code-switching, and language ideology, I categorize such evidence and explain its significance with respect to its literary and historical contexts. I thus contribute to wider debates on the sociolinguistics of ancient Hebrew, the development of the concept of the “holy language” in Judaism, and the topic of linguistic diversity in the broader ancient Near East. I find that the notion of linguistic diversity is used in the Hebrew Bible to set up, and also to challenge, boundaries of various kinds, be they territorial, as in the Shibboleth test (Judg 12:5–6), ethnic, as with the Judaean-Ashdodite children (Neh 13:23–4), or theological, as in Jeremiah’s Aramaic oracle against idols (Jer 10:11). My analysis shows that references to linguistic diversity are concentrated in texts of the Achaemenid Persian period and later, reflecting changes in the sociolinguistic circumstances of Judaeans. Yet in all periods Israel and Judah’s encounters with the empires Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia influenced attitudes towards linguistic diversity, whether this influence be manifested in fear (Jer 5:15) or ridicule (Esth 8:9). Overall, linguistic difference is not the primary means by which the biblical authors distinguish Israel from the nations, nor do they attribute a unique religious function to their own language. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

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Abstract In this dissertation I draw on the Nessana papyri corpus and relevant comparable material (including papyri from Petra and Aphrodito and inscriptions from the region) to argue that ethnic, linguistic and imperial identities were not significant for the self-definition of the residents of Nessana in particular, and Palaestina Tertia in general, in the sixth- to the seventh- centuries AD. In contrast, this dissertation argues that economic considerations and local identities played an important role in people's perceptions of themselves and in the delineations of different social groups. The first chapter, is intended to provide a basis for further discussion by setting out the known networks of class and economics. The second chapter begins the examination of ethnicity, which is continued in the third chapter; but the second chapter concentrates on external definitions applied to the people of Nessana, and in particular on the difference between the attitude of the Byzantine Empire to the village and the attitude of the Umayyad Empire. Building on this ground, the third chapter tackles the issue of ethnicity to determine if it was at all operative in Nessana, determining that though ethnonyms were applied in various cases, these served more as markers of outsiders and were situational. Chapter four moves to the question of language use and linguistic identity, examining the linguistic divisions within the papyri. An examination of the evidence for Arabic interference within the Greek leads to the conclusion that Arabic was the vernacular, and that Greek was used both before and after the Muslim conquest for its connotations of power and imperial rule rather than as a marker of self identity. The conclusions reached in this chapter reprise the discussion of imperial identity and the questions of centralization first raised in chapter two. This return to previous threads continues in chapter five, which deals with the ties between Nessana and neighboring communities and local identities. The chapter concludes that the local village identity was indeed very strong and possibly the most relevant and frequently used form of self-identification. Overall, it appears that many of the categories we use in the modern world are not relevant in Nessana, and that in those cases where they are used, the usage implies something slightly different. / Dissertation

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