This dissertation examines the cultural constructs that are the basic elements of the comedies of Plautus. To achieve this goal the study has been divided into four chapters: Language, Customs, Places and 'Gentes'. Chapter One, Language, analyzes how the Latin language influences the way in which the characters express the various aspects of their world. Chapter Two, Customs, considers the expression of the affairs of daily life that are of common interest to the characters on stage. This chapter evaluates a cross-section of the activities that the characters describe, such as their reference to public offices and civic duties, the details of their religious practices, their dealings with wealth and money, as well as their references to travel, education and slave duties. Chapter Three, Places, looks at the wide variety of places that construct the world of Plautus' characters. This chapter is divided into three parts: the city sites, the dramatic settings, and the distant countries and cities of the world. Chapter Four, 'Gentes', examines the manner in which Plautus ascribes his characters and the people of the world into particular groups and what variation and importance there are in these attributes and specifications. The comedies of Plautus are filled with descriptions of cultural details that are evidence for some of the ways in which Latin-speaking peoples of the Middle Republican period conceptualized the world. The cultural resonance of the Latin language influences how the characters express important elements of their stage world. This influence is especially acute in the moral and familial terms that the characters use, but it filters through as well into the political world of the comic stage and other customs that are a part of the characters' interactions. Furthermore, the places that the characters of the comic stage describe maintain certain consistent associations which allows for an easy identification from play to play as well as an easy transition from the stage to the places with which the audience was familiar. Finally, Plautus draws upon a fairly narrow band of ethnic characterizations which he applies to the gentes who populate his plays. Many of these attributes follow the themes of comedy itself. Otherwise, the designation of origin is an important attribute that is tied to a character's social status and birthright as a free citizen. Plautus' characters are citizens from all over the Mediterranean world and this fact plays an important role in the development of the plots of the plays and in most of their resolutions.

This thesis comprises an assessment of the introductory poem of a book of six, known as the "first elegy by Maximianus". The authorship of the poem is uncertain, and a principal objective of the study is to shed light on this puzzle. A review of the poem's quality and its historical context leads to the thesis that it could have been authored as a school exercise by one or a group of students of Latin literature writing in the 6th century A.D. The influence of earlier writers on the composition of the poem has been examined by performing a thorough search through classical Latin literature for phrases that are similar to those found in this "first elegy by Maximianus". Such a study would have been prohibitively time-consuming until recently, when the introduction of high-speed computers has made the exercise feasible. In the present work, the PHI CD-ROM collection of the complete Republican and early Imperial Latin literature was used as the primary reference for phrase-matching. A methodology has been developed and described for classifying the probability of earlier influence on phrases in the poem. A complete translation of the poem is followed by a commentary on the influence of previous writings on phrases in the first 220 lines of the poem that have been found in the course of the computer search to be similar to phrases used by previous authors. It is shown that 62 phrases and half-lines are likely to have been influenced by the Latin literature of the period from 250 B.C. to 200 A.D. The evidence is consistent with the suggestion in this thesis that the elegy could have been a school exercise written by an immature student or group of students.

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<p>This dissertation is a study of the use of Homeric diction in the epigrams of Posidippus of Pella. I place the poetry in the context of the aesthetic and scholarly interests of Ptolemaic Alexandria and I provide a stylistic and intertextual analysis of the use of Homer in these 3^rd century BCE epigrams. In the subgenres of amatory and sepulchral epigrams, the repetition of Homeric diction in combination with particular <i> topoi</i> and themes in the poems of Posidippus and other epigrammatists becomes a literary trope. In other cases, Posidippus incorporates more complex thematic allusion to Homer and, by doing so, displays awareness of the self-reflexive and self-annotating experience of reading poetry. The repetition of Homeric diction within sections of the Milan papyrus reinforces arguments for cohesive structure within the &lambda;&iota;&thetas;&iota;&kappa;[special characters omitted] and o&iota;&omega;&nu;o&sigma;&kappa;o&pi;&iota;&kappa;[special characters omitted] sections. What this study of Homeric diction reveals is that Posidippus&rsquo; choice of <i>topoi</i> and themes are distinguished by the way he incorporates Homeric references and thematic allusion. Other poets share his <i> topoi</i> and his themes and sometimes even his Homeric diction, but these three elements rarely match the complexity in Posidippus. The combinations are what differentiate Posidippus&rsquo; stylistic tendences from other Hellenistic epigrammatists. </p>

Current scholarship in Virgil's Aeneid includes the search for subtexts and subthemes and also investigation into father/son relationships. While there has been examination of maturation motifs in Greek myth and legend, there has been no serious exploration of initiatory themes in the Aeneid with regard to Ascanius. The focus of this dissertation is a study of the initiatory pattern itself, its manifestations in ancient and Classical Greek literature and culture, Republican Roman practices which reflect this motif, and then an analysis of these influences in the portrayal of the growth and development of Ascanius. In addition, there is a brief study of Euryalus, Pallas, and Camilla as they undergo the initiatory process and reasons for their failures. / In the first three chapters I explore the origins of rites of passage, associated with fertility and marriage ceremonies, and their evolution into initiations into adulthood, studying especially the Greek and Roman cultures, for whom initiations into adulthood were part of everyday life, expected and assumed. / In Chapter Four I establish the initiatory process from the childhood to the adulthood of Ascanius. The first of three steps, separation of the child from his mother, occurs when Ascanius and the Aeneadae flee from the burning Troy; in the second stage, the margin or instructional period, Ascanius undergoes a journey, learns the lore, traditions, and religion of his people, endures dangers, and learns the skills of warfare through the hunt; finally, Ascanius achieves adult status in the eyes of the heroic/warrior community by his leadership in council and the slaying of an enemy. / The similarities between Ascanius and Euryalus, Pallas, and Camilla are considered in Chapter Five with an eye toward the important differences which cause all three of the latter to fail, and die, in their attempts to achieve adult status. Their failure, not without considerable literary and historical precedent, serves as a foil to the success of Ascanius as he joins the adult world and the heroic community. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1343. / Major Professor: W. W. deGrummond. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Ethics of Leadership| Organization and Decision-Making in Caesar's "Bellum Gallicum"