This thesis treats of the use and meaning of the Greek concept of eleutheria (freedom) and the cognate term autonomia (autonomy) in the early Hellenistic Period (c.337-262 BC) with a specific focus on the role these concepts played in the creation and formalisation of a working relationship between city and king. It consists of six chapters divided equally into three parts with each part exploring one of the three major research questions of this thesis. Part One, Narratives, treats of the continuities and changes within the use and understanding of eleutheria and autonomia from the 5th to the 3rd centuries. Part Two, Analysis, focuses on the use in action of both terms and the role they played in structuring and defining the relationship between city and king. Part Three, Themes, explores the importance of commemoration and memorialisation within the early Hellenistic city, particularly the connection of eleutheria with democratic ideology and the afterlife of the Persian Wars. Underpinning each of these three sections is the argument that eleutheria played numerous, diverse roles within the relationship between city and king. In particular, emphasis is continually placed variously on its lack of definition, inherent ambiguity, and the malleability of its use in action. Chapter one opens with the discovery of eleutheria during the Persian Wars and traces its development in the 5th and early 4th centuries, arguing in particular for a increasing synonymity between eleutheria and autonomia. Chapter two provides a narrative focused on the use and understanding of eleutheria in the years 337-262. It emphasises continuity rather than change in the use of eleutheria and provides a foundation for the subsequent analytical and thematic chapters. Chapter three analyses eleutheria itself. It emphasises the inherent fluidity of the term and argues that it eschewed definition and was adaptable to and compatible with many forms of royal control. Chapter four looks at the role of eleutheria within the relationship between city and king. It elaborates a distinction between Primary and Secondary freedom (freedom as a right or freedom as a gift) and treats of eleutheria as a point of either unity or discord within a city‘s relationship with a king. Chapter five explores the connection between freedom and democracy and looks at how the past was used to create and enforce a democratic present, specifically in constructing both Alexander‘s nachleben as either a tyrant or liberator and the validity of Athenian democratic ideology in the 3rd century. Chapter six concludes the thesis by returning to the Persian Wars. It analyses the use of the Wars as a conceptual prototype for later struggles, both by kings and by cities. Exploring the theme of the lieu de mémoire, it also outlines the significance of sites like Corinth and Plataia for personifying the historical memory of eleutheria.

Over the past two millennia, dominant Western narratives of the Persian Wars have established a problematic East-West binary in which Greece is represented as a defender of democracy whose improbable victory over the Persians laid the foundation for the development of Western civilization and the Persians are represented as a power hungry, totalitarian “Other” determined to subjugate all whom they encounter. Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300, and its subsequent film adaptations, 300, and 300: Rise of an Empire (collectively referred to as the 300 franchise) have reinforced and contributed new problematic elements to the dominant Persian War narratives with contemporary visual representations of key historical figures, locations, and events as they pertain to the conflict. In this thesis I conduct a visual rhetorical analysis of the 300 franchise to identify and explain its problematic visual representational tactics for both the Greeks and Persians. Next, I conduct a visual rhetorical analysis of a non-Western Persian Wars counter-narrative, Ramin Abhari’s Xerxes Speaks. Throughout my analysis of Xerxes Speaks I identify instances in which the counter-narrative addresses 300’s problematic representations of the East as “Other.” I conclude by discussing the importance of critiquing visual representations in order to continue to disrupt dominant Western Persian War narratives and subsequently try to establish a currently marginalized Persian perspective on the Persian Wars.

O propósito desta dissertação é apresentar algumas idéias sobre o emprego das palavras relacionadas à visão no texto do Livro I das Histórias de Heródoto. O principal destaque é dado à relação entre ver e saber e as investigações de Heródoto. O segundo propósito, decorrente do primeiro, é verificar a importância dos oráculos no Livro I e buscar a relação (se existe) entre oráculos, sonhos, visões e a busca do conhecimento. / The purpose of this dissertation is to show some ideas about the use of words related to sight in the text of HerodotusHistories, Book I . The main focus is given to the existing relationship between seeing and knowing and Herodotus researches. The second purpose, built from the first one, is to evaluate the importance of oracles described in Book I and to seek the relationship of (if it exists) oracles, dreams, visions and the search for knowledge.

This dissertation considers Aeschylus’ Persae and portions of Herodotus’ Histories as attempts to shape memories of the Greco-Persian Wars by invocation of material evidence at very different moments in the fifth century BCE. Given the literary and archaeological nature of our surviving Greek evidence, this consideration is a necessary part of the larger project towards which I work: a history of Persian interactions with Greek sanctuaries during the Greco-Persian Wars. Greek archaeological evidence offers one set of comparative perspectives on these interactions. I attempt to place Aeschylus and Herodotus in dialogue with this evidence in chapters two and three. Herodotus, unlike Aeschylus, depicts respectful Achaemenid behavior at Greek sanctuaries during the Greco-Persian Wars. To contextualize this depiction, I examine earlier sources from the western Achaemenid Empire in chapter four. In so doing, I build on methodology demonstrated in the introductory chapter to consider a second set of comparative perspectives. Close reading of Herodotus in parallel to these sources provides a basis for fully examining types of behavior which have often been explained away in previous scholarship on the historian. Notably, Herodotus’ depiction, unlike our surviving earlier sources from the western Achaemenid Empire, often considers how such behavior relates to more violent aspects of conquest, and as such provides a contrast to these surviving earlier sources. I suggest that this contrast—Herodotus’ depiction of both sacrilege and respectful behavior—can be understood in his historical moment. And yet this suggestion is but a beginning.

O propósito desta dissertação é apresentar algumas idéias sobre o emprego das palavras relacionadas à visão no texto do Livro I das Histórias de Heródoto. O principal destaque é dado à relação entre ver e saber e as investigações de Heródoto. O segundo propósito, decorrente do primeiro, é verificar a importância dos oráculos no Livro I e buscar a relação (se existe) entre oráculos, sonhos, visões e a busca do conhecimento. / The purpose of this dissertation is to show some ideas about the use of words related to sight in the text of HerodotusHistories, Book I . The main focus is given to the existing relationship between seeing and knowing and Herodotus researches. The second purpose, built from the first one, is to evaluate the importance of oracles described in Book I and to seek the relationship of (if it exists) oracles, dreams, visions and the search for knowledge.

The name ‘Simonides’ has long been associated with the Persian Wars. More specifically, Simonides is famous in large part because of his commemoration of the Persian War dead in the form of epigrams. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of four of the most famous and most distinctively ‘Simonidean’ poems to the end of delineating their stylistic deviations from conventional epitaphic speech. This paper argues that the specific ways in which Simonides departs from the conventions of epigrammatic language serve to convey a distinctively democratic ethos. This ethos is clear in that Simonides’ epigrams privilege the mass efforts of the collective, and do not praise any particular individuals over another. Moreover, that these poems do not include the sort of identifying details that we would normally expect to find in epigrams anticipates a readership that is uniformly knowledgeable about the events of the Persian Wars. This represents another facet of the egalitarian ethos evident in this group of epigrams, as Simonides treats his readers as equally aware of the events of the Persian Wars. Thus, Simonides assumes a unified, panhellenic identity that characterizes both the subjects of his poems as well as his readers: they are all part of the same entity that defeated the Persians. Simultaneously, however, Simonides, or at the very least, the Simonidean name, achieves his own kleos as an individual poet through his distinctive commemorations of the Persian War dead. With these poems comes the emergence of a Simonidean poetic persona that renders the poet’s voice unique because of the way in which Simonides diverges from epigrammatic convention. The allotment of immortal kleos both to the anonymous, undifferentiated masses of Persian War dead and to the name ‘Simonides’ reflects two distinctive ideologies, the latter archaic and the former classical. My reading of these epigrams thus demonstrates how the commemoration of the Persian Wars is poised between two different eras and two different ideologies. / text

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished