Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 330-340). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This four-part dissertation considers Minoan frescoes in their own right for a first time, with reference to unpublished paintings and nearly fifty new restorations, with a view to providing a new basis for historical reconstruction drawn from that source. Earliest developments begin with Neolithic architectural muse of mud plasters, the first painted plasters occuring in EM II settlements and simple decorative schemes in the First Palaces (1900-1700 B.C.). The sudden rise of pictorial naturalism in MM IIIA is explained by native cultural developments of the First Palace Period, not by foreign influences or "eideticism" which is rejected altogether. A review of the motival repertory leads to considerations of six main "cycles of ideas" whence the painters derived their themes. The most important, confined to Knossos palace, depicts a major festival of grand processions and athletic activities before the chief Minoan goddess, and it illuminates the palatial architechural design. But five different systems of mural decoration characterise Minoan architecture as a whole, with regional and perhaps autonomous variations at Cycadic sites. Technical considerations confirm "buon fresco" as the normal painting technique and distinguish Knossian town house and palace murals in construction and purpose. Similar distinctions in compositional design are also described. A review of eleven "schools" of Knossian painters and of regional artists precedes a detailed reconstruction of the dates of the frescoes on stratigraphical, stylistic and comparative evidence. Sir Arthur Evans's fresco dating should generally be lowered by one Minoan phase. Minoan pictorial painting ceases with the palace destruction at Knossos, c.1375 B.C. Major differences appear between pre- and post-LM IB frescoes, tentatively explained on the evidence of Aegean and Egyption pictorial representations by the arrival at Knossos of a Mycenaean military dynasty, c.1450 B.C. Minoan wall painting finally disappeared in the LM IIIB period.

<p> This dissertation focuses on religious processions in Athens in the late 6^th and 5^th centuries BCE, when the evidence for processions and festivals first becomes abundant enough to study fruitfully. The built sacred landscape of Athens was beginning to take shape, and Athenian identity was being reshaped under the influence of the Persian Wars, Athens&rsquo; imperial ambitions, and the new popularity of Theseus. Processions traced defined routes in this landscape, forming physical links between center and periphery, displaying numerous symbols which possessed special significance for Athenians and which were part of Athenians&rsquo; cultural memory and collective identity. </p><p> Processions were intense, subjective sensory experiences, full of symbols with deep religious and cultural significance. They were also public performances, opportunities for participants to show off both their piety and their wealth, to perform their membership in the Athenian community, and perhaps to gain social capital or prominence. Not least, processions were movements through a landscape embedded with myths, history, cultural associations, and the connotations of daily lived experience. Previous studies of processions have focused on one of these three aspects&mdash;symbols, participants, or route&mdash;without fully taking account of the others, failing to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework or analysis of these ritual movements. All of these elements&mdash;symbols, participants, and route&mdash;were deliberately chosen, designed to impart particular experiences and meanings to participants and spectators. This dissertation will thus ask why particular symbols, participants, and routes were chosen and explore as many of their potential meanings as possible, considering the myths, cultural associations, and areas of daily life where these elements appeared. </p><p> The repetition of processions is vital to understanding their cultural resonance. Spectators could see the processions multiple times over the course of their lives, and draw new conclusions or interpretations as they gained life experience, learned new stories or myths, and as the collective discourse around Athenian religion created new meanings&mdash;for example, in the aftermath of the Persian Wars. This repetition also reinforced the meanings that these symbols already possessed for Athenians. </p><p> Fran&ccedil;ois de Polignac&rsquo;s bipolar <i>polis</i> theory, which inspired many aspects of this dissertation, characterized processions as ritual &lsquo;links&rsquo; in the landscape connecting center and periphery. This is essentially correct, but in Classical Athens, there were multiple peripheries and a whole calendar full of processions and sacred travel to festivals, the performance of which constructed and maintained the idea of Athens as a spatially and culturally unified territory. Therefore I propose instead the multipolar <i>polis</i> model, which provides a richer and more comprehensive view of the web of connections which linked Athens to her peripheries. These connections included the state-run festivals put on at the major extraurban sanctuaries; the monumental temples and other facilities constructed with state money; the fortifications constructed at or near the sanctuaries, protecting the strategic interests of the state; and the mythical, historical, and ideological significance of these sacred places and their deities. Whether participants traveled to these sanctuaries in a formal procession or via less-organized sacred travel, their movement through the landscape reinforced their associations with it and with the destination sanctuary. </p><p> Processions were complex rituals with many functions. They displayed culturally-significant symbols to participants and spectators, reinforcing their meaning. They provided a stage for participants to perform their status and wealth. They traced a defined route through the landscape of Attica, linking center and periphery, taking participants past a series of meaningful places, buildings, and art. All of these elements&mdash;symbols, people, and places&mdash;drew their meanings from shared myths, rituals, history, and the experience of daily life. The repetition of processions reinforced these meanings in the minds of Athenians, and allowed them to change as Athenian identity changed (and vice versa). It is these threads of common cultural memory, myths and associations that an Athenian could depend on his or her fellow Athenians to remember and understand, and which Athenians wove together in their writings, speeches, plays, and rituals to form their common identity.</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.

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The question asked by this thesis is twofold: first, what is the relevance and purpose of the generic prominence of the motif of παρθενία in the Greek novels of the first centuries A.D., and secondly, what is the broader significance of female virginity in ancient Greek literature. In order to answer this double question, the first part of the thesis examines in detail a number of literary texts from Early Greek Literature in which the theme of παρθενία is a central concern. Thus, a close reading of Homer’s Odyssey reveals the crucial role played by παρθενία in mapping imaginary spaces such as Scheria. A close reading of Sappho sheds light on the sense of continuation that exists between a girl’s premarital stage and her wedding and marriage, which will prompt a definition of Greek marriage as “the symbolic preservation of παρθενία.” In contrast, by focusing on unsuccessful, distorted weddings and marriages, Greek tragedy nonetheless upholds the necessity of a smooth, unbroken transition between virginity and the wedded state in order that a successful marriage be possible. The chapter on Aeschylus’ Suppliants focuses on the incomprehensibility of the concept of παρθενία from a non-Greek point of view, that of the pre-Greek daughters of Danaus and their suitors. The second half of the thesis moves forward five centuries and examines the generic relevance of παρθενία in the Greek novels. Most of these novels (including fragments) are interested in this theme, which appears to be associated with the double affiliation of the novels to fictional literature (generically in verse) and referential literature (generically in prose). Moreover, these novels stress the continuity between the premarital stage and marriage, as the discordant accounts of Lycaenion and the main narrator at the end of Longus’ novel about the effect of the wedding on the παρθένος imply. The final chapters devoted to Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus highlight the complex connections between the virginity of the female protagonist, the descriptions of nature or created objects, the interest in the text as artifact and the auctorial distancing.

The question asked by this thesis is twofold: first, what is the relevance and purpose of the generic prominence of the motif of παρθενία in the Greek novels of the first centuries A.D., and secondly, what is the broader significance of female virginity in ancient Greek literature. In order to answer this double question, the first part of the thesis examines in detail a number of literary texts from Early Greek Literature in which the theme of παρθενία is a central concern. Thus, a close reading of Homer’s Odyssey reveals the crucial role played by παρθενία in mapping imaginary spaces such as Scheria. A close reading of Sappho sheds light on the sense of continuation that exists between a girl’s premarital stage and her wedding and marriage, which will prompt a definition of Greek marriage as “the symbolic preservation of παρθενία.” In contrast, by focusing on unsuccessful, distorted weddings and marriages, Greek tragedy nonetheless upholds the necessity of a smooth, unbroken transition between virginity and the wedded state in order that a successful marriage be possible. The chapter on Aeschylus’ Suppliants focuses on the incomprehensibility of the concept of παρθενία from a non-Greek point of view, that of the pre-Greek daughters of Danaus and their suitors. The second half of the thesis moves forward five centuries and examines the generic relevance of παρθενία in the Greek novels. Most of these novels (including fragments) are interested in this theme, which appears to be associated with the double affiliation of the novels to fictional literature (generically in verse) and referential literature (generically in prose). Moreover, these novels stress the continuity between the premarital stage and marriage, as the discordant accounts of Lycaenion and the main narrator at the end of Longus’ novel about the effect of the wedding on the παρθένος imply. The final chapters devoted to Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus highlight the complex connections between the virginity of the female protagonist, the descriptions of nature or created objects, the interest in the text as artifact and the auctorial distancing.

Aristotle argues in Chapter 2 of Book I of the Politics that the polis exists by nature. I argue that this notion of a natural polis, what I call the Naturalness Thesis, is fundamentally important to Aristotle's political philosophy. The Naturalness Thesis is discussed in only one place by Aristotle, and it is found alongside two further claims—the claim that humans are the most political animal and the claim that the polis is naturally prior to the individual. Together these three ideas constitute Aristotle's political naturalism. I begin by examining the relationship between the Naturalness Thesis and the other two claims. I argue that the Naturalness Thesis is the central idea in Aristotle's political naturalism. I then proceed to defend the argument Aristotle gives in support of the Naturalness Thesis from David Keyt's critique of it. Keyt argues that Aristotle's argument is unsuccessful and that, furthermore, Aristotle himself has reason to believe the polis exists by art rather than nature. Because of this, Keyt believes that there is a blunder in Aristotle's political naturalism. I argue that it is Keyt, and not Aristotle, who blunders. Keyt makes the mistake of interpreting Aristotle's account of the rise of the polis out of the village and household as an account of three distinct social arrangements. As I see it, Aristotle is instead suggesting that village, household, and polis are three stages in the development (or growth) of one thing, namely the polis. That is, households and villages are essentially the same (they contain the same form) as the polis, though they are underdeveloped. Finally, I expound on the Naturalness Thesis by interpreting Aristotle's account of the rise of the natural polis from a number of perspectives. First, the account is sociobiological: Aristotle's polis is literally a naturally living thing. Second, the account is historical: it alludes to other accounts of prehistory and reveals Aristotle's ascription to the theory of a perpetual rise and fall of civilization. Third, the account is ethical: it seeks to break down the distinction between nomos (=law) and phusis (=nature) to ground politics in nature. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-15 19:10:03.993

Descriptions of the edges of the Roman world were shaped by social preoccupations and identity issues. Living in a newly unified Roman world, the popularizing geographers of the early Empire (Strabo, Mela, Pliny) used descriptions of fictional and remote people such as the utopian Hyperboreans, the cannibal Scythians and the monstrous Dog-Heads to present customs and behaviors that were utterly un-Roman. These rhetorical descriptions helped define Roman identity through antithetical exempla. In contrast to this, the fifth and sixth centuries, the anonymous authors of legends surrounding the figure of Saint Christopher witnessed a crisis of Roman identity fostered by a new 'barbarian' presence within the Empire and by the expansion of the Christian (i.e. Roman) faith outside of the Empire. Their response was to tear down the ginary barrier between the Roman world and fictional, remote people and to proclaim the forceful Christianization of distant lands.