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

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<p> Carl Bear This study considers the ways in which the complex debates about appropriate Christian funeral practices in late fourth-century Antioch indicated some of the ways in which Christians' ritual practices embodied their theological beliefs and enacted their religious identities. Sources used to study Christian funerals include the homilies of John Chrysostom, the orations of Libanius, the church order known as <i>Apostolic Constitutions </i>, the historiographic and hagiographic work of Theodoret, and archaeological remains. The analysis of the sources utilizes methods of liturgical history that focus on the perspectives and experiences of ordinary worshipers, and attends to the biases and limitations inherent in the historical record. It also places Christian funeral practices in the context of larger questions surrounding religious identity and ritual in Antioch, especially within the Christian cult of the saints and eucharistic liturgies.</p><p> Ordinary Christians and church leaders in fourth-century Antioch had different ideas about how to Christianize their funerals. Criticism from church authorities that Christians' funeral practices were inconsistent with Christian faith in the resurrection were one-sided. Instead, it seems that ordinary Christians had their own ideas about appropriate ways to care for their dead ritually. Especially in the case of mourning and other contested practices, Christians were giving expression to their human emotions of bereavement, loss, and concern for the dead in culturally prescribed ways. Church leaders, such as John Chrysostom., however, desired Christian funeral practices that exhibited fewer cultural influences and that distinctly demonstrated Christian belief in the resurrection in all aspects of the ritual.</p><p>

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.

<p>A paleodemographic analysis was conducted using skeletal data from J?mon period sites in Japan. 15P5 ratios were produced as proxy birth rate values for sites throughout the J?mon period. Previous studies based on numbers of residential sites indicated a substantial population increase in the Kant? and Ch?bu regions in central Japan, climaxing during the Middle J?mon period, followed by an equally dramatic population decrease, somewhat resembling changes that occurred during a Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT). The J?mon are viewed as a relatively sedentary, non-agricultural group, and provided an opportunity to attempt to separate the factors of sedentism and agriculture as they relate to the NDT. Skeletal data showed fairly stable trends in birth rates, instead of the expected increase and decrease in values. This discrepancy calls into question the validity of previous studies. The stable population levels suggest that sedentism alone was not the primary driver of the NDT.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the ancient system of rhetoric and its influence on Virgil as seen in his use of the simile in the Aeneid. The first two chapters deal with the rhetorical nature of Virgil's verse, the nature of rhetoric itself, the position of literature in the study of rhetoric, the influence which this study had on subsequent literature and the various types and definitions of figures and tropes of which the simile is a very important member. Among the great wealth of literature written on these topics, Quintilian's scholarly work the Institutio Oratoria is by far the most significant. It is exhaustive in scope and comprehensive in nature. The origin and purpose of the Virgilian simile are both seen in the examination of the simile in Homer and Lucretius. This examination is in the opening pages of the third chapter which constitutes the main part of the study of the simile In the Aeneid. Much discussion has been devoted to the nature, sources and the classification of the sources of the Virgilian simile. The study of the simile in Virgil has been confined to the study of the similes in the Aeneid, since it is the main work of our author that can be regarded as an epic without any qualifications and reservations. In considering the nature of the Virgilian simile special attention has been paid to the simple phrase simile and the extended simile whether it is static or dynamic. This examination shows how the amplification of detail or lack of it, and static and dynamic elements in the various similes are somehow or other connected with Virgil's personal life and philosophy of life, experience, and education. The manner and extent of Virgil's similes constitute the concluding chapter. The method adopted in their investigation has made it unnecessary to embark on a lengthy discussion. This chapter opens with two tables which speak clearly for themselves. It will be noticed that the latter of the two tables analyses the data of the former. It will be found that Virgil uses almost the same number of similes as Homer and Apollonius Rhodius, and less than Ovid whose writings are obsessed with an immoderate profusion of similes; it will also be observed that most of Virgil's similes are extended and dynamic rather than static and come from the animal world, and that the influence of his rhetorical training has not led him (as in the case of other epic writers in Roman literature) to deviate widely from the norm which Homer has set in the use of the simile. These are the conclusions to which this investigation leads. / Arts, Faculty of / Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of / Graduate

There are at least six positions at which Gothic infinitives may be attached: (1) VI$\sp{\prime\prime},$ the external argument (VI Specifier; see Berard 1993a-b for this and the following); (2) VI$\sp\prime,$ the VI Complement node; (3) A$\sp\prime,$ the AP Complement node; (4) N$\sp\prime,$ the NP Complement node; (5) N$\sb0,$ the node that cojoins to NP; and (6) VI, the head verb node. Gothic permits articularization of subject and, perhaps, object infinitives only as a very exceptional response to unusual length or complexity of expression in situations where the infinitival clause has functional Theme status. VI$\sp\prime$ adjuncts with final semantics regularly take the form (V$\sb{\rm inf}$) when motivated by matrix verbs with "motion" semantics. Verbs with non-"motion" semantics regularly take $\lbrack du + {\rm V\sb{inf}}\rbrack$ final adjuncts. The primary motive for exceptions to this rule is the apparent need to avoid (accusative) Default Case Marking of the subject of the infinitive (see Berard 1993c), in which situation final adjuncts are formulated with ei + optative. Almost all AP complement infinitives, the vast majority of VI complement infinitives, and a considerable majority of subject infinitives and infinitives associated with NPs are bare. Except in the case of a periphrastic future, all subject control predicates have bare infinitives. For embedded Ss which are external arguments, there is very often a controller which is the logical subject of the embedded infinitive and which is marked dative. This dative controller is located in the matrix rather than being in the embedded S and attracted by the matrix into the dative case. This construction thus appears to be an example of raising to dative object. An infinitive may be controlled by a covert NP. Strong evidence for a wider usage of the voice-inspecific synthetic infinitive in a passive-voice sense is found in passive complements of predicate APs. Nominative morphology in the NP of which the AP is predicated, combined with expression of the Agent in a PP, does not permit an active-voice interpretation.