The god Seth was depicted in both zoomorphic and bimorphic form. In zoomorphic form he was depicted as a canine-like animal with a down curved muzzle, upright squared-off ears and an erect tail, whilst in bimorphic form he was portrayed as a human male with the head of the Seth animal. Although much has been written on the mythology of Seth and identification of the Seth animal, no in-depth research has been undertaken regarding the variations that occur in his images over the dynastic period of Egyptian history. This thesis looks at the variations in the images of Seth and how he was represented in temples, tombs, written texts and in personal adornment. A comparison of the variations of his component parts leads to a comprehensive understanding of the different forms employed and allows the questions to be answered of whether there was ever a fully defined standard representation or if each image was an individual interpretation of a loosely defined theoretical form. Additionally, the study of the use of the zoomorphic and bimorphic Seth images within the Nile Valley and Western Desert oases provides the further understanding of the form of the proscription against Seth.

This thesis details the development of fora in Rome and Pompeii in order that our understanding of these spaces as 'centres' accounts for their changing relationship with the city, between the third century B.C. and the second century A.D. It is a diachronic study of spatial practice and the representation of space, based on archaeological evidence for infrastructures of movement and textual evidence for the articulation of spatial concepts. Having asserted the importance of movement in shaping the perception of space in antiquity, this thesis details the changes to the physical disposition, the management of access, and the representation of fora. It concludes that while the centrality of the Forum Romanum was related to its potential for through movement, access was increasingly restricted in the late-first century B.C. This changing disposition of public space informed the development of the imperial fora, which in turn informed the development of fora outside of the city of Rome. Fora changed from shortcuts to obstacles in the city; from spaces of movement through to spaces of movement to. This represents a fundamental redefinition of their relationship with the city of which they were a part, and of their 'centrality' in both practice and representation.

The research presented in this thesis applies Thomas Luckmann’s theory of invisible religion to three aspects of ancient Egyptian culture (festivals, household and personal items, and communication with the dead and with gods). The intention is firstly to address the four key issues that have arisen as a result of previous research into personal religion in ancient Egypt, secondly to determine whether ordinary ancient Egyptians possessed individual religiosity, and thirdly to establish whether the three aspects of ancient Egyptian culture considered can be viewed as examples of invisible religion. With regards to the four key issues, this research concludes: there was a link between individual religiosity and state religion; the intimacy of ordinary ancient Egyptians’ emotions relating to individual religiosity varied; individual religiosity was not a phenomenon of the lower classes; individual religiosity was not an innovation of the New Kingdom. In addition, it is shown that ordinary ancient Egyptians did possess individual religiosity but that each person would have created, maintained, engaged with, and internalised the universe of meaning (as described by Luckmann) to a different extent. Finally, this research concludes that the three aspects of ancient Egyptian culture considered can be viewed as examples of invisible religion.

The late New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period (1215-650 BC) have been, and continue to be, interpreted as periods of decline and dramatic change within ancient Egyptian history. This thesis challenges such views through an analysis of those interpretations and the evidence used to support them. In so doing I have evaluated if these periods do reflect a decline from previous periods and if the changes were as all-encompassing as previously suggested. In order to carry out this evaluation three key processes have been examined through detailed analysis of related datasets. These will establish the complexity of the periods, and the potential for nuance within specific datasets which is masked by the current descriptions. Reference has also been made to cross-cultural comparisons and ethno-archaeological theories as many of these processes have been identified in other societies and discussed outside Egyptology. This has led to some clarity regarding the complexity of the periods, recognising the extensive level of continuity and possible explanations for the changes visible, and thus an alternative to the 'simplistic' interpretation of decline and decay.

This thesis investigates the metics, or resident aliens, in democratic Athens and how they affected ideas of identity, with a particular focus on the fourth century BC. It looks at definitions of the metics and how the restrictions and obligations which marked their status operated; how these affected their lives and their image, in their own eyes and those of the Athenians; how the Athenians erected and maintained a boundary of status and identity between themselves and the metics, in theory and in practice; and how individuals who crossed this boundary could present themselves and be characterised, especially in the public context of the lawcourts. The argument is that the metics served as a contradiction of and challenge to Athenian ideas about who they were and what made them different from others. This challenge was met with responses which demonstrate the flexibility of identity in Athens, and its capacity for variety, reinvention and contradiction.

While the growing body of literature on the relationship between feminist theory, classical myth, and classical scholarship has contributed to an understanding of general scholarly trends, there has not been a sustained examination of the relationship between feminist scholarship and classical receptions. Furthermore, the field of classical reception studies focuses almost exclusively on male authors and widely ignores female voices. This thesis addresses these lacunae through detailed discussions of the Ovidian receptions of four women writers active between 1950 and the present: Sylvia Plath, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Josephine Balmer, and Saviana Stănescu. The thesis tracks the ‘difference made’ by feminist scholarship on their varied receptions, and the ways in which recurrent concerns in their engagements prefigure, echo, or explicitly draw upon feminist theory and feminist Ovidian scholarship. This thesis poses the argument that women’s classical receptions offer a critical tool to advance feminist classical scholars’ attempts to ‘reappropriate the text’, by reclaiming female narrative authority from the male poet and interpellating the ‘resisting reader’. This diverse, yet characteristically feminine, Ovidian tradition challenges existing reception traditions based upon male practitioners alone, and reawakens the political and aesthetic critique at the heart of Ovid’s poetry.

This study examines the development of artillery used in and around the Latin East during the period of the crusades. It begins with an examination of the broader historiography of medieval artillery, an overview of the spread of swing-beam siege engines (trebuchets) across Europe and the Levant in the Early Middle Ages, and the mechanical physics that govern such machines. From these foundations, the development and significance of the engines are investigated. Incorporating as much textual and archaeological evidence as possible, the use of artillery by Frankish and Muslim forces is examined on a case-by-case basis. With an appreciation of the power of these machines, the influence of artillery on the design of twelfth- and thirteenth-century-fortifications is analysed. Both Frankish and Muslim forces were familiar with the traction trebuchet by the end of the eleventh century. While these engines remained relatively light throughout the period of the crusades, the counterweight trebuchet appears to have been introduced by the end of the twelfth century. Initially rather primitive and little stronger than the traction variety, these engines developed fairly quickly. The appearance of new vocabulary for identifying these engines in the early thirteenth century indicates their increasing strength and physical evidence from the middle of the century confirms that they had become much more powerful by the start of the Mamluk period. Although counterweight trebuchets appear to have grown steadily throughout the thirteenth century, these had a relatively limited impact on the design of most fortifications. Trebuchets, large and small, were an important part of Frankish and Muslim siege arsenals in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but even the largest were not effective breaching engines by the time the Franks were pushed out of the Holy Land.

My study examines a category of data--the logistics of classical Greek warfare--that has not been used before for ancient Greek economic history. This examination provides much new evidence for Greek economies in the fifth and fourth centuries. Close readings of contemporary literary evidence--especially Thucydides--shows that classical Greek amphibious and naval expeditions military forces always acquired their food from markets provided to them by cities and traders. A systematic comparative analysis confirms this conclusion by demonstrating that the economic and politico-social structures of classical Greek states meant that the market was the only institutional mechanism available to them to feed their navies and amphibious forces--in contrast to other European and near Eastern pre-industrial states which could use mechanisms such as requisitioning and taxation-in-kind to acquire provisions to supply their military forces. I then produce estimates of the amounts of food purchased by classical Greek military forces in the markets provided to them by cities and traders by combining data on standard daily rations (from contemporary literary and epigraphical sources) and caloric requirements (established from an analysis of classical Greek skeletal material and WHO/FAO research data) with the relatively precise figures we have in contemporary historians for army and navy sizes and lengths of campaigns. These calculations provide many more figures for trade in grain and other foods in the classical period than we currently possess, and figures that are mostly much greater in scale. The analysis of the provisioning of Greek overseas warfare provides, then--for the first time--evidence for a regular and large-scale seaborne trade of grain in the classical Greek Mediterranean; it shows a world where the development of marketing structures and networks of merchants was sufficiently strong to permit tens of thousands of men to get their food through markets for years at a time. Demonstrating the existence of a regular and substantial overseas trade in grain in the fifth and fourth centuries is crucially important for a wider understanding of classical Greek economies because the existence of such a trade made possible increased urbanization and specialization of labor, and itself could only have been made possible by sizeable reductions in transactions costs for maritime commerce: it therefore provides evidence for the foundations of economic growth in classical Greece.

This dissertation applies the principles of fiscal dissertation to the study of the Roman Republic. I argue that the creation of a profitable empire allowed the ruling elite to end their reliance on domestic taxation to fund state activity, and that Rome's untaxed citizens were effectively disenfranchised as a result. They therefore lacked the bargaining power to prevent aristocrats from enriching themselves at the expense of the state. The result was a set of leading individuals whose resources could overwhelm those of communal, public institutions. This wealth allowed them to control the distribution of economic resources within Roman society, reinforcing hierarchies and forcing less fortunate citizens to tie themselves to patronage networks instead of state institutions. This state, unable to command the respect of its constituents, was eventually picked off in the competition between great individuals.

This thesis is a study of the influence of cosmology on Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, an epic hexameter poem written in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. I examine ancient Greek ideas of cosmogony and cosmology, which range from the earliest extant Greek texts (Homer and Hesiod) to contemporaries of Apollonius (Aratus). My argument is that cosmology is deeply embedded in the text, and that Apollonius creates a nexus of cosmic intertexts which provides a scientific and intellectual backdrop against which the events of the narrative take place. The narrative’s events all occur within a cosmos, which is alluded to throughout the epic; the reader sees snap-shots of the development of this cosmos alongside the development of the Argo’s journey, which creates an analogous progression between the two. Particularly salient for this thesis is the connection to Empedoclean ideas of love and strife as cosmic forces, as these comprise two of the major themes of the narrative. Accordingly, a key point of contact between narrative and cosmology lies in these forces, as the narrator consciously recalls them and the cosmos they control in the process of weaving his narrative. The three passages I examine all focus on this cosmic system, as the cosmic backdrop evolves and changes alongside the narrative itself. The cosmic analogy, therefore, is not static but changes in line with the narrative. This study will form the only extended analysis of cosmology in the Argonautica. The influence of cosmological material on the text (within the wider issue of philosophical influence) has attracted marginal attention, scholars often noting some of the more overt connections without a great deal of analysis. Works that acknowledge the presence of cosmological material at sporadic points include: Fränkel (1968); Hunter (1989 and 1993), Clauss (1993 and 2000); Levin (1970 and 1971). More detailed studies of aspects of cosmological material in the Argonautica include: Bogue (1979); Nelis (1992); Kyriakou (1994); Pendergraft (1995); Murray (2014); Santamaría Álvarez (2014). These studies all confirm the importance of cosmological ideas on the text, but focus on a particular manifestation of these ideas. This thesis will build on these ideas in an attempt to create a cohesive study of cosmology throughout the narrative and consider how this material affects our reading of the narrative itself and its poetic agenda, along with how this use feeds into Apollonius’ poetic values and contemporary poetic trends in general. The thesis is divided into three main chapters, in which I examine three key passages of the Argonautica to make my argument. In Chapter One I examine Orpheus’ song (1.496-511), in which the cultic bard Orpheus calms a fight between two Argonauts by singing a cosmogony. The song establishes cosmic forces that run analogous to the forces at work in the narrative and demonstrates how the growing influence of love in the cosmos parallels the increased reliance on love for the success of the Argonauts’ mission. In Chapter Two I examine Jason’s cloak (1.721-767), a passage that comprises the only extended ecphrasis in the Argonautica. The images woven into his cloak continue the cosmic theme begun in the song of Orpheus, since they demonstrate the world in a later stage of development, as human and divine events unfold and time progresses towards the Argonauts’ contemporary world. In Chapter Three I examine Eros’ sphere (3.129-141), an intricate toy offered to him by Aphrodite in exchange for his shooting Medea with an arrow to make her fall in love with Jason. The ball’s shape and its details both suggest that what Eros holds in his hand is some sort of divine three-dimensional model of the universe. I have chosen these three passages because a cosmological mode of reading is particularly strong in them; they bring to the forefront the cosmological undertone which underlies the wider narrative. My conclusion is that the three passages are all connected throughout the narrative by their cosmic material, material which underscores the Argonauts’ narrative and facilitates them anchoring their time to the grand timeframe of the cosmos. Both cosmic and narrative events run concurrently, as the evolution of the cosmos from its origins to the Argonauts’ present day runs alongside the evolution of the narrative. This duality shows how the Argonautic poet employs cosmology and in doing so creates a continuous parallel narrative that runs throughout the text. Since he uses three connected parallel narratives (song, garment, and toy), the reflective capacity of the passages is not merely a one-off, but consecutive, as all three comprise different moments in the same cosmic scheme. The boundaries between parallel narrative and main narrative are thus broken down in the passages as the narrator establishes the idea that cosmology does not only run parallel to the events of the narrative, but prefigures them and enriches the reader’s understanding of the narrative world. In sum, the cosmic readings of the passages demonstrate that what the narrator is drawing the reader towards is a cosmic subtext that is unfixed and undergoes change.