Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes can be read as allegories of warriors who experience war trauma. The ancient Greeks already knew of the effects of war trauma through prior literature, and the plays were produced during a period of great violence and upheaval. Ajax shows how a shame-inducing betrayal causes a warrior to go berserk, and consequently withdraw from his community and commit suicide. Philoctetes shows that a betrayal, combined with the loss of a comrade, can cause the warrior to become isolated and emotionally vulnerable. His only means of being reintegrated into society is through mutual understanding with members of that society, and closure with his dead comrade. These plays were produced for therapeutic benefit, as shown by the comparative evidence found in psychodrama, dramatherapy, and the Theater of War productions of the two plays. / Graduate / 0294 / 0621 / 0465 / jrbinus@aol.com

This thesis examines the Athenian ephebeia, from its creation to 200 B.C. The primary aim of the study is to examine the forces which led to the perception of a need for the ephebeia and which influenced its creation. After describing the institution and then investigating the available evidence for its foundation date, I argue that the "formal ephebeia" was created in 335 B.C. and was substantially different in form from anything which had preceded it. There were, however, some antecedent aspects of the ephebeia which can be traced to earlier times. The following two chapters examine forces in the fifth and early fourth century which contributed to the creation of the ephebeia. The first is an examination of Greek military innovation in the fourth century and of new Athenian defensive policy. The second investigates a "discourse" of educational thought which was present in the intellectual circles of Athens in the fourth century, the nature of which can be found in writings of the "Socratic" philosophers. In the fifth chapter I descrive the environment of "Lycurgan Athens" and argue that the ephebeia was a deliberately "invented tradition" which suited its ideological context. The final chapter examines all available evidence for the history of the organization from 322 to 200 B.C., charting a transformation of the institution. There are two appendices: one on the demography of late fourth century Athens and its relationship to the ephebeia, the other on the life-dates of Menander and the year of his ephebate. There are also two catalogues of inscriptions. The first provides all fourth century ephebic inscriptions since the publication of Reinmuth's collection (or changes to those). The second provides all published third century ephebic inscriptions and some from the early second century.

Project/Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 1998. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-132).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 204 p.; contains ills., map. Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-204). Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 May 19.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 38).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 38)

Thesis (doctoral)--Academia Georgia Augusta, 1914.

Athens insists on representing white marble as the material embodiment of the city, and consequently white marble is persistently present in mythologies of the city. This thesis argues that in perpetuating these myths that make consistent appeals to idealised ‘white places’, the reciprocal and mytho-poetic relationship between marble’s materiality and the Athenian metropolis is progressively over-simplified. The result of this particular, reductive historiography is that today the contemporary opsis (architectural surface and image) of marble stimulates an emotional (pathetic) perception of the material that, by extension, fosters a marble-image of Athens that is truly pathetic. This pathos is clear if we consider the violent gestures that accompanied a series of recent anti-austerity riots in which rioters deliberately tore marble veneers from numerous modern and contemporary urban edifices. Despite the apparent senselessness of this act of dissent toward the superficiality of the current Athenian politico-economic apparatus, these actions in fact exposed the superficial manner in which the material has been employed to re-present Athens as an imaginary place. This thesis regards the perceptible absence of marble brought (inadvertently) to the surface during these riots as an opening to a deeper understanding of marble’s materiality. ‘Following’ the agency of marble’s matter, this Architecture by Design thesis presents three potential ways of re-instituting what matters in Attica’s marble. Firstly, the thesis advances a theoretical argument for the mutually constitutive relationship between marble and Athens, where obsolete illustrations and a priori dogmas regarding notions of matter and materiality, image and opsis, landscape and ecology are challenged (Vol. 1). Secondly, the thesis presents a re-presentational visual archive as an expressive essay of both marble’s opsis and of Athens’ marbleimage (Vol. 2). Thirdly, the thesis evokes the poetics of marble as discourse along with a portfolio of architectural design as it materialises a series of speculative design propositions that are placed in specific charged contexts across the broader Attic (metropolitan) landscape, and which address practices of marble concerned with the marble-image of Athens (Vol. 3). Read in conjunction (or in disjunction), these three means of re-situating marble’s materiality within its inherently aesthetic and, by extension, political ground mobilise the material’s asperity. In this way, the material’s intrinsic textures, tensions and differences are projected into the making of marble’s opsis —an opsis that in turn re-informs and enriches the making of Athens’ imageries.

The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First of all it aims at finding a unified philosophical basis for The Tempest. Commentators have widely acknowledged the diversity of the moral and political discourses present in this play: there is the idea of divine providence; there is the Stoic discourse about restraining one’s anger and desire for revenge; there is the Machiavellian teaching which lays strong emphasis on power and illusion as the only means to make men obedient; there is a deep concern with the question of whether virtue is teachable or not and how it should be taught; and there is also a preoccupation with the golden world and the ideal commonwealth. But is there a unity to be found amid this diversity? My answer to this question is that there indeed is an integrated philosophical framework in which all these discourses can find their proper places and reinforce one another in a way that contributes, together with the strictly observed unity of action, place and time, to the overall coherence of the play. This underlying basis, I will try to demonstrate, has a close affinity with Plato’s moral and political thought which centers around the question of teaching virtue; meanwhile, it could also be shown that, either historically or conceptually, the discourses identifiable in the play are all closely related to Plato’s philosophy. The examination of this basis will allow us to better appreciate the depth and nuances of The Tempest, but it will also shed some new light—hence the second task of this research—on the meaning of five other Shakespearean plays starting from Hamlet, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, to Timon of Athens and Coriolanus. In my dissertation, all these works (and Timon of Athens in especial, which, I believe, is a play where all the philosophical themes I will explore in this dissertation converge) will be treated at some length, with emphasis laid respectively on the use of power, the taming of anger, and Shakespeare’s idea about the golden world. Though a considerable part of my dissertation will be devoted to the tracing of this intellectual basis with reference to the template of ideas provided by Plato’s philosophy, I do not mean to suggest that it is through reading Plato directly that Shakespeare consciously develops a philosophy. My point is rather that all the discourses he makes use of in these plays could lead him of their own accord to the Platonic template. In this sense, what Shakespeare did is no more than just to allow the philosophical potentials of his motifs to work out themselves and meanwhile faithfully register their intricate interaction. In accordance with this assumption, my study will be half speculative rather than stringently historical in nature. I will proceed, though, strictly on an empirical line, that is, to presume nothing about the existence of philosophical patterns, and base my conclusion as much as possible on close readings of the text.

In my thesis I analyse the issue of democracy in antiquity. Research includes practice and theory. At the beginning I will focus on the analysis of the real functioning of democracy in the Athenian polis (how the idea of democracy arose, what were the political institutions, who had or did not have a share in the controlling of the polis etc.). Emphasis is placed on the history of Athens in the 6th to 4th centuries BC. The core of this chapter is the time of Pericles when Athenian democracy reached its peak. The second part of the thesis describes how democracy was viewed by leading ancient thinkers - Plato and his disciple Aristotle. One of the aims of this thesis is to understand their criticism of the democratic establishment and what alternatives governments offer as better. The third part of the thesis is a comparison between political reality in ancient Athens and political theory in the works of Plato and Aristotle.