Modern rhetoric takes many influences from the classical era, but aural components of rhetoric are not often included in rhetorical education. This paper examines the techniques used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his essay On Literary Composition, where he explored the components of arrangement of words in clauses for greatest impact when read and spoken aloud. Dionysius utilized meter and aesthetic placement of words to create work that was technically skilled and appealing to the listener or reader. Dionysius built on ideas from rhetoricians of 4th and 5th century BCE Athens for his definition of style. His writing on style is compared with the work of Demosthenes and Aristotle among others. While many of his techniques and examples are specifically focused on Attic Greek, we can still use the concepts to improve modern written and especially spoken rhetoric. Spoken rhetoric on television and the internet in particular provides a venue to exercise the lessons of precisely planned wording and control of sounds through word placement.

This dissertation discusses the interaction of mythology and power in the Roman Republic and early Principate. It identifies a mythological paradigm that has not been recognized in previous scholarship ("pairs") and traces the use of this paradigm by Roman writers of the second and first centuries BCE. It argues that pair stories problematize the relationship between Roman elite ambition and the Republic's political ideals of equality and cooperation among magistrates. It further argues that these stories evolve over the course of the two centuries under discussion, from tales that are relatively optimistic about the potential of reconciling the tension between individual ambition and elite collegiality to tales that are extremely pessimistic. This evolution is tied to the political turmoil visible at Rome in this period. Several stories are identified as pair stories. The first and most well-attested is the foundation myth of the city, which is discussed at length in chapters two through six. In chapters seven and eight, the pattern is established through the analysis of Amulius and Numitor, Brutus and Collatinus, and the men known as affectatores regni. The historical development of these tales is discussed as thoroughly as possible. The argument throughout is that narratives from second-century writers depict pairs as representatives of productive rivalry. This rivalry encourages the elite to achieve beneficial results for the city, and can be set aside for the public good. Such depictions become less prevalent by the later first century, when the pair narratives instead tend to illustrate destructive competition. This destruction must be understood in the context of its times; the third quarter of the first century BCE saw the establishment of Rome's first monarchy in centuries. It is under the Principate that the tales again become clearly different: competition disappears. Soon afterwards, so does the use of these stories as a tool to think with.

Zugl.: Münster (Westfalen), University, Diss., 2007.

This project traces shifts in understandings of causation from the premodern to the early modern period, focusing on one premodern interpretation of causation as representative of the Neoplatonic period, that of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and comparing this perspective to several early modern thinkers, especially, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Francis Bacon. For Dionysius, formal and final causation have metaphysical superiority over efficient and material causation. By contrast, beginning in the early modern period, efficient causation, the sense that describes how an object acquires a particular shape, begins to be seen as metaphysically supreme. The main historical and philosophical reasons for this shift in perceived supremacy are the affirmation of the primary-secondary quality distinction, and the rejection of Forms and teleology. The primary-secondary quality distinction allows for reality to be completely quantified, and thereby renders superfluous qualitative approaches to reality, such as formal causation. Similarly, the rejection of Forms and teleology leaves formal causation meaningless. After this historical overview, the philosophical hypothesis that Dionysius's premodern understanding of causation is more amenable to those who want to avoid nihilism is defended: purely scientific notions of causation have no means for providing whatness, intelligibility, or determinacy to the world in a rationally defensible manner, and thus, when pressed, a purely scientific view of the world is without whatness, intelligibility, and determinacy, which, by definition, leads to nihilism. By contrast, a world with causes other than solely scientific causes, specifically, a world with formal (and final) causation such as Dionysius's, allows for whatness, intelligibility, and determinacy, and thereby escapes nihilism because whatness requires Form, intelligibility requires Form and teleology, and determinacy requires teleology (which, in turn, is a supplement to Form). As argued, science studies the world of becoming, and therefore cannot provide the grounds for the world of being (which belongs to metaphysics); to live in a world of pure becoming without being is to have a nihilistic worldview. The epilogue draws a significant implication from this conclusion: the premodern approach invites a necessary revival of natural philosophy because the world of becoming is wider than modern science acknowledges.

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The goal of this dissertation is to address the influence of the Greek Fathers on the metaphysics of St. Bonaventure. Specifically, it looks at John of Damascus' and Dionysius' influence on Bonaventure's doctrine of divine ideas. It is argued that the former's influence contributed decisively to shaping the Seraphicus' exemplarism by giving it a distinctively voluntaristic framing. The subject is treated both from a historical and theoretical point of view. Accordingly, attention is not paid exclusively to systematic connections between the different authors but also to the means of historical transmission and interpretation. In this respect, the heritage of the School of St. Victor and of the first Franciscan masters in Paris (Alexander of Hales and John de la Rochelle) as mediators of the Greek Fathers to Bonaventure is brought forward and explored.

In this thesis one can see footwashing from different perspectives even though the focus is from a liturgical and patristic perspective. Using the liturgical dialectical method, I put the liturgical text in a dialectical relationship with the wider patristic context. Footwashing in this thesis is approached from four angles. Chapter Two: An historical overview and a background regarding. Chapter Three: The Syriac Orthodox Footwashing rite. Chapter Four:The Commentary of Bar Salibi on Foot Washing. Chapter Five: A comparison between the Syriac Orthodox ordo and the commentary. In the second chapter one explores the development of footwashing, both in the west and the east in patristic and canonical sources.The ongoing discussion in the west seems to be whether the footwashing is considered as a sacrament or not, while the fathers in the east interprets footwashing as explicitly revealing the cross for his disciple. In this chapter one gets to know the views of the fathers such as Augustine, Ambrose, John Chrysostom etc. The Syrian fathers make the same connection as the eastern fathers but connects it however to baptismal theology which is found in Rom 6:4.The fathers of the Syrian Orthodox tradition presents also an allegorical and symbolic interpretations of the footwashing, especially during the early Middle Ages and later Middle Ages. The canonical sources presents two views 1. Canonical. 2. Monastic. The canonical sources are Elvira 305-6. And Toledo 694, Elvira does not encourage the practice of the footwashing due to it being practiced after the baptism. In Toledo footwashing is encouraged and it seems that this praxis was discouraged according to the canon itself, the monastic was seen all through the subchapter. It was the custom for the brothers to greet a guest by washing their feet. The third chapter is about the footwashing rite and its theological contrasts and the contemplation which makes it a rite itself. Chapter Four is divided in three commentaries. The three different gospel narratives exist in 1. Jn 12:1-11. 2. Lk 7:36-50. 3. Jn13:1-20. The different use of this commentary reveals for the reader how Bar Salibi conducted biblical theology and how these different biblical stories reveal his view on the footwashing in contrast with John 13. The Fifth chapter concern the differences and similarities between the footwashing rite and the patristic by comparing the structures and the main focus of the texts, differences and similarities between the theologies of the two texts become clearer. The two main questions in this thesis is 1. Is the first-hand source (footwashing rite) compatible theologically with the second-hand source (Dionysius Bar Salibi`s biblical commentaries The second question is how much Greek influence has influenced the footwashing rite in contrast to the biblical commentaries?

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This is a study of how late Republican and early Imperial authors recast different elements of episodes from the Struggle of the Orders (509-287 BCE) based on the events and circumstances of their own times and their authorial aims. The study is divided into two parts. Part I focuses on portrayals of Sp. Cassius’ third consulship in 486 BCE, when he sought to pass a lex agraria. Part II examines the treatments of Sp. Maelius’ private frumentary distributions, which purportedly occurred in 439 BCE. Both episodes seem to have been treated briefly by earlier sources; the main thread of the stories centred around Cassius’ and Maelius’ desire to acquire regnum, which led to their suppressions and deaths. Over time, the stories evolved and became more detailed. Elements were exaggerated, added, or omitted, which often spoke to what was happening during the time at which a certain author was writing. By means of a comparison of the primary sources I examine the contemporary Roman historical realities contained within our surviving narratives on the patricio-plebeian conflicts of the early period. Late Republican authors frequently recast the patrician-plebeian struggle in the context of the recent political conflicts between optimates and populares, using the political idiom of their own times to describe the Struggle of the Orders. Cassius and Maelius became embedded in the political controversy surrounding the suppression of men (reportedly) seeking kingship by the state that began with the institution of the SCU and continued long into the first century BCE. I analyze the changes that take place in the accounts of Cicero, Livy, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, our main sources on the episodes involving Cassius and Maelius. Different authors reinterpret, emphasize, and omit various elements of the events of 486 and 439 BCE. A single author might, as is the case with Cicero, reimagine the episodes differently at different times based on his immediate aims. While the ways by which the sources reimagine elements of these episodes has led to harsh criticisms of these authors, especially Livy and Dionysius, I argue that our sources were engaging with the material at their disposal and shaping it in ways that were acceptable to ancient audiences. This historical interpretation helped the Romans to make sense of their own past and derive meaning from it, which, in turn, helped them to engage with and make sense of their present. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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