This thesis offers a reappraisal of the Sabine glosses through the analysis of thirty-nine words, all glossed explicitly as Sabine in ancient sources ranging from the first century BCE to the sixth century CE. The study of the Sabine glosses found in ancient grammarians and antiquarians goes back to the beginnings of Italic scholarship. Over time, two positions on the Sabine glosses have crystallised: (a) the Sabine glosses are evidence of a personal obsession of the Republican author Varro, in whose work many Sabine glosses survive, and (b) the Sabine glosses are true remnants of a single language of which little or no epigraphic evidence has survived. By using the neogrammarian observation that sound-change is regular and exceptionless, it is possible to ascertain whether or not the Sabine glosses are likely to be from the same language. This thesis finds that the sound-changes undergone by the Sabine glosses show no broad agreement. The developments are characteristic of different languages – Latin, Faliscan and various Sabellic languages – and many changes are mutually exclusive. This consequently throws doubt on the assertion that the Sabine glosses are all taken from one language. Instead, the glosses should be seen as part of a discourse of the relationships between Romans, Sabines and Sabellic-speaking peoples. During the Republic, Sabines were central to Roman myth, historiography and political rhetoric. As the Sabines were a distinct people in the Roman foundation myths, but were largely Romanised in the Republican present, they became a convenient bridge between Rome and the Sabellic-speaking peoples of Central and Southern Italy, to whom Greek and Roman writers ascribed myths tracing origin back to the Sabines. This continued into the Empire, when emperors such as Claudius and Vespasian utilised their (supposed) Sabine heritage to gain ideological capital. In light of this, the phenomenon of Sabine glosses cannot be seen as one man’s interest, but as a means of reflecting on Rome’s relations with Sabellic-speaking Italy.

Le présent ouvrage entend proposer une vision d’ensemble des panthéons de l’Italie antique d’époque républicaine, à travers l’étude des ensembles théonymiques des trois principales langues italiques dont l’épigraphie nous a laissé de nombreuses attestations de date contemporaine : osque, ombrien, latin. Dans le domaine osque, l’inscription de la Table d’Agnone révèle selon nous une forte empreinte de l’hellénisme, mais son organisation met également en lumière des faits théologiques, et des théonymes, proprement italiques, que l’on retrouve par exemple dans le monde latin, et dans d’autres corpus osques : ainsi dans le sanctuaire de Rossano di Vaglio, nous observons de telles de convergences italiques, comme l’association du monde agraire au domaine militaire, ainsi que des figures de divinités féminines qui échappent aux grilles de classification trifonctionnelle. À la différence de la Table d’Agnone, ainsi que du sanctuaire de Pietrabbondante qui marque vraisemblablement une plus grande influence romaine, celui de Rossano présente des divinités qui semblent davantage indigènes ; pourtant la dimension hellénisée d’un tel sanctuaire ne doit pas non plus être mise à l’écart, elle est par ailleurs confirmée par l’archéologie. Dans le domaine ombrien, les Tables Eugubines et leurs nombreuses divinités révèlent une théologie complexe, qui montre de nombreux points de comparaison avec le monde latin, mais vraisemblablement également avec le monde étrusque, dont la théonymie est intrinsèquement liée, pour une partie du panthéon du moins, aux langues italiques. Enfin, la comparaison avec les corpus de divinités du monde latin, notamment la série des coupes en céramique des pocola deorum du Latium, mais également à Préneste et dans l’ager Faliscus, semble également confirmer le rôle majeur des échanges entre les théologies italique, grecque, étrusque. Nous montrons par ailleurs comment ces échanges s’appuient sur des processus linguistiques précis, à travers les emprunts, calques morphosémantiques, traductions, syncrétismes et interprétations. / In this work, we intend to provide a broad overview of Ancient Italian pantheons from the Republican age through the study of god names. Our study focuses on theonymic groups from the three main Italic langages, which possess to this day the largest epigraphical corpus, i.e. Oscan, Umbrian and Latin. On the Oscan side, the Tablet of Agnone bears testimony of a profoundly Hellenized background, but its structure also reveals typically Italic theological features as well as theonyms. Similar features can be found in the Roman world and other Oscan corpora, especially the sanctuary of Mefitis at Rossano di Vaglio, which is central in our study. One may notice, for example, the common association of agrarian divinities to military contexts, or the importance of feminine divinities, which elude trifunctional classification. Unlike the tablet of Agnone or the Pietrabbondante sanctuary, which bear more significant traces of Roman influence, the sanctuary of Rossano seems to present a more indigenous set of theonyms – although we have to keep in mind that the site also belongs to Hellenized territory, as confirmed/demonstrated by archeological research. On the Umbrian side, the Iguvine Tablets reveal a complex theology, and some features which are very similar to what we can find in Latin and Etruscan worlds – the latter showing significant Italic influence in its theonymy. Finally, comparisons with Latin corpora, such as the pocola deorum ceramics collection from Latium, and with Faliscan and Praenestine Latin, confirm the major part played by exchanges between Italic, Greek, and Etruscan theologies. This work also demonstrates how these exchanges rely on specific linguistic processes, viz. borrowings, morphosemantic calques, translations, syncretism and interpretations.

During the Italic Wars, the Italian peninsula experienced foreign invasions and internal discord between rivaling duchies and city-states. Florence and Venice both faced internal and external discord due to the constant wars and political in fighting. Venetian Pietro Bembo wrote historical accounts of this period during the Renaissance. His contemporaries, Marino Sanudo, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Francesco Guicciardini, also wrote historical accounts of this time. My research spotlights Bembo’s history of the Venetian Republic. This history was written in a supposedly objective fashion, yet, scholarship shows that historical writing from this time contained bias. I focused on Bembo because there is a lack of scholarship that looks at his historical writings. This bias can be linked with the socio-political ties these men had. Examining his accounts of historical events and comparing them with the other three historians, Bembo’s slanted accounts illustrate the effect and importance of having a strong patronage network.

This thesis focuses on a short period of time between 50 B.C. to A.D. 14, which is marked by the increased prominence of pax as a central concept within the victory rhetoric of the period. The period is one of immense political and social upheaval and change that was to dictate the power structures of the Roman world, and one of the ways in which this change was conceptualised was through the language of peace. In this thesis I examine pax as a concept within the Roman empire and as part of an discourse on the nature of Roman imperialism. This examination considers not just the development of pax as a concept over time, but also how it was variously conceptualised and presented to different audiences and in different locations. This focuses the examination of pax on understanding what the term as an expression of Rome’s imperium meant to various peoples within the Roman empire, how it was expressed and for what reasons. As David Mattingly has recently emphasised the nature of Roman imperialism changed radically over time (‘Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire’ (2011)). This study of the different rhetorics of peace offers new insight into this changing nature. Beyond the specific examination of pax as a part of imperial discourse within the late Republic and early Principate, this study raises questions about the way we think about concepts in the ancient world. Rather than talking about a single development or evolution over time, we should rather consider concepts as constantly active and changing in time. Our view of the ancient world and the way in which it was conceptualised should not be a static one, but one where the meaning and value of words give us insights into how individuals and communities expressed and explained changing social and political conditions.

This thesis combines a philosophical interpretation of Epicurean attitudes to language with literary analysis of the language of DRN. Chapters 1-2 describe Epicurean attitudes to diachronic and synchronic linguistic phenomena. In the first chapter I claim that the Epicurean account of the first stage of the development of language involves pre-rational humans acting under a ‘strong’ form of compulsion. The analogies with which Lucretius describes this process were motivated by a structural similarity between the Epicurean accounts of phylogenetic and ontogenetic psychology. Chapter 2 explores the Epicurean account of word use and recognition, central to which are ‘conceptions’. These are attitudes which express propositions; they are not mental images. Προλήψεις, a special class of conception, are self-evidently true basic beliefs about how objects in the world are categorized which, alongside the non-doxastic criteria of perceptions and feelings, play a foundational role in enquiry. Chapter 3 offers a reconstruction of an Epicurean theory of metaphor. Metaphor, for Epicureans, involves the subordination of additional conceptions to words to create secondary meanings. Secondary meanings are to be understood by referring back to primary meanings. Accordingly, Lucretius’ use of metaphor regularly involves the juxtaposition in the text of primary and secondary uses of terms. An account of conceptual metaphor in DRN is given in which the various conceptual domains from which Lucretius draws his metaphorical language are mapped and explored. Chapter 4 presents a new argument against ‘atomological’ readings of Lucretius’ atoms/letters analogies. Lucretian implicit etymologies involve the illustration, via juxtaposition, of language change across time. This is fully in keeping with the Epicurean account of language development. Chapter 5 describes Lucretius’ reflections on and interactions with the Greek language. I suggest that the study of lexical Hellenisms in DRN must be sensitive to the distinction between lexical borrowing and linguistic code-switching. I then give an account of morphological calquing in the poem, presenting it as a significant but overlooked strategy for Lucretian vocabulary-formation.

This thesis investigates the Roman idea of fortuna, by examining its representation in different media (coins, cults, philosophy, and literature) and the thought worlds which these media inhabited. Drawing chiefly on evidence from the late Republic and the first two centuries of the Empire, I examine the interactions between the meanings of fortuna and the contexts in which they occur, showing how fortuna was used to construct understandings of broader social processes. Chapter 1 charts how various groups and individuals appropriated the religious character of fortuna into discourses of power to promote their interests, from the first archaic cults through to Imperial fortunae. By propitiating fortuna, the founders and worshippers of these cults attempted to ‘tame’ fortuna by representing themselves or the groups to which they belonged as particularly favoured by this deity. Chapter 2 examines how literary authors used fortuna to talk about ideas of social status, luck, chance, and fate. How these authors chose to describe fortuna, or which powers they chose to ascribe to her, were choices frequently determined by the text’s relationship to the structures of Roman power. Chapter 3 examines the iconography of fortuna on Imperial coins, for which I used a statistical methodology to quantify her numismatic representation. This sets our understanding of the interconnections between numismatic iconography and cultural and political history on a firmer basis and allows us to analyse more precisely how fortuna was imagined in imperial ideology. I look at the periods in which fortuna was most often deployed and when her iconography and legends underwent the greatest changes, discussing the political and cultural contexts that motivated these uses. Chapter 4 addresses philosophical conceptions of fortuna. I look at what was peculiarly Roman about how Roman Stoics and Epicureans figured fortuna in their physics and ethics, focusing especially on the philosophical and cultural implications of their concern with fortuna.

Questo studio ha per oggetto l’attività dei giudici imperiali nella Lombardia comunale tra XII e XIII secolo. La prima parte consiste in una lettura d’insieme dell’operato dei giudici imperiali nel solco più generale delle vicende politiche del regno italico durante l’impero di Federico I barbarossa e del figlio Enrico VI. L’intera ricerca è stata condotta a partire dalla documentazione, edita e non; tali risultati sono stati contestualizzati nell’ampio dibattito storiografico sulla natura statuale dell’impero romano-germanico del pieno medioevo. Alla ricostruzione diacronica seguono le schede biografiche dei giudici imperiali più significativi per la ricostruzione storica proposta nella tesi e un’appendice documentaria. Il lavoro è chiuso dalla bibliografia utilizzata e dall'indice dei nomi di persona. / The object of this study is the activity of the imperial judges in the communal Lombardy between twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The first part consists of an overall reading of the activity of the imperial judges in the political strategy in the Italic Kingdom during the empire of Frederick I Barbarossa and his son Henry VI. The entire research is carried out starting from the documentation, edited and inedited; these results are contextualised in the wide historiographical debate on the institutional nature of the medieval Roman-German Empire. The diachronic reconstruction is followed by the biographies of the most significant imperial judges and a documentary appendix. The work is closed by the bibliography and the index.

The Roman festival of the Lupercalia is one of the most discussed issues in the field of pre-Christian Roman religion. Hardly a year goes by without an article on the subject appearing in a major Classics journal. But the festival presents a range of issues that individual articles cannot address. This thesis is an attempt to present a modern analysis of the phenomenon of the Lupercalia as a whole, including literary, archaeological and historical evidence on the subject. The first section presents the ancient sources on the Lupercalia, and is divided into five chapters, each analysing a particular aspect of the festival: fertility, purification, the importance of the wolf and the foundation myth, the mythology of Arcadian origins, and Caesar's involvement with the Lupercalia of 44 BC. The second section places the Lupercalia in a wider context, discussing the festival's topography and the course of the running Luperci, its relationship to other lustration rituals, and its position in the Roman calendar, ending with an appraisal of the changes it underwent in late Antiquity. The third section employs methods from linguistics, anthropology and comparative religion to show that the Lupercalia involved a ritual of initiation, which was also reflected in the Roman foundation myth. The central chapter of this section discusses the methodology used in comparative Indo-European mythology, and offers a case study that parallels the god of the festival (Faunus) with Rudra of Vedic Hinduism. The last chapter considers other parallels with Indian religion, especially the relationship between flamen and brahmin. The thesis challenges a number of established theories on the subject and offers new evidence to show that the festival has Indo-European origins, but also that it played an important role throughout Roman history.

This thesis compares the interaction of philosophy and literature in Plato and Lucretius. It argues that Plato influenced Lucretius directly, and that this connection increases the interest in comparing them. In the Introduction, I propose that a work of philosophical literature, such as the De Rerum Natura or a Platonic dialogue, cannot be fully understood or appreciated unless both the literary and the philosophical elements are taken into account. In Chapter 1, I examine the tradition of literature and philosophy in which Plato and Lucretius were writing. I argue that the historical evidence increases the likelihood that Lucretius read Plato. Through consideration of parallels between the DRN and the dialogues, I argue that Plato discernibly influenced the DRN. In Chapter 2, I extract a theory of philosophical literature from the Phaedrus, which prompts us to appreciate it as a work of literary art inspired by philosophical knowledge of the Forms. I then analyse Socrates’ ‘prelude’ at Republic IV.432 as an example of how the dialogue’s philosophical and literary teaching works in practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider the treatment of natural philosophy in the Timaeus and DRN II. The ending of the Timaeus is arguably an Aristophanically inspired parody of the zoogonies of the early natural philosophers. This links it to other instances of parody in Plato’s dialogues. DRN II.333-380 involves an argument about atomic variety based on Epicurus, but also, through the image of the world ‘made by hand’, alludes polemically to the intelligently designed world of the Timaeus. Through an examination of Plato’s and Lucretius’ polemical adaptation of their predecessors, I argue that even the most seemingly technical passages of the DRN and the Timaeus still depend upon literary techniques for their full effect. The Conclusion reflects briefly on future paths of investigation.

The aim of this project is to account for the widespread reception of the epics of Homer and Virgil by American poets of the twentieth century. Since 1914, an unprecedented number of new poems interpreting the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid have appeared in the United States. The vast majority of these modern versions are short, combining epic and lyric impulses in a dialectical form of genre that is shaped, I propose, by two cultural movements of the twentieth century: Modernism, and American humanism. Modernist poetics created a focus on the fragmentary and imagistic aspects of Homer and Virgil; and humanist philosophy sparked a unique trend of undergraduate literature survey courses in American colleges and universities, in which for the first time, in the mid-twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of students were exposed to the epics in translation, and with minimal historical contextualisation, prompting a clear opportunity for personal appropriation on a broad scale. These main matrices for the reception of epic in the United States in the twentieth century are set out in the introduction and first chapter of this thesis. In the five remaining chapters, I have identified secondary threads of historical influence, scrutinised alongside poems that developed in that context, including the rise of Freudian and related psychologies; the experience of modern warfare; American national politics; first- and second-wave feminism; and anxiety surrounding poetic belatedness. Although modern American versions of epic have been recognised in recent scholarship on the reception of Classics in twentieth-century poetry in English, no comprehensive account of the extent of the phenomenon has yet been attempted. The foundation of my arguments is a catalogue of almost 400 poems referring to Homer and Virgil, written by over 175 different American poets from 1914 to the present. Using a comparative methodology (after T. Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns, 1993), and models of reception from German and English reception theory (including C. Martindale, Redeeming the Text, 1993), the thesis contributes to the areas of classical reception studies and American literary history, and provides a starting point for considering future steps in the evolution of the epic genre.