<p>This dissertation is a study of the use of Homeric diction in the epigrams of Posidippus of Pella. I place the poetry in the context of the aesthetic and scholarly interests of Ptolemaic Alexandria and I provide a stylistic and intertextual analysis of the use of Homer in these 3^rd century BCE epigrams. In the subgenres of amatory and sepulchral epigrams, the repetition of Homeric diction in combination with particular <i> topoi</i> and themes in the poems of Posidippus and other epigrammatists becomes a literary trope. In other cases, Posidippus incorporates more complex thematic allusion to Homer and, by doing so, displays awareness of the self-reflexive and self-annotating experience of reading poetry. The repetition of Homeric diction within sections of the Milan papyrus reinforces arguments for cohesive structure within the &lambda;&iota;&thetas;&iota;&kappa;[special characters omitted] and o&iota;&omega;&nu;o&sigma;&kappa;o&pi;&iota;&kappa;[special characters omitted] sections. What this study of Homeric diction reveals is that Posidippus&rsquo; choice of <i>topoi</i> and themes are distinguished by the way he incorporates Homeric references and thematic allusion. Other poets share his <i> topoi</i> and his themes and sometimes even his Homeric diction, but these three elements rarely match the complexity in Posidippus. The combinations are what differentiate Posidippus&rsquo; stylistic tendences from other Hellenistic epigrammatists. </p>

This dissertation offers a reading of Juvenal's Satires. It maintains that Juvenal consciously frustrates readers' attempts to identify his poetic voice with a single unitary character or persona. At the same time, it argues that Juvenal's poems are influenced in both form and theme by cultural trends in the early second century. The arguments staged in these poems constitute a critique of aspects of Roman intellectual culture in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.

This dissertation examines the relationship between scientific inquiry and hexameter poetry at Rome in the first century CE. It focuses on three poetic texts: Manilius' Astronomica, Lucan's Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna. It argues that despite generic and thematic differences, these works participate in a common dialogue and therefore can benefit from being read side by side. In particular, the dissertation demonstrates that all three authors reflect on the ability of poetry to communicate scientific knowledge, and that they simultaneously question or undermine the practical value of that knowledge. As a result, it allows us to see that scientific inquiry itself constitutes a dynamic and multifaceted area of creative literary activity in Early Imperial Rome.

This study traces the development of building inscriptions in Roman North Africa, in order to understand the rich epigraphic record testifying to public construction during the reign of Diocletian. In particular, it examines the role of the imperial government in construction, both in how it itself built and how it related to locals who did. Treating construction as a form of communication between builder and society, I have examined the claims made by the state as it took on the role of builder, and to what social groups these claims were directed. A wide approach has been called for to understand the role played by public construction - and by broadcasting it through inscriptions - for the negotiation of influence in the province. I have examined the activities of both imperial and local builders, which has revealed well defined conventions as to what and where to build, and how to communicate it. Against this backdrop, I have traced the relations of the Diocletianic government to a number of social strata, as expressed through building inscriptions, from rural entrepreneurs and small town councilors to Carthaginian senators. An image has emerged of a government that was keenly aware of the social makeup of the province, and deeply invested in its economic fabric, concerned with maintaining a viable, small scale network of independent municipalities as a counterweight to the interests of the highest elites, while at the same time maintaining stable relations to said elites.

This dissertation examines the poetic construction of geography in Statius' Silvae. As poems composed by Statius to praise his patrons, the Silvae are shaped by the social relationships of first-century Rome and reflect in many ways the worldview of contemporary Roman elites. In the Flavian era, political, military, technological, and commercial developments contributed to an increasingly important ideology of spatial control; the Empire was seen as encompassing the inhabited world, which was subject to Roman dominion and knowledge. Statius' treatment of geography in the Silvae, often dismissed as rhetorical embellishment, in fact presents a vision of the Empire and the world related to but distinct from this "official" geographical ideology. I develop this argument in a series of thematically organized chapters, in which I read the Silvae both collectively, to elucidate the worldview of the corpus as a whole, and individually, to demonstrate the ways in which Statius uses geography for particular poetic and social purposes. I first examine Statius’ general presentation of the Empire, which combines traditional imperialistic methods of viewing global space with contemporary political and military developments. In Silvae 3.2, an example of Statian travel narrative, the connection between military conquest and geographical knowledge is most extensively elaborated across Italy, the Empire, and the extra-imperial world. A discussion of the geographical significance of imported household luxuries shows how the poet establishes a correspondence between domestic and imperial spaces. Finally, I examine the association between geography and ethnicity in Silvae 4.5, in which Statius uses the ethnographical and poetic traditions to blur the distinction between native and assimilated identities. Statius regularly draws on the traditions of poetic and scientific geography, but he also updates his “map” to reflect the changing world of the Flavian era. But while Statius’ geography generally expresses the imperial vision of his patrons, it is not monolithic; he also constructs more private geographies, which complement this political and Rome-centered worldview. The geography of the Silvae thus also serves to enhance the poet’s personal friendship with his patrons, his praise of his various addressees, and his self-presentation as a learned poet. / The Classics

<p> This thesis investigates the role that <i>furor</i> and other negative emotional states have on Aeneas' mission in the <i>Aeneid</i>. The role of the Fates is to enact change on a large scale, and this is achieved through destruction, which is caused by mortal and immortal agents manipulated by emotion. While Aeneas is trained to control his desires in the first half of the epic, in the second his rage and passions are spurred by supernatural forces. </p><p> This study will discuss the major plot points where emotion and rage interact with the main goal of Aeneas and the Fates. Included is a linguistic analysis wherein key prototypical terms - <i>fatum, amor</i>, and <i> furor</i> - are arranged visually on graphs that show their placements line-by-line and locations relative to each other. The contention is that at various points, <i>fatum</i> causes <i>amor</i> which leads to <i>furor</i>, which leads to change, and thus <i> fatum</i>.</p>

The Iliad in certain key passages construes the Olympian gods as an internal epic audience offering and exploring multiple configurations of audience response to the poem. Chapter 1 explores the special features of the divine audience in general terms and considers previous scholarship. Chapter 2 reads Zeus' provocation of Hera and Athena in Book 4 as a "metaperformative" provocation of the poet's audience. Chapters 3 argues that the audience's mental "viewing" experience is construed as attendance at a live spectacle where the gods also attend, a spectacle for which the duel in Book 3 provides a paradigm. Chapter 4 interprets the duel in Book 7 as a reevaluation of that paradigm, motivated intratextually by the internal audience of Apollo and Athena. Chapter 5 shows that the climactic duel in Book 22, and especially the passage describing Hector and Achilles circling Troy as the gods watch and discuss, problematizes the ethical stance of the extratextual audience. Chapter 6 argues that in the Iliad as a whole the poet uses "the gods" to model a shift in audience sympathy from pro-Achaean bias to pity for the Trojans.

This dissertation analyzes the three main protagonists of Lucan's Bellum Civile through their attempts to utilize, resist, or match a pattern of action which I call the "formula." Most evident in Caesar, the formula is a cycle of alternating states of energy that allows him to gain a decisive edge over his opponents by granting him the ability of perpetual regeneration. However, a similar dynamic is also found in rivers, which thus prove to be formidable adversaries of Caesar in their own right. Although neither Pompey nor Cato is able to draw on the Caesarian formula successfully, Lucan eventually associates them with the river-derived variant, thus granting them a measure of resistance (if only in the non-physical realm). By tracing the development of the formula throughout the epic, the dissertation provides a deeper understanding of the importance of natural forces in Lucan's poem as well as the presence of an underlying drive that unites its fractured world.

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