Showing 1 - 4 of 4 Items
From Homer to the Roman Empire: The Reception of Music in Antiquity Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Augustine Segger
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Adapting Greek Heroines: Penelope and Medea Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Ishani Agarwal
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Alexander the Great and the Rise of Christianity
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Stephen M. Girard
Access: Open access
- Alexander the Great and the Rise of Christianity focuses on the political, mythical, and philosophical connection between Alexander the Great's life and the beginnings of early Christianity. The first chapter of the text focuses on an analysis of mythical conceptions of Alexander the Great as “Son of God” as well as cultural perceptions of him as “Philosopher King” and cosmopolitan, and how these portraits of Alexander were influential for Christianity. The second chapter analyzes Alexander’s relationship with the Jewish people, and his appearances in the Old Testament apocalyptic Book of Daniel. The last chapter discusses Alexander’s relationship with Christianity itself, seen through a study of the life of Jesus, Alexandrian Judaism, and the early Christian apologists.
Political Polupragmones: Busybody Athenians, Meddlesome Citizenship, and Epistemic Democracy in Classical Athens
Date: 2016-01-01
Creator: Harry D Rube
Access: Open access
- The figure of the πολυπράγμων, the overactive, over-engaged, or meddlesome democratic citizen, is a literary trope that emerges in Classical Athenian literature in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. This project seeks to use the πολυπράγμων as an entry point into understanding Athenian attitudes toward citizenship and socially acceptable political behaviors in Athens’ democratic era. I explore the history and usage of the term πολυπράγμων, and the associated characteristic of πολυπραγμοσύνη (meddlesomeness), and its synonyms and antecedents. I demonstrate that to be labeled πολυπράγμων is a term of social restraint—one is named a πολυπράγμων if they do not “mind their own business.” In 5th century Athens such an admonition is primarily political. It refers to and demonstrates the existence of a contested definition of what is and what is not acceptable political behavior on behalf of the non-elite citizens of Athens. Through a reading of Plato’s dialogues and an analysis of other Athenian literary productions describing street-level social and political interactions in the fourth century, I endeavor to demonstrate in the second half of this thesis that the behaviors of social inquisitiveness, over-activity, and the negative characteristics attributed to the πολυπράγμων by contemporary writers such as Plato, could actually have served to increase the common knowledge and cohesiveness of the Athenian city-state. To do this, I consider the πολυπράγμων through the lens of modern scholarship and social science that considers Athens as an “epistemic democracy” concerned with aggregating and employing politically useful information.