Master of Arts, Miami University, 2025, History

Migration, Mobility, and Manumission considers the emotions, conditions, and power dynamics experienced by enslaved Romans from their enslavement to their possible manumission from the late Republic in the first century BCE through the establishment of the Principate to the end of the second century CE. Using a narrative structure, a variety of ancient source material, and considerations of later Roman studies, this work explores the reality of life for enslaved individuals in multiple periods of life as well as various locations in and around Rome. Enslaved Romans were oppressed by both Roman institutions and, more personally, by the individual who enslaved them. This work argues that throughout their enslavement and even after their possible manumission, enslaved individuals were controlled most forcefully by their enslaver's absolute and legally sanctioned power. Moreover, this work argues that the control enforced upon enslaved individuals was affected most greatly by the enslaved individual's proximity to their enslaver, their occupation, and their identity.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This dissertation investigates how ancient Roman people came to believe that stories are true. It focuses on Roman funerary inscriptions in Greek and Latin that make extraordinary eschatological claims about ordinary people. It uses the idea of religious affordances to build an ecological model for understanding funerary inscriptions in context. It adapts the environmental model of visual perception for understanding inscribed epitaphs as a network of three interdependent spheres: the locational, temporal, acculturative, and linguistic affordances of the medium, the material affordances of the substance, and the visual and verbal affordances of the inscribed surface. It takes the ‘Cave of the Vipers,' a late 1st or early 2nd century CE tomb for a Roman woman named Atilia Pomptilla (CIL X 7563–7578), as an extended case study to develop and demonstrate the efficacy of this ecological model. Above all, this dissertation argues for the relevance of belief as a valid analytical concept in the broader study of Greco-Roman religion.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This dissertation interprets the journey of the youth (kouros) in Parmenides' proem as an idealized mythological representation of a meditative practice by analyzing its deployment of Homeric psychological terminology. The first chapter puts forth an interpretation of Homeric psychology in light of what we now call the autonomic nervous system and suggests that thumos corresponds roughly to the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic arm and psuche to the “rest and digest” response of the parasympathetic arm. At death, I argue, characters pass from the “hot” end of that spectrum to the “cold” end as the psuche exits the body. The second chapter uses this Homeric psychological scheme to argue that the journey of the kouros in Parmenides' proem depicts in mythological terms a process of heating and immortalizing the mind by increasing the thumos. This in turn allows him to meet and understand the unnamed goddess that greets him beyond the gates of Night and Day. I argue that this journey involves an ascent (anabasis) of the thumos towards the light of the sun rather than exclusively a descent to the underworld (katabasis), a common interpretation in recent years. The third chapter builds on the psychological and mythological interpretations developed in the first two chapters and examines one aspect of a meditative practice behind the proem. I argue that the kouros would heat and immortalize his mind by “inhaling” (αμπνυτο) more “wind” (πνοιη) to increase his thumos as an initial purification to prepare for the ascent. This proposal finds support in later Greek representations of meditative breathing practices that involve inhaling hot pneuma in the Chaldean Oracles and the “Mithras Liturgy” as well as comparison with similar ideas about “heat-generating ascetic practices” (tapas) in some Indian sources. I conclude that archaic Greek sages may have used inhalation-emphasized breathing practices to stimulate the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervou (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This project uses mythology as a heuristic tool to enrich our understanding of the ancient female body and its processes. Alongside the important and necessary implications afforded by Greco-Roman myth, each of my chapters works through the prominent tripartite biological statuses of the ancient woman that appear in the surviving Greco-Roman gynecological documents—post-natal care, pregnancy/birth, and virginity. By approaching the material from three separate angles, my dissertation explores the complex relationship between medicine and mythology. In each life stage of an ancient woman, I reveal how “irrational” myth and “rational” Greco-Roman medicine support one another in the reckoning, mechanisms, and actions of the female body. Each chapter utilizes Soranus' Gynecology to commence an analysis of each life stage because, as a document speculated to be a manual for midwifery, it offers a viable proving ground due to its range of topics from virginity to raising children.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Anthropology

Weaning is a central factor in both infant morbidity and mortality in archaeological populations. While a relationship between weaning and physiological stress has been established in many living populations, the degree to which weaning is associated with infant stress is highly dependent upon living conditions, food availability, and nutritional quality. As such, the impact of weaning on infant health cannot be assumed in archaeological samples. The aim of this research is to use high-resolution longitudinal weaning profiles to explore variation in weaning timing and its impact on physiological stress in one historic complex society, specifically Imperial Roman Italy. Individual weaning timelines for 52 ancient Romans from the Lazio and Marche regions of Italy are reconstructed using Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) based analyses of Sr/Ca and, to a lesser extent, Ba/Ca signal intensity (concentration) ratios within dental enamel. Weaning timelines are compared to the timing of accentuated lines, histologically observable physiological stress markers in enamel. Timing of both weaning and accentuated lines are examined to determine the relationship between weaning behavior and stress in infancy and early childhood. Results indicate that early infant feeding practices were highly variable, with infants being exclusively breastfed, exclusively bottle fed – likely with herbivore milk – and fed with a combination of breastmilk and herbivore milk. Counter to expectations, exclusive breastfeeding was not associated with fewer accentuated lines in enamel when compared to bottle feeding or mixed feeding, although the weaning period in general was associated with higher frequencies of accentuated lines when compared to exclusive breastfeeding, bottle feeding, and mixed feeding prior to the onset of weaning. Exclusive breastfeeding was also not associated with improved mortality rates. Interestingly, feeding behavior between sites varied (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education, Ashland University, 2024, College of Education

The researcher investigated the effects of learning in an integrated curriculum environment in a Midwestern urban school among 7th grade students. The control group consisted of students who were enrolled in just a 7th grade social studies class. The test group consisted of students who were enrolled in both a social studies class and visual art class learning about Ancient Greece. The implications of this study have both quantitative and qualitative results. The quantitative show mixed results in the control group vs. the test group in their assessment scores. However, the qualitative results showed an increase of enjoyment in teaching for teachers and learning for students in an integrated learning environment.

MA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

This thesis examines Livy's pro-republican statements in Books 1-5 and how he used them as exempla and documenta. In particular, it discusses how Livy's use of exempla and documenta demonstrates how libertas, freedom, cannot exist under a regnum, monarchy, and serves as a commentary about the events that occurred during its composition.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2023, History (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis examines the role of entertainment in shaping the social hierarchy of ancient Rome. While birthright was a significant factor in determining one's status in Roman society, entertainment offered a way for increasing social standing. Furthermore, entertainment was a vital tool the Romans would use to reinforce the status hierarchy. The games, theater, and public baths were venues where individuals could display their wealth and influence, gain respect from elites and the Roman mob, and construct and maintain the social hierarchy. This thesis focuses on these three forms of entertainment because they are some of the most significant in terms of interactions with the different social classes. This paper contributes to our understanding of the ways in which Roman entertainment shaped the social hierarchy of ancient Rome.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

This dissertation assesses biblical prophets' claims to possess access to suprahuman knowledge. A common modern scholarly construct of biblical prophecy holds that prophets were primarily social critics who denounced social injustice and exhorted repentance. The problem with that construct is not that it acknowledges prophets as decrying social ills and admonishing repentance, but that the construct marginalizes prophets' alleged suprahuman knowledge to the function of social criticism. A close analysis of the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible, as provided herein, reveals that the modern construct has inverted the primary focus of the ancient texts. Rather than present the prophets as primarily social critics who denounce social injustice and exhort repentance, the biblical authors principally emphasized the prophets as suprahuman knowledge specialists who occasionally decried social ills and preached repentance. The introductory chapter demonstrates the prevalence of the modern scholarly construct by citing numerous statements by scholars who explicitly marginalize biblical claims that prophets possessed access to suprahuman knowledge in favor of interpreting prophets as social critics denouncing social ills and exhorting repentance. Chapter two provides a history of scholarship from the Dead Sea Scrolls through the twentieth century that establishes the origin of the modern construct as a product of the nineteenth century. Prior to the nineteenth century, exegetes never understood prophetic claims of suprahuman knowledge as subordinate to issues of social justice and repentance. In chapter three, I expose how biblical prophetic texts only occasionally depicted the prophets as social critics. Even in cases where the prophets were portrayed as decrying social injustice or exhorting repentance, the authors paired those statements with claims of prophets announcing information beyond normal human ken. Whereas relatively few prophetic texts paint the prophets as (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Art History

This thesis seeks to frame the study of the Victory Monument at Nikopolis within the well-established scholarship of the Augustan propaganda campaign. The main facets of this campaign were that Octavian was the savior of the Republic and that he was a worthy heir to Alexander the Great and other great men of the past, and in fact surpassed them. Each component of the Victory Monument contributed to these facets of his propaganda campaign. The inscription was carefully composed in order to focus on Octavian's role as savior of the Republic and the row of rostra established Antony and Cleopatra as formidable opponents. The stoa was constructed in the Hellenistic tradition and the frieze demonstrated Octavian's clementia.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, History

Traditionally, scholars of Classical Athenian history have assumed that the Athenian demokratia organized itself for war around the principle of egalitarianism. My dissertation, which focuses on the military contributions of the elite, marks a significant departure from this view by arguing that this is decidedly not the case. In fact, I argue that the elite were so dominant in every aspect of war-making that warfare under the demokratia was primarily an elite concern. Not only did wealthy Athenians serve more frequently in the ranks, but they did so in a larger number of capacities. The liturgies of elite citizens funded both the individual triremes and in many cases, entire military expeditions. Athenian armies and fleets were led by the most elite citizens, who also dominated debates over matters of war and peace in the ekklesia. This elite domination did not undermine the sovereignty of the demos as a whole, however, as the demos was able to keep its elite members in line due to strict accountability measures. Significantly, these accountability measures, which were vital to the demokratia, were enforced almost exclusively by the elite. This decidedly inegalitarian approach to warfare has a broader significance when it comes to understanding the very nature of demokratia itself. I argue that, when we consider both the inequalities that we see at work when the Athenians made war with better known inequalities, such as the non-inclusion of women in politics and the widespread use of slave labor, this shows that demokratia was built on different principles than modern democracy and did not share modern concerns about inequality. The broader significance of this realization, I argue, is that future studies of demokratia should be more careful about delineating the differences between demokratia and democracy before hazarding comparisons.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

While there has been a great deal of work on the late seventh-century Chronicle of John, the anti-Chalcedonian Bishop of Nikiu, since its 1883 publication and French translation by Hermann Zotenberg, there have been few modern studies devoted exclusively to the author and his work. What is more, these modern studies primarily engage with the text as a source of data for the reign of Emperor Herakleios, and the Arab conquest of Egypt, meaning that modern historians often read past the author to a layer of sources beneath them. This positivist utilitarian view of the Chornicle often involves reducing John's worldview to that of a monophysite historian and a Coptic proto-nationalist, and as such interprets the relevant data through this framework. Modern scholarship has further transposed this world view onto the author's world, creating the impression that the Chronicle presents a narrative which reflects the development of a Coptic identity characterized primarily by hostility towards the Chalcedonian church, and the Roman state which had previously supported it. Anything in the text which challenges this view is dismissed as the product of John of Nikiu's method of compiling sources and inverting pro-Chalcedonian and pro-Roman sentiments where they appear. This dissertation moves beyond the heretofore utilitarian-positivist approaches. It instead argues that the entire Chronicle must be viewed as a complete work which, while compiled from a variety of identifiable and unidentifiable sources, still reveals a coherent and distinct historical narrative and theory of history, and one that does not neatly align with the theological and historical positions of the Egyptian Severan Church. This dissertation examines John of Nikiu's theory of history and prescriptive guidelines through a series of challenges to established scholarly views of the Chronicle. The first chapter challenges the notion that the Chronicle reflects a parochial view of world history centered pr (open full item for complete abstract)

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Classics

Imagine a Roman citizen of the 50s BCE unrolling Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. They might expect a dramatic tale of barbarians rushing naked against Roman shields with faces painted blue, blonde mustaches adorning their faces, their hair like horses' manes flowing in the wind. Our Roman would probably believe Gallic society to be even more mysterious than their battle tactics; after all, they counsel with druids, they count by nights, and they believe in a never-ending cycle of life and death. Although some Romans possibly read Posidonius' account of Gallic society (which dispels some of these prejudices), most would think of them as the barbaric enemy to the North. After all, these were the descendants of the Gauls that sacked Rome in 390 BCE. At distinct points in the narrative, this is what Caesar wants you and I, or rather his Roman audience, to believe is the reality of Gaul. However, it is a purposeful exaggeration of the truth, an invented Gaul created by a man writing an account of his own achievements. Caesar clearly exaggerates the social function of clientela among the Gauls, which is first described in Posidonius. Posidonius describes the “parasites” that eat around the military gentry, but this relationship is concerned with nothing more than dining traditions. Caesar on the other hand uses clientela as the central piece for his ethnographic purposes because of the prevalence of patrons and clients in Rome. In the world of the late Roman Republic, clientela and its web of power relations deeply affected the political landscape. Caesar exaggerates these aspects in Gauls not only because the Roman landscape is dominated by clientela, but also because he wants to comment on the implications of this system in Rome of the 50s BCE. Leaders such as Cicero, Pompey and Caesar amassed massive numbers of clients and in turn increased their personal power. I will argue that Caesar's exaggeration of Gallic clientela plays into this trend. I have chosen (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

“The Virgin Mary in Ritual in Late Antique Egypt: Origins, Practice, and Legacy” examines the significance of the Virgin Mary for the ritual activities of Christians in Egypt, from the early conceptual roots of Marian veneration in the second century, to its diffusion among the monks of Egypt ca. 500 CE. In addition to patristics and the New Testament, this project emphasizes esoteric treatises, apocryphal stories, and ritual devices, and considers writings predominantly in Coptic, Greek, Syriac, and Latin. The dissertation challenges longstanding views that make the cult of Mary either a reflex of pagan goddess worship or a response to Christological controversy—above all, the “heresy” of docetism (i.e., the belief that Jesus' humanity and/or suffering were merely apparent). In contrast, the dissertations argues that the earliest association of Mary with divine powers was inspired by mythologies related to “heterodox” Christians—such as Valentinians, Gnostics, and Manichaeans—who variously linked Mary to spiritual powers like the primordial church, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin of Light, and the Mother of Life. These developments in doctrine and praxis reflect distinct forms of social and ritual authority among the Christians of late antiquity, who expressed competing notions of ecclesiastical and anthropological harmony, and visionary experiences. The history of Mary's ritual authority, and Christianity more generally, must always account for the contributions of so-called “heterodox” Christians even in the most unlikely ways, not within some fleeting period of early diversity, but as part of a continuous process well into the Middle Ages.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Anthropology

This dissertation explores the skeletal evidence for violent conflict and social change during the agricultural transition of prehistoric Japan. During the Yayoi period (about 900 BCE to 250 CE), migrants from the Asian mainland brought rice agriculture, metalworking, and new customs to the Japanese islands. Intergroup violent conflict occurred during the period, but neither the origins of such conflict, nor its implications on Japanese history are understood. This dissertation addresses those topics. This research is important because the enactment of violence likely influenced historically known values and cultural beliefs. Analysis addressed two hypotheses. The first hypothesis states that violent conflict results from a competition between groups for the resources necessary to maintain population health. It was predicted that as population health declines, the evidence for intergroup conflict would increase. Analysis explored associations between skeletal indicators of poor health and violent trauma. The second hypothesis states that changing patterns of violent trauma will reflect increasing militarization, as a proxy for greater social complexity. Militarization should evolve concurrent increasing social stratification, a precondition for the development of a state society, like the Yamato state that emerged after the Yayoi period. This hypothesis was supported by observations of changes in skeletal trauma over time. Skeletal remains were examined from various sites dated to the Yayoi period. The largest samples were from the Doigahama, Kuma-Nishioda, and Aoya-Kamijichi sites. The bioarchaeology of experience is developed as a theoretical approach to the contextualized interpretation of skeletal trauma in specific individuals. Middle Yayoi males suffered a significantly higher number of injuries due to weapons in the postcranial skeleton and significantly more sharp-force trauma to the upper limbs compared to Early Yayoi males. Skele (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Anthropology

The archaeological record in the Middle Ohio Valley documents a relatively rapid transition from native domesticated plants and cultigens to maize production. This shift coincided with the cultural historical periods Late Woodland (A.D.400-1000) and Fort Ancient in the Late Prehistoric (A.D. 1000-1650). Previous research has established the chronology and characterized variation among sites across this transition in the Middle Ohio Valley. This dissertation uses high resolution data to explore the paleoethnobotany of four Fort Ancient sites that straddle the transition between these periods in the Little Miami and Great Miami River Valleys in southwestern Ohio and southeastern Indiana. I create a regional model for the maize transition to explore the reasons behind variation in responses to maize. Communities of this time period in the mid-Ohio valley variously ignored maize initially, added it to the existing resource set, or replaced native crops with maize. Opposing hypotheses about whether this transition to maize production was due to resource depression or technological innovation are built using human behavioral ecology's diet breadth model. Expectations developed from these hypotheses are compared to the archaeobotanical record at sites in this region.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2018, History

Through the analysis of the primary sources of Saint Patrick, Gildas, and Bede I will show how the different communities living within the British Isles utilized Christianity, as well as their Roman pasts, to formulate ethnic and cultural identities during the early Middle Ages for the purposes of differentiation and unification.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Greek and Latin

This dissertation offers an analytical history of Roman imperial accessions from the first century through the early years of the seventh century AD. It examines three phases of accessions: a `Roman-senatorial' phase, a `provincial-military' phase, and an initial `Constantinoplitan' phase. I distinguish each of these phases with reference to the typical site of accession, the central audience of the accession speech, and the predominate persona assumed by new emperors who successfully projected legitimate imperial authority. I argue that in less than 600 years, the prerogative to make new emperors changed hands three times. After the foundation of monarchical empire (27 BC-AD 14), the Roman populace (and the relatively few communities of citizens living in the provinces) delegated its right to make heads of state to the Roman Senate. They enjoyed this privilege for the first two centuries of the empire's existence (14-193 AD). In the second phase (212-383 AD), Roman frontier armies stripped the privilege of emperor-making from Rome and its Senate. A century after a major overhaul of the empire's administrative system, emperors decided to permanently settle in the eastern city of Constantinople. There, the circus-factions and populace in the hippodrome of Constantine's `New Rome on the Bosporos' would distinguish themselves as the electoral base of new emperors. While surveying each phase of accession, this history identifies and analyzes the communicative acts and political dynamics that defined successful imperial accession and restored anew the emperorship of the Romans. The dissertation closes with a hypothetical treatise instructing future emperors-elect on the essential tasks that they must perform in an accession speech in order to enact new emperorship.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, History (Arts and Sciences)

In the broad stream of ancient Christian thought, one finds varying understandings of Jesus's mother Mary and the meaning of her virginity. Despite little evidence in the Bible itself to support the view, some early Christians came to assert her “perpetual virginity.” This idea came out of legends found in apocryphal texts, whose contents alleged that Mary had retained her virginal status through the entirety of her life, even after Jesus's birth and her apparent marriage to Joseph. By the late fourth century, belief in Mary's perpetual virginity had become the dominant though not universal perspective found among Christian theological authorities. Several passages in Scripture, however, remained a problem for this camp, not least selections from the New Testament suggesting that Jesus had siblings, which implicitly challenged the permanence of Mary's abstinence. In order to surmount this hurdle, the church father, biblical scholar, and polemicist Jerome argued that these “brothers” were in fact cousins, not siblings in a literal sense. While this overcame the Scriptural problem, it also deliberately contradicted the well-established, popular traditions that were based in the apocrypha. This study examines the immediate response to his new theory in the fourth and fifth centuries. By measuring the reaction from Jerome's contemporaries and later readers, it draws conclusions about the nature of late antique theological dialogue and the development of Christian dogma from its ancient origins into the middle ages.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Anthropology

The Roman Empire sustained one of the longest and largest ruling powers in history, from the first century BC to the fourth century AD, through imperial programs of political and cultural assimilation. Prior to post-colonial reevaluations of historical colonization and imperialism, the Roman process of cultural integration (Romanization) was lauded as unidirectionally constructive and civilizing for the indigenous populations. Recent studies, however, have demonstrated that indigenous populations in culturally- and politically-reconstituted regions of the early Roman Empire experienced diminished access to resources and, consequently, poorer physiological health relative to pre-Roman occupation populations. This research tests the hypothesis that Roman rule had similar detrimental effects on an indigenous community in the eastern Empire. I test the hypothesis via a bioarchaeological study of violence, physiological health, and dietary resource allocation. Critically applying a theoretical framework of structural violence to the analysis of skeletal remains from the Roman (AD 130-270) cemetery at Oymaagac, Turkey, this study investigates how Roman imperial rule impacted locally and regionally the indigenous populations of the Pontus. Because the indigenous populations of northern Anatolia assimilated to Roman imperial rule with little political and social restructuring, it is predicted that, relative to Western indigenous populations, limited or weak evidence of structural violence existed among this rural community. Operational variables of violence—traumatic lesions (fractures), diet (carious lesions, antemortem tooth loss, calculus, abscesses, and stable carbon and nitrogen ratios), childhood growth perturbations (linear enamel hypoplasias), non-specific infection (periosteal new bone and periodontal disease), and physical activity (osteoarthritis, rotator cuff disease, and intervertebral disc disease)—utilized in bioarchaeological studies are contextualized with (open full item for complete abstract)