1,721,012 research outputs found
The Pivotal Theios Aner : (re)invented conservatism in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana
No full textThe eponymous hero of Philostratus’ first work, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana,\ud
uses his status as a unique representative of perfected and divinely ordained Hellenic\ud
philosophy on earth—that is, as the quintessential theios aner—to articulate and implement\ud
Philostratus’ own ideal world order. This order was in some ways deeply conservative in its\ud
vision of political, economic, social, and religious systems—a reflection of Philostratus’\ud
status as an establishment elite figure—but equally radical in others—a reflection of the\ud
counter-cultural philosophical tradition that Philostratus and his “Second Sophistic” milieu\ud
were channeling. Philostratus successfully uses Apollonius as a pivot, or link, between the\ud
heavenly and mortal realms. This enables the author to defend the infusion of ethical\ud
philosophy from the former realm into the latter one as a fundamentally tradition-upholding\ud
move. The changes that Apollonius effects are not new; rather, they represent a return to a\ud
long-forgotten era of Hellenic philosophical purity. The effect of this “orthodox” infusion is\ud
that ethical philosophy legitimizes and defends the established world order—political, socioeconomic,\ud
and religious—insofar as the latter adjusts to meet the demands of the former.\ud
When tensions between the two systems arise, Philostratus cleverly takes advantage of the\ud
oscillating “active” and “marginal” nature of his theios aner to prevent a collision. The Life of\ud
Apollonius of Tyana is a well-crafted, contingency-anticipating synthesis of Hellenic “culture”\ud
and “counter-culture” that makes a valiant attempt to inject new life and new direction into\ud
the author’s civilization
Πολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ Love in Thucydides and Plato
No full textMy senior thesis, titled Πολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ Love in\ud
Thucydides and Plato, concerns the decline of Athenian politics\ud
during the late 5th century BCE and the Peloponnesian War. I argue\ud
that Thucydides attributes Athens’ success under Pericles to the ideal erotic relationship between the citizen and the πόλις that the general sets forth in his famous Funeral Oration. This relationship is based off of the educational and sexual relationship that prevailed between older male lovers and younger male beloveds in the\ud
classical period, what I call the ἐραστής-ἐρώμενος relationship. I examine the structure of this homoerotic relationship, the gender norms that constitute it, and how it informs Pericles’ Ideal. I then show how Thucydides attributes Athens’ decline from Pericles’ wartime leadership to the kind of erotic relationship Alcibiades cultivates with the Athenian people, or δῆμος. This relationship was\ud
fundamentally one of erotic ambiguity, in which Alcibiades took on\ud
perverted roles as ἐραστής and ἐρώμενος of the people. I use Plato’s depiction of Alcibiades’ and Socrates’ ambiguous relationship to determine the extent to which Alcibiades transgressed the norms of behavior of model ἐρασταί and ἐρώμενοι as they constitute Pericles’ Ideal. In sum, after detailing Pericles’ Ideal and the ἐραστής-ἐρώμενος relationship, I first detail Alcibiades as a bad lover of the δῆμος and of Socrates, then his erotic ambiguity in Plato, and then his courting the δῆμος as a bad beloved. I then examine Thucydides’ lengthy digression on the myth of the tyrannicides\ud
Harmodius and Aristogeiton. He comments on how the Athenians err\ud
in their response to widespread sacrilegious vandalism on the eve of\ud
their fateful departure for Sicily due to a faulty interpretation of the myth. As a consequence, they ultimately exile Alcibiades, and in doing so, precipitate their failure in subduing Sicily and their failure in the wider war with the Spartans. I link their love for Alcibiades with\ud
their overwhelming desire to invade Sicily, with their failure to\ud
adequately (i.e. rationally) respond to the sacrilegious vandalism, and with their exile of their foremost general
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
When I walked the dark road of Hades: Orphic katabasis and the katabasis of Orpheus
Full text linkAccounts of the descent to the Underworld attributed to Orpheus have been presumed to provide privileged information about the Underworld from the first hand experience of the narrator Orpheus, giving such accounts a special eschatological significance (R. PARKER [1995]). The surviving evidence, however, suggests that accounts of katábasis in texts attributed to Orpheus are not in the first person, while accounts of Orpheus’ katábasisare not attributed to Orpheus (with exception of the allusion in the late Orphic Argonautica). The possibility that the Orphic katabáseis might have recounted the descent of Herakles or Theseus rather than Orpheus himself opens up new avenues for understanding the nature of pre-Platonic Orphica within the Greek epic tradition. Likewise, looking beyond practising Orpheotelests for the authors of these katabáseis allows us to appreciate the way such texts may have been used to explore contemporary medical, mechanical, and other physical ideas. The katabáseis of Orpheus are, quite literally, another story – the story of a mythical poet, whose music is so powerful that it can charm even the lords of death. This separation in the evidence for the katábaseis of Orpheus the author and Orpheus the character prompts re-evaluation of the eschatological significance of Orphic poetry
The battlefield of history: Megara, Athens, and the mythic past from 600 BC to 250 BC
No full textIn ancient Greece, history and myth were intertwined. The mythic past was a realm where heroes walked alongside gods to found the cities of the classical period. Diplomatic relations, military endeavors, and local identity were justified and created using the mythic past. Myth was not a static body of stories, however. Mythology, and the mythic past, was malleable. Local identity was created through an active and constant process of selection that rewrote the content of the mythic past to create the history best suited to the needs of the present. The cities of Athens and Megara were two such cities that engaged in this process of identity formation through myth. The mythic discourse between the cities shows, however, that the alteration of myth was also an act of aggression that would be met with retaliation and resistance. Myth was used to create local identities, and it was in a city’s best interest to undermine the identity of its enemies.\ud
Through iconographic remains and fragmentary textual evidence, the mythic discourse of Athens and Megara can be reassembled from its disparate parts. The most prominent and frequently contested myths were those most important to the political process of identity formation and attack. This thesis examines the evolution from 600 BC to 250 BC of the myths of Pandion and Nisus, Theseus and Skeiron, Athena Skiras, and Theseus and Ariadne to show that the mythic past in Greece was a political tool used to express hegemony over and attack the foundation of other cities. Control over the mythic past demonstrated a city’s political control over a region. Economic, political, and military action was accompanied by an ideological war waged on the battlefield of the mythic past
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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