Classical Studies

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Classical Studies.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Browsing Classical Studies by Subject "Ancient Greece"

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    Rejection and Integration: State Reactions to the Evolution of Dionysian Mystery Cult in Greece and Rome
    (University of Waterloo, 2020-01-15) Noakes, Andrew
    This thesis examines the integration of Dionysian mystery cults into the state religions of Greek polis and the Roman Republic. The cults are often portrayed as controversial and immoral in myth and literature, but the official reactions of various ancient city states never restricted the cult’s rituals or showed any concern over moral degeneracy. Rather, official reactions from the state pertained solely to leadership and organization of the cults. This thesis proposes that the reason for this is that Dionysian mystery cults provided an opportunity for women to obtain leadership, authority, and self definition through a means that was usually restricted to only a small number of women who obtained official state priesthoods. Therefore integration of the cults and restriction on leadership was the most common reaction, with some allowances still made for the cults to exist in private forms. When this opportunity for leadership, authority and self definition was opened up to men, as in the case of the Roman Bacchanalia, the state reacted much more harshly since the cult now provided a social structure that undermined those of the Roman Republic.
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    What We Do in the Shadows: Illuminating the Female Pederastic Tradition
    (University of Waterloo, 2020-05-13) Barclay, Julia
    In scholarship, the study of male pederastic practices in the ancient Greek world has been used time and time again to reinforce the existence of homosexuality across time, though the same attention has not been given to a feminine equivalent, let alone for the same intentions. This is an extension of the tradition set by antique writers that chose to address male relationships and same-sex love as the ideal, making treatments on the female type much more difficult to perform. This pattern surfaces in discussions of pederastic homosexuality the world over, leaving modern scholars with only scant conclusions on the possibility of a feminine equivalent without any further efforts to elaborate. The following study aims to address this glaring hole in scholarship. First, in looking to the initiatory origins of male pederasty in the Greek world in order to build and account for the feminine; Second, in establishing the feminine’s own origins in mythology and initiatory practices; And, finally, in identifying how it was practiced throughout the ancient Greek world in surviving poetry from the Archaic and Hellenistic periods.