Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 75-05(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Joseph G. Manning.

I study Greek inscriptions that accompanied honorific statues on bases or stelae. My question is twofold. One is characterized by an interest in Peer Polity Interaction: Why is it that, from some point in the fourth century onward, Greek-speaking communities get into the habit of honoring prominent individuals with individualized statues and install these in their civic landscapes? The other question reflects on modern methodology: If virtually no original honorific statue of the period survives, how will we talk about what was certainly a major form of social and art production? In answering these questions, I characterize Hellenistic history as a period of civic agency and success, notably in the uniformity and spread of honorific language and habits in Greek city-states.

I argue that we can reassemble a civic discourse that was authoritatively concerned with honorific portraits as social artifacts: it must be traced in decrees, formulas, and epigrams inscribed on stone, but also oral proclamations and some of the orations written for papyrus consumption (notably Isocrates and Dion of Prusa). My central thesis is that the habit of honorific statues in Hellenistic city-states was, despite appearances, democratizing in purpose: both individuals and communities were so enabled to smooth over events of historical rupture, positive or negative (e.g. outstanding benefaction or oppressive domination), into the symbolic sphere of egalitarian continuity. As such, the habit of honorific portraiture was essentially a mindset and coping mechanism for communities to archive only the best of its local and invariably democratic history. Local variations did of course exist, with important, religions consequences. Whenever portraits were the outcome of civic agency, they tended not to be religious dedications, whereas portraits that were the outcome of private initiative could gain added effect by religious dedication.

The insights into a society's dealings with anthropomorphic artifacts, and in particular the way in which it chose to talk about these as shared by other Greek-speaking communities, should be of interest to historians, but also Classicist interested in language and art.