Union College Union | Digital Works Honors Theses Student Work 6-2014 Japan and the Ancient Western Classics: The Role of Divine Intervention in Greek Roman and Japanese Literature Christian Garcia Union College - Schenectady, NY Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses Part of the Classics Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Garcia, Christian, "Japan and the Ancient Western Classics: The Role of Divine Intervention in Greek Roman and Japanese Literature" (2014). Honors Theses. 524. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/524 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Union | Digital Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Union | Digital Works. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ! ! ! ! ! JAPAN AND THE ANCIENT WESTERN CLASSICS: THE ROLE OF DIVINE INVENTION IN GREEK, ROMAN, AND JAPANESE! LITERATURE ! ! ! ! ! BY! ! ! ! ! ! CHRISTIAN! J. GARCIA ! ! ! ************! ! ! ! Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Department! of Classics ! ! UNION COLLEGE! ! JUNE, 2014 ! ! ! ! ! ABSTRACT! ! GARCIA, CHRISTIAN Japan and the Ancient Western Classics: The Role of Divine Intervention in Greek, Roman, and Japanese Literature ! Department of Classics, June 2014. ! ! ! This thesis explores the reasons for divine intervention in Greek, Roman, and Japanese literature and how it impacts the cultures and traditions of ancient Greece, Rome, and Japan. In the first chapter, I discuss the main motivations of divine interven- tion in human affairs in Homer’s Iliad. In the second chapter, I examine the lack of divine intervention in Lucan’s Bellum Civile and the changing attitudes toward the role of di- vinities.