Boutique Business Plan - 2251 Words

SHRESHTA Your Dreams†¦ Our Designs!!! BUSINESS PLAN CONTENTS Sl. No. | Particulars | Pg. No. | 123456789 | Introduction Mission, vision Objectives Organizational structure Marketing mix * Product * Price * Place * PromotionSWOT analysis * Strengths * Weakness * Opportunities * ThreatsUnique Selling Proposition Legal formalities Financial plan Future plans | 1234810101116 | INTRODUCTION Clothing is a beautiful visual demonstration of the social and emotional needs of people wearing it. It also portrays in a clearly understood visual manner, what people of different cultures and styles want socially.†¦show more content†¦The penetration strategy sets a low price in order to penetrate the market quickly and deeply to attract a large number of buyers. The premium strategy of pricing sets a high price for high quality. The above figure shows the pricing strategies mix. In order to attract a large number of buyers quickly and win a large market share the penetration pricing strategy is chosen. As the textile market has huge competition the penetration pricing strategy is chosen in order to withstand the huge competition and also to attract the brand loyal. PLACE : It is recommended that the proposed location for the said enterprise be an area with the following specifications: * People of that locality should have the buying capacity for women fashion wear. * The neighborhood should have less number of stores which cater exclusively to the needs of women. * The operational costs should be low. The size of the boutique should be at least 800 Sq.ft. The shop would be obtained on rental basis, and the rent estimation for such a shop is Rs 17,000/month. According to the prevailing practice, 3 month rent as advance would be required for renting the shop. The suggested locations in Hyderabad with the specified characteristics could be * Tarnaka * Bownepally * ECIL PROMOTION: The marketing of Shreshta follows the conventional marketing pattern which is dependent on selection of venue of the outlet and the product mix (designs and sizes), as well as theShow MoreRelatedBoutique Business Plan2239 Words   |  9 Pages Your Dreams†¦ Our Designs!!! BUSINESS PLAN CONTENTS Sl. No. | Particulars | Pg. No. | 123456789 | Introduction Mission, vision Objectives Organizational structure Marketing mix * Product * Price * Place * PromotionSWOT analysis * Strengths * Weakness * Opportunities * ThreatsUnique Selling Proposition Legal formalities Financial plan Future plans | 1234810101116 | INTRODUCTION Clothing is a beautifulRead MoreBusiness Plan for Mustard Boutique9962 Words   |  40 PagesSummary Overview Mustard Boutique is an upscale women’s clothing boutique that will open in June this year. 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OneRead MoreSuccessful Start-Ups Key Success Factors37688 Words   |  151 Pages7 7 7 2 METHOD 9 9 10 10 11 12 13 13 17 2.1 My Research and Approach 2.2 Critics of the my approach 2.3 Collection of the Data 2.4 Can my result be used? 2.5 Reliability and Validity of the sources 2.6 Theoretical Framework 2.6.1 The business Platform 2.6.2 Keywords 3 TWO SUCCESSFUL START-UPS – CASES STUDY 21 21 21 23 25 26 31 33 33 34 35 36 36 38 39 41 42 46 48 49 50 3.1 Case 1 – Kreatel AB 3.1.1 Company Presentation 3.1.2 Idea Formulation Clarification 3.1.3 DevelopmentRead MoreStrategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a Business1092 Words   |  5 PagesStrategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a Business BUS/475 Strategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a Business A successful strategic plan must be based on the company s mission, vision, and values. The purpose of this paper is to define a selected business, products, services, and customers by creating a mission statement. 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In particular this paper will discuss the approach of a balanced scorecard that is widely used by both large and small organizations. To elaborate, this concept paper will deal with the application of the concept to the business model of â€Å"The New You Boutique†. Once the boutique’sRead MoreA Business Plan For Nouveau Riche1694 Words   |  7 PagesYou Are An Entrepreneur! Ariel Keaton Professor Kenneth Guyette ACC 557 – Financial Accounting Abstract The paper presents a business plan for Nouveau riche. Nouveau riche Boutiqueis a fashion retail store located in Charleston, SC. It is a sole proprietorship and is managed by the owner. It sells fashionable clothing, shoes, purses and accessories. The business plan will also presents the projected sales analysis, projected profit and loss, and projected balance sheet in the next five years.Read MoreCreative Brief : Marketing Plan1725 Words   |  7 PagesPositioning Statement To increase their sales in the home section of the boutique the positioning of their boutique needs to be changed. The proposed positioning statement states, â€Å"For women, who are looking to find unique pieces and experience great customer service, Two P’s Calli’s offers one of a kind pieces to meet your style needs, while providing customers with professional, but friendly service. Unlike any other business in the San Marcos area, Two P’s Calli s does not compromise qualityRead MoreMarketing: The Costco Strategy1218 Words   |  5 Pagesstrategy for getting into the wedding gown business is to have a set of touring trunk shows at its Western stores during the season where people are planning their weddings. Costcos typical pricing strategy is to undercut competition and make up for this with high volume sales. The company applies this strategy to the wedding gown business as well. Costco offers one of the lowest prices of any company on its wedding dress es. The companys business plan ensures that the details have been fleshed

Is There a Relationship Between Consumption and Identity

In traditional societies, peoples identity was rooted in a set of social roles and values, which provided orientation and religious sanctions to define ones place in the world. In modernity, identity is often characterised in terms of mutual recognition, as if ones identity depended on recognition from others combined with self- validation of this recognition. Identity still comes from a pre set of roles and norms. For example, a mother or a catholic, identities are still limited and fixed, though I believe the boundaries of possible new identities are continually expanding. Current research suggests some theorists believe identity as something†¦show more content†¦For example, a suit and tie may be suitable for a business meeting, but not for wearing in a swimming pool. Significantly, people mis-read and differ in their interpretations. Consequently, appearances are increasingly seen to constitute personality and perhaps, religion, equating how one looks with how one is. This is a process open to positive and negative consequences alike, from parody and masquerade to deception and misunderstanding. In a sense, fashion is associated with uncertainty and confusion concerning social values, especially concerning what is real or authentic. Some say that the nature of fashion is a ‘depthless culture, stressing that fascination of fashion as the fascination of surfaces, of packing and of seduction, which leads to the suggestion that nothing defines us so instantly than as our clothes. Dont you think that when we meet someone new, before you have a chance to say a word, they have already jumped to a host of conclusions, based wholly on what you are wearing? We can manipulate other peoples opinion of us by what we wear. Dependent on how we consume, may actually determine whether we are able to justify the high status thatShow MoreRelatedDoes Developmental Generativity Predict Substance Use? Middle Aged Adults? 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The contributors cover a broad range of cultural consuming patterns drawing on material as well as symbolic resources with case studies from different parts of the world. Studied practices include shopping, personal narratives, music and performance, the imagination of identities and places, media and audiences as well asRead MoreThe Implication of the Emergence of the Gourmet Food Industry595 Words   |  3 Pagesfood industry as an indicator of class, identity, and generation. He explores the historical context of the rise of the new tastes in coffee industry as a response to the early mass market standardization regime. Examining the historical, sociological and anthropological aspects of changing the structure of marketing and consumption of coffee, he probes a broader range of implications in the social change. 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Instead, ‘commodities are not just objects of economic exchange, they are goods to think with, goods to speak with’ (Fiske, 1989) (Cited in Bocock, 1993). This suggests that individuals use goods as symbolic props, as a way of creating and moulding their own identities. It is suggested that the individual has the ability to create their own narrative andRead MoreMass Media And Its Influence On Consumer Culture1497 Words   |  6 Pagesrecognized that people consume in ways that are consistent with their sense of self (Sirgy, 1982). Consumption is not only a tool to obtain the value of goods and display social status, but also is closely related to self-identity. In the consumer culture, customers no longer just shop because of their needs. The desire of individual s self-development and self-taught continue to stimulate the consumption. People change them selves as much as possible by buying new goods. 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According to Hill (n.d.), it is generally defined as a process of purchasing or buying those previously produced and distributed goods and services. These three terms are related to the economic growth of a region

Dreams Of Grandeur free essay sample

Dreams of Grandeur by Jamie Lynn A., Elmhurst, NY The sky was a dazzling sapphire blue. The air was clean and fresh, unusual for New York City. There was a cool morning breeze on this first day of summer. The day couldnt be more perfect. I was surrounded by my family and friends, the people who mattered the most to me. In my crisp, white gown, I held onto my cap and followed the sea of green and white. It would soon be my turn. I approached the stage with care. Cameras flashed all around as I stepped onto the stage. At the other end, I saw it there waiting for me. I shook some hands, took in all the smiling faces and walked across the stage. Now it was within reach. I heard a Congratulations as a roll of cream white paper, tied with a crimson ribbon, was held out to me. We will write a custom essay sample on Dreams Of Grandeur or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I murmured a Thank you and took it in my trembling hands. I continued off the stage, staring in disbelief at the paper for which I had waited my whole life. As I was walking, a woman with a microphone stopped me. Jamie Lynn Andres, youve just graduated from high school. What are you going to do now? Without hesitation, I answered her. Im going to college! I awoke with a start. Whoops! There I go again. Ive always been a bit of a dreamer. When youre the shy, quiet girl who tends to go unnoticed, dreams are what keep you going. Where else can I travel the world in just days? Where else can I be a famous rock star? Where else can I have a perfect graduation day in New York City? Its just like the song says, Only in my dreams. Of course I know it doesnt have to be that way. Dreams do become reality. I just have to make them happen. But there are a few things I have to do first. At the top of my list is college. When Im finally ready, I will turn my dreams into my future. Right now, though, I have something to say to all those people who told me to dream on. Guess what? I will.

Justice Aeneid vs Old Testament vs New Testament Essay Example

Justice: Aeneid vs Old Testament vs New Testament Paper The Aeneid, a poem written before the era of Christ and Christianity, has been argued to be a precursor to the values of Christianity, much as the Old Testament is a precursor to the New Testament. While the Aeneid does not explicitly lay out these values, scholars have interpreted the text otherwise. Some scholars have made claims arguing for the connection between The Aeneid and The New Testament, finding their evidence in other works of literature, especially Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno, one of Alighieri’s three poems about the journey into the Christian afterlife. However, when one looks closely with analytic and skeptical eyes, these connections are not as strong as they might seem. This paper argues that the connections between The Aeneid and Christianity are spurious, and that the evidence put forth in defense of this argument does not establish its existence. The Old Testament is a book of stories and instructions that establishes divine law for the Jewish people. The New Testament also consists of stories, but instead of focusing on establishing a law, it provides a moral guide to get into the kingdom of Heaven. The Aeneid was Virgil’s attempt to create an epic poem that drew elements from Homer’s poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, to increase the glory of Rome through an epic tale. Through the journey of Aeneas, the reader sees how Virgil tells the history of the Roman Empire through hero, grand quests, and supernatural journeys. In the epic, Virgil illustrates how a Roman should behave and what duties they ought to fulfill. We will write a custom essay sample on Justice: Aeneid vs Old Testament vs New Testament specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Justice: Aeneid vs Old Testament vs New Testament specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Justice: Aeneid vs Old Testament vs New Testament specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Retributive justice becomes a large part of the Aeneid because some individuals are doing what they ought not to and not fulfilling their duties. In fact, the defining factor in my argument is the different concepts of justice in The Aeneid, the New Testament, and the Old Testament. I argue against the claim that the Aeneid was a pre-cursor of the New Testament based on the fact that its constructions of justice are markedly different than those proposed in the New Testament, but point out that they are quite similar to those in the Old Testament. I will show that the Aeneid and the New Testament are at odds in values and principles, and that previous arguments that support the connection between Christianity and The Aeneid use evidence based on adaptations of stories that provide inconclusive information to support a connection. Justice in the Old Testament One must critically analyze the Old Testament and compare the Old and the New Testament before comparing the New Testament and The Aeneid. The difference I plan to illustrate will be a focal point for comparing the two biblical texts to The Aeneid. It is with justice that the Old and New Testaments are set apart as being different and separate from one another. Therefore, by using some of the examples that other scholars have used to support the connection I will not only refute their evidence, but rethink their track of logic to debunk the argument. Taking this into consideration, the cornerstone of this argument is the value of justice and how it is perceived in the Old Testament. The value of justice in the Old Testament can be broken down into three terms: sedakah, mishpath, and hesed (Eballo, p. 21). He judges and punishes those who go against his laws and sedakah, a Hebrew term meaning, â€Å"right relationship† (Eballo, p. 15). This â€Å"right relationship† is defined in many ways, including the covenant between God and man, and the values and customs of the covenant, and ordered relationships. These ordered relationships refer to â€Å"relationship[s] with nature, God’s dealings with humans, [†¦] between David and God, [†¦] the king and the people†, and between people (Eballo, p. 16). Another word worth noting is tzedek, meaning â€Å"justice [†¦] in the [†¦] relationship between persons of unequal power† (Shoenfeld, p. 2). The combination of these two words embodies the value of justice in the Old Testament. Those who act against these values are subject to mishpath, a term which, according to Eballo, refers to justice in the context of failing to maintain the sedakah. That is to say that justice is the punishment that awaits those who violate the right relationship. Only God, â€Å"the judge who punishes the wicked one, [†¦] in order to restore right relationships†, can deliver this justice (Eballo, p. 16). Those following and adhering to the sedakah will be greatly rewarded, â€Å"enjoy long life [†¦] and increase in] land flowing with milk and honey† (Deut. :2-3). This clearly shows that God rewards those who follow his ways and the covenant and, as part of retribution, demands that those who break His laws â€Å"stop doing wrong and learn to do right† (Isa. 1:16-17). Those who do not adhere to divine laws are subject to punishment by the hand of God. Next is the word hesed, which is translated to mean â€Å"loving kindness, [†¦] steadfast love, mercy, and compassion† (Eballo, 2008, p. 7). It refers to the love that God has for his people and the covenant. It is also a way to govern the human actions by urging men to show the same love to others as God does unto them. Evidence of this is scattered throughout the Old Testament; it shows up several times in Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Isaiah, as well as some of the other books. God’s people are told to â€Å"love your neighbor as yourself† (Lev. 19:18) and â€Å"be open-handed and freely lend [a poor man] anything he needs† (Deut. 15:8). While the Old Testament contains the word hesed that encompasses the value of justice and love, the New Testament contains no such word with the same meaning. Rather, the New Testament has a different outlook on how people should conduct themselves in relation to God and each other. One of the more obvious and conclusive pieces of evidence about the role of justice and law in the Old Testament is the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is a manual or rulebook defining acts that are good and bad in the eyes of God, as well as the punishments involved, the procedures of different types of offerings, and cleansing of the body. There is little doubt that Leviticus is a rulebook if one simply looks at the name of the chapters such as: â€Å"Unlawful Sexual Relations†, â€Å"Various Laws†, â€Å"Rules for Priests? †, and â€Å"Punishment for Sin. From these chapters one could assume, like in modern day society, that those whole follow the rules will be rewarded while lawbreakers will be punished. This shows that the definition of justice in Leviticus, as well as the rest of the Old Testament, is retribution designed to punish those who defy the word of God. The prime example of this would be Adam and Eve whose only restriction in the Garden of Eden was to not eat from a specific tree. Once God found out that they had defied His word they were punished severely with mortality, labor pains, and the need to work to survive among other punishments. The Old Testament is very clear about what justice is and how to carry it out. It is adhering to the right relationship with God and following His rules. In other words, a person is doing God justice by being a loyal and obedient servant. The God of the New Testament doesn’t have a system of justice like in the Old Testament. The New Testament justice is focused around something that goes beyond the legality and authority of the Old Testament God and so God’s ability to forgive sinners who repent for their actions is the loving and forgiving justice that is present in the New Testament. Juxtaposition of The Aeneid and the Old Testament Now that the Old Testament has received some proper analysis, it will be used to compare and analyze The Aeneid and its sense of justice. Virgil wrote this poem in the pre-Christian era, so it would not be surprising if the Aeneid and the Old Testament had some similarities. The values presented in The Aeneid can be assumed to be similar to the Old Testament values, namely of justice in the form of retribution. Both texts present a strong belief in retributive justice, namely punishing those who do wrong against others and against the will of the gods or, in the Old Testament’s case, God. Zetzel describes the justice in The Aeneid as â€Å"poetic justice† simply because those who do good are praised, while those who do evil are punished. The latter portion of the understanding of poetic justice can also be interpreted as retributive justice, justice through punishment that is either morally or rightfully deserved. The Ten Commandments are the backbone of God’s law in the Old Testament and the foundation of God’s love and relationship in the New Testament. The same commandments were interpreted respectively in these texts from a legal aspect to an interpersonal one. The interpretations of justice differ from one another, but it is with the Old Testament that the Aeneid finds commonality. The Aeneid displays the retributive justice that is commonly found in the teachings of the Old Testament where sinful acts are punished severely. The severe punishments that are evident in the Old Testament and Aeneid both result from a failure to follow divine laws. In several instances the reader is shown retribution as well as the need to obey the law of the gods throughout the Aeneid. On such example is in Book 6, where it is said that the narrative takes on a new life, it is still evident that the underworld is based on punishment and justice (Zetzel, p. 265) due to the fact that those in that realm are punished for injustices they committed while they were alive. In Book 3 Aeneas and his crew were given instructions to set up altars on a beach, perform vows, cloak themselves in purple and veil their heads as to not attract any enemy presence. The purpose of these instructions was for Aeneas to establish them and set an example for the later generations to follow. Aeneas and his comrades were to â€Å"fast to this sacred rite [†¦]. [His] son’s sons must keep it pure forever† (Aeneid, 3. 482). These instructions were given to Aeneas through a prophet of Apollo and can essentially be said to have come from the god himself. In this light one can interpret the instructions as a law established by the gods. Instructing people to keep a custom for several generations is nothing new and has been observed in several instances in the past. Not only is this done in The Aeneid, but also it appears in the Old Testament in the form of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is one of the most observed customs from the Hebrew Bible, which lays out for the Jews things they cannot do on their day of rest. Jesus, on the other hand, goes against the customs of the Sabbath. As mentioned previously, when he healed an ill man and was criticized for it because strict adherents to God’s laws claimed it violated sacred tradition Another excellent point for comparison between the two texts is the story of Job. This story is about a man who is completely faithful to God, but whose faith is repeatedly tested through a series of horrible events. The reason for this is because God made a wager with Satan that no matter what kind of misfortune Satan could send him, Job will remain faithful and pious, never doubting God and His ways. Throughout the story, his children fall ill and are then killed and his home is destroyed by a hurricane. Job stayed faithful to God in the face of all of these horrible traumas, and as a result, after all of the tests, he began prospering once again. In this story, all of these dreadful events happen because of Satan (and God’s affection for gambling with his faithful), but nobody besides the reader and the divine knows this. Job believed that all these misfortunes were naturally occurring, but despite all that he keeps his faith and doesn’t curse the name of God, even when his wife told him to curse the name of God and die (Job 2:9-10). Though these trials were a test, humankind can never know the magnitude of God’s reasoning, which is why Job’s friends and family are so quick to say that God was needlessly punishing him. On the other hand, justice is not served through punishment; instead punishment is given to enforce justice according to sedakah, mishpath, and hesed. Through his suffering, Job’s right relationship with God is solidified. The Old Testament sets itself apart from The Aeneid in the sense of justice because Job was punished for not as a result of sinning or committing an act that violates the word of God, but because he was tested on how strong his faith in his Lord was. Though the two texts experience a slight disconnect, the two are conjoined once again by a human behavior, that is, the Roman gods and God express a behavior that is familiar in humans. God expresses a quality similar to the queen of the Roman god, Juno. Juno makes a personal vendetta to kill Aeneas, and by inciting the Greeks to launch an attack on the Trojans or bribing a mortal who can control the winds and the waves, Juno continuously shows this flawed human emotion known as pettiness. When most people think of God, they believe Him to be omnipotent, omniscient, and loving, but He is also a jealous and petty god. It seems odd that a being such as God would possess such an emotion or behavior that is normally equated to humans because there is no god that governs jealousy or pettiness. God shows His pettiness when challenged by Satan about his servant Job. Satan merely makes the point that Job has no reason to fear God because God pampered him the whole time and if he were to take everything from him then Job would surely curse His name, to which God says something to the effect of â€Å"Oh, we’ll see about that†. It is that petty human reaction that is exhibited by an omniscient and omnipotent entity, much like Juno, that sets the Old Testament and the Aeneid apart from the New Testament. God and His son Jesus are complete opposites of this. Rather than being petty, Jesus, displays fairness, kindness, and warm-heartedness instead of being spiteful and enraged. Another instance where the Old Testament and the Aeneid are similar is in the story of Noah and the ark. This story, like the story of Job, is another well-known tale from the Hebrew Bible. Also it shares similarities with the events that happen in the narrative and also has the essence of retributive justice. Noah was a righteous man, probably the only righteous man on Earth; God contacted him and only him, instructing Noah to build an ark and load it with two of every animal (male and female). Needless to say, God told him He was going to flood and destroy the Earth and the people in it because they had corrupted the world with violence and sin (Gen. 6:12-13). Then God made it rain for forty days and nights and the world remained flooded for one hundred fifty days. The raining and flooding can be compared to the storms that landed Aeneas and his boats on the shores of Carthage. Juno had spoken to King Aeolus and persuaded him to use his powers to create treacherous winds, storms, and waves to kill Aeneas and the Trojans. Neptune, god of the seas, caught wind of this heinous act and called out to the elements, â€Å"What insolence! [†¦] You winds, you dare make heaven and earth a chaos, raising such a riot of waves without my blessing. [†¦] Power over the sea and ruthless trident is mine [†¦] by lot, by destiny (Aeneid 1. 155-162). Neptune threatens King Aeolus that if he were to do something like that again he would receive some kind of punishment. The scolding is a form of punishment, as lenient as it, much like how first time offenders for a misdemeanor are punished less the first time around, but punished more harshly for a second time offence. One could compare this to the story of Noah’s ark when the repeated sins of man had corrupted the world and as punishment God wiped the world clean with a flood, sparing Noah and some animals. While Aeolus was not sentenced to drown like all of humanity the reason for his punishment was quite similar. God had flooded the world because man had become corrupt and disregards God’s laws. Aeolus disregards Neptune in a similar fashion in that he disregards the fact that Neptune has the sole power to control the seas. Of course Virgil, when writing The Aeneid, had no intention of writing for Jesus Christ or his disciples, thus connections made to the Christian texts were a result of a poor exegesis that only attempts to connect the two texts through the similar events or later fictional works that attempt to bring Virgil into line with Christianity. Justice in the New Testament Justice is an inconsistent concept in the Bible between the Old and New Testament. It is inconsistent because it is clearly defined in the Old Testament as to what constitutes as justice, but as the New Testament emerges the value of justice is altered by redefining what kind of actions entails justice. Justice makes a shift from emphasizing law in the Old Testament to an emphasis of love in the New Testament reverse order here Many scholars have noticed this phenomenon and have argued for the existence of retributive justice (justice by punishment) in the Old Testament; they conclude that retribution is replaced with a sense of love and forgiveness in the New Testament (Allbee, p. 48). In both texts God is the ultimate power and is the provider of judgment, but Jesus Christ, the prominent figure of Christianity is the dispenser of justice in the New Testament where justice is expressed in a new form of love and forgiveness. New Testament justice not only different than the Old Testament’s justice, but is actually opposes it in several instances during Jesus ’ travels. In Matthew 12, Jesus and the Pharisees had an exchange of words about working on the Sabbath. Jesus was criticized for healing a man on the Sabbath, to which he responded that men should be able to do good deeds even on Sabbath, which clearly illustrates the legal aspect of justice being replaced by notions of interpersonal obligation (Matt. 12:11-12). If Jesus, who was himself a Jew, was allowed to break the sacred custom of the Sabbath, which was punishable by death, then it must follow that justice from the Old Testament has failed and does not have a strong presence in the New Testament. However if one were to interpret the personal values of love and faith, whether from person to person or person to God, as a form of justice then the New Testament would clearly have its own system of justice apart from the Old Testament system. That is to say that the New Testament is not completely devoid of a system of justice, rather that is possesses a different one than the Old Testament that stems from a different value system. The Gospel of Matthew has much to offer in understanding justice in the New Testament. A portion of the gospel uses a passage from Isaiah that defines a servant of God as someone who will bring justice to the world. Matthew, of course, reinterprets this to mean Jesus and only Jesus, while the original passage is ambiguous and, quite frankly, could mean God’s people in general. So once again, passages found in the New Testament show the shift in justice from x to y where x is the legal aspect of justice and y is justice in the form of love, faith, and morals; a shift that is strongly relevant to the issue of comparing The Aeneid to the New Testament. Based on that passage, it seems that justice can only be done by one who can affect the world, that is, a person who is able to change the world by their actions. Moreover, if the system of justice is truly replaced with love and faith then the connection to The Aeneid can’t possibly exist because love and faith is not the method to achieve justice. In the world of Aeneas and the Roman gods, love and faith is not the system of justice that guides people to the kingdom of heaven, only fear and reverence can do this. The Roman people honored and feared the gods for their power to not only do good, but to also punish and do harm if they were displeased; a concept that appears in both the Old and New Testament. An opposing view to this states that punishment does, in fact, exist in the New Testament and contends that the one being punished is Jesus. The view of punishment is, however, flawed because it runs contradictory to what the New Testament promotes: love, forgiveness, and, in Jesus’ case, suffering for someone else’s sins. Justice is also served when and individual who has committed a sin or evil deed is punished. This is the case according to Robert Schier who uses his claim to defend capital punishment as a method compensate for one’s sins. The general conception of Jesus’s death and crucifixion is that he died as a martyr in order to wipe the people’s slates clean of sin. The author instead interprets Jesus’s death as making him into a scapegoat for mankind. The claim is made that God punished Jesus because the sins of man were put onto his shoulders. In a sense, Jesus went from dying for the people to dying because of the people. In other words, Jesus was sent to die for the people and became a tool for God to save his beloved people. I disagree with Schier’s interpretation of the crucifixion of Christ because Christ died as a savior, not as a man deserving of punishment. The sins he carried were not his to begin with, and to take the burden unto one’s self to alleviate the burden of others is not an act a person should be punished to death for; someone like Jesus is an emancipator who died in order to save others. If Jesus was sentenced to death for our sins, why on Judgment Day, the day when Christians believe the world will end and Jesus’ second coming will happen, are the dead â€Å"judged according to what he had one† (Revelation 20:13)? Did Jesus not already die to absolve us of our sins? There’s a contradiction here that suggests that there was no justice or punishment in Jesus’s death because man will still be judged for his own sins and actions. The point that is being stressed is that Jesus had already died to absolve mankind of their sins, but according to the t ext in the book of Revelation, despite the fact that Jesus died for our sins, we’re are still being judged based on our actions on Judgment Day. If individuals still wind up in Hell does that not mean Jesus was sacrificed for nothing? If the system of justice has been swapped as aforementioned from the time of the Old Testament and the New Testament, then the question that arises is what exactly has been changed or swapped that sets the two testaments apart from one another. The idea of justice is altered and the alteration is what causes the Old Testament to have more of a connection to the Aeneid than the New Testament. The Old Testament and the Aeneid contain a legal connotation of justice that asserts itself in the form of retribution. The New Testament loses its alleged connection to the Aeneid because of the shift in the values of justice, that is to say that the New Testament cannot be linked to Virgil’s work because it does not value justice in a legal context, but rather in a personal one that emphasizes love. The correlation between love and justice becomes the definitive element that sets the two testaments apart from one another. Old Testament Vs. New Testament Like the Old Testament, Christianity has a word that is supposed to mean justice: dike, the term in the New Testament that results from one having faith. According to Schoenfield who wrote on the theme of justice in Christianity, dike is the â€Å"Greek equivalent of tzedek, which has already been explained to mean justice in the sense of right relationship between people of unequal power† (Schoenfeld, p. 237). Immediately, one can tell the differences in justice between the Old and New Testament in the vocabulary used to convey the value of justice and how to adhere to that system. Some have made the observation that the Old Testament is more concerned with God’s law and the New Testament is more concerned with each individual’s personal relationship with God. In the New Testament, some scholars have contended that justice is taken out of its legal connotation and transformed to emphasize â€Å"righteousness through faith on gracious love [within] the individual believer† (Shoenfield, p. 239). Not only does the principle of justice make this shift from legally love based, but the idea of love makes the transition as well from love of god to love of others. Richard A. Allbee, a writer on the subject of love in the Old Testament †, analyzes chapter 19 verses 11 through 18 of Leviticus, and affirms this notion. He writes that the â€Å"same love of neighbor commandment that Jesus explicitly reveals is [†¦] already implicitly implicated as such in [†¦] Lev. 19. 11-18† (Allbee, p. 147). I believe this claim to be false because it very clearly says to love your neighbor in Lev. 19:18. The question that I raise is whether there is a difference between love in the Old and New Testaments? Allbee answers this question through the idea of priority. He asks readers to differentiate these definitions of love according to what or whom people are supposed to love in each text. In the New Testament it is plain to see that the interpersonal relationship of love is the main priority, while the Old Testament puts that same love â€Å"in a legal context, [†¦] [giving] the system of law the priority† (Allbee, p. 148). In addition, the importance of the Sabbath was mentioned before in the Old Testament, but there is no such emphasis in the New Testament. Laws were set in play for Jews to rest on this day, goes against the customs of the Sabbath. Jesus came across an ill man and healed him. He was criticized for this because strict adherents to God’s laws claimed it violated sacred tradition of the Sabbath. Jesus’ defense to those accusations he gives them a hypothetical question of whether is it lawful to do good or evil, to save a life or to kill (Mark 3:4). In discussing the value of love and right relationship, the value of justice is clarified and reveals that both are closely related; almost synonymous. Justice is derived from one’s ability to uphold the correct relationship either with God in the Old Testament or, in the case of the New Testament, with your neighbors and others. The aspect that sets the two testaments apart is the legal aspect of justice and love of the Old Testament. This legal aspect that demands retribution when laws are broken is the point with which to compare the value of justice with The Aeneid. Justice in The Aeneid Throughout The Aeneid the gods take action; manipulating reality as they see fit, fighting amongst one another, but, more importantly, punishing people on Earth who have crossed them or acted against their wishes or laws. The portion of the poem that scholars use most often to discuss the theme of justice is Book 6, â€Å"The Kingdom of the Dead. † The reason for this is because Book 6 narrates Aeneas’s journey to Italy to establish a new city of Troy; instead he travels deep within the bowels of the underworld to find his father and along the way encounters familiar faces. Zetzel analyzes Book 6 and discovers there is a theme of moral evaluation. He contends that Virgil uses the underworld to draw a â€Å"framework [†¦] to confront the problems of justice and morality in Augustan Rome† (Zetzel, 1989, p. 64), thus grounding Book 6 in history instead of pagan religion. We are told in Book 6 that Tartarus, the underworld, [†¦] is not limited to mythic sinners, but [extends to] those who violate the universal canons of justice and morality† (Zetzel, 1989, p. 272). These mythic sinners refer to the mythological characters that appear in the underworld like Aeneasâ€⠄¢s last lover, Dido, who came from the kingdom of Carthage and, under the sway of Venus and Cupid, broke her vow to her dead husband. Deiphobus, who was the son of the Trojan king Priam, was killed in the Trojan War. Because his body was mutilated and left unburied, he too was found in the underworld. What Zetzel means to assert is that not only would the underworld contain those who have committed sins similar to those in myths, but it also has room for those who commit what Greek society view as unjust and immoral acts. Those in the underworld, according to Zetzel (and Virgil), deserve to be there to pay for the actions they committed when they were alive. Through Virgil, the reader is given an absolute sense of justice. Dispensers of justice and guardians seek to correct mistakes in judgment made when a person was alive (e. g. judged innocent of a murder). The divine order of gods is what makes justice prevail in the world of The Aeneid the gods are always seeking a kind of balance in which their laws are preserve. A clear example of this is how Aeneas was shown resistance and was constantly restricted passage further into the underworld and though he was met with resistance, he prevailed. This is a feat to take note of due to the fact that it was constantly stressed that the gods forbade any living soul to be present in Tartarus because it was an area for dead souls to be punished, clearly suggesting that Aeneas, alive and free from punishment, should not be there. While Aeneas goes against the word of the gods, there is a lack of punishment for his trespass. This contradiction exists because he was fated by the gods to take the journey to Tartarus and also to live on to â€Å"wage a [†¦] war in Italy [†¦] and build high city walls for his people there and found the rule of law† (Aeneid, 1. 14-317) thus doing justice to Zeus’s predictions. This contradiction in fate and law suggests that the gods possess the power to bend their own rules and work against the laws that they have already set in stone. It is no surprise that the gods should be able to contradict themselves, since in many Homeric poems gods are known to do things in spite of other gods: fight each other, go against their will, plead to Zeus to change fate itself. If the gods are viewed as a single unit then the contradiction can be explained as a laws being indecisive about what should be done. In other words, if the gods a single functioning unit or entity, then the bickering between the gods and defiance among them is just the law adapting or changing itself. The first account of retributive justice in The Aeneid takes place just before the fall of Troy surrounding the story of the Trojan Horse in Book 2. As the story goes, a large wooden horse appeared at the gates of Troy and was brought into the city because the Trojans believed that it was a gift from the Greeks that reflected their abandonment of the war. A skeptical man by the name of Laocoon warned of the treachery of the Greeks and hurled a spear into it to make sure that there was no one inside, before it could be offered as an offering to Minerva. Soon after, two giant serpents sprang up and killed Laocoon and swiftly retreated to the heights of Troy and took shelter behind the shield of Minerva. Immediately people began to think that this was Laocoon’s punishment for hurling the spear. It was said that he â€Å" deserved to pay for his outrage, [†¦] he desecrated the sacred timbers of the horse, he hurled his wicked lance into the beast’s back† (Aeneid, 2. 291-293). Notice the language: â€Å"deserved to pay†, â€Å"sacred†, and â€Å"wicked†. It’s impossible to not realize that the consequences of Laocoon were interpreted as being delivered by the goddess as retribution. An offering intended for Minerva was desecrated and the act violated the goddess. Of course, it is needless to say that those who act against the gods will be punished. While the poem does not specifically say that Minerva summoned the giant serpents to kill Laocoon, it is understood that the gods control aspects of reality that make events they create seem natural In other words, the things that occur in nature such as thunder and lightning are natural occurrences, but the Greeks and Romans, who had no clear understanding of these natural forces, did the best they could to make sense of the world and natural disaster and other natural occurrences by claiming that a god was behind this occurrence. Gods like Zeus the god of lightning, Hephaestus the god of fire, Poseidon the god sea and storm, are understood to govern their respective forces of nature. So thunder and lightning might be manifestations of Zeus’s wrath, which could make people believe that they have done something to anger him. Using this understanding of the world and the natural occurrences and manifestations of the gods, the surfacing of the serpents and their attack on Laocoon may seem a horrific, random, naturally occurring incident, but it would actually be understood as Minerva summoning the serpents as Laocoon’s punishment for lashing out at the Trojan Horse. Moreover, this understanding also stretches farther than nature and the elements. For example love may seem to be a natural experience, but, according to the Romans, it is actually controlled by Venus, the goddess of love. Some gods can also govern skills such as craftsmanship, wisdom, and archery; these skills are personified in Hephaestus, Athena, and Apollo, respectively. Justice is very clearly illustrated as getting one’s â€Å"just dessert†; those who have committed wrongs against the gods should get their just punishment. The punishment not only applies to the living world, such as plagues, misfortune, or death, but can also extend to the afterlife. Bodies unburied for whatever reason are forced to stay on the shores of the river of Styx, unable to find solitude across the banks. Others are left to suffer for their moral wrong doings. Not only is there a sense of moral justice, that is, doing things that are considered morally just in Greek society, but there is a heavy sense of duty towards the gods: sacrifices, reverence, and servitude. Justice is therefore served through obedience to the gods and disobedience leads to retribution. In the Aeneid justice prevails in the living world as well. Justice is seen many times as coming from the gods themselves in a divine and retributive form. There are times when the gods are behind the plot of the story, sometimes pushing characters in the right direction to fulfill their destiny and other times punishing them with some kind of natural or supernatural force. As far as the unfortunate events that happen to people goes, the communal conception is that is justice being given by the hand of the divine to those who are deserving of punishment. Take, for example, the death of Palinurus, the helmsman of Aeneas’s ship when Aeneas and his men set sail for Italy in Book 5. Venus, Aeneas’s mother, asks for Neptune’s help and begs him to protect her son Aeneas and provide safety from Juno or who ever else would want to harm him on his journey. Neptune agrees, but requires one life for the lives of the rest of the crew as a sacrifice. On the surface, this doesn’t seem like justice at all because Palinurus has done nothing deserving of death. But once Neptune decided to take his life, it became the will of the gods and, therefore, must be done. At first he resisted the powers of the god of Sleep, but since Neptune mandated that he should die for the safety of the rest of the crew, to go against the wishes of a god guarantees punishment for Palinurus. Another punishment that is overlooked is Palinurus’ suffering after he dies as a result of being left unburied without proper burial rites. Without these burial rights Palinurus’ soul is bound for more suffering in the underworld of Tartarus. In Book 6 Aeneas runs into the shade, or ghost, of Palinurus who begs to be saved from his torment. Sibyl, Aeneas’s guide through the underworld, tells Palinurus that they cannot save him because his body rots in the sea, but people who eventually come across his body will give him his proper burial and set him free. Proper burials are extremely important in Roman culture and part of that reason is the emphasis on proper burials in Greek culture. During several instances in the Iliad, which part of the Aeneid was meant to mimic, burials are essential for the souls of the dead to be at rest. Through this we can see a clear example of retribution as well as vindication as part of the value of justice. For resisting the death that he was fated for, not only does Palinurus die, but he suffers in the underworld as well. An opposing view of this would claim that had he not resisted, death and suffering would still await him, in other words, his resistance might have been foretold as well as well as his death. Readers are shown time and time again that no one can escape their fate and every step that is taken has already been predetermined and will bring about the same intended outcome. No matter what Palinurus did, whether he resisted, gave into the power of the gods, or any other option available to him, his body would have still ended up in the sea and his soul in the underworld. The rebuttal to this view would say that Palinurus’ ultimate demise was set in stone, but his path to get there was completely up to free will. This means that he chose, out of his own free will, to resist the god and that his choice was not affected by the gods in any way, which therefore justifies why his soul is suffering in the river of the underworld. Justice was not a value that was taken from The Aeneid and infused into the New Testament. Since it’s been established that these two texts possess two very different perspectives on justice and how to achieve it. However, if the perspectives of justice from the two texts don’t line up, then the question still remains of what is the basis for assuming that there is connection of New Testament and The Aeneid. The answer is in the adaptation of the stories. Unlike an exegesis, which interprets the meaning and values underlying a text, adaptations use previous works as a template to mimic actions and events for a more modern version of the original. It is because adaptations only mimic events instead of interpret values or morals that the New Testament should be seen as only an adaption and not an exegesis of the Aeneid as others claim it to be. Adaptations and Exegesis The same kind of logic is used to explain the transition between the Old Testament and the New Testament, which is illustrated by Hawkins and in Bill Maher’s documentary on worldwide-organized religion entitled Religulous. Hawkins provides an analogy: Old Testament is to New Testament as Virgil is to Christianity. The New Testament is an exegesis of the Old Testament giving explanation and interpretation to God’s laws, as mentioned before, and of the prophecies of the coming messiah. Harold Bloom (1973) who also writes on the Christian exegesis of the Old Testament, views the New Testament as an atrocious misreading of the Hebrew Bible. Bill Maher conducted interviews for his documentary Religulous in order to question the logic behind religion and understand why people would believe in illogical and improbable events described in the Bible, such as the talking snake from the story of Genesis or the unrealistic number of years that prophets, like Moses, lived. The point I want to make, which Maher posits in his film to a group of Christian truck drivers is, â€Å"The New Testament came after the Old Testament, do we agree to that? † to which the driver agrees. Maher continues by saying â€Å"all it means is that the people who wrote the New Testament read the Old Testament and then made prophecies fit† (Johnston Charles, 2008). Maher also discusses another instance of adaptation on the New Testament writers’ part. He discusses the story of Jesus’s life with an actor who plays Jesus in a tour extraction in Orlando, FL called â€Å"The Holy Land Experience†. Essentially it was explained that the story of Jesus Christ being born of a virgin, baptized in a river, crucified and then resurrected three days later reflects the themes raised in many other stories from different religions dating back before the birth of Christ. Maher states that Krishna, a Hindu deity, â€Å"was a carpenter, born of a virgin, baptized in a river† (Johnston Charles, 2008), all of which are attributes more notably associated with Jesus Christ. He also mentions the Persian god Mithra who was â€Å"born December 25th, performed miracles, resurrected on the third day† (Johnston Charles, 2008), and also goes by the same aliases as Jesus (e. g. the Lamb, the Way, the Light, the Savior). A third example is the Egyptian god, Horus; Maher’s film states that the Egyptian Book of the Dead details Horus’s biography as a son of a god, born to a virgin, had 12 disciples, and was crucified and resurrected. Lastly, the emorable portion of the Exodus story when Moses parts the Red Sea in order to let the Jews cross can be seen in an earlier Egyptian story where a magician parts the Nile to allow the pharaoh’s lead oarsman (or woman) to retrieve her golden lotus jewelry. The adaptation of this story does not stop just at Christ, but continues even in present times. The same stories, which has made Jesus the embodiment of such miracles has been adapted into Hollywood films as well. This merely points out that ad aptations have been around for centuries. Thus one could infer that popular or ancient myths and biblical story are not original, that is to say that elements in these tales have probably been copied for a more ancient story. Under that assumption, it does not follow adaptations could hold any interpretation of value systems if they mirror the events of another work. Much like how Virgil mirrors Homer’s two famous works the Iliad and Odyssey, he does not copy the values systems in the two epic poems, only puts Aeneas in situations that echoes the two Homeric poems. The most memorable adaptation of Virgil’s Aeneid is Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, three books that tells of Dante’s journey through the Christian afterlife with his guide Virgil, the same Virgil that wrote The Aeneid. Before the bulk of the story is even told it is obvious that Dante uses Virgil as a Christian figure in his poem. Not only does Dante place Virgil into his poem, but it is generally accepted that the Inferno is one large adaptation of Book 6 of the Aeneid, not only in the similarity of the events but in the framework and structure, as well. For example, Hawkins writes that the number of adaptations â€Å"from the Aeneid are so abundant that it is impossible to escape the fact that the Commedia constructed out of its narratives, personae, metaphors, and imperial dream (Hawkins, 2003, p. 75). Dante himself even mentions this in Purgatory in Canto 21 verse 97 when he says, â€Å"The Aeneid [ ] was my mama and my nurse in writing poetry† (Durling, 2003, p. 351). These adaptations of biblical stories prove that Christianity can be adapted by other authors, aside from Virgil, and their works and not be argued to be an exegesis of social and religious values like the Aeneid has. Moreover, the several examples of adaptations show that they are not exegeses of previous work; they merely echo the works of their predecessors and leave out the interpretation of values and morals. I believe that this argument holds true for Virgil’s works and Christianity. That is to say that Virgil preceded Christianity chronologically and thereby if any of the values of the Christianity were in common with The Aeneid then it would be because the authors of the New Testament had read The Aeneid and incorporated those values into Christianity. This would explain some of values the two texts have in common, but chronological order would not be sufficient to make a strong claim that The Aeneid is not a precursor to Christianity, which is to say that just because the Aeneid predated the New Testament and therefore easily explains why similarities occur between the two, it does not explain why the Aeneid was reinterpreted for its religious and social values. While the chronological order can explain some similarities in values, the rest of the answer to why one text is not a precursor to another lies in the stories that were adapted from The Aeneid. The Aeneid Vs. the New Testament Adaptations All of this works towards affirming the assumption that while certain aspects of some stories are unoriginal and draw upon things that have come before them, this does not provide sufficient evidence to claim that one text is a precursor for the other. The same would hold true for The Aeneid and Christianity to the extent of saying that the Aeneid, though itself not original, is not a precursor for Christianity just because certain aspects of its story are similar and, therefore, it must follow that the value system of was derived from Virgil’s work. A reading of both texts does not reveal many similarities. The most noticeable presence of The Aeneid in the New Testament is the actual use of the protagonist’s name in the stories. The New Testament directly puts the name of Aeneas into the Bible as one of the ill who is healed by Paul in the name of Jesus. Found in the book Acts, Peter came across a man who was paralyzed and bedridden; his name was Aeneas. Peter healed Aeneas and converted all those around him into seeing the light of God. The context of the story, such as where Aeneas was when the healing took place, seems like a failed attempt to connect the two stories. First of all, the Aeneas in the Bible was a man from Lydda, a place located near Joppa. Joppa was a wealthy port city in or around the borders of Phoenicia. The Virgilian Aeneas in Book 1 stays with Dido, the Phoenician exile who is queen and founder of Carthage. One can see the stretch in the correlation, making this somewhat farfetched. Had the Aeneas of the New Testament been living and healed in Carthage or Latium, the new Troy that Aeneas established in The Aeneid, the connection would’ve been obvious and indisputable. This example seemed to have danced around the fact that it might have been a connection to The Aeneid, which is very inconclusive. In another work of literature Aeneas died, the details of his death were not revealed, but Aeneas’s death was short-lived; he became immortal at the request of his mother. This story is similar to that of Jesus Christ: a mortal that died and is resurrected into a god. The Aeneas in Virgil’s poem was neither paralyzed nor bedridden for eight years, nor was his death explicitly related to these circumstances, and the reference to Joppa and possibly to Phoenicia is too coincidental and seems to try to force the connection onto the reader. Additionally, the history and events during the time biblical times and Virgil’s time are cloudy at best, and one can only assume that Aeneas could be a common name at the time, which would further distance The Aeneid from The New Testament. Justice clearly comes in many different interpretations. The Old Testament views justice as something that ought to be done for the sake of following a law and a proper relationship with God while the New Testament views it as something people ought to do out of morality and love. The Aeneid obviously does not follow suit with the New Testament’s justice because love and forgiveness is not emphasized and one’s duties are placed above a moral decision out of compassion. Aeneas is compelled to fulfill his duty rather than stay with Dido to save her life and preserve her love because he is Virgil’s ideal Roman; one who fulfills his duties and puts that obligation before himself and others. On that one fact alone is can’t be possible for the New Testament and the Aeneid to be connected because of the two different outlooks on justice. A more accurate description of the Aeneid is that it shares many qualities of the Old Testament, from its perspective on ustice to how to maintain it with an obligation to laws and fitting punishments for those who disobey. Moreover, by presenting a skeptical and logical view on these assumptions that the New Testament is an exegesis of the Aeneid, one can see that it is only an adaptation and doesn’t possess any of the same values as the Aeneid on justice or otherwise. It seems that those who argue in favor of Virgil as a Christian-precursor conflated the two, believing that the New Testament adaptat ion of some stories in The Aeneid are an exegesis uncovering Christian values in disguise. The same holds true for many of the things in today’s society; that many things we know are not original ideas, but have been adopted, adapted, and changed; much of this is seen on television or Hollywood movies. The stories of Jesus were not original, nor were the gods that seemed to be omnipresent in The Aeneid. The Roman gods were derived from the Greek gods and only had their names changed (e. g. Minerva in Roman mythology is equivalent to the Greek’s Athena). While this only focuses on The Aeneid, the same cannot be said for his other works with great certainty. Others have written about some of his other works in association the Christianity such as The Eclogues. But as for the dissent of these claims for other Virgilian works, that area still remains for the most part uncharted. Reference Allbee, R. A. (2006). Asymmetrical continuity of love and law between the old and new testaments: Explicating the implicit side of a hermeneutical bridge, leviticus 19. 11-18. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 31(2), 147-166. Beaton, R. (1999). Messiah and justice: A key to matthews use of isaiah 42. 1-4? Journal for the Study of the New Testament, (75), 5. Davies, E. W. (2008). [Rhetoric and social justice in isaiah]. Journal of Theological Studies, ns59(pt1), 230-232. Eballo, A. D. (2008). Theological constants of justice in the old testament. Philippiniana Sacra, 42(127), 15-22. Hahn, E. A. (1934). Poetic justice in the aeneid. The Classical Weekly, 27(19), 145-149. Johnston, J. (Producer), Charles, L. (Director). (2008). Religulous [Motion Picture]. United States: Thousand Words. McCallum, R. (Producer), Lucas, G. (Director). (1999). Star wars: Episode one – the phantom menace [Motion Picture]. United States: 20th Century Fox Schoenfeld, E. (1989). Justice: An illusive concept in christianity. Review of Religious Research, 30(3), 236. Smedes, L. B. (2002). How to deal with criminals. Christianity Today, 46(1), 59. Virgil (2008). The aeneid. (R. Fagles, Trans. ). New York, NY: Penguin Classics Zetzel, J. E. G. (1989). Romane memento: Justice and judgment in aeneid 6. Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), 119, 263-284. Zetzel, J. E. G. (1996). Natural law and poetic justice: A carneadean debate in cicero and virgil. Classical Philology, 91(4), 297-319.

Message confidentiality Essays

Message confidentiality Essays Message confidentiality Essay Message confidentiality Essay Secret key cryptography is also known as Symmetric Encryption. Here same key is used for both the Encryption and Decryption processes [1]. In this approach, sender and receiver both should know the algorithm to use and the secret key. Sender and receiver should be kept the key secret and they should obtain the key in a secured way [2]. Most commonly used secret key cryptography algorithms are DES, 3DES, RC4 etc [1]. In this test DES has been used to encrypt/decrypt an arbitrary message. Here Base64 encoding has also been used to encode the message. We know that, while sending SMTP e-mails with attachments normal text files can be attached in plain text format, but binary files (such as image files) cannot be attached in the same way. Binary files need some sort of encoding process to be attached with STMP mail. And the most widely used encoding is Base64 [3]. Description of DES algorithm DES Encryption Process DES has a very strong internal structure [2]. The following figure presents an overview of the DES encryption process. Figure 1: DES Encryption process In DES encryption process 2 inputs are provided to the encryption function: a 64 bit plain text and a 56 bit secret key. At first, the 64-bit plaintext is initially permuted. In the next step combination of a permutation and substitution function is executed 16 times, it makes 16 rounds. Left half and right half of the output from the last round are swapped and permuted again. This permutation is an inverse function of the initial permutation function. At last we get a 64 bit cipher text as an output of the whole process [2]. DES Decryption Process DES decryption process uses the same algorithm as DES encryption process. But in this case the application of the subkeys is reversed [2]. Strength of DES The main strength of DES is usage of 56 bit keys. For using 56-bit long keys the number of possible key is 256 and so the bruit force attack needs 255 attempts which is quite impractical to complete. So DES is strong against Brute force attack. It is also strong against Differential Cryptanalysis and Linear Cryptanalysis as they need 247 and 243 attempts respectively [4]. Base64 Data Representation Base64 data representation is based on a 64 character alphabet [3]. The alphabet is presented in the following table. Sequence Characters 0 25 A Z 26 51 a z 52 61 0 9 62 + 63 / Table 1: Base64 Alphabet A binary file is a series of zeros and ones [3]. These bits are represented with a 0 or 1 character. In Base64 data encoding at first the zeros and ones are grouped into sets of 6 characters. Then these blocks of bits are converted by a single character, which can be calculated from table 1. In this way 6 characters are replaced by a single one. Thus Base64 alphabet allows converting binary zeros and ones into a compressed and human readable format [3]. Description of the demo Programming Language Java Java has been used here to implement DES including Base64. Java has been chosen as it has some advantages such as it is open source, platform independent, and it has automatic memory management [5]. Besides, the Java platform has some built in packages that make cryptographic implementation easier. Source code Result of test run The test result was as follows. Conclusion According to Microsoft Confidentiality is the ability to keep a message unreadable by anyone other than the intended recipient; this is achieved through cryptography [6]. So here to achieve confidentiality DES algorithm has been used including Base64 encoding and also have successfully retrieved the original message by using decryption process. Reference: [1] Secret Key Cryptography, sequi. com/SEQUI_VPN_Glossary. htm [2] William Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security, 4th Edition (Nov 16, 2005), chap 3. [3] Randy Charles Morin, How to Base64 kbcafe. com/articles/HowTo. Base64. pdf

Causes and Stages of Cancer The WritePass Journal

Causes and Stages of Cancer Introduction Causes and Stages of Cancer IntroductionLiterature ReviewReferenceRelated Introduction The World Heath Organisation (2011) estimates that without intervention 84 million people will die from cancer between 2005 and 2015. In 2008 156,723 people died in the UK alone of malignant neoplasm and 1 in 3 people will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime. There were 12.7 million new cases diagnosed worldwide in the same year which led to 7.6 million deaths.   (Cancer Research UK, 2011). There are over 200 different types of cancer but lung, breast, prostate and colorectal account for over 50% of cancer cases. The percentage of deaths caused by cancer varies by region with 4% in Africa, 12% in Asia, 19% in Europe, 21% in Oceania and 23% in North America (National Cancer Institute, 2010). Cancer is used to define the group of diseases in which extensive cellular proliferation occurs alongside the invasion of surrounding tissues. Cancer cells can spread through the body via the blood and lymph systems and ultimately cause death of multi-cellular organisms (National Cancer Institute, 2010). Cancer is caused by the accumulation of genetic mutations which leads to instability of genetic regulators and alters gene expression. Cancer represents not a single disease but a group of heterogeneous diseases that share the fundamental biological characteristics of immortalisation, invasion, genetic instability, erratic differentiation and uncontrolled proliferation (Vogelstein and Kinzler, 2008). Despite advances in detection and treatment of metastatic cancer, specifically breast, mortality rates still remain high because current therapies are limited by the emergence of therapy resistant cancer cells (Al-Hajj, et al, 2003). It has been documented that tumorous cells possess key stem cell characteristics such as high migration, self-renewal, drug resistance and extensive differentiation which leads to the production of a heterogeneous population. Tissue specific cells are able to self-renew and produce differentiated and functional cells within an organ. These differentiated cells are short lived and are produced from a small pool of long lived stem cells which lasts throughout the organism’s lifetime (Seo, 2007). Stem cells are essential for tissue development, replacement and repair however their longevity means they are susceptible to the accumulation of genetic damage and thereby providing a growth route for cancer recurrence following treatment (Clarke, 2005). Dean, Fojo and Bates (2005) suggest that cancer stem cells can survive chemotherapy and sustain the re-growth of a malignant tumour. Therefore if cancer stem cells are present in a tumour then they must be targeted in order to achieve a cure. Prospectively identifying cancer stem cells will allow investigation of the pathways and key molecules that can be targeted to eliminate these malignant cells (Clarke Fuller, 2006). There have been many studies which imply the existence of a sub-population of cells within tumours termed cancer stem cells which drive tumourgenesis. This paper therefore aims to isolate and characterise different sub-populations of cancer stem cells through physiological stress in human and murine models (DLD-1 and CT-26 respectively). There has been extensive evidence that CD133 and CD44 are reliable cancer stem cell markers therefore it can be hypothesised that CD133 and CD44 positive cells would demonstrate resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. This statement formed the basis of the protocol developed by Sharma (2010) where the novel technique of exposing parental cancer cells to the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin in-vitro to isolate cells resistant to drug exposure.   The resulting cells will them be characterised by their ability to form spheroids and the performance of Q-PCR, immunofluorescence and western blotting to identify the presence of the CD133, CD44 and CD26 specif ic cancer stem cell markers. The ultimate aim is then perform microarray on parental and cancer stem cell populations to compare the difference in gene expression of the two populations. Literature Review On a cellular level cancer is caused by uncontrolled cell proliferation which enables abnormal growth leading to cancerous tumours. Just 5-10% of cancer cases can be attributed to genetic defects whereas the remaining cases (in order of influence) are a result of environmental factors such as diet, tobacco, infections, obesity, alcohol, radiation, stress and physical activity (Anand, et al, 2008). These factors lead to tumour growth as they induce DNA alterations or loss of the ability to repair DNA damage which deregulates standard gene expression (Vogelstein and Kinzler, 1998). Carcinogenesis is the term used to define the creation of cancer by which normal cells are transformed into cancer cells. This is due to the accumulation of genetic mutations and the resultant misbalance in cell death and proliferation (King Robins, 2006). Cell production is a complicated process which is kept in apoptosis via cell regulation by numerous classes of genes including oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes (Vogelstein and Kinzler, 1998). Carcinogenesis occurs when there is a genetic mutation which upsets the normal balance between cell death and proliferation. The multi-step process is driven by the accumulation of genetic alterations which gives rise to highly malignant derivatives which have the ability to elude apoptosis, invade tissues and possess unlimited potential for replication (Hanahan and Weinberg, 2000). The inheritance of a defective gene itself is not sufficient for development of cancer. Cancer manifests from the accumulation of additional somatic mutation s which occur as a result of imperfect DNA replication or DNA damage caused by environmental mutagens. Genes that, when mutated, lead to cancer predisposition normally have the function of suppressing tumourgeneis. If one allele of such gene mutates in the germ line then the cell still has the product of the wild type as a back up. If a mutation occurs in the wild type then the cell has no functional suppressor gene product remaining. The cell therefore proliferates abnormally leading to clonal expansion. Cells of proliferating clones are likely to accumulate another mutation resulting in further loss of growth control. As gradual clonal expansion takes place a tumour evolves. Oncogenes and cell suppressor cells control cell proliferation, a mutation here leads to the cells to become continually active. Caretaker genes control rates of mutation, defective caretakers therefore acquire mutations (Vogelstein and Kinzler, 1998). The three stages of carcinogenesis are promotion, proliferation and progression. Changes in the genomes structure occur across all three of the stages of neoplasm development. Additionally changes in gene expression take place at cell promotion with selective proliferation of mutation cells. Apoptosis and cell proliferation occur at different rates but still maintain a balance during initiation and promotion but during progression the balance alters and a malignancy arises as seen in figure 1 (Oliveira, 2007). The fundamental progression features of malignancies are invasion and metastasis and it is these traits which distinguish between normal and cancerous cells. Metastasis is characterised as the migration of cancer cells from the site of origin to a secondary point through the lymphatic system, connective tissues and blood supply. At this secondary point the cells then continue to invade and form new tumours (Hanahan, 2000). Cancer immunoediting has been described as the conflicting action of the immune system to protect the host from cancer development through immunosurveillance and promote tumour growth by the promoting action of immunity (Smyth, Gunn and Schreiber, 2006). The interaction of the innate and adaptive anti-cancer immunity dictates the intensity of the outcome of the endogenous anti-cancer response. Stress induced molecules on tumour cells initiates the innate response and presentation and processing of tumour associates antigens leads to an adaptive response. Both of these responses can affect the tumour in different ways. The endogenous reaction could suppress tumour formation whilst at the same time exerting a selection pressure leading to the emergence of escape variants. Additionally the host’s immune response could directly promote tumour growth, invasion and metastasis via elaboration of inflammatory mediators and cytokines. There is a complex network of interactions between tumour cells, immune elements and stromal components in the microenvironment (Jinushi and Dranoff, 2007). However currently only the capability of the immune system to identify and kill cancer cells forms the basis of therapeutic strategies and immunotherapy (Schulz, 2005). Modifications in immunotherapy protocols have been proposed to lessen the effect cancer and improve the therapeutic value of immunological approaches by targeting the elimination of cancer stem cells (Lepisto, McKolanis Finn, 2007). Stem cells originate from the haematopoietic tissue and can be characterised by the unlimited capacity to self renew, which is the result of increases telomere activity (Huntly Gilliand, 2005) and the ability to terminally differentiate into one or more cell types, which is regulated by a niche signalling pathway system (Spradling, Drummond-Barbosa Kai, 2001). The capacity of stem cells to form differentiated offspring is described in terms of their differentiation potential (Friel, Van der Sar Mee, 2005). Totipotent cells have the ability to construct a complete organism, pluripotent cells are descendants of totipotent cells and can differentiate into almost all cells, multipotent cells differentiate into a specific family of cells, oligopotent cells differentiate into lymphoid and myeloid cells and omnipotent cells are only able to produce their own cell type but have the ability of self renewal which distinguishes them from other non-stem cells (Knoepffler, Schipanski Sorgner, 2007). The differentiation of stem cells is regulated by a niche signalling pathway system (Spradling et al, 2001). It has been suggested that cancer stem cells are displaced due to lack of heritable changes in phenotype and genetic alteration leading to an absence in cancer however when stem cells were placed in defective tissue they induced tumour growth (Clarke Fuller, 2006). Charafe-Jauffret, Monville and Ginester (2008) clarify the existence of cancer stem cells which possess tumorgenic, self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation abilities. Cancer stem cells are defined as a sub-population of cells in a tumour capable of generating phenotypically assorted cells (Gao, 2007). This petite population is accountable for the relapse of tumour growth, progress and invasion after treatment (Clarke Fuller, 2008). Although the concept that germ cells are responsible for oncogenesis has existed since 1855 the first conclusive evidence of cancer stem cell existence was that by Bonnet and Dick (1997) who isolated a CD34+/CD38 sub-population of leukemic cells which were capable of initiating tumours in NOD/SCID mice histologically similar to the donor. The cancer stem cell hypothesis states that the cancer initiating cell is a transformed tissue stem cell which retains the property of self protection through the activity of multiple drug resistant transporters. This drug resistant cell then remains at a low frequency amongst a tumour mass (Donndenberg Donndenberg, 2005). The cancer stem cell theory points to a new era of cancer res earch and is expected to yield alternative cancer treatments. It is now evident that tumours include cancer stem cells which can be isolated by antigenic markers and have the potential to develop into non-adherent spheroids (Wright et al, 2008).   This concept has challenged the previous hypothesis that carcinogenesis is a result of ‘clonal evolution’ where every cell present in a tumour is capable of proliferating and forming new tumours (Max et al, 2006). Cancer stem cells have similar properties to stem cells such as similar molecular mechanisms and physiological trafficking which implies that cancer stem cells are a result of consecutive accumulated mutations in embryonic stem cells (Kucia Ratajckzak, 2006). This is supported by the correlation seen in the signalling pathways associated with maintenance of ‘stemness’ in embryonic cells and cancer pathways. These pathways such as JAK/STAT, Notch, MAPK/ERK, P13k/AKT, NF-GB and Wnt are not only involved in stem cell renewal governing proliferation but also express key molecules associated with malignant phenotypes which leads to tumour growth (Dreesen Brivanlou, 2007). It has therefore been deduced that normal stem cells are transformed into cancer stem cells via mutations in suppressor genes and oncogenses and mutations in repair genes and histone modifications (Costa, et al, 2006). Embryonic stem cells are dependent on the specialised microenvironment in which they reside. This niche prevents tumorgenesis by supplying signals to inhibit differentiation and proliferation. Additional signals are also provided to allow stem cell promotion, self-renewal or differentiation when necessary (Scadden, 2006). Stem cells are dependent on this niche for survival alternatively cancer stem cells do not appear to be dependant on this niche in the same way. Some believe that cancer stem cells have evolved to escape the control of a local environment whereas an additional theory suggests the cells do reside in a niche which has undergone changes itself which encourages cell growth (Burness Sipkins, 2010). Cancer stem cells are thought to evolve from an intrinsic mutation leading to self-sufficient proliferation and deregulation as the cancer cell overtakes the molecular machinery used by normal stem cells (Li Neaves, 2006). These tumour initiating cells are the source of recu rring tumours in many types of cancer (Foltz et al, 2009). Cancer stem cells make up less than 5% of a tumour and have been found in blood-borne, brain, breast, ovarian and colon cancers (National Cancer Institute, 2010). These cells are highly resistant to both chemotherapy and radiotherapy and in order to develop successful therapy it is essential to identify the cell surface markers unique to cancer stem cells and interpret their signalling pathways, figure 2 (Foltz et al, 2009). Figure 2: The impact of cancer stem cells on tumour growth and response therapy. A: Subset of cells within the tumour has the ability to replicate and sustain tumour growth. TA cell is suspected to be responsible for a majority of tumour growth and is susceptible to cancer therapy. Cancer stem cells give rise to identical immortal daughter cells. B: Possible outcome of targeting tumour cancer stem cells verses present cancer therapy techniques which do not affect cancer stem cells (Houghton et al, 2007). The developmental concept of cancer denotes the presence of a hierarchy of cells within a tumour which refers to the differences of cancer cells within a tumour where all cells do not express the same antigens. Additionally functional assays show that only a specific sub-population of cells within a tumour can propagate tumour growth. It appears that cancer cells capable of tumour growth are able to self-renew as well as generate cells which cannot propagate tumour growth (Cho Clarke, 2008). Cancer stem cells have therefore developed the ability for self-renewal and differentiation into a heterongenous population as well as the tumour related properties of uncontrolled growth and ability to form metastasis (Dalerba, et al, 2007). The ability that cancer stem cells share with stem cells to renew has changed perspectives leading to new approaches to treating the disease (Li and Neaves, 2006). Cancer stem cells show resistance to both chemotherapy and radiotherapy making them a crucial target for treatment, it is therefore essential to identify the markers present on these cells in order to therapeutically target them (Foltz, et al, 2009). Current therapeutic strategies attempt to target cancer stem cells and its microenvironment whereas Tang, Ang Pervaiz (2007) identified a novel approach of targeting the reactive oxygen species in a cancer stem cell which would facilitate apoptotic death over proliferation. Additionally the development of monoclonal antibodies to recognise cancer stem cell markers would allow for more efficient destruction of these tumour forming cells (Okamoto Perez, 2008). The use of immunocompromised mouse model have shown to reliably capulate the molecular, biological and clinical features of the human disease. With such models defining the stages of tumour development, homogenised breeding and environmental conditions. This has therefore led to the development of the concept that plasma from genetically modified cancer models contains tumour derived proteins that may be relevant in the development of markers for human cancer (Kuick, et al, 2007). There are numerous studies which cites the use of immuno-comprised mice as vehicles for cancer stem cell isolation. Mouse models have been established as highly trusted in the development of human cancer treatment through verify the cancer stem cell extent of a tumour. This has been achieved by the opening and repetitive tumour progression in immuno-compromised SCID mice (Laurie, et al, 2007). http://tpx.sagepub.com/content/38/1/62.full.pdf+html Current developed methods to isolate ‘adult’ stem cell populations includes collection of different hematopoietic cells populations staining with the antibodies of interest and sorting by magnetic bead and/or fluorescence activated cell sorters (FACS) followed by in vivo transplant experiments. This allows for the development of understanding of fundamental hematopoietic stem cell characteristics of differentiation and the ability of the cells to give rise to others cells with the same potential for proliferation whilst still maintaining the stem cell pool Cho Clarke, 2008). Additional characterisation of cancer stem cells can be carried out by identifying gene expression and cell markers via immunofluorescence, western blotting and Q-PCR. It has been stated that an immature cell population can be characterised by surface markers CD34+ and CD38+ in AML and that these markers suggest the ability of initiating tumour development (Bonnet Dick 1997). Furthermore the use of a low-adherent growth environment can be used to produce spheroids from tumorgenic cells as a basis of isolation of cancer stem cells (Grange, et al, 2008) As it has been identified that a small minority of cells present in a tumour has the ability to form new tumours. It is therefore possible to distinguish between tumorgenic and non-tumorgenic cells based on the cell surface marker expression. Al-Hajj, et al (2003) were able to isolate breast cancer cells expressing CD44+ and CD24 lineage in as few as 100 cells with tumorgenic capabilities and identified hundreds of thousands of cells with a different phenotype which failed to form new tumours. Furthermore passaging the CD44+ and CD24 lineage led to the creation of phenotypically diverse populations. Sherman, et al (2011) also identified CD133 expression correlated with prognosis of oligodendroglial and astrocytic tumors and here immunofluorescence provided an effective and reproducible assay for identifying markers present in ca ncer stem cells. Fundamentally cancer is resistant to treatment because malignant cells survive chemotherapy, CD133 positive cancer stem cells display strong compatibility with tumours resistant to chemotherapy (Liu, et al, 2006). The use of immunofluorescence to characterise cancer stem cells has been used in a great deal of cases especially where total cell count is reduced CD44+ and CD24+ can be used for markers of colorectal cancer stem cells. CD44/CD24 cells are enriched for spheroid colonies and can reform all four CD44/CD24 subpopulations (Yeung, Wilding Bodmer, 2009). Additionally a population of CD26+ cells present in a sub-population of colorectal cancer stem cells led to the development of distant metastasis when injected into a mouse cecal wall. These CD26+ cells were also associated with enhanced invasiveness and chemoresistance (Pang, et al, 2010). Lgr-5 has also been identified as a key marker expressed in cancer stem cells of colorectal cancer associated with the activation of the Wnt signalling pathway which plays a key role in cancer development (Takahashi, et al, 2010). The first report indicating the difference in gene expression of cancer cells exhibiting cancer stem cell properties and those which did not was published in 2007 by Seo, et al. Amongst the 61 differently expressed genes 12 genes were considered up-regulated in the sub-population whereas 49 were downgraded validation of these gene expressions was validated using quantitative real time reverse transcriptase PCR. It was found that genes related to drug resistance such as AKR1C1/C2 and NR0B1, or cancer metastasis (TM4SF1) were up-regulated. Further more the up-regulated gene ABCG2 could be of use as an indicator for sorting. AKR1C has been identified as a catalyst of metabolic reduction and either activates or inactivates several xenobiotics. The public database (Gene expression Omnibus) has shown significant up-regulation in expression of AKR1C1 in smokers. Reference AL-HAJJ, M., et al. 2003. Prospective identification of tumorgenic breast cancer cells. 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Discovery of cancer biomarkers through the use of mouse models. Cancer Letters, 249(1), pp. 40-48.