When Pindar says “Water is best, (ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ) and gold, like a blazing fire in the night, stands out supreme of all lordly wealth” in Olympian 1, he is not wrong. Life happens around water. It is hard to find an example that water is not present in our daily lives. Water cleans, nourishes, and heals. Who wouldn’t enjoy a nice bath? How about the ancient Greeks? In this… Read more
At this time of year our thoughts often turn to food and drink, so we start our exploration of the topic in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. Where does their food come from? What kinds of foods does the poetry represent? How is it prepared and served? There is evidence for herd animals being reared. For example, in the Odyssey Eumaios mentions the flocks on Ithaca and its neighbors: There are… Read more
Pierre Judet de La Combe in his book Homère (2017) evokes the gifts of the gods which are ambiguous and double-edged. One example he mentions is Demodokos: 62 The herald came near, bringing with him a singer, very trusted, 63 whom the Muse loved exceedingly. She gave him both a good thing and a bad thing. 64 For she took away from him his eyes but gave him the sweetness… Read more
Victorious poet (inscribed “He is beautiful”) reciting (“As once in Tiryns…”) In Part 1 we looked at the role of aoidoi as depicted within epic poetry itself. Now we turn to later sources in which the word rhapsode comes into use. In that post, we touched on the performance of Achilles and Patroklos in relay. Gregory Nagy comments: 8§28…Homeric poetry was performed at the Panathenaia by rhapsōidoi, ‘rhapsodes’ … The… Read more
~ A guest post by Brian Prescott-Decie ~ In the course of searching for simple texts for a student of Latin who has been making rather heavy weather of Agricola, and needed some light relief, I recently came across the History of Apollonius, King of Tyre, a Latin romantic novel of perhaps the third century CE. By the purest serendipity, I then found myself reading the following lines of the… Read more