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
This time the Core Vocab term—taken from terms listed in H24H[1] and tracked in the associated Sourcebook[2]— is kamatos [κάματος] which Gregory Nagy glosses as ‘ordeal, labor, pain’. This seems to convey a similar range of meanings to another Core Vocab term, ponos [πόνος], also glossed as ‘ordeal, labor, pain’ which was the subject of a previous blog article. So I looked initially at the dictionary entries to see what… Read more
And if one were to tell of the wintry-cold [kheimōn], past all enduring, when Ida’s snow [khiōn] slew the birds; [565] or of the heat, when upon his waveless noonday couch, windless the sea [pontos] sank to sleep—but why should we bewail all this? Aeschylus Agamemnon 563–567, adapted from Sourcebook[1] Many areas in the northern hemisphere are currently experiencing heavy snow and freezing temperatures. So we are sharing some passages… Read more
In this section we will consider the ships that are described as megakētēs [μεγακήτης], usually translated as huge, hollow, and gaping. The word is made up of two parts, mega [μέγα-, “great”], and an adjective form of kētos [κῆτος, “any sea-monster”]. A related word is kētōeis [κητώεις], which means “full of hollows”. In a ship’s geometry the epithet describes the threatening form of the forefoot [steira] of the ancient Greek… Read more
Beauty: a concept of the mind that is intangible, culturally influenced, and fluid. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, say many. The realm of beauty is as old as humanity. The topic canvasses from philosophy to religion from natural to man-made. This is a huge topic, from which I will focus on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, and explore how people in antiquity thought about beauty. I have… Read more