Archive

Book Club | May 2025: Aristophanes’s Birds

SCENE: A wild and desolate region; only thickets, rocks, and a single tree are seen. Euelpides and Pisthetaerus enter, each with a bird in his hand. Euelpides To his jay. Do you think I should walk straight for yon tree? Pisthetaerus To his crow. Cursed beast, what are you croaking to me? . . . to retrace my steps? Euelpides Why, you wretch, we are wandering at random, we are… Read more

Greek dialects in epic: the cake of Homeric poetry

In this video, Gregory Nagy, Douglas Frame, and Leonard Muellner have an informal discussion about the functioning of Greek dialects in Homer, focusing on the role of multiple parallel grammatical forms in the system. First published March, 6,2018 You can watch the video on the CHS YouTube channel, or in the frame below. Related topics Greek dialects and the poetic super-language Greek dialects in the language of Homer: Mycenaean, and… Read more

Open House | Plato and the Tyrant, with Professor James Romm

We are pleased to welcome Professor James Romm, The James Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics, Bard College, to join members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on Plato and the Tyrant: The Tale of the Platonic Letters.  Plato made three trips outside Athens during his life, all of them to the Greek city of Syracuse (in Sicily). His relations with two powerful tyrants there, a father and… Read more

Gallery | Hector The Protector

Tommaso Piroli, from John Flaxman: Funeral of Hector Achilles is “The Best of the Achaeans”[1], and Hector is the best of the Trojans. The Iliad starts with the anger of Achilles, but the last words belong to Hector’s funeral: Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses.Iliad 24.804[2] Biagio d’Antonio da Firenze: The Siege of Troy – The Death of Hector Achilles will eventually fall in… Read more

Divine Deceiver: Hermes in the Homeric Hymns

I read with great interest and enjoyment the recent posts by Jacqui Donlon “Divine Doppelgänger: Hermes and Odysseus” and by Bill Moulton: “The Divine Doublet: Odysseus and Hermes“, and became intrigued to learn more about Hermes as deceiver, as portrayed in the Homeric Hymns. Although the longer hymn is number 4, there is another, much shorter, hymn dedicated to Hermes, number 18. So I’ll start with that one: …He [=… Read more