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The Structure of Greek Tragedy: An Overview

There are different terms for different parts of a Greek drama, some of which modern scholars took from Aristotle and other ancient drama critics. The typical structure of an Ancient Greek tragedy is a series of alternating dialogue and choral lyric sections. (There are exceptions, and technical divisions naturally do not explain intellectual and emotional “soft power” aspects of a great Greek tragedy.) The dialogue sections are in typically speechverse,… Read more

Visiting Scholars

Open House | How to Talk About Love, with Professor Armand D’Angour

We were pleased to welcome Professor Armand D’Angour, of Jesus College, Oxford, who joined members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on “How to Talk about Love: Plato’s Symposium.” The earliest and most brilliant philosophical treatment of Love is Plato’s dialogue Symposium. In it, a group of seven men, including the comic playwright Aristophanes and the philosopher Socrates, offer speeches describing what they think love is. The… Read more

History

The Classic Ship | Part 1: The Persian Wars and the maritime supremacy of Athens

In the period of about 600–480 BCE, Ionian colonists emigrated from Attica to the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, which is modern Turkey[1]. There they inhabited a narrow coastal strip from Phocaea in the north to Miletus in the south, including the islands of Chios and Samos. Persia (c 540 BCE) conquered the cities of this area and appointed native tyrants to rule for them. The rebellion of the colonists against the rule of these… Read more

Reading Homer

Homeric Greek | Iliad 1.1–9

We are pleased to share this segment in our series on reading Homeric epic in ancient Greek. In each installment we read, translate, and discuss a small passage in the original Greek in the most accessible way. If you’ve ever wanted to read Homer in ancient Greek, here is your chance to do so with teachers who have spent a lifetime studying these works. Together they help even new readers… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | March 2025 : Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics

Every art and every investigation, and likewise every practical pursuit or undertaking, seems to aim at some good: hence it has been well said that the Good is That at which all things aim. (It is true that a certain variety is to be observed among the ends at which the arts and sciences aim: in some cases the activity of practising the art is itself the end, whereas in… Read more