Archive

Open House | Similes and Storytelling in Homer’s Iliad, with Deborah Beck

We were pleased to welcome Professor Deborah Beck of the University of Texas for an Open House discussion on “Similes and Storytelling in Homer’s Iliad.” You can watch the recording down below or on our YouTube channel. Deborah Beck shared these two focus passages: Homer Iliad 16.482–492 (translation by R. Lattimore) Two similes describe the Trojan fighter Sarpedon as he falls at the hands of Achilles’ companion Patroklos: [Sarpedon] fell,… Read more

Core Vocab: hēsukhos; hēsukhiā

A guest post by Sarah Scott This month I’ve chosen a word that represents something that sounds very appealing: hēsukhos ‘serene’; hēsukhiā ‘state of being hēsukhos’.[1] My guess was that the word would not be very frequent. Although not shown in the Sourcebook[2], I did find it in Iliad: Πηλεΐδης δ᾽ ὁρμήσατ᾽ Ἀγήνορος ἀντιθέοιο δεύτερος: οὐδ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἔασεν Ἀπόλλων κῦδος ἀρέσθαι, ἀλλά μιν ἐξήρπαξε, κάλυψε δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἠέρι πολλῇ, ἡσύχιον… Read more

Gallery: Parthenon Marbles

A guest post by Safdar Mandviwala Only a month ago I perused the exquisite Parthenon marbles at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, together with the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies study-group led by Professor Gregory Nagy. Arrayed to reflect the original placement of the marbles on the Parthenon Frieze[1], with the second floor of the museum oriented in perfect alignment with the aspect of the Parthenon, visible atop the… Read more

Book Club | September 2016: Homeric Conversation

Dear fellow readers Our Book Club selection for September is from Deborah Beck Homeric Conversation, which you can find on the Center for Hellenic Studies website, here. We will all be reading the introduction, and then each of you can choose one other chapter to read, depending on your interest. You can start and continue the conversation in the forum, here, and we will be meeting via Google+ Hangout on… Read more

Open House | Kinyras: The Divine Lyre, with John C. Franklin

We were pleased to welcome John C. Franklin who joined us for an Open House discussion on “Kinyras: The Divine Lyre” on Thursday, September 15 2016. Kinyras was a mythical priest-king of pre-Greek Cyprus, and John C. Franklin’s research draws on Greco-Roman material and Near Eastern evidence for the divinization of temple lyres, and seeks to illustrate the cultural interactions in the eastern Mediterranean. To prepare for this event, you… Read more