Finding Helen in texts is frustrating. Many contradictory facts may be encountered. Who was Helen? What about her life, her power, her birth, her beauty? Was she hated or was she loved? If we were to write a short biography, it might read like this: Helen was the daughter of Leda and Tyndareus/Zeus, and Clytemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces’ sister. Penelope was her cousin. She married Menelaos king of Sparta,… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Arti Mehta, Lecturer in Classics at Howard University, for our Open House discussion on Aesop. To prepare for the discussion, participants might like to read Mehta’s handout and article: “Aesop and Fable: A God of Small Things,” handout: [Word | PDF] “Fox and Jackal: The Individual Against the Collective” (online in Classics@ 12: “Comparative Approaches to India and Greece”). You can watch the recording of this discussion… Read more
We are pleased to share news about a new Learning Module: Introduction to Attic Greek. This comprises a series of video presentations made by Professor Leonard Muellner and Belisi Gillespie. These videos cover the content covered in two semesters of a college-level Introduction to Ancient Greek course. They are designed to be used in conjunction with the book Greek: An Intensive Course by Hardy Hansen and Gerald M. Quinn. The… Read more
Marine Fauna, Mosaic, Pompeii, House of the Geometric Mosaics, Naples, MANN Pliny the Younger (61–113 CE), an author and a lawyer, was a direct witness of the eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 CE. Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae were covered by ashes as a result of the eruption. Pliny wrote several letters to Tacitus about this terrible event. His uncle Pliny the Elder (23–79CE) died during the eruption. Pliny the… Read more
Our next exploration of Core Vocab terms is about thūmos [θυμός] ‘heart, spirit’ (designates realm of consciousness, of rational and emotional functions). Here Professor Nagy explains the meaning a little further: The word thūmos, which I translate here as ‘heart’, expresses in Homeric diction the human capacity to feel and to think, taken together. In some Homeric contexts, thūmos is used as a synonym of phrenes, which can also be… Read more