This gallery will take you to Delphi in Greece. Plutarch, who was a priest of Apollo in Delphi for several years, wrote a book about the oracles. Here are two passages from his book. Plutarch describes “the shrine of Earth” τὸ τῆς Γῆς ἱερὸν. Accordingly we went round and seated ourselves upon the southern steps of the temple, looking towards the shrine of Earth and the stream of water, with the result that Boethus… Read more
In the forum we have previously discussed the ancient Greek Moirai in comparison with the Nordic Norns, so for this month’s Core Vocab I thought it might be interesting to look at the word moira (plural moirai), defined in the Core Vocab as ‘portion; portion of meat divided at a sacrifice; lot in life, fate, destiny.’[1] Just that range of meanings in the definition is intriguing. I am curious to… Read more
We were delighted to welcome Panayotis Fragkiskos League, PhD Candidate, Ethnomusicology of Harvard University, for an Open House discussion. The video discussion was on Thursday, January 28, 2016 at 11:00 a.m. EST, and was recorded. The topic of this ‘Open House’ is ‘Performance Traditions in Greece.’ Paddy League also performs songs accompanied by laouto, and demonstrates the tsambouna. You can watch the event below or on our YouTube channel. Members… Read more
The Heritage of Armenian Literature [1] opens up with a chapter about oral tradition. The information about the Armenian oral tradition comes from the History of the Armenians by Moses of Khoren. He mentions different forms of story telling about the ancient Armenian heroes. Zruyts “old and unwritten stories, to which Moses of Khoren attaches a high degree of credibility. Less credible ones, what he terms araspels or legends… Read more
Claude Lorrain, The Daughters of Helios Searching for their Brother Phaeton (1658) Montreal Museum of Fine Arts I often go to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts but I did not notice this painting until last month. The painting represents the sisters of Phaeton lamenting for their brother after his tragic death. Different versions may be found about who they are and who is their mother. The painter Claude Lorrain… Read more