Archive

Visiting Scholars

Open House | Rites of Passage and the Making of Achilles in Statius’ Achilleid, with Patricia Hatcher

We were pleased to welcome Patricia Hatcher, CUNY Graduate Center, to join members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on Rites of Passage and the Making of Achilles in Statius’ Achilleid. This talk applies anthropological ritual theory to Statius’ Achilleid to reinterpret Achilles’ early life as a series of rites of passage. Drawing on Arnold van Gennep’s tripartite model and Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, the discussion… Read more

History

The Classic Ship | Part 3: The Battle of Salamis

In the last days of September of the year 480 BCE, King Xerxes proceeded to Athens, after having had his victory at Thermopylae. Also his naval forces moved southward for the final stroke. Among the Persian naval contingent were 120 triremes from Thrace, 100 ships from Ionia, 60 ships from Aeolia including Lesbos and Samos, and an unspecified number of ships from the Greek islands, including the Cyclades, and lastly,… Read more

Topic for Discussion

Performance of epic | Part 2: Rhapsodes

Victorious poet (inscribed “He is beautiful”) reciting (“As once in Tiryns…”) In Part 1 we looked at the role of aoidoi as depicted within epic poetry itself. Now we turn to later sources in which the word rhapsode comes into use. In that post, we touched on the performance of Achilles and Patroklos in relay. Gregory Nagy comments: 8§28…Homeric poetry was performed at the Panathenaia by rhapsōidoi, ‘rhapsodes’ … The… Read more

Texts

Pindar, Second Nemean Epinikion

  A translation and notes by Jack Vaughan For Timodemos of Archarnai, Victor in Pankration Much as Homerid singers often begin their weaving of songs with a prelude honoring Zeus, this man, too, for a start has received an installment of a victory-studded career in the sacred contests in the much-celebrated hallowed precinct of Nemean Zeus. It still behooves him, the son of Timonoos, if his life’s time, guided straight according to the ways of his fathers, has been given as an adornment to… Read more

Visiting Scholars

Open House | Ares, Aphrodite, and a Monkey’s Rump: Some Thoughts on Public Humiliation, with Prof. Christopher Brown

We were pleased to welcome Professor Christopher Brown, William Sherwood Fox Professor of Classics at Western University, Ontario, Canada, who joined members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on Ares, Aphrodite, and a Monkey’s Rump: Some Thoughts on Public Humiliation. Professor Brown revisited a passage in the Odyssey that he published as an article in 1989, the story of the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite (Odyssey 8.266–366).… Read more