I read with great interest and enjoyment the recent posts by Jacqui Donlon “Divine Doppelgänger: Hermes and Odysseus” and by Bill Moulton: “The Divine Doublet: Odysseus and Hermes“, and became intrigued to learn more about Hermes as deceiver, as portrayed in the Homeric Hymns. Although the longer hymn is number 4, there is another, much shorter, hymn dedicated to Hermes, number 18. So I’ll start with that one: …He [=… Read more
We are pleased to share this segment in the 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 dreamed of reading Homer in the original, here is your chance to do so with teachers who have spent a lifetime thinking about this poetry. With their guidance even new… Read more
522 BCE was the year of death of Polykrates, the tyrant of Samos, famous for having assembled a navy of hundred pentekontoroi, by that time the greatest navy of Greece. In Athens, Hippias had succeeded Peisistratos as the tyrant of Athens. In 522, Darius I gained kingship of Persia. He would create an empire comparable to the Imperium Romanum; an empire without bounds in space, focusing on people and defendable… Read more
Both Cleisthenes and Thrasybulus played important roles in the independence of Athens, and its existence as a democracy. Yet both their roles were downplayed by succeeding generations. Athens indeed spun the murder of the tyrant Hipparchus by a pair of disgruntled lovers into a fight against tyranny, but neglected Cleisthenes’ place in the true origins of the democracy. The citizens of the polis welcomed the freedom and democracy restored by… Read more
The man who at Delos set forth in the precinct of the god his own opinion composed an inscription for the forecourt of the temple of Leto in which he distinguished goodness, beauty and pleasantness as not all being properties of the same thing. His verses are: Justice is fairest, and Health is best, But to win one’s desire is the pleasantest. Theog. 255f. But for our part let us… Read more