Departure of Ulysses from the Land of the Phaeacians, Louvre Museum Douglas Frame attended a conference hosted by the Center for Odyssean Studies in August of 2017. The topic of his presentation was the “homecoming” of Odysseus, concentrating on “nostos as taking place in a wholly imaginary world.” The notion of a nostos as a “return to life” is deeply imbedded in the Odyssey. I have traced its origins to… Read more
On January 25 at 11:00 a.m. EST, Kosmos Society welcomed back Dr. Maria G. Xanthou, University of Leeds, to an Open House discussion on Xerxes’ desire of Thessalian heights and Tempe gorge. These are the focus passages (PDF handout): Xanthou-OpenHouse25012018Handout You can watch the event below or on our YouTube channel. For further videos please visit the Watch page. Maria G. Xanthou Dr Maria-Elizabeth G. Xanthou (PhD Aristotle University of… Read more
In the previous posts in this series we looked at descriptions of hair for males and for females. This time we look at some examples of how hair features in ritual events as depicted in the texts. Ritual offering of hair Achilles and his companions cut their hair and offer it in commemoration at the funeral of Patroklos: In the midst of them his comrades bore Patroklos [135] and covered… Read more
The classic example of cartography exercised as science is by Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria (87–150 CE). The Romans, however, followed their own methodology, generally qualified as a decline relative to the Greek art and science of cartography, but with a logic that is the subject of this post. The Ptolemaic approach comprised a system of orthogonal terms, being the coordinates of latitude and longitude. The advanced mathematical basis that is… Read more
We were pleased to welcome again Jeffrey Rusten of Cornell University, Department of Classics, for an Open House discussion on Thucydides on Early Greece and the Trojan War. For the Open House Jeffrey Rusten invites us to think about and discuss the following questions: How does Thucydides approach the Iliad and think it has historical value? Is his analysis flawed in any way? Is it anachronistic? Is it in any… Read more