We were pleased to welcome Kevin McGrath for an Open House discussion about Indo-European Epic Poetry. In preparation, you might like to read and think carefully about Odyssey 8.487–491. Demodokos, I admire and pointedly praise you, more than any other human. 488 Either the Muse, child of Zeus, taught you, or Apollo. 489 All too well, in accord with its kosmos, do you sing the fate of the Achaeans [490]… Read more
This month’s Core Vocabulary discussion, based on terms listed in The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours[1] and tracked in the Sourcebook[2] is “biā [βία] (biē [βίη] in the language of Homeric poetry) ‘force, violence’.” As we read passages together, among the questions we might ask are: what kinds of force are exhibited, and is it ever depicted as a desirable or undesirable quality? Here are a few examples to… Read more
A guest post by William Moulton One Saturday in July I arrived at the British Museum about 11:30, just in time for the free tour of the Nereid Monument. I always thought it was a nymphaeum—a shrine to the Nereids—but it isn’t. I discovered that it was the tomb of Arbinas the dynast of Lycia—a sort of a sub-king to the Persian king. For those who don’t know, after Alexander… Read more
In this video, Gregory Nagy, Douglas Frame, Leonard Muellner, and Keith Stone have an informal discussion about the role of dialects in the Homeric poetic tradition, introducing the Mycenaean phase, and Homeric forms in Arcadian. They include examples from formulas such as epithets within Homeric poetry, and also refer to the work of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Related topics Greek dialects and the poetic super-language Greek dialects in epic: the cake… Read more
A guest post by Leonard Muellner In October of 2016, I had the pleasure of talking about Homeric poetry to the largest audience I have ever addressed in the many years I’ve spent teaching Classics—over 500 students in a huge new amphitheater at the University of Lille in northeastern France. The Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lille is part of an emphatically public system, supported by tax dollars… Read more