Night bore also hateful Destiny, and black Fate, and Death; she bore Sleep [Hupnos] likewise, she bore the tribe [phūlon] of Dreams [Oneiroi]; these did the goddess, gloomy Night bear after union with none. Theogony 211–212, adapted from Sourcebook[1] In the Homeric epics, dreams sometimes play an important part in the narrative. In this post we look at some examples, and how people react in response. Dreams are from Zeus… Read more
Louise Marie-Jeanne Hersent: Daphnis et Chloe 19th century For the young and innocent Daphnis and Chloe, the first stirrings of love and desire are uncomfortable experiences: Hearing the name of Eros for the first time soothed the pain in their souls [psūkhē]. At night, they returned to the folds and began comparing their own experiences with what they had heard from Philetas. “Those in love [erân] are in pain [algeîn].… Read more
And if one were to tell of the wintry-cold [kheimōn], past all enduring, when Ida’s snow [khiōn] slew the birds; [565] or of the heat, when upon his waveless noonday couch, windless the sea [pontos] sank to sleep—but why should we bewail all this? Aeschylus Agamemnon 563–567, adapted from Sourcebook[1] Many areas in the northern hemisphere are currently experiencing heavy snow and freezing temperatures. So we are sharing some passages… Read more
To say my mother was “a force of nature” is an understatement! As Hilda Doolittle wrote, she [Helen] is “the admitted first cause of all time and all history.” She was, is, and will always be “the destroyer of worlds,” well at least the world before my birth. I can’t begin to tell you how inhumanly beautiful she was. The effect the very sight of her had on men and… Read more
Beauty: a concept of the mind that is intangible, culturally influenced, and fluid. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, say many. The realm of beauty is as old as humanity. The topic canvasses from philosophy to religion from natural to man-made. This is a huge topic, from which I will focus on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, and explore how people in antiquity thought about beauty. I have… Read more