~ A guest post by Brian Prescott-Decie ~ In the course of searching for simple texts for a student of Latin who has been making rather heavy weather of Agricola, and needed some light relief, I recently came across the History of Apollonius, King of Tyre, a Latin romantic novel of perhaps the third century CE. By the purest serendipity, I then found myself reading the following lines of the… Read more
A guest post by Bill Moulton Ah, ah! Oh, oh, the agony! 1215 Once more the dreadful ordeal [ponos] of true prophecy whirls and distracts me with its ill-boding onset. Do you see them there—sitting before the house—young creatures like phantoms of dreams? Children, they seem, slaughtered by their own kindred, 1220 their hands full of the meat of their own flesh; they are clear to my sight, holding their… Read more
A guest post by Laura Ford We have all heard stories of “book burnings” that leave us with a sense of horror at the irretrievable loss of priceless literary and artistic treasures. In some cases, as in the burning of the Library of Alexandria, the true cause of the burning will probably never be known. In other cases, a specific political intent to suppress the content of the books is… Read more
Heroes in Homeric poetry need to make contact with gods and goddesses. They like to be reassured by them or they fear them and beg. In the following passage, Pallas Athena sends an encouraging message to Odysseus before he goes as a spy to the night ambush. She sends a heron and when Odysseus hears its cry, he prays. It’s a moving scene. When the pair [=Diomedes and Odysseus] had… Read more
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