We were excited to welcome back Gregory Nagy of Harvard University, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature and the Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC. for an Open House. The topic of the discussion is “Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology.” The event was live-streamed on Thursday, October 10 at 11:00 a.m. EDT, and was recorded.
In preparation, you might like to read the primary texts that appear within these posts at Classical Inquiries:
The apotheosis of Hēraklēs on Olympus and the mythological origins of the Olympics
Reconstructing Hēraklēs backward in time
Reconstructing Hēraklēs forward in time
You can watch the event on our YouTube channel, or in the frame below:
Mentioned during the discussion:
- The recent series of articles about Hēraklēs at Classical Inquiries
- The work of Georges Dumézil
- Martin P. Nilsson The Mycenaean origin of Greek mythology
- Euripides’ Herakles: you can find a translation by R. Potter, adapted by M. Ebbott & C. Dué, here
Images shown during presentation:
- Metope 1: Lion, from the Temple of Zeus. Published in Curtius, Ernst, and Friedrich Adler, eds., Olympia: die Ergebnisse der von dem Deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung. Tafelband 3: Die Bildwerke von Olympia in Stein und Thon (Berlin, 1894): plate 45.
- Colorized version of the above. Image after Metope 1: Lion, from the Temple of Zeus. Published in Curtius, Ernst, and Friedrich Adler, eds., Olympia: die Ergebnisse der von dem Deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung. Tafelband 3: Die Bildwerke von Olympia in Stein und Thon (Berlin, 1894): plate 45.
- Metope 3: Stymphalia, from the Temple of Zeus. Published in Curtius, Ernst, and Friedrich Adler, eds., Olympia: die Ergebnisse der von dem Deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung. Tafelband 3: Die Bildwerke von Olympia in Stein und Thon (Berlin, 1894): plate 45.
- The figure of “Apollo” from the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia. Modern plaster cast of the original in the Olympia Museum. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Gregory Nagy
Gregory Nagy is the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and is the Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC. In his publications, he has pioneered an approach to Greek literature that integrates diachronic and synchronic perspectives. His books include The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press), which won the Goodwin Award of Merit, American Philological Association, in 1982; also Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Homeric Questions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), Homeric Responses (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), Homer’s Text and Language (University of Illinois Press 2004), Homer the Classic (Harvard University Press, online 2008, print 2009), and Homer the Preclassic (University of California Press 2010). His latest work, Masterpieces of Metonymy, is now available online. He co-edited with Stephen A. Mitchell the 40th anniversary second edition of Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature vol. 24; Harvard University Press, 2000), co-authoring with Mitchell the new Introduction, pp. vii–xxix. Professor Nagy has taught versions of this course to Harvard College undergraduates and Harvard Extension School students for over thirty-five years. Throughout his career Nagy has been a consistently strong advocate for the use of information technology in both teaching and research. He is currently writing articles for Classical Inquiries, including commentaries on Iliad.