The Iliad starts with the anger of Achilles, but the last words belong to Hector’s funeral. Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses. Sourcebook Iliad 24.802-803[1] However, Casey Dué in Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics[2] shows that an alternative ending line existed. The medieval manuscripts and all modern editions, such as that of Munro and Allen’s 1920 Oxford Classical Text, end… Read more
There has been much discussion in the forum about the birth of Aphrodite, taking as a starting point the account in the Hesiodic Theogony, after Kronos cuts off the genitals of his father Ouranos: But the genitals, as after first severing them with the steel, he had cast them into the heaving sea from the continent, 190 so kept drifting long time up and down the deep, and all around… Read more
Detail showing Hecuba finding the body of her son I am starting to look back at some photos that I took during the six weeks I spent in Europe, just before the confinement. During several days, the Louvre was closed, because of the pandemic, but not the Louvre Collection in the Inventory of the Department of Prints and Drawings. This amazing place is open to the general public. You just… Read more
The themes depicted in the myth of the fall of Troy inspired ancient Greek tragedies, such as the Trojan Women of Euripides, and other works by writers and dramatists of ancient Rome and of later periods. The subject has also inspired many artists from ancient times to the current day. The universal and powerful themes of the suffering of the most vulnerable—women, children, and the elderly—still have relevance and resonance.… Read more
“A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece, 700 BC–200 AD” Onassis Cultural Center New York Onassis Foundation USA, 645 5th Ave., New York Through June 24, 2017 A guest post by David A. Beardsley Much of my own ongoing fascination with the ancient Greeks is in that theirs is the first culture with which I can readily connect, and this is largely because of the way they display their emotions. The… Read more