To make a light-hearted start to the new year, this month’s Book Club selection is a Roman comedy by Plautus, Rudens, “the Rope”. As usual, the conversation will start and continue in the Forum, with Google Hangouts on Tuesday, January 29, 2019, at 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. EST. You can read any translation you like. Here are a couple that are available free online: Translation by Cleveland K. Chase… Read more
The Book Club is taking a break over the holiday season, although discussion is still taking place in the forum. Meanwhile here is a foretaste of what is to come during the early part of 2019 to start a new year of varied classical reading from Roman and Greek primary texts, with works by: Plautus Plutarch Xenophon Look out for further announcements in January, February, and March with details of… Read more
Seven warriors, fierce regiment-commanders, slaughtered a bull over a black shield, and then touching the bulls gore with their hands they swore an oath by Arēs, by Enyo, and by Rout who delights in blood, that either they will level the city [polis] and sack the Kadmeians’ town [astu] by force [biā], or will in death smear this soil with their blood. This month’s Book Club selection is the Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus.… Read more
Hold it right there. Tell me this, Ion—respond to what I ask without concealment. When you say well the epic verses and induce a feeling of bedazzlement [ekplēxis] for the spectators [theōmenoi] —as you sing of Odysseus leaping onto the threshold and revealing himself to the suitors and pouring out the arrows at his feet, or of Achilles rushing at Hector, or something connected to the pitiful things about Andromache… Read more
The subject of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles, not Achilles himself. But what is this anger of his? The Book Club this month will be reading and discussing selections from The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic (available free online at the Center for Hellenic Studies.) We will be reading how Leonard Muellner uses the insights of Albert Lord on epic themes, and looks at such anger not… Read more