In an epic text, how were poets able to represent emotion? How can we understand today their way of speaking? Did Achilles “copy” the behavior of warriors from those distant times? Or might it be the reverse: did the epic influence certain real behaviors? Our Book Club selection for April is taken from Hélène Monsacré: The Tears of Achilles, available online at CHS. This book, originally published in French as… Read more
Thanks to all who have participated in the forum and via hangouts in the Kosmos Society Book Club discussions so far this year. You can still post in the forums if you missed the live sessions, have anything further to add, or if you have read additional parts of the selected works. Here is a foretaste of what is to come during Spring 2018 at the Book Club, in which… Read more
Our next Book Club selection is the The Natural History of Pliny the Elder. We will be focusing on Book 7: “Man” although you can read others as well if you wish. Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) is a Roman author. His most famous work is The Natural History which consists of thirty seven books on geography, anthropology, zoology and many other different topics. He died during the eruption of Vesuvius… Read more
Our next Book Club selection is from Lucian, whose satirical dialogues poked fun at philosophers and mythological characters. We will be reading The Dialogues of the Dead; here are a selection of translations available free online: Translation by H.W. & F.G. Fowler: Online at theoi.com or Online at sacred-texts.com Translation by William Tooke: Dialogues of the Dead starts at (printed) page 191 Online at archive.org Translation by Howard Williams: Dialogues of the… Read more
Our first Book Club selection for the new year is from Claude Calame: Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece, which is available from the Center for Hellenic Studies Publications website. We will all read Chapter 1, “Introduction”, and then if you wish you can read any other chapter of your choice. You can find the Alcman Fragment 1 “Partheneion,”—translated by Gregory Nagy—in the Sourcebook, or on the CHS website. The… Read more