Terracotta funerary plaque (520–510BCE) This gallery displays different means of transportation used by the Ancient Greeks: chariots, horses, ships. Some pictures also show other ways of traveling in myths: dolphins and rams. The photographs were taken in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this passage from the Odyssey, Homer compares ships to horses drawing a chariot. When they [= the Phaeacian seafarers] began rowing out to sea,… Read more
In this video clip, Professor Gregory Nagy discusses the epic cycle, as a body of oral poetry, and helps us to understand how the ancient Greeks viewed their tradition of composition in performance through the metaphor of the chariot wheel, the κύκλος [kuklos, ‘circle, cycle, chariot wheel’]. You can watch on our YouTube channel, or in the frame below References: Albert B. Lord: Singer of Tales Gregory Nagy: Homeric Questions… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Kevin McGrath, Associate in the Department of South Asian Studies at Harvard University, to discuss how charioteering and charioteers are emblematic—if not signal—of warrior song and culture in the Mahābhārata. Our discussion included reference to focus passages from the Iliad and Mahābhārata noted below, as well as McGrath’s article on Kṛṣṇa in Mahābhārata. Focus Passages & Scholarship Iliad 2. 545ff Iliad 4. 297ff Iliad 5. 239ff… Read more