In this part of our series on marriage in ancient Greek texts (following part 1: Music, and part 2: Wedding), we look at the courtship phase. How are suitors or prospective bridegrooms portrayed, what agency does the bride-to-be have, and how are marriages arranged? Émile Benveniste, in Indo-European Language and Society[1], discusses how “there is, properly speaking, no Indo-European term for “marriage.”” He explains that the words are different for… Read more
We were excited to welcome Angela Cinalli of “La Sapienza” University of Rome, for an Open House, entitled “Itinerant professionals of literature and music in the epigraphic sources of the Hellenistic period. ‘Poeti Vaganti’ in Delphi and Delos.” The event took place on Friday, June 12 at 11:00 a.m. EDT, and was recorded. In preparation for the event, you might like to read the primary sources in this PDF handout:… Read more
A guest post by Sarah Scott With the Olympic Games coming up, this month’s Core Vocab word from H24H[1] and tracked in the associated Sourcebook[2] is āthlos (aethlos) [ἆθλος/ἄεθλος] ‘contest, ordeal; competition’; and āthlētēs [ἀθλητής], ‘athlete’ . In HeroesX Gregory Nagy introduces the word āthlētēs in a section about the Labors of Hēraklēs and the founding of the Olympic Games: Hēraklēs not only founded this major festival: he also competed in every athletic event… Read more
A guest post by Bill Moulton It is odd, that a culture that seems to personify every river, creek, lake, spring, meadow, vale, city, region, and sea with a deity shows so little knowledge of the gods of the mountain peaks. The Hesiodic Theogony lists none of the mountains by name and expends only one line of poetry addressing this. By contrast, it names forty-one of the three thousand Oceanides in… Read more