What from the founder Esop fell, In neat familiar verse I tell: Twofold’s the genius of the page, To make you smile and make you sage. But if the critics we displease, By wrangling brutes and talking trees, Let them remember, ere they blame, We’re working neither sin nor shame; ‘Tis but a play to form the youth By fiction, in the cause of truth. This month’s Book Club selection… Read more
This time our Core Vocab exploration, taken from terms listed in H24H[1] and tracked in the associated Sourcebook[2], is about ainos [αἶνος] ‘authoritative utterance for and by a social group; praise; fable’; and the related word ainigma [αἴνιγμα] ‘riddle’. In H24H 2§60, Gregory Nagy says: Here is my working definition of this word: an ainos is a performance of ambivalent wording that becomes clarified once it is correctly understood and then… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Arti Mehta, Lecturer in Classics at Howard University, for our Open House discussion on Aesop. To prepare for the discussion, participants might like to read Mehta’s handout and article: “Aesop and Fable: A God of Small Things,” handout: [Word | PDF] “Fox and Jackal: The Individual Against the Collective” (online in Classics@ 12: “Comparative Approaches to India and Greece”). You can watch the recording of this discussion… Read more
A Hare one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the Tortoise, who replied, laughing: ‘Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race.’ The Hare, believing her assertion to be simply impossible, assented to the proposal; and they agreed that the Fox should choose the course and fix the goal. On the day appointed for the race the two started together. The… Read more