The city of Thebes has always been of interest to scholars working within mythographical and literary traditions, precisely because its presence looms large in our corpus of extant textual and especially non-textual sources. Looming even larger is the absence of a monumental epic to encapsulate its story in the manner that the Iliad and Odyssey do for the Troy story. Myths set in Thebes or involving Theban characters occupy a… Read more
We were excited to welcome Joel Christensen for an Open House. The title of the discussion is “Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts,” based on his research and collaboration with Elton T. E. Barker. The event took place on Friday, March 6 at 11:00 a.m. EST. It was live-streamed and recorded. In preparation, you might like to read Iliad 4.1–421 and Odyssey 11.225–332, as well as… Read more
Recent Book Club discussion prompted me to think about how human emotions were depicted in some of the readings from Greek antiquity. In the Trojan Women, Andromache’s reaction to her son’s fate—death by being thrown out of the battlements—is not physical, a loud, wailing lament, but a subdued, courageous reaction. To get a proper burial for her son, she does not fight back vehemently when the child is taken. The… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Caroline Stark of Howard University for an Open House. The title of the discussion was: The Reception of Greek in Renaissance Italy. The session was live-streamed and recorded. The event took place on Thursday, December 5 at 11:00 a.m. EST. To get ready for the event, you might like to read: Petrarch’s letter to Homer: Text on Project Gutenberg Aristophanes’ speech, from Plato Symposium, 189–193: Text… Read more
In part 1 we looked at divine mothers in epic. Now in part 2 we see the difficulty of being a mortal mother of a hero. Unlike some of the examples we looked at featuring divine mothers, these sons do not rely on their mothers or ask them for help, and the mothers seem to have no control over events or their sons’ lives. But as with the divine mothers,… Read more