When I first heard that the British Museum was putting on an exhibition “Troy: Myth and Reality” I knew I had to go, and I was so happy that friends from the Kosmos Society were able to visit at the same time so we could share the experience with each other. In this post we continue our series of impressions and highlights. Upon entering the first part of the exhibition… 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
After we finish reading the last scroll of the Iliad, we might wonder what happens in Troy after Hector’s funeral. We have parts of what happens next in the Odyssey, in tragedies, and in fragments and plot-summaries. However, in his Description of Greece Pausanias writes an interesting description of a painting which depicted “Troy taken and the Greeks sailing away” (Pausanias 10.25.2)[1], and which was still at Delphi when he… Read more
We were pleased to welcome back Olga M. Davidson, Boston University, for a discussion on ‘Persian epic and the embedding of a song of lament’. The event took place on Thursday, September 19 at 11 a.m. EDT, and was recorded. You can watch the event on our YouTube channel, or in the frame below. In connection with this discussion, you might like to read her article “Women’s Lamentations and the… Read more