A wedding ceremony is a celebratory marker for the bride and groom as well as for their two families. Further, this joyful event, rich with rituals, extends to the community that the bride and groom are part of. In ancient Greece, weddings were celebrated with many customs and rituals attached. The roles were assigned and expected to be performed according to traditions. Kirk Ormand in his book titled Exchange and… Read more
In the previous posts in this series we looked at descriptions of hair for males and for females. This time we look at some examples of how hair features in ritual events as depicted in the texts. Ritual offering of hair Achilles and his companions cut their hair and offer it in commemoration at the funeral of Patroklos: In the midst of them his comrades bore Patroklos [135] and covered… Read more
This video recording was originally shown at an international conference held at Baku, November 27–28, 2015. In this video Professor Gregory Nagy explores the myths relating to The Lives of Homer. “This inquiry centers on the surviving texts of ‘Life of Homerʼ narrative traditions, to which I refer simply as Lives of Homer. These Lives, I argue, can be read as sources of historical information about the reception of Homeric poetry.… Read more
A guest post by Sarah Scott I have become interested in the role of the herald. Does this carry a special status and have particular responsibilities? Is a herald the same as a messenger, or do they have separate functions? They are different words in Greek, κῆρυξ, plural κήρυκες, dual κήρυκε [kērux, kērukes, keruke], and ἄγγελος plural ἄγγελοι [angelos, angeloi]. Here are a few examples to start the conversation. But Agamemnon did not… Read more
~ A guest post by Brian Prescott-Decie ~ In the course of searching for simple texts for a student of Latin who has been making rather heavy weather of Agricola, and needed some light relief, I recently came across the History of Apollonius, King of Tyre, a Latin romantic novel of perhaps the third century CE. By the purest serendipity, I then found myself reading the following lines of the… Read more