We were excited to welcome back Richard P. Martin for an Open House entitled “What’s a kômos song?” The event took place on Friday, September 25 at 11:00 a.m. EDT and was recorded. You might like to read the following PDF handouts in connection with this event: Dionysos Readings from Aristotle Poetics You can watch the recording on our YouTube channel or via the link in the frame below. Mentioned… Read more
Our next Core Vocab term, taken from terms listed in H24H[1] and tracked in the associated Sourcebook[2] is nomos [νόμος]. Gregory Nagy glosses the word as follows: “nomos, plural nomoi ‘local custom; customary law; law’.” In Eumenides we see Athena changing the old system of vendetta, personified by the Furies or Erinyes, to that of a justice system and trial by jury[3]. The Furies complain (twice): Younger gods, you have ridden down… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Timothy Power (Rutgers University) for an Open House discussion on ‘Rhapsodes, Kitharôidia, and Performance in Ancient Greece’. For additional reading associated with this event, you might like to read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Timothy Power’s book The Culture of Kitharôidia, available for free online. You can watch the event on our YouTube channel, or below. Members can start and continue discussion in this… Read more
Our next Book Club selection features two selections from Albert B. Lord’s The Singer of Tales: Chapter 2 ‘Singers: Performance and Training’, and Chapter 5 ‘Songs and the Song’. This book, originally published in 1960, is based on research carried out in the former Yugoslavia by Milman Parry in the 1930s, which focused on how singers who learn songs in an oral tradition compose in performance. This provides valuable evidence for… Read more
{Socrates is speaking:} Hold it right there. Tell me this, Ion—respond to what I ask without concealment. When you say well the epic verses and induce a feeling of bedazzlement [ekplēxis] for the spectators [theōmenoi]—as you sing of Odysseus leaping onto the threshold and revealing himself to the suitors and pouring out the arrows at his feet, or of Achilles rushing at Hector, or something connected to the pitiful things… Read more