When one visits the famous ancient sites of Greece, one soon realizes that most of these were built at places sacred to one or more of the ancient Greek gods—Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena and Poseidon among them. It seems the gods were a real presence to the ancient Greeks, influencing how they lived their everyday lives, their political decisions, and their world view. They seem to have believed they could… Read more
L’univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n’a lu que ta première page quand on n’a vu que son pays. The universe is a kind of book of which one has read only the first page when one has seen only one’s own country. From de Montbron, Le Cosmopolite, quoted by Lord Byron in the “Preface to the First and Second Cantos” of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage When I received… Read more
Members of the Spring Break trip 2019 Gregory Nagy will again be leading the Spring Break Trip in Greece for Students and Alumni of Harvard University. There may still be waiting-list places available for the next trip, March 13–March 21, 2020. For further details, please see the Harvard Alumni website, here. Whether or not you are able to attend yourself, you might like to read about the experiences of one… Read more
522 BCE was the year of death of Polykrates, the tyrant of Samos, famous for having assembled a navy of hundred pentekontoroi, by that time the greatest navy of Greece. In Athens, Hippias had succeeded Peisistratos as the tyrant of Athens. In 522, Darius I gained kingship of Persia. He would create an empire comparable to the Imperium Romanum; an empire without bounds in space, focusing on people and defendable… Read more
Nafplio, the first capital of modern Greece. Join Keith Stone and an intergenerational group of alums, current students, and HeroesX participants January 10–19, 2020, on a Harvard Alumni Association – Center for Hellenic Studies travel-study tour of Greece! Starting in the picturesque seaside town of Nafplio, where the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies has its headquarters in Greece (CHS Greece), and ending in the great metropolis of Thessaloniki, this travel-study tour takes… Read more