Friday ‘Kids and Curs’ Café
“Ceto bore Phorcys another unmanageable monster like nothing human nor like the immortal gods either, in a hollow cave. This was the divine and haughty Echidna, and half of her is a Nymphe with a fair face and eyes glancing, but the other half is a monstrous serpent, terrible, enormous and squirming and voracious.” Read more…
Nereid Monument
I always thought the Nereid Monument was a nymphaeum— a shrine to the Nereids—but it isn’t. I discovered that it was the tomb of Arbinas of Lycia. So why did he have a shrine that looks like an Ionic temple? And why does it include figures of Nereids? Read more…
Greek dialects in the language of Homer: Mycenaean, and Arcadia
In this video, Gregory Nagy, Douglas Frame, Leonard Muellner, and Keith Stone have an informal discussion about the role of dialects in the Homeric poetic tradition, introducing the Mycenaean stage, and Homeric forms in Arcadia. They include examples from formulas such as epithets within Homeric poetry, and also refer to the work of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Read more…
“Les langues vivaces” at the Faculty of Medicine, the University of Lille 2
“In October of 2016, I had the pleasure of talking about Homeric poetry to the largest audience I have ever addressed in the many years I’ve spent teaching Classics—over 500 students in a huge new amphitheater at the University of Lille in northeastern France.” Leonard Muellner explains how medical students there are being introduced to Latin and Greek—the “indestructible languages”—as part of the curriculum. Read more…
Friday ‘On Reading’ Café
The last café dealt with the subject of the storage of books, so it seems natural to go on talking about books. Summer is in full swing and the weather is fine. When I go on vacation in the countryside or by the sea, I always bring several books with me. If I fly, I always bring a mystery novel to the airport, to avoid thinking about real disaster which might happen. Read more…
Book Club | August 2017: Virgil Aeneid 11 & 12
…Latinus himself was amazed
at these mighty men, born at opposite ends of the world,
meeting and deciding the outcome with their swords.
As soon as the field was clear on the open plain,
they both dashed quickly forward, hurling their spears first
from a distance, rushing, with shield and ringing bronze,
to battle. The earth groaned: they redoubled their intense
sword-strokes, chance and skill mingled together. Read more…
Greek dialects and the poetic super-language
In this video, Gregory Nagy discusses with Douglas Frame and Leonard Muellner an introduction to how ancient Greek dialects function in Homeric poetry: what the different dialects are, how different forms fit into the metrical structure, and the evolution and perpetuation of the poetic super-language. Read more…
Core Vocab: nemesis
Gregory Nagy says that “nemesis indicates the process whereby everyone gets what he or she deserves.”
Here are some passages in which the word is used, as a starting point for further exploration and discussion of the word and its use both as a process and in its personification as a goddess. How did the ancient Greeks view nemesis? Was it seen negatively, or as a necessity? What situations triggered it? Read more…
