The active interaction among the bard, internal audience and the external audience in a Homeric performance intrigued me. I wondered how the external audience, in the 5th century BCE, processed such a complicated narrative (Homeric Iliad and Odyssey). How did they kept them near and dear to their song culture? Read more
Apollo and Achilles are ritual antagonists. So how do we explain the strategic alliance Achilles forms with the god early in Iliad Scroll 1? The hero does this through Kalkhas, the seer who received his prophetic powers from Apollo. Read more
|524 This is how [houtōs] we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men [andrōn] of an earlier time [prosthen], |525 who were heroes [hērōes], whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger. |526 They could be persuaded by way of gifts and could be swayed by words. Read more
4 He [= Hēraklēs] used to travel all over the boundless earth and all over the sea, |5 veering from his path and wandering off, all because of the missions assigned to him by Eurystheus the king. |6 He [= Hēraklēs] performed many reckless things on his own, and he suffered many such things in return. Read more
Did Odysseus return to Troy after his initial departure? And if so, why? The Iliad, which ends before the fall of Troy, gives us no information about the sack of the city or the departure of the Greeks. But there are some scanty details offered in the Odyssey and in the summaries of the poems of the Epic Cycle. Read more
