To tie in with this month's Book Club readings which include the Epinician Odes of Bacchylides, this Gallery features some ancient Greek artworks featuring the kinds of athletic contests celebrated in the poems. These contests seem to have been a favorite subject in the visual as well as the verbal arts from the earliest periods. Read more
"... Sinis used to take hold of pine trees and draw them down. All those whom he overcame in fight he used to tie to the trees, and then allow them to swing up again. Thereupon ... the bound man...was torn in two. This was the way in which Sinis himself was slain by Theseus." I looked for examples of myths, rituals, and sacred spaces associated with trees and wood. Read more
"The number and features of these three sexes were owing to the fact that the male was originally the offspring of the sun, and the female of the earth; while that which partook of both sexes was born of the moon, for the moon also partakes of both" Read more
Theophrastus, in Enquiry into Plants, says "we must endeavour to speak of timber, saying of what nature is that of each tree, what is the right season for cutting it, which kinds are hard or easy to work, and anything else that belongs to such an enquiry." Read more
Having come across across references to trees and to wooden construction in the Iliad and Odyssey, my curiosity was piqued, and I decided to gather a few examples where wood and trees were mentioned, to try and better understand what these meant in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. Are there any special associations with trees or using wood? What kinds of trees are mentioned? Read more
