Iliad

Interview | Singing the Iliad, with Bettina Joy de Guzman

We are pleased to share this video interview with Bettina Joy de Guzman, about her project to sing the entire Iliad in ancient Greek, accompanying herself on a replica period lyre. She shares with us her process of preparation, audience reaction, engagement with those working in other fields, and her favorite episodes. Read more

Gallery | Hector The Protector

We published a Gallery about Achilles last month, so we now are doing one depicting this other hero, Hector. Who is Hector? He has the reputation of a protector of his city Troy and his people. He is also equal to Zeus in mêtis. Read more

Beauty in Homeric Iliad and Odyssey

Beauty: a concept of the mind that is intangible, culturally influenced, and fluid. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, say many. The realm of beauty is as old as humanity. The topic canvasses from philosophy to religion from natural to man-made. This is a huge topic, of which I will focus on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, and explore how people in antiquity thought about beauty. Read more

Book Club | April 2020: Barker/Christensen Homer’s Thebes

"The city of Thebes has always been of interest to scholars working within mythographical and literary traditions, precisely because its presence looms large in our corpus of extant textual and especially non-textual sources. Looming even larger is the absence of a monumental epic to encapsulate its story in the manner that the Iliad and Odyssey do for the Troy story." Our Book Club readings are from Homer's Thebes: Epic Rivalries… Read more