At this time of year our thoughts often turn to food and drink, so we start our exploration of the topic in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. Where does their food come from? What kinds of foods does the poetry represent? How is it prepared and served? Read more
In this segment, Douglas Frame (CHS), Leonard Muellner (Brandeis University), and Gregory Nagy (Harvard University), read in Homeric Greek, translate, and discuss Odyssey 1.178–186. Topics include demonstratives, the verb eukhomai, Athena as Mentes, the preposition epi, the adjective allothroosand placenames, the phrases agō aithōna sidēron and epi oinopa ponton, and epithets and properties of wine in the poetic tradition. Read more
In our initial discussions we concentrated on the Homeric epics and identified some of the themes that appear in our focus passages. When we viewed together the main subjects surrounding the words appearing with oinops—pontos, ‘sea’, and bous, ‘ox’, we started to see a connection with seasonality, so we decided to look in more detail at the two oinops passages in Hesiodic Works and Days. Read more
