Browsing CHS Classical Inquiries by Title
Now showing items 73-92 of 279
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The failed apobatic adventure of Pandaros the archer: A bifocal commentary on Iliad 5.166-469
(2015-05-20)In this posting for 2015.05.20, I experiment with different ways of making annotations in a commentary. The passage I have chosen for this commentary is Iliad 5.166–469. I will analyze these 300odd Homeric verses in two ... -
Feeling pain and delight while hearing a song in Odyssey 8
(2015-06-10)This posting of 2015.06.10 continues from where I left off in the posting of 2015.06.03, where I was focusing on the audience’s reception of the first song of Demodokos. The song, as we saw, is paraphrased at verses 72–83 ... -
For anyone tempted to read the Homeric Iliad, all of it, in translation: some words about a book that can help with getting started
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-07-17)In this brief essay, I talk about a book that can help get you started if you wish to make a personal commitment to read the Homeric Iliad, all of it, in translation. It is a book of mine that was first published in 2013 ... -
A foreword to an essay by Charles de Lamberterie
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2017-11-17) -
From Athens to Crete and back
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-09-10)In my posting for 2015.08.26, I spoke of a “MinoanMycenaean civilization,” not saying “Minoan” and “Mycenaean” separately. That is because, as we saw in the postings for both 2015.08.26 and 2015.09.03, some of the myths ... -
From the heavenly to the earthy and back, variations on a theme of love-on-wings in Song 1 of Sappho and elsewhere
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-12-18)In this essay, I start by considering the word strouthoi, conventionally translated as ‘sparrows’, in Song 1 of Sappho. At line 10, these birds are seen at the moment when they take wing and fly off. They are pulling behind ... -
Genre, Occasion, and Choral Mimesis Revisited- with special reference to the "newest Sappho"
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-10-01) -
Girl, interrupted, and some possibilities for linking the hymeneal songs of Sappho with the etymologies of two Greek words, humḗn (ὑμήν) and húmnos (ὕμνος)
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-10-23)Ιn Fragment 114 of Sappho, we read the words of a girl who is lamenting her loss of girlhood: ‘where oh where, my girlhood, my girlhood, have you gone off to, leaving me behind?’ (παρθενία, παρθενία, ποῖ με λίποιc’ ἀποίχῃ). ... -
Girl, interrupted: more about echoes of Sappho in Epigram 55 of Posidippus
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-12-03)Epigram 55 of Posidippus, a poet who flourished in the third century BCE, refers to the songs of Sappho. Thatis what I argued already in my posting for 2015.11.19. But the reference to Sappho in that epigram is evenmore ... -
Glimpses of Aeolian traditions in two different myths about two different visits by Philoctetes to the sacred island of the goddess Chryse
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2021-08-09)The cover illustration for this essay is a drawing, made in the early nineteenth century of our era, which copies with some clarity and flair a picture painted on a vase manufactured in Athens in the fifth century BCE and ... -
God-Hero Antagonism in the Hippolytus of Euripides
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-02-14) -
Helen of Sparta and her very own Eidolon
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2016-05-02)In Classical Inquiries 2016.02.18, I analyzed a scene in the Homeric Odyssey where Telemachus finds himself transported into a kind of “Mycenaean heaven” while visiting the palace in Sparta where Menelaos lives together ... -
Herodotus and a courtesan from Naucratis
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-07-01) -
A historical Cato caught in the vortex of an ancient biography
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-08-05)Renaissance Opera is notorious for taking liberties with the facts in its portrayal of historical characters. Vivaldi’s Cato in Utica is no exception. My presentation explores here some strikingly comparable situations in ... -
Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part 2: More on the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-11-30)This post, dated 2018.11.30, picks up from where I left off in Classical Inquiries 2018.11.22. Here again I am dealing with problems I have encountered in figuring out the historical circumstances of Homeric performances ... -
Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Part Five
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2019-02-08) -
Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Part Four
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2019-01-31)This posting for 2019.01.31 is Part Four of a long-term project that started with Part One at 2019.01.08 and continued with Part Two at 2019.01.16 and with Part Three at 2019.01.25. The numbering of my paragraphs here in ...