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Back and forth from general to special kinds of erotic love, further variations on a theme of love-on-wings in Song 1 of Sappho and elsewhere
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-12-25)
In Song 1 of Sappho, as our mind’s eye views Aphrodite, goddess of erotic love, at the moment when she starts driving her chariot pulled by birds called strouthoi and travels with the speed of light, in a miraculous instant, ...
Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XV, with a focus on Hēraklēs of Tiryns as military leader of the Mycenaean Empire
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2019-10-31)
While analyzing comparatively the myths about Hēraklēs as a leader of people in general and of military expeditions in particular, I have outlined in the essay TC XII, 2019.10.11, the special relevance of Tiryns, a ...
On a new book by Richard P. Martin, draft of a Foreword written by an admiring editor
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2017-12-09)
An Iliadic Odyssey as a song of the Sirens
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-09-18)
This short essay about the Odyssey of “Homer” is a playful experiment. But it is based on an even shorter essay that is quite serious in intent. That essay (Nagy 2020) appears in World Epics, an on-line site edited by Jo ...
Mages and Ionians
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2017-06-25)
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 ...
Some variations on the theme of a recomposed performer in ancient Greek prose and poetry
(Harvard University. Center for Hellenic Studies., 2021-02-27)
This essay is inspired by a most admirable comment made in an article by Johanna Hanink (2015) about nostalgic attempts, in the early fourth century BCE, at recovering the charisma associated with the former glory days, ...
Imagining a Courtesan in the Songs of Sappho
(2021-01-22)
In an octopus' garden: a story from Lesbos
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-12-12)
In Plutarch’s Banquet of the Seven Sages, the author imagines a remote time when conversations took placein the city of Corinth at a dinner party hosted by the tyrant of that city, Periandros, a historical figure whoselifetime ...
Pausanias as novelist: a micro-sample
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-07-20)
In this post, dated 2018.07.20, I have put together a working retranslation of the sad story of Komaithο, priestess in love, as retold by Pausanias at 7.18.8–7.20.2. Some essential parts of this story have already been ...