Linguistic dating is in close agreement with historians’ and classicists’ beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources. By (left-to-right) Dr. Eric Lewin Altschuler, Dr. Andreea S Calude, Dr. Andrew Meade, and Dr. Mark Pagel / 02.18.2013 Altschuler: Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Microbiology and Molecular Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, University Hospital[…]
The Death of Patroclus – Illustration from page 265 of ‘The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Mr Pope. / Wikimedia Commons More than one thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era, a Greek expeditionary force laid seige to the city of Troy in Asia Minor. Homer’s epic account of this gives a graphic,[…]
By Dr. Gregory Nagy Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature Professor of Comparative Literature Director, Center for Hellenic Studies Harvard University Still under the spell of Heinrich Schliemann’s rediscovery of Troy, students of ancient Greece have been accustomed to regard the Greek epic tradition of Homer as a reporting of events that really happened in the[…]
Detail of a relief depicting the “Apotheosis of Homer,” attributed to Archelaos of Priene, ca. 225 BCE–205 BCE. In the British Museum. / Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Gregory Nagy Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature Professor of Comparative Literature Director, Center for Hellenic Studies Harvard University The meaning of “olbios” “Ulysses Departing[…]
Odysseus and his crew escape the cyclops, as painted by Arnold Böcklin in 1896. Wikimedia By Dr. Chris Mackie / 09.04.2017 Professor of Classics La Trobe University The Odyssey of Homer is a Greek epic poem that tells of the return journey of Odysseus to the island of Ithaca from the war at Troy, which Homer[…]
Odysseus departs from the Land of the Phaeacians, painting by Claude Lorrain (1646) / Louvre Museum, Paris By Dr. Gregory Nagy Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature Professor of Comparative Literature Director, Center for Hellenic Studies Harvard University The meaning of “noos” This diagram shows the medieval understanding of spheres of the cosmos, derived from Aristotle, and as per the standard explanation by Ptolemy.[…]
A Reading from Homer (1885) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1885 / Philadelphia Museum of Art, Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Jean Bollack (deceased) French Philosopher, Philologist, and Literary Critic When I started out, I found it hard to distinguish writing projects from re-elaborations of subject matter, and I failed to pay sufficient attention to the breaks, large or very[…]
Ajax defending the ships of the Greeks. After a drawing by John Flaxman / Image via H.P. Haack, Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Gregory Nagy Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature Professor of Comparative Literature Director, Center for Hellenic Studies Harvard University The meaning of kleos Achilles and Agamemnon, Scene from Iliad Book I. Mosaic, Pompeii /[…]
By Dr. Raquel Martín-Hernández / 03.28.2014 Postdoctoral Researcher Universidad Complutense de Madrid Abstract The verses of Homer were often interpreted in Antiquity as the voice of an oracle. But we have no material evidence about the use of Homeric verses as oracles before the third and fourth centuries CE. This paper is focused on the[…]