Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches; Foreword Gregory Nagy, General Editor Building on the foundations of scholarship within the disciplines of philology, philosophy, history, and archaeology, this series spans the continuum of Greek traditions extending from the second millennium B.C. to the present, not just the Archaic and Classical periods. The aim is to enhance perspectives by applying various different disciplines to problems that have in the past… Read more
Heat and Lust Hesiod’s Midsummer Festival Scene Revisited J.C.B. Petropoulos ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν, καὶ τοὺς φέροντας χεῖμα καὶ θέρος βροτοῖς λαμπροὺς δυνάστας, ἐμπρέποντας αἰθέρι ἀστέρας … Aeschylus Agamemnon 4-7 Ραχοῦλες, εἶμαι ὁ πιστικὸς τῆς ἥμερης ἀρνάδας, ὀργώνω, σπέρνω, ἱδροκοπῶ, τοῦ κάμπου δουλευτής, καὶ λούζω τὸ τραγούδι μου στῆς δροσοπρασινάδας τὰ δάκρυα καὶ στὰ δάκρυα τῆς δύσκολης ζωῆς … Kostis Palamas,… Read more
Abbreviations 1. Corpora of ancient texts and editions of individual authors (not a complete list) Quotations are taken from the Oxford editions of ancient authors, unless otherwise stated. Of the editions and commentaries used the following deserve especial notice: Aesop (Perry) Aesopica…, ed. Perry, Ben Edwin (Urbana, 1952) Alcaeus (LP) Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta, eds. Lobei, Edgar,… Read more
1. The Problem Stated: A Look at Hesiod’s Feast and Beyond In the Works and Days, occasional local details—trapped as it were amidst uniform details—mirror aptly the larger “panhellenic,” or trans-national, orientation of the poem as a whole. [1] The composition of the WD could manage little more than occasionally to have disparate local details jostle one against another, often against other… Read more
2. The Harvest Without question the most gruelling of the year’s tasks, the wheat harvest is conducted fifteen days after the harvest of the barley crop, which occurs in mid-May. [1] The whole of June is devoted to reaping, and presumably for this reason the month is also called ‘The Harvester’ (Θεριστής). [2] The harvest schedule is… Read more
3. The Threshing Threshing in Greece. (Photograph by the author.) Threshing falls in July, giving this month the names ‘Αλωνάρης, Ἁλωνιάτης, and ‘Αλωνιστής (‘Thresher’). [1] The shocks of wheat are transferred from the heap to the communal threshing-floor (ἁλώνι) [2] and planted erect in a circle, and then unbound. The work is done by… Read more
III. Delos, Cyprus, and Argos After consideration of the major variants of the Ariadne-Theseus myth, the next step must be a division on the basis of content. The last three sets discussed, those of Cyprus, Delos, and Argos, all contain one particular element absent from the Cretan and Naxian variants: a reference, however small, to the goddess Aphrodite and the consequent implication of her eventual predominance over… Read more
IV. Crete and Naxos Although the Cypriote, Delian, and Argive variants are set apart from the Cretan and Naxian by virtue of their mention of Aphrodite, a single salient feature, which occurs in at least one variant from each locality, draws all the different versions together: the death of Ariadne. Assuredly, the death of the heroine does not occupy the central position within each retelling, as the… Read more
List of Works Consulted Carpenter, Rhys. Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics. Berkeley, 1956. Dow, Sterling. “The Greeks in the Bronze Age,” in The Language and Background of Homer, ed. G. S. Kirk. Cambridge, 1964, 140–173. Frisk, Hjalmar. Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg, 1960. Hainsworth, J. B. The Flexibility of the Homeric… Read more
Foreword The timing could not be more perfect (téleios). It is a privilege, honor, and joy for me to welcome the second English edition of my Ritual Lament. A privilege above all else because two outstanding young scholars, Panagiotis Roilos and Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, have given freely of their expertise to bring about the completion (télos) of this revised edition, at just the same time as their Greek… Read more
