Translated by Robert Potter Adapted by Mary Ebbott and Casey Dué Further adapted by Miriam Kamil Introduction: Herakles has gone to the underworld, where he was sent by Eurystheus to drag to light the triple-headed dog Cerberus. Lykos, king of Thebes, certain that the enterprise will prove fatal to the hero, seizes on his three sons, together with their mother Megara, and grandfather Amphitryon, in order to allay… Read more
back José L. García Ramón (Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC) 1. The Pylian man’s name e-ti-me-de-i (dat.) occurs in PY Fn 324.1 (S324, Ciii), a tablet of contributions of barley (HORD, with indication of the quantities) beside a series of names.* Some of them, all in dative, are surely Greek, [1] among others a-ka-ma-jo .4 /Akmaiōi/ or /Alkmaiōi/ (:… Read more
[This article is a draft of a review later published in Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011) 166–169 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426911000127). Page numbers for that publication have been added in curly brackets. For instance, {166|167} indicates the break between pages 166 and 167.] For the author (hereafter LF), the ‘epic age of Homer’ is the 8th c. (here and hereafter, all dates are BCE). The word ‘travelling’ refers to… Read more
Second, online edition (2018) of a thesis presented to the Department of Comparative Literature and the Committee on Degrees in Theater, Dance, & Media in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 7, 2017. Read more
Old Norse mythology is elusive: it is the label used to describe the religious stories of the pre-Christian North, featuring such well-known gods as Odin and Thor, yet most of the narratives have come down to us in manuscripts from the Middle Ages mainly written by Christians. Our view of the stories as they were transmitted in oral form in the pre-Christian era is obscured. To overcome these limitations, this… Read more
This work explores the role of orality in shaping and evaluating medieval Icelandic literature. Applying field studies of oral cultures in modern times to this distinguished medieval literature, Gísli Sigurðsson asks how it would alter our reading of medieval Icelandic sagas if it were assumed they had grown out of a tradition of oral storytelling, similar to that observed in living cultures. Sigurðsson examines how orally trained lawspeakers regarded the emergent written… Read more
1. Introduction §1. Opinions have varied and swayed regarding the interpretation of the Linear B term po-re-na. Whatever meaning is assigned, many would draw the forms po-re-si and po-re-no- into their interpretation of po-re-na, and vice versa. In this investigation I begin with the interpretation of po-re-na that appears most probable and reconsider po-re-si and po-re-no- on the basis of both internal and comparative evidence. 2. Po-re-na §2. Pylos tablet… Read more
Gísli Sigurðsson, The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, University of Iceland More than fifty years after the publication of The Singer of Tales the book and the ideas therein still serve as a fresh wind in the textually-oriented field of Old Norse Studies where very few have taken up the issue of how an oral background for medieval texts can possibly affect the modern appreciation of them. It should… Read more
A retranslation based on an original translation by W. H. S. Jones, 1918 (Scroll 2 with H.A. Ormerod), containing some of the footnotes added by Jones. This retranslation is by Gregory Nagy | 2018.07.27* For the most up-to-date version of this work, visit http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.prim-src:A_Pausanias_Reader_in_Progress.2018-. [ back ] Scroll I. Attica {1.1.1} Belonging to the Greek [Hellēnikē] mainland [ēpeiros], [1]… Read more
Bosnian traditional ballads have intrigued many by their beauty and eloquence, from Goethe’s poetic interest in them in the eighteenth century to the work of twentieth-century scholars such as Milman Parry and Albert Lord. These songs are now available to the English reader in a bilingual edition offering a selection of never before translated or published materials from Harvard University’s Parry Collection. The forty oral ballads, many appearing in multiple… Read more
