Pillars, Columns, Cornerstones: Verticalism in Arts and Philosophy Workshop Conducted by Artemis Herber Sunday, April 24, 2016 from 11am–4pm Workshop Participation: Free and open to the public; reservation required. RSVP by April 20th, 2016 to events@chs.harvard.edu Parking available on-site. This workshop is presented by the Washington Sculptors Group in collaboration with the… Read more
This 2016 “born digital” work is an expanded edition of a publication that originally appeared May 11, 2010 on FirstDrafts@Classics@. Read more
[A French-language version of this essay was printed in Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 24 (2006), 51–62. In this online English-language version, the page-breaks in the printed French-language version are indicated within curly brackets “{…|…}”.] The language of Homeric poetry has often been used to help solve problems in interpreting the poetic language of Empedocles. Conversely, the language of Empedocles may at times help solve problems in understanding Homeric poetry. In… Read more
[Final draft of an essay by the same title published by Oxford University Press in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture, edited by Clemente Marconi, 2015, 621-636.] §1. Anthropology has had an important role in studies of Greek and Roman art, albeit a role marked by such discontinuity and eclecticism that it does not lend itself to be described as a set of principles. What is… Read more
Leonard Muellner’s goal is to restore the Greek word for the anger of Achilles, menis, to its social, mythical, and poetic contexts. His point of departure is the anthropology of emotions. He believes that notions of anger vary between cultures and that the particular meaning of a word such as menis needs to emerge from a close study of Greek epic. Menis means more than an individual’s emotional response. On… Read more
Bibliography Alexiou, Margaret. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge. Ameis, Carl, and Carl Hentze. 1906, repr. 1965. Iias für den Schuldebrauch. II Bd. 4 Hft. Gesang XXII-XXIV. Leipzig. Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ. Austin, Norman. 1966. The Function of Digressions in the Iliad. Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 7:295-312. Benveniste, Emile. 1935, repr. 1948. Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen. Paris. Read more
Appendix. The Etymology of Mênis After the in-depth contextual analysis of mênis provided above, it should be possible to resolve some of the lingering questions about its etymology. In this appendix, I propose to (1) point out the existence of a word ultimately related to mênis that is attested in the oldest surviving texts from ancient Iran, the Avestan Gāthās , and from ancient India, the hymns of the Rig… Read more
5. The Mênis of Achilles and Its Iliadic Teleology This book began with an assumption that terms for emotions such as anger have meanings and resonance that are specific to their culture, so that it could be informative to reconstruct the sense of an epic word such as mênis within its own poetic context. By now it is clear that this highly specialized social term denoting the cosmic sanction against… Read more
4. The Mênis of Achilles and the First Book of the Iliad It is possible to foresee a sequel to the Theogony from within my metonymic analysis of its myth. [1] The stage has been set for another myth whose central theme is the mênis of Zeus. Neither the word mênis nor the proper use of the term are conceivable until the Theogony is complete,… Read more
3. The Narrative Sequence of the Hesiodic Theogony The purpose of this chapter is to articulate the relationship between the Hesiodic Theogony and mênis, the starting point of the Homeric Iliad. The existence of a global relationship between these poetic traditions has already been postulated by Laura Slatkin, who has described its essential content. [1] Formal criteria also give us reasons to suspect the existence… Read more
