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Focus on Sappho

Gathered here are selections from CHS publications pertaining to the songmaking of Sappho. The majority of them have been generated in Classical Inquiries, an online, rapid-publication project devoted to sharing some of the latest thinking on the ancient world with researchers and the general public, authored primarily by Gregory Nagy, Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies. Nagy’s approach, which combines diachronic and synchronic perspectives, encourages us to view Sappho’s… Read more

Curated Books

Epic Singers and Oral Tradition

Albert Bates Lord here offers an unparalleled overview of the nature of oral-traditional epic songs and the practices of the singers who composed them. Shaped by the conviction that theory should be based on what singers actually do, and have done in times past, the essays collected here span half a century of Lord’s research on the oral tradition from Homer to the twentieth century. Drawing on his extensive fieldwork… Read more

Curated Articles

Alcaeus in Sacred Space

[The printed version of this article was published in Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca da Omero all’ età ellenistica: Scritti in onore di Bruno Gentili (ed. R. Pretagostini) vol. 1, 221–225. Rome 1993. The original pagination of the printed version will be indicated in this electronic version by way of curly brackets (“{“ and “}”). For example, “{221|230}” indicates where p. 221 ends and p. 222 begins.] This presentation brings… Read more

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Curated Books

The meaning of Homeric εὔχομαι through its formulas

Eukhomai had been glossed traditionally as “pray, long for, wish for; vow, promise; boast, brag, vaunt; profess, declare.” Muellner’s approach is to make a systematic analysis of the constraints in which this word is used in Homeric texts—grammatical, stylistic, and contextual—and to compare them, keeping in mind the framework of traditional diction, in which “a traditional poet uses a repertoire of formulas and themes to express his meaning.” Second online edition… Read more

Curated Articles

A poetics of sisterly affect in the Brothers Song and in other songs of Sappho

[The online version of my essay as published here, dated 2015.09.08, matches a printed version published in The Newest Sappho (P. Obbink and P. GC Inv. 105, frs. 1-5), edited by Anton Bierl and André Lardinois, Leiden: Brill, 2016. I am grateful to the editors of that volume for securing permission from Brill for me to present this online version, which is longer than the printed version. The difference in length… Read more

Curated Articles

Language and Meter

[This essay is an online second edition of an original printed version that appeared as Chapter 25 in A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (ed. E. J. Bakker; Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World 2010) 370-387. In this online second edition, the original page-numbers of the first edition will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{371|372}” indicates where p. 371 of the first edition ends and… Read more

Curated Books

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours

The ancient Greeks’ concept of “the hero” was very different from what we understand by the term today, Gregory Nagy argues—and it is only through analyzing their historical contexts that we can truly understand Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, and Herakles. In Greek tradition, a hero was a human, male or female, of the remote past, who was endowed with superhuman abilities by virtue of being descended from an immortal god. Despite their mortality,… Read more

Curated Articles

Grieving Achilles

Brandeis University [This work was originally published in Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry, eds. Franco Montanari, Antonios Rengakos, Christos Tsagalis, pp.197-220. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2012.] My point of departure is the scholarly work of my late friend and colleague, Steven Lowenstam. His book, As Witnessed by Images: The Trojan War Tradition in Greek and Etruscan Art, which was published posthumously by Johns… Read more

Curated Articles

Homeric Poetry and Problems of Multiformity: The ‘Panathenaic Bottleneck’

[This article was originally published in Classical Philology 96(2):109–119 (2001).] In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book. Multiformity, according to Albert Lord,… Read more