back Olga M. Davidson The two texts that I compare in this presentation are epics. One of them is Persian and the other one is Greek. The Persian epic is the Shāhnāma of Ferdowsi, composed in the 10th century CE. The Greek epic is the Homeric Iliad, compositionally shaped in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE and textually solidified in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Each of these… Read more
back Douglas Frame §1. If the Homeric Question is a matter of identifying the circumstances in which the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed on a monumental scale, that question, to the minds of most, has not yet been satisfactorily answered. In a book published in 2009 about the Homeric figure Nestor I proposed an answer to this long-standing question which I wish to present in more concentrated form… Read more
back P.E. Easterling Oedipus at Colonus is not unique among Greek tragedies in using oracles as both structuring elements in the plot and clues to interpretation, but Sophocles makes especially telling use of them in this play, as many scholars have noted. Even so, I believe there is a little more to be said, and I hope the topic is one that may appeal to our honorand, whose observations… Read more
back Victor Bers For many years, in fact many decades, I thought that Doug Frame was the first of Greg Nagy’s Ph.D. students. Only after Greg had settled in at the Center for Hellenic Studies and the three of us were sitting together in the living room did the matter of priority between the two of us finally get thrashed out. Doug’s recollection seemed to establish that I stand… Read more
Part I. Introduction The Homeric poems, as I hope to show, constitute acts of interpretation as well as acts of creation. The elucidation of their oral nature has taught us to look at Homeric composition not as a matter of rigidly prescribed transmission of inviolate requirements, but as a choice among alternative arrangements of fundamental compositional elements—formulas, diction, “themes,” type-scenes—that allow for modification within established contours. [1]… Read more
Online edition of Hellenic Studies 20, originally published in 2009 by the Center for Hellenic Studies. Copyright, Center for Hellenic Studies. A print version is available for purchase via Harvard University Press here. Read more
back Giuseppe Lentini Who is the best of the Achaeans? As Greg has shown in his much-admired book, this question dominates as well as unites the Homeric poetic tradition. While it is an “overall Iliadic theme that Achilles is the best of the Achaeans”, “in contrast to the Iliad, it is an overall theme of the Odyssey that indeed Odysseus is áristos Akhaiôn ‘best of the Achaeans’” [… Read more
back Anton Bierl, University of Basel I. Introduction During Greg Nagy’s last visit to Basel, we had an intense discussion about adolescence and the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan, who has made great strides toward giving a voice to young women. [1] On this occasion I realized that I had not yet told him in detail about the progress of my current book on… Read more
