Chapter 4. The New Sappho Poem (P.Köln 21351 and 21376): Key to the Old Fragments André Lardinois The Egyptian desert continues to reveal to us its treasures. The most spectacular find in recent years is probably the Milan papyrus, containing over one hundred new epigrams of the Hellenistic poet Posidippus, published in 2001. [1] No less spectacular is the… Read more
Part 3. Athens Chapter 8. Arete and Nausicaa {338|341} §3.1 Odyssey 3 brings together two figures, Nestor and Athena, whose functions are related in the story of Odysseus’s return: Nestor is the “homebringer” who ten years earlier failed to bring Odysseus back from Troy; Athena is the goddess who has now undertaken to free Odysseus from Calypso’s island and bring about his long delayed return home. Read more
Chapter 9. The City Goddess of Athens {391|393} §3.39 The Phaeacian king and queen are the key to the relationship between Athena Polias and Erechtheus as it once was. Aspects of this relationship, like Athena’s change from virgin goddess to mother goddess in the context of the Plynteria, can be reconstructed only indirectly from the Phaeacian parallel and must therefore remain obscure; other aspects of the relationship… Read more
Endnotes, Part 3 EN3.1 (Endnote to n3.16) {486|487} Cults of Damia and Auxesia had elements in common with cults of Demeter and Kore; Pausanias, who saw and sacrificed to the images of Damia and Auxesia in Aegina, says that their sacrifice was like that in Eleusis (εἶδόν τε τὰ ἀγάλματα καὶ ἔθυσά σφισι κατὰ <τὰ> αὐτὰ καθὰ δὴ καὶ Ἐλευσῖνι θύειν νομίζουσιν, Pausanias 2.30.4). Herodotus too… Read more
Part 4. Ionia Chapter 10. The Panionic League {511|515} §4.1 Nestor, as discussed in Part 2 above, plays an extensive role beneath the surface of the Homeric poems; this role is based on Nestor’s twin myth, which is itself kept hidden from view in the poems. Nestor’s brother Periklymenos, who is mentioned but once in the poems, is Nestor’s partner in this old myth, which is… Read more
Chapter 11. The Festival of the Panionia and the Homeric Poems {550|551} §4.20 The Phaeacians, as argued earlier, represent the Ionians in the one context in which they were a single people, namely the celebration of the Panionia. With their love of songs, dances, and banquets, the Phaeacians bring out the festive side of the Ionians, and this is for good reason if they are meant to… Read more
Endnotes, Part 4 EN4.1 (Endnote to n4.22) {620|621} I agree with the viewpoint expressed by Cook 1975:784–785 that Athens cannot be removed from the Ionian migration, but I think that he claims too much for Athens’ role, as in the case of Colophon: “Many modern scholars have contended that this claim [that Athens was the main focus of emigration] was invented by the Athenians in the… Read more
Chapter 3. Vedic {58|59} §1.42 The twin gods of the Rig-Veda have two dual names: they are not only Aśvínā, “horse-possessors,” a name that occurs 398 times in the Rig-Veda, but also Nā́satyā, a name that occurs 99 times in the Rig-Veda. [117] The name Nā́satyā is old. It has an exact cognate in Avestan Nā̊ŋhaiθya, the name of a demon in… Read more
Endnotes, Part 1 EN1.1 (Endnote to n1.181) {94|95} If the Dioskouroi were thought of as buried beneath the earth at Therapne, their cult must, one assumes, have included the principal feature of hero cults, namely a grave. Unfortunately nothing is known of the twins’ cult at Therapne, which after Pindar is never mentioned again. Bölte RE ‘Therapne’ 2365 suggests that after Pindar’s time the twins’ cult… Read more
Part 2. Nestor’s Homeric Role Chapter 4. Iliad 11 {102|105} §2.1 The basic text for Nestor’s myth is his story in Iliad 11.670–761. [1] I have already suggested that the essence of Nestor’s myth is that he is a twin who has lost his brother and who therefore must take his brother’s place. What points to this is the etymological correspondence… Read more
