Gregory Nagy
Books by this author
Articles by this author
Orality and Literacy (Persian translation)
Gregory Nagy Translated into Persian by Farnoosh Shamsian [[This article was first published in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (ed. T. O.
Herodotus on queens and courtesans of Egypt
[This essay was originally published in Herodotus: Narrator, Scientist, Historian , ed. Ewen Bowie, 109–122. Trends in Classics 59. Berlin:…
Oral Traditions, Written Texts, and Questions of Authorship
[Originally published in The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion, ed. Marco Fantuzzi and Christos Tsagalis, 59-77.
A ritualized rethinking of what it meant to be ‘European’ for ancient Greeks of the post-heroic age: evidence from the Heroikos of Philostratus
[[This essay was originally published in 2019 as chapter 12 of Thinking the Greeks: A Volume in Honour of James…
Poetics of Fragmentation in the Athyr Poem of C. P. Cavafy
[Originally published in Imagination and Logos: Essays on C. P. Cavafy (ed. Panagiotis Roilos) 265-272. Cambridge, MA 2010. The original…
Different ways of expressing the idea of historiā in the prose of Herodotus and Thucydides
[This is an early draft of an article eventually published in Pushing the Boundaries of Historia, ed. Mary C. English and…
Review of Robin Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer (London: Allen Lane, 2008)
[This article is a draft of a review later published in Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011) 166–169 (DOI:…
A Sampling of Comments on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey
Editors: Elizabeth Gipson, Angelia Hanhardt (2016–2021), and Keith DeStone Web producer: Noel Spencer Consultant for images: Jill Curry…
Genre, Occasion, and Choral Mimesis Revisited—with special reference to the “newest Sappho”
[[A preliminary version, originally published in Classical Inquiries 2015.10.01, of a chapter published in 2019: Lyric Genre, ed. Leslie…
Observations on Greek dialects in the late second millennium BCE
[This text is the English-language version of a lecture I delivered 2011.04.06 on the occasion of my induction as a…
Diachronic Homer and a Cretan Odyssey
2017.06.10 [The online version of this presentation as published here on the website of the Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS),…
The idea of an archetype in texts stemming from the empire founded by Cyrus
[This article was originally published as Chapter 14 of The Archaeology of Greece and Rome: Studies in Honour of Anthony…
Hymnic Elements in Empedocles
[A French-language version of this essay was printed in Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 24 (2006), 51–62. In this online English-language…
Herodotus and the Logioi of the Persians
[This essay was originally published in No Tapping around Philology: A Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th…
Things said and not said in a ritual text: Iguvine Tables Ib 10-16 / VIb 48-53
[A printed version of this article appears in Miscellanea Indogermanica: Festschrift für José Luis García Ramón zum 65. Geburtstag (ed.
Homeric Echoes in Posidippus
[Originally published in 2004 as chapter 5, pp. 57–64, of Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an Epigram Collection…
Copies and Models in Horace Odes 4.1 and 4.2
[The printed version of this essay was published over 20 years ago in Classical World 87 (1994) 415–426. The online…
Alcaeus in Sacred Space
[The printed version of this article was published in Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca da Omero all’ età ellenistica:…
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.
Language and Meter
[This essay is an online second edition of an original printed version that appeared as Chapter 25 in A Companion…
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…
A second look at a possible Mycenaean reflex in Homer: phorēnai
2015.03.01 Introduction The original version of this article, Nagy 1994-1995, “A Mycenaean reflex in Homer: phorēnai” (Nagy 1994-1995), was published…
The fire ritual of the Iguvine Tables: Facing a central problem in the study of ritual language
[Originally published 2007 in Classical World 100:151–157, 10.1353/clw.2007.0017. Second edition, published online 2015.] In this on-line version, the page-numbers of…
Review of Writing Homer. A study based on results from modern fieldwork, by Minna Skafte Jensen
Harvard University [This review of Writing Homer. A study based on results from modern fieldwork, by Minna Skafte Jensen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske…
The meaning of homoios (ὁμοῖος) in verse 27 of the Hesiodic Theogony and elsewhere
[Originally printed in Allusion, Authority, and Truth: Critical Perspectives on Greek Poetic and Rhetorical Praxis (ed. Phillip Mitsis and Christos…
Convergences and divergences between god and hero in the Mnesiepes Inscription of Paros
[[This article was first published in 2008 in Archilochus and his Age II (ed. D. Katsonopoulou, I. Petropoulos, S. Katsarou)…
The Delian Maidens and their Relevance to Choral Mimesis in Classical Drama
[Originally published as Chapter 10 in Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy, ed. R. Gagné and M. G. Hopman (Cambridge: Cambridge…
Comments on Plutarch’s Essay On Isis and Osiris
[This “born digital” commentary has not yet appeared in print. This 6th edition is dated 08.28.2013. For previous editions, see…
Homer as Model for The Ancient Library: Metaphors of Corpus and Cosmos
§1. This essay treats the ancient library not so much as a place or institution but as an idea or…
Foreword to Mothers in Mourning, by Nicole Loraux. Trans. Corinne Pache. Cornell University Press, 1998.
[In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example,…
Foreword to Born of the Earth: Myth and Politics in Athens, by Nicole Loraux. Trans. Selina Stewart. Cornell University Press, 2000.
[In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example,…
Signs of Hero Cult in Homeric Poetry
Originally published in Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry (ed. F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and C. Tsagalis)…
Virgil’s verse invitus, regina … and its poetic antecedents
[[This is an electronic version of an article originally published in More modoque: Die Wurzeln der europäischen Kultur und deren…
A second look at the poetics of re-enactment in Ode 13 of Bacchylides
[[Originally printed 2011 in Archaic and Classical Choral Song: Performance, Politics and Dissemination (ed. L. Athanassaki and E. L. Bowie)…
Asopos and his multiple daughters: Traces of preclassical epic in the Aeginetan Odes of Pindar
This is an electronic version of Chapter 1 of Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry. Myth, History, and Identity in…
The earliest phases in the reception of the Homeric Hymns
This is an electronic version of the printed version published 2011 in The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays (edited by Andrew…
Achilles and Patroklos as Models for the Twinning of Identity
[Forthcoming in Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology, edited by Kimberley C. Patton (London: Bloomsbury…
Reading Greek Poetry Aloud: Evidence from the Bacchylides Papyri
[This essay was originally published in 2000 in Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 64:7–28. The page numbers of the original…
Genre and Occasion
[[This article was first published in 1994 in Mètis: Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens 9–10:11–25. In this online version, the…
The Origins of Greek Poetic Language: Review (part II) of M. L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford 2007)
[This online 2010 edition is a revised, expanded version of a review first published in Classical Review 60 (2010) 333–338.
The ‘New Sappho’ Reconsidered in the Light of the Athenian Reception of Sappho
[[This article was originally published as chapter 13 (= pp. 176-199) in E. Greene and M. Skinner, eds., 2010, The…
Transmission of Archaic Greek Sympotic Songs: From Lesbos to Alexandria
[[This essay was originally published in 2004 in Critical Inquiry 31:26–48. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the…
Poetics of Repetition in Homer
[[This article was originally published in 2004 in Greek Ritual Poetics (ed. D. Yatromanolakis and P. Roilos) 139–148. Hellenic Studies…
“Dream of a Shade”: Refractions of Epic Vision in Pindar’s Pythian 8 and Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes
[[This is an electronic version of an article that appeared in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100 (2000) 97–118. In…
The Aeolic Component of Homeric Diction
Published 2011 in Proceedings of the 22nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference (ed. S. W. Jamison, H.C. Melchert, B. Vine) 133–179.
The Homer Multitext Project
[This paper was originally published in Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come. Proceedings of the Mellon Foundation…
The Library of Pergamon as a Classical Model
[[Originally published as Nagy, G. 1998. “The Library of Pergamon as a Classical Model.” In Pergamon: Citadel of the Gods…
Classics@9: Gregory Nagy, Diachrony and the Case of Aesop
Diachrony and the Case of Aesop Gregory Nagy [Also published in print in Diachrony: Diachronic Studies of Ancient Greek Literature and…
The Idea of the Library as a Classical Model for European Culture
This essay treats the ancient library not so much as a place or institution but as an idea or concept—a…
Ancient Greek Elegy
[[This essay is an online version of an original printed version that appeared in The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy,…
Greek Literature: Introductions and Suggested Bibliographies
Greek Literature 9 volumes, edited by Gregory…
Reading Bakhtin Reading the Classics: An Epic Fate for Conveyors of the Heroic Past
[[Originally published in Bakhtin and the Classics, ed. R. B. Branham (Evanston IL 2002) 71-96. (The page-numbers of the printed…
On Dialectal Anomalies in Pylian Texts
This text, “Nagy 1968,” was originally published as an article in the Atti e memorie del 1o congresso internazionale di…
The Subjectivity of Fear as Reflected in Ancient Greek Wording
This essay was originally published in Dialogues 5 (2010) 29–45. In this on-line version, the original page-numbers of Nagy 2010…
Epic
[[This essay is a 2010 online version of an original printed version that appeared as Chapter 1 in The Oxford…
Performance and Text in Ancient Greece
[[This essay is an expanded online version (2010) of an original printed version that appeared as Chapter 34 in The…
Orality and Literacy
[First published in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (ed. T. O. Sloane; Oxford 2001) 532-538. In this online version, the original page-numbers of…
Review (part I) of M. L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford 2007)
[This review was first published in Indo-European Studies Bulletin 13 (2008) 60–65.] West’s book is most useful for researchers in…
Hesiod and the Ancient Biographical Traditions
[[This essay is an online version of an original printed version that appeared in The Brill Companion to Hesiod, ed.
The Fragmentary Muse and the Poetics of Refraction in Sappho, Sophocles, Offenbach
[[This essay originally appeared in 2009 in Theater des Fragments: Performative Strategien im Theater zwischen Antike und Postmoderne (eds. A. Bierl, G. Siegmund, Ch. Meneghetti,…
The Sign of the Hero: A Prologue to the Heroikos of Philostratus
Originally published in J. K. Berenson Maclean and E. B. Aitken, eds., Flavius Philostratus, Heroikos (Atlanta 2001) xv-xxxv. The original…
Transformations of Choral Lyric Traditions in the Context of Athenian State Theater
This text was originally published as an article in Arion 3 (1994/5) 41–55. In this on-line version, the original page-numbers…
Lyric and Greek Myth
The printed version is published in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (ed. R. D. Woodard; Cambridge University Press 2007)…
Homer and Greek Myth
[The printed version is published in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (ed. R. D. Woodard; Cambridge University Press 2007)…
An Apobatic Moment for Achilles as Athlete at the Festival of the Panathenaia
[[First published in ΙΜΕΡΟΣ 5.1 (2005) 311-317.]] To refer to this essay, please cite it in this way: G. Nagy,…
Did Sappho and Alcaeus Ever Meet? Symmetries of Myth and Ritual in Performing the Songs of Ancient Lesbos
[Revised and corrected second edition of an article that originally appeared in Literatur und Religion I. Wege zu einer mythisch–rituellen Poetik…
The Epic Hero
To refer to this work, please cite it this way: Nagy, G. 2006. “The Epic Hero,” 2nd ed. (on-line version),…
Theognis and Megara: A Poet’s Vision of his City
[[This article was originally published in 1985 by The Johns Hopkins University Press as Chapter 2 of Theognis of Megara:…