Featured Publications and Resources @CHS New in the Hellenic Studies Series Christos Tsagalis From Listeners to Viewers: Space in the Iliad This book offers a systematic and comprehensive presentation of the different types and functions of space in the earliest work of Greek literature. Adopting a twofold division between simple and embedded story space, Tsagalis shows how character drawing and authority are deeply influenced… Read more
The Center for Hellenic Studies offers students and scholars of Homer a particularly deep selection of publications and resources--all freely available online. Read more
The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce the publication of Loving Humanity, Learning, and Being Honored: The Foundations of Leadership in Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus by Norman B. Sandridge, available now through Harvard University Press. You can preview this work by downloading the introduction here. Xenophon is generally thought to have done his best theorizing on leadership through his portrayal of Cyrus the Great, the first king… Read more
The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce the publication of Loving Humanity, Learning, and Being Honored: The Foundations of Leadership in Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus by Norman B. Sandridge, available now through Harvard University Press. You can preview this work by downloading the introduction here. Xenophon is generally thought to have done his best theorizing on leadership through his portrayal of Cyrus the Great, the first king of… Read more
The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce that the online edition of Victor Bers’ GENOS DIKANIKON: Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens is now available on the CHS website (chs.harvard.edu). In this monograph Victor Bers attempts to show that many features of Athenian court speech in the deluxe form we know from the preserved speeches were fashioned to avoid the failings of amateur… Read more
Concepts of the Hero in Greek Civilization, Video Proseminar on Hesiod Kevin McGrath, Gregory Nagy, and the Heroes Teaching Fellows discuss Hesiod as a bridge between the world of Homer and the polis of ancient Greek drama. Laura Slatkin, “Measuring Authority, Authoritative Measures: Hesiod’s Works and Days” in The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays. Slatkin shows that in early Greek thought and poetics, both values and… Read more
Graeme Bird and a student from Gordon College examine an 1800-year-old Homeric papyrus.Photo Credit: Cyndi McMahon, Gordon College "True improvisation has nothing really to do with “making stuff up on the spot”; rather it is the creative and inspired weaving together of previously rehearsed material…" --Graeme Bird We recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with professor, musician, and CHS author Graeme D. Bird about his work on ancient Homeric papyri, jazz improvisation, and the surprising intersections between the two. Read more
The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce that the online edition of Laura Slatkin’s The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays is now available on the CHS website (chs.harvard.edu). This influential and widely admired book explores the superficially minor role of Thetis in the Iliad. Slatkin uncovers alternative traditions about the power of Thetis and shows how an awareness of those myths brings a far greater… Read more
We are pleased to feature the following publications and resources that highlight ancient Greek song culture and ritual contexts. Online Publications Read more
We are pleased to feature the following publications and resources that highlight multitextuality and digital publication. Online Publications Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott, Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: A Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary Dué and Ebbott confront deeply entrenched ideas about the Doloneia. Ignoring or only barely acknowledging Iliad 10 is a strategy employed by many scholars, who likely feel they must ignore it so as not to incur the charge of making arguments about Homer based on an “interpolated,” “un-Homeric,” or otherwise problematic text. Nevertheless, the authors feel that there is an entirely different way of treating this book. Rather than dismiss it as “un-Homeric” or pass over it in silence, they propose to show that Iliad 10 offers us unique insight into such important topics as the process of composition-in-performance, the traditional themes of Archaic Greek epic, the nature of the hero, and the creativity and artistry of the oral traditional language. Read more
