back Deborah Beck I joined the Classical Philology Ph.D. program at Harvard University in 1992, in preference to the other programs to which I had been admitted, largely because everyone I talked to told me how hard Greg Nagy worked for his students. This turned out to be much… Read more
back Mike Tueller I. The grave of a Homeric hero is marked by a σῆμα. Whatever its materials or construction, the purpose of a σῆμα is clear: to attract attention. This much we can discern from the word σῆμα itself, but Homer is sometimes even more clear. In the… Read more
back Timothy Power, Rutgers University, New Brunswick A strange bird indeed Even in the odd company of Imperial mythographers, paradoxographers, antiquarians, and literary revisionists, Ptolemy the Quail (Ptolemaios Chennos), an Alexandrian writing around the turn of the first into the second century CE, qualifies as a fringe figure. Read more
back Susan T. Edmunds Introduction §1. In discussion of Homer and the lyric poets, Gregory Nagy has shown how “the idea of making song is expressed metaphorically through the idea of making fabric.” [1] The process of weaving would have been completely familiar to… Read more
back Karl Reichl who translates literally is a liar, one who embellishes is a blasphemer. Talmud (Kiddushim 49a/b) The learned rabbi to whom this saying in the Talmud is due was no doubt thinking of the Bible and not of the Homeric epics or any other epic poem. Read more
back J.C.B. (Yiannis) Petropoulos, Democritean University of Thrace & CHS-Greece Given the special occasion for this collection of papers, I would like to preface mine with a few remarks—short reminiscences rather—that are necessarily (and a bit awkwardly) autobiographical. [1] I return to the fatefully… Read more
back Archbishop Demetrios of America, Ph.D., Th.D. It is well known that the early Christian theologians lived in a state of considerable tension with respect to the pagan world around them. [1] On the one hand, they deplored the sensuality and violence of the… Read more
back Stephen Mitchell Introduction Several years ago, Gregory Nagy, referring to epic heroes from Greek, Indian, Hittite and other traditions, commented, “These constructs — let us call them simply ‘characters’ for the moment — are in some ways radically dissimilar from each other. Even within a single tradition like… Read more
back Kevin McGrath I Kṛṣṇa in the epic Mahābhārata appears in the poem as a superhuman and heroic figure and as an intimate companion and charioteer of his friend Arjuna; nowhere else in the Mahābhārata is such a close and constant amity portrayed by the poets as with these… Read more
back Thomas R. Martin The greatest crisis in Alexander the Great’s military career came in late 326 BC on the western bank of the Hyphasis (Beas) River in northwestern India. Several months earlier, Alexander had won a great victory over the Indian king Porus. Recognizing his foe’s great valor… Read more
