Books

The Origins of the Goddess Ariadne

Second, online edition of a thesis presented to the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 27 March 1970. Read more

The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition

Margaret Alexiou’s The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, first published in 1974, has long since been established as a classic in several fields. This is the only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament and its socio-cultural contexts throughout Greek tradition in which a great diversity of sources are… Read more

Heat and Lust: Hesiod’s Midsummer Festival Scene Revisited

J.C.B. Petropoulos examines the description of midsummer in Hesiod’s Works and Days, explores modern Greek agrarian practices and relevant folk beliefs, proverbs, symbols, and songs, and cautiously attempts a ‘backward extrapolation’. With the help of comparative ethnographic models, readers will not only better appreciate the seasonal settings of Hesiod’s harvest… Read more

Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter

Reversing the generally accepted notions about formula and meter in epic poetry, Gregory Nagy seeks to show that meter is an outgrowth of formula. To make his point he links the Parry-Lord techniques of formulaic analysis with the researches of Meillet, Jakobson, and Watkins on Indo-European metrics. In the process he evolves… Read more

The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic

Leonard Muellner’s goal is to restore the Greek word for the anger of Achilles, menis, to its social, mythical, and poetic contexts. His point of departure is the anthropology of emotions. He believes that notions of anger vary between cultures and that the particular meaning of a word such as… Read more