back Alexander Herda, Berlin/Athens/Tübingen Though I know that I am serving here more or less owls on the cosmic plate to Greg, I nevertheless hope he will enjoy it. What I owe to his constant encouragement and help is of a much larger dimension. [*] The story of the wandering soul of Pythagoras In his description of the philosopher Pythagoras (c. 560–480 BCE), Diogenes… Read more
back Danielle Arnold Freedman My being born in a tiny coal-mining village in Warwickshire, England, Harvard may have seemed an unobvious destination. However, I had been primed for it from the start by a favourite Uncle who had escaped in the preceding generation, to Canada. Equally unobviously I did an undergraduate degree in Classics, faking Greek from scratch until I made it. In the University bookstore, “Chapter and Verse,”… Read more
back Laurie Hart Fieldnote, August 1995, Prespa, Macedonia, Greece I wake to the sounds of my landlady, Irini, and her husband Markos talking quietly in the kitchen. She’s boiling maize that Markos will use as bait on his fish hooks and preparing to bake an enormous carp (grivadi) that he fished this morning, for family expected to arrive today—Markos’s sister Anna and her husband Pandelis on their annual summer… Read more
back Catharine P. Roth Ada Adler, whom William Calder calls “incontestably the greatest woman philologist who ever lived,” [1] enjoyed the support of a mentor, Anders Bjørn Drachmann, who believed in what she could accomplish even though she did not have a regular university appointment. Gregory Nagy has been that kind of a mentor to many students, and so it seems appropriate to offer… Read more
back Nancy Sultan The year 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Administration and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ tenure as First Lady. [1] Now, Jacqueline, who died in 1994, is in the news again because a new book of her recorded interviews with the historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, came out in… Read more
back Aida Vidan, Harvard University From the time of the Homeric epics down to the period when Milman Parry and Albert Lord discovered “new Homers” such as Avdo Međedović in the Slavic part of the Balkans, the epic tradition has captivated the attention of both scholars and audiences. By contrast, shorter lyric songs and ballads from the same region traditionally performed by women (and sometimes simply called “women’s songs,”… Read more
back Michael B. Sullivan I. STATUS QUAESTIONIS So much has been written about Virgil’s invocation of Erato at Aeneid 7.37-45 that one is tempted to call on the Muse for assistance with the catalogue. [1] Mynors’ text of the controversial passage runs as follows [2] : Nunc age, qui reges, Erato, quae tempora, rerum quis Latio antiquo fuerit status,… Read more
back Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, Stanford University I. This note is inspired by an anonymous comment on a song, both the comment and the song being readily found on YouTube. [1] The fuller version of the comment runs this way: “The voices of the singer and the choir flow in my veins.” I wish to discuss briefly the voices of the singer and choir that deeply moved… Read more
back Corinne Pache, Trinity University “Le passé, ce n’est pas ce qui a disparu, c’est au contraire ce qui nous appartient.” “The past is not what has disappeared, it is on the contrary what belongs to us.” Kings and Queen [1] Arnaud Desplechin’s 2004 Kings and Queen tells the story of two former lovers, Nora and Ismael, as they remember their past and… Read more
back Laszlo Nagy Contemplating my father at age 70, I think to him when he was my age, 35, thirty-five years ago. This means I find myself in the odd situation of contemplating him when he was my age at my birth. I am reminded already then of his having a newborn son, something that I lack at the moment, realizing that I will be 70 without a 35… Read more
