Translated by Ioanna Papadopoulou [This article was originally published in French as “L’adjectif grec ἄσμενος : étymologie et histoire du mot,” in Hommage à Jacqueline de Romilly. L’empreinte de son oeuvre, eds. Marc Fumaroli, Jacques Jouanna, Monique Trédé, and Michel Zink. Actes de colloque (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres). Paris,… Read more
I.Introduction The many facets of the Ariadne-figure have long been the subject of classical scholarship. The peculiar cultic customs surrounding the goddess have been assiduously interpreted, in part successfully and in part unsuccessfully. Her relation to the figure of Dionysus has been explored in hopes of proving the Mycenaean origins… Read more
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
[This text is the English-language version of a lecture I delivered 2011.04.06 on the occasion of my induction as a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens. The lecture was then published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Athens in 2011, Volume 86 Second Issue (2011) pages 81–96. It… Read more
Problems and method The lament for the dead is essentially functional. It is only one part of a complex tradition of ritual customs and beliefs. To understand the nature of its development in Greek tradition, and to determine the extent of its continuity from ancient to modern times, it must… Read more
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
2017.06.10 [The online version of this presentation as published here on the website of the Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS), http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:Nagy.Diachronic_Homer_and_a_Cretan_Odyssey.2017, replicates the contents of another online version as published in Oral Tradition 31/1 (2017) 3–50. The proper URL citation for that version is http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/31i/nagy. I am most… Read more
[This article was originally published as Chapter 14 of The Archaeology of Greece and Rome: Studies in Honour of Anthony Snodgrass, edited by John Bintliff and Keith Rutter, 337–357, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. It appears here 6 months after the print publication by agreement with University of Edinburgh Press.]… Read more
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
Second, online edition (2017) of a thesis presented to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts April 1, 1977. Read more
