Chapter 1. Homer and Comparative Mythology Still under the spell of Heinrich Schliemann’s rediscovery of Troy, students of ancient Greece have been accustomed to regard the Greek epic tradition of Homer as a reporting of events that really happened in the second millennium B.C., the Mycenaean… Read more
Chapter 2. Formula and Meter: The Oral Poetics of Homer Since the discoveries of Milman Раrry [1] and Albert Lord [2] about the nature of “oral poetry,” some problems have developed over how to define… Read more
Chapter 3. Hesiod and the Poetics of Pan-Hellenism The Hesiodic Question From the vantage point of the ancient Greeks themselves, no accounting of Homer is possible without an accounting of Hesiod as well. In the fifth century B.C., Herodotus was moved to observe (2.53.2)… Read more
Chapter 4. Patroklos, Concepts of Afterlife, and the Indic Triple Fire The rituals occasioned by the Funeral of Patroklos, as narrated in Iliad XXIII, have been compared with the royal funerary rituals of the Hittites. [1] The parallelisms in details… Read more
Chapter 5. The Death of Sarpedon and the Question of Homeric Uniqueness It has been argued often, and in many ways, that the poetry of Homer is unique, transcending his poetic heritage. The point of departure for this presentation is a confrontation with one such… Read more
Chapter 6. The King and the Hearth: Six Studies of Sacral Vocabulary Relating to the Fireplace In the Electra, of Sophocles, Clytemnestra dreams that Agamemnon has come back from the dead to the realm of light (417-419; ἐς φῶς 419). The king seizes the skêptron… Read more
Chapter 7. Thunder and the Birth of Humankind In the myth making traditions of a wide variety of societies, there is a convergent pattern of thought concerning the origin of fire: that a stroke of thunder can deposit fire into trees or rocks and that… Read more
Chapter 8. Sêma and Nóēsis: The Hero’s Tomb and the “Reading” of Symbols in Homer and Hesiod The word semiotic—and se mantic, for that matter—may be perceived in a new light if we look again at its Greek origins. The basic form in Greek… Read more
Chapter 4. Euripides’ Hippolytos Many of the metaphors of illegitimacy we have already seen, along with the social forces and structures that inform them, come together in Euripides’ Hippolytos, a drama that confronts in turn a woman’s sexual desire and a young man’s transition to adulthood. But… Read more
Conclusion Many of the concerns associated with illegitimacy cut across the narratives we have examined. The connection between legitimacy and reining in female desire is present not only in Euripides’ portrayal of Phaedra but also in the narratives about Danaë. [1] Both… Read more
