Hour 19. Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and heroic pollution The meaning of miasma 19§1. The key word for this hour is miasma, meaning ‘pollution, miasma’, a noun derived from the verb miainein, meaning ‘pollute’. In the last hour, we saw that Oedipus in the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles needed to… Read more
Hour 20. The hero as mirror of men’s and women’s experiences in the Hippolytus of Euripides The meaning of telos 20§1. The key word for this hour is telos, ‘end, ending, final moment; goal, completion, fulfillment; coming full circle, rounding out; successfully passing through an ordeal; initiation; ritual, rite’. We… Read more
Hour 14. Longing for a hero: a retrospective The meaning of pothos 14§1. The key words for this hour are the noun pothos and its variant pothē, which both mean ‘longing’ or ‘yearning’ or ‘desire’, and the verb derived from this noun, which means ‘long for’ or ‘yearn for’ or… Read more
Hour 15. What the hero ‘means’ The meaning of sēmainein 15§1. The key word for this hour is sēmainein, which means ‘mean [something], indicate [something] by way of a sēma’. In Hour 7, the key word was sēma (plural sēmata), meaning ‘sign, signal, symbol; tomb, tomb of a hero’. The… Read more
Introduction to tragedy III§1. In considering the traditions of tragedy, it is important to keep in mind that the medium of tragedy in particular and of drama in general was the central context for the evolution of traditions in poetry, song, and dance in Athens during the classical period of… Read more
Hour 16. Heroic aberration in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus The meaning of atē 16§1. The key word for this hour is atē, the meaning of which can be interpreted as ‘aberration, derangement, veering off-course; disaster; punishment for disaster’. In Homeric poetry, as we saw in Iliad XIX 91 as quoted… Read more
Hour 4. Achilles as lyric hero in the songs of Sappho and Pindar The meaning of aphthito- 4§1. The key word for this hour is aphthito- in the sense of ‘imperishable’. And, by the time we reach the end of this hour, we will see that aphthito- can also be… Read more
Hour 5. When mortals become ‘equal’ to immortals: death of a hero, death of a bridegroom The meaning of daimōn 5§1. The key word for this hour is daimōn (plural daimones), which I translate for the moment simply as ‘superhuman force’. This word is used to refer to an unspecified… Read more
Hour 6. Patroklos as the other self of Achilles The meaning of therapōn 6§1. The key word for this hour is therapōn, ‘attendant; ritual substitute’. And the key passage comes from a climactic moment in the Iliad when Achilles, while praying that Zeus should preserve Patroklos from harm, uses the… Read more
Hour 7. The sign of the hero in visual and verbal art The meaning of sēma 7§1. The key word for this hour is sēma (plural sēmata), meaning ‘sign, signal, symbol; tomb, tomb of a hero’. An important word that derives from this noun sēma is the verb sēmainein, ‘mean… Read more
