5. Enter the Cicada The list of creatures which populate demotic lore is considerable: we have already remarked the partridge and the swallow—just to mention two common birds. The cicada, also, is a striking creature which evokes multiple themes in Greek tradition. In fact, its piercing, persistent cry not only informs the popular memory of the harvest but is a flash signal for such related themes as… Read more
4. The Village of Avdemi: A Case Study in Wanton Women? [1] … cicadas acerrimi cantus esse et mulieres libidinis avidissimas virosque in coitum pigerrimos scripsere. … “they [sc. Hesiod and Alcaeus] have written that the cicada’s songs are sharpest and women are most lustful and men most sluggish in sexual relations.” Pliny Natural history 22.86… Read more
3. The Threshing Threshing in Greece. (Photograph by the author.) Threshing falls in July, giving this month the names ‘Αλωνάρης, Ἁλωνιάτης, and ‘Αλωνιστής (‘Thresher’). [1] The shocks of wheat are transferred from the heap to the communal threshing-floor (ἁλώνι) [2] and planted erect in a circle, and then unbound. The work is done by… Read more
2. The Harvest Without question the most gruelling of the year’s tasks, the wheat harvest is conducted fifteen days after the harvest of the barley crop, which occurs in mid-May. [1] The whole of June is devoted to reaping, and presumably for this reason the month is also called ‘The Harvester’ (Θεριστής). [2] The harvest schedule is… Read more
1. The Problem Stated: A Look at Hesiod’s Feast and Beyond In the Works and Days, occasional local details—trapped as it were amidst uniform details—mirror aptly the larger “panhellenic,” or trans-national, orientation of the poem as a whole. [1] The composition of the WD could manage little more than occasionally to have disparate local details jostle one against another, often against other… Read more
Abbreviations 1. Corpora of ancient texts and editions of individual authors (not a complete list) Quotations are taken from the Oxford editions of ancient authors, unless otherwise stated. Of the editions and commentaries used the following deserve especial notice: Aesop (Perry) Aesopica…, ed. Perry, Ben Edwin (Urbana, 1952) Alcaeus (LP) Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta, eds. Lobei, Edgar,… Read more
Heat and Lust Hesiod’s Midsummer Festival Scene Revisited J.C.B. Petropoulos ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν, καὶ τοὺς φέροντας χεῖμα καὶ θέρος βροτοῖς λαμπροὺς δυνάστας, ἐμπρέποντας αἰθέρι ἀστέρας … Aeschylus Agamemnon 4-7 Ραχοῦλες, εἶμαι ὁ πιστικὸς τῆς ἥμερης ἀρνάδας, ὀργώνω, σπέρνω, ἱδροκοπῶ, τοῦ κάμπου δουλευτής, καὶ λούζω τὸ τραγούδι μου στῆς δροσοπρασινάδας τὰ δάκρυα καὶ στὰ δάκρυα τῆς δύσκολης ζωῆς … Kostis Palamas,… Read more
Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches; Foreword Gregory Nagy, General Editor Building on the foundations of scholarship within the disciplines of philology, philosophy, history, and archaeology, this series spans the continuum of Greek traditions extending from the second millennium B.C. to the present, not just the Archaic and Classical periods. The aim is to enhance perspectives by applying various different disciplines to problems that have in the past… Read more
Plates (between pp. 128 and 129) 1 Athens, National Museum no. 450, from Pikrodaphne. Athenian black-figure loutrophóros amphora, by the Sappho Painter, c. 500 B.C. 2a Crete, Heraklion Historical Museum no. 285. Panel-painting by an unknown Cretan artist, early seventeenth century, formerly in the Mone Sabbathiana. The thrênos is a local Cretan version of a type similar to the Lampardos thrênos, c. 1600, Athens, Byzantine Museum no. Read more
Bibliographical Supplement In this supplement we offer a selection of studies on Greek lamentation and its diverse ritual and socio-religious contexts that appeared after the first edition of The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition in 1974. We have also included studies on images, beliefs, rituals, and ideologies relating to death during the different periods of the tradition of Greek lament. This is not an exhaustive bibliography on… Read more
