5. Reading Myths* Research on the cycle of becoming had to be linked with cosmology. Speculation on ordered movement and the birth of time occupied a central place. The refutation of the thesis that there were two parallel and opposite cycles in Empedocles,… Read more
6. Purifications* God on Earth A subversive action Purifications (Katharmoi) marks a complete break with the cultural tradition, one that could equally well be called literary or religious. The poem [1] invents a myth, a new… Read more
7. An Anthropological Fiction* Freud used the word “historical” on several occasions to characterize what he set out to describe in Moses and Monotheism; [1] the word implies that he was referring to events that had actually happened,… Read more
8. Reading Drama* During an earlier phase in my career my great passion was Epicureanism, but over the last twenty years I have devoted most of my scholarly work to the field of Greek tragedy, often in collaboration with Pierre Judet de La… Read more
9. An Act of Cultural Restoration: The Status Accorded to the Classical Tragedians by the Decree of Lycurgus* The measures concerning drama have pride of place among the laws promulgated by Lycurgus, according to the Lives of the Ten Orators (included in Plutarch’s… Read more
21. Syro-Cilician Approaches Kinnaru of Ugarit, I have argued, was probably but one regional manifestation of a more widespread pattern. Kinnaru himself, of course, belongs to a Syrian milieu. We also saw that material from the Hurrian sphere, stretching across Syria and into Cilicia/Kizzuwatna, documents both its… Read more
Appendices Appendix A. A Note on ‘Balang’ in the Gudea Cylinders The balang was the usual instrument of the gala’s song. But the description of Ušumgal-kalama in the Gudea Cylinders shows that, in the third millennium at least, a balang could also appear in the… Read more
Appendix B. Ptolemy Khennos as a Source for the Contest of Kinyras and Apollo The Novel History (Kainḕ Historía) by the early imperial wondermonger Ptolemy ‘The Quail’ Khennos is known mainly from a terse epitome by Photios, but was equally available to Eustathios, who reproduces a dozen… Read more
Appendix C. Horace, Cinara, and the Syrian Musiciennes of Rome Horace alludes several times to a certain Cinara whom he loved in his youth, and her untimely death. She may of course be partly or largely poetic fiction, like other lover-muses of Roman elegy. This role she… Read more
Appendix D. Kinyrízein: The View from Stoudios I have argued that kinyrízein meant first and foremost ‘play the kinýra’. [1] This is corroborated by the word’s third and latest attestation—in a passage of Theodoros, Abbot of the monastery of Stoudios (Constantinople) in… Read more
