Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works ABV = J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1956) ARV2 = J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1963) BKT 5.1 = Berliner Klassikertexte 5: Griechische Dichterfragmente: Teil 1, Epische und elegische Fragmente, ed. W. Schubert and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Berlin 1907) Davies, Aethiopis = M. Davies,… Read more
Preface This is the third installment in my series of commentaries (which began with The Theban Epics [2015] and continued with The Aethiopis [2016]) on the fragments of the Epic Cycle. There is now, of course, an excellent introduction to the whole topic in the form of the late Martin West’s The Epic Cycle (Oxford 2013), which displays his genius at full stretch, especially his inerring ability… Read more
Bibliography Adkins, A. W. H. 1983. “Orality and Philosophy.” In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy, ed. K. Robb, 207–227. La Salle, IL. Adler, A. 1928. Suidae Lexicon. Vol. 1. Leipzig. Ahl, F., and H. M. Roisman. 1996. The Odyssey Reformed. Ithaca. Aitchison, J. M. 1963. “Homeric ἄνθος.” Glotta 41.3/4:271–278. … Read more
Appendix. The Semantics of ἄνθος and ἀνθέω A number of the passages discussed in this book incorporate the noun ἄνθος, which is commonly translated “flower.” [1] Linguists have however expressed doubts over the semantics of the lexeme: some have suggested that it originally carried a more abstract meaning, such as “surface” or “that which bursts forth.” Therefore, in spite of the usual… Read more
Plates Plate 1. Spring blooms at the ancient site of Epidaurus, 30 March 2015. Photo by the author. Plate 2. Spring blooms at the ancient site of Eleusis, 31 March 2015. Photo by the author. Plate 3. Spring bloom on the slopes of the ancient site of Mycenae, 10 March 2009. Photo by the author. Plate 4. Narcissus… Read more
Conclusion Over the course of this book, we have gained a sense of the particular choices made by the Homeric poets in forming their vegetal images. We have seen that the relevant images draw on some of the most striking characteristics of the Greek flora—the sudden, exceptionally diverse blooms of the Greek spring. And by accessing these phenomena, the Homeric poets were able to draw their listeners’… Read more
9. Homeric Flowers and the Monstrousness of Death In the previous chapter, we found that the Homeric floral imagery of death frequently evokes the notion of fertility, at times an exceptional fertility. The Odyssean images that we studied also associate flowers with the notions of insubstantiality and the dissolution of form. As we shall see, these different concepts combine to suggest a particular conception of death. We… Read more
8. Fertility and Formlessness: Images of Death in the Iliad and the Odyssey In the last chapter, we compared Homeric and elegiac treatments of the “flower of youth” and found that, while the elegiac poets associated the phrase with the brevity of life, their Homeric counterparts employed it only in evocations of the prime of life. In order to study the Homeric floral imagery of death, we… Read more
7. Beauty and Transience? Flowers and Death in Greek Elegy and Homeric Poetry Given the preoccupation of many poems in the Greek elegiac tradition with death, the floral imagery of that tradition offers the most obvious comparandum for the Homeric floral images of death that we shall discuss below. [1] We can get a first sense of the particular associations of the… Read more
Part III. Youth and Death Preamble The third and final part of this monograph focuses on Homeric vegetal images of death and, in particular, on Homeric associations of death with flowers, which provide some of the most striking examples of such imagery. We might feel intuitively that such floral images will capture the brevity of life—its brief bloom—an idea that is common in the modern west,… Read more
