Featured Themes at CHS: Mothers and Mortal Children, December 2013


The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to feature the following books and articles, all of which are freely available on the CHS website.
Front cover - Slatkin
Laura Slatkin
The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays
This influential and widely admired book explores the superficially minor role of Thetis in the Iliad. Slatkin uncovers alternative traditions about the power of Thetis and shows how an awareness of those myths brings a far greater understanding of her place in the thematic structure of the Iliad.
This second edition also brings together six essays covering a broad range of topics–some never before published. The selection includes “Composition by Theme and the Mêtis of the Odyssey,” “Measuring Authority, Authoritative Measures: Hesiod’s Works and Days,” and “Remembering Nicole Loraux Remembering Athens.”
Throughout this volume Slatkin studies ancient Greek mythology and poetics as a dynamic and interconnected system. Her nuanced readings offer access to this system by highlighting the role of allusion and revealing the ongoing dialogue between poetic traditions. The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays will prove valuable to students and scholars of Homer, Hesiod, mythology, and ancient Greek poetics.

Also Available in Online Publications at CHS

From The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours

We also invite you to explore the following content from Gregory Nagy’s The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. An epub version of this text is currently available

      |54 Ah me, the pitiful one! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very best. |55 I gave birth to a faultless and strong son, |56 the very best of heroes. And he shot up [

anedramen

      ] equal [

īsos

      ] to a seedling [

ernos

      ]. |57 I nurtured him like a shoot in the choicest spot of the orchard, |58 only to send him off on curved ships to Troy, to fight Trojan men. |59 And I will never be welcoming him |60 back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. |61 And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun, |62 he will have sorrow [

akh-nutai

      ], and though I go to him I cannot help him. |63 Nevertheless I will go, that I may see my dear son and learn |64 what sorrow [

penthos

      ] has befallen him though he is still holding aloof from battle.

Hour 4 Text G: Achilles as the Focus of Lament, Iliad XVIII 54-64, trans. Gregory Nagy
Enjoy a brief video dialogue about this passage.
Learn more about The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours and the associated HeroesX project.