Achilles
El Monstruo de los Jardines
26 May 2021, 3:00 pm ET
Reading Greek Tragedy Online (Season 2, Episode 4) Read more
The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic
Leonard Muellner’s goal is to restore the Greek word for the anger of Achilles, menis, to its social, mythical, and poetic contexts. His point of departure is the anthropology of emotions. He believes that notions of anger vary between cultures and that the particular meaning of a word such as… Read more
The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry
Despite widespread interest in the Greek hero as a cult figure, little was written about the relationship between the cult practices and the portrayals of the hero in poetry. The first edition of The Best of the Achaeans bridged that gap, raising new questions about what could be known or conjectured about… Read more
Achilles and Patroklos as Models for the Twinning of Identity
[Forthcoming in Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology, edited by Kimberley C. Patton (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).] Twinning in myth is a way to think about identity. As Douglas Frame shows in his essay, which is a twin to this one, mythical twins share one… Read more
Achilles and Patroclus as Indo-European Twins: Homer’s Take
[Forthcoming in Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology, edited by Kimberley C. Patton (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).] There are two forms of the Indo-European twin myth relevant to the story of Patroclus and Achilles in the Iliad. In one the twins remain together, in the… Read more
An Apobatic Moment for Achilles as Athlete at the Festival of the Panathenaia
[[First published in ΙΜΕΡΟΣ 5.1 (2005) 311-317.]] To refer to this essay, please cite it in this way: G. Nagy, “An Apobatic Moment for Achilles as Athlete at the Festival of the Panathenaia,” https://chs.harvard.edu/publications, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC, 2009 This presentation focuses on two Black Figure… Read more
Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics
Though Achilles the character is bound by fate and by narrative tradition, Achilles’s poem, the Iliad, was never fixed and monolithic in antiquity—it was multiform. And the wider epic tradition, from which the Iliad emerged, was yet more multiform. In Achilles Unbound, Casey Dué, building on nearly twenty years of… Read more
The Tears of Achilles
Warrior, hero, super-male—Achilles, by the protocols of Western culture, should never cry. And yet Homeric epic if full of his tears and those of his companions at Troy. This path-blazing study by Hélène Monsacré shows how later ideals of stoically inexpressive manhood run contrary to the poetic vision presented in… Read more
King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad
Descriptions of animal sacrifice in Homer offer us some of the most detailed accounts of this attempt at communication between man and gods. What is the significance of these scenes within the framework of the Iliad? This book explores the structural and thematic importance of animal sacrifice as an expression of… Read more