back J.C.B. (Yiannis) Petropoulos, Democritean University of Thrace & CHS-Greece Given the special occasion for this collection of papers, I would like to preface mine with a few remarks—short reminiscences rather—that are necessarily (and a bit awkwardly) autobiographical. [1] I return to the fatefully formative year 1981, when I wrote my senior thesis at Harvard […]
back Archbishop Demetrios of America, Ph.D., Th.D. It is well known that the early Christian theologians lived in a state of considerable tension with respect to the pagan world around them. [1] On the one hand, they deplored the sensuality and violence of the dominant culture and religion; on the other hand, they admired the […]
back Stephen Mitchell Introduction Several years ago, Gregory Nagy, referring to epic heroes from Greek, Indian, Hittite and other traditions, commented, “These constructs — let us call them simply ‘characters’ for the moment — are in some ways radically dissimilar from each other. Even within a single tradition like Homeric poetry, heroes like Achilles and […]
back Kevin McGrath I Kṛṣṇa in the epic Mahābhārata appears in the poem as a superhuman and heroic figure and as an intimate companion and charioteer of his friend Arjuna; nowhere else in the Mahābhārata is such a close and constant amity portrayed by the poets as with these two heroes. [1] The following is […]
back Thomas R. Martin The greatest crisis in Alexander the Great’s military career came in late 326 BC on the western bank of the Hyphasis (Beas) River in northwestern India. Several months earlier, Alexander had won a great victory over the Indian king Porus. Recognizing his foe’s great valor and dignity even in defeat, Alexander […]
back Jennifer Kellogg In his 1963 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, poet George Seferis commented upon a multi-faceted sense of connection that Homeric Greek offers to modern speakers of the language, saying: When I read in Homer the simple words “φάος ἠελίοιο” – today I would say “φως του ηλίου” (the sunlight) – I […]
back Marianne Hopman, Northwestern University Gregory Nagy is well known for his path-breaking work on the performative dimension of archaic Greek poetry. Several of his books, including The Best of the Achaeans, Pindar’s Homer, and most explicitly Poetry as Performance, unravel the rich implications of a fundamental intuition rooted in the fieldwork of Milman Parry […]
back Gloria Ferrari Explaining the subtitle to his Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past, Gregory Nagy wrote: [1] I chose the word possession because the preoccupation of Greek poetry with the application of the past to the here and now is in itself an exercise of political power. This arresting programmatic statement […]
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back Lowell Edmunds When this paper was composed, in 2005, and delivered, on a September day, in Molyvos (ancient Methymna), I could not have guessed its ultimate destination—this Festschrift—and its dedicatee—my friend Gregory Nagy. The many references to Greg’s work to be found here did not begin, then, as honorific. They reflected a habit of […]
back Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott We have worked closely with Greg Nagy since we were graduate students at Harvard, and each of us wrote her dissertation under his direction. Already at that time we also worked closely with each other; we worked together as Teaching Fellows for Greg’s large Core Curriculum course entitled The […]