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Looting and Faking

Theodore Nash The discipline of Classics, as the study of the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and neighbouring regions, is characterised at its best by a remarkable methodological breadth. Archaeologists, philologists, and historians (each a heterogenous group in its own right) are able to ask complex questions of rich datasets, with especially exciting opportunities when they overlap. Nowhere is this overlap more literal than when texts are themselves preserved on… Read more

Introduction How many ways are there to tell the story of Troy? A passage from Iliad 20 makes me wonder just how flexible the Homeric tradition might be. At the beginning of book 20, Zeus calls the gods to an assembly. He tells them that they may now join the battle taking place before the walls of Troy on whichever side they wish, something that he had expressly forbidden them… Read more

The Oral Background of the Eddas and Sagas

Gísli Sigurðsson, The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, University of Iceland More than fifty years after the publication of The Singer of Tales the book and the ideas therein still serve as a fresh wind in the textually-oriented field of Old Norse Studies where very few have taken up the issue of how an oral background for medieval texts can possibly affect the modern appreciation of them. It should… Read more

Gregory Nagy, Παρατηρήσεις σχετικά με τις ελληνικές διαλέκτους στα τέλη της δεύτερης χιλιετίας π.Χ.

Παρατηρήσεις σχετικά με τις ελληνικές διαλέκτους στα τέλη της δεύτερης χιλιετίας π.Χ. Gregory Nagy [1] Μετάφραση από την Christina Lafi Κατά την πρώτη χιλιετία π.Χ., η οποία αποτελεί την εποχή στην οποία αναπτύχθηκε η αλφαβητική γραφή από τους Ελληνόφωνους λαούς από τον όγδοο αιώνα π.Χ., υπάρχουν μαρτυρίες για ένα ευρύ φάσμα διαλέκτων οι οποίες μπορούν να χωρισθούν χονδρικά σε τέσσερις ομάδες: (1) στην Άρκαδο-Κυπριακή, (2)… Read more

The Poetics of Immanence in the American Mountain Märchen

Carl Lindahl Most who pause to commemorate the first half-century of The Singer of Tales will remember, vividly, how they first made its acquaintance. Fifty years since The Singer of Tales marks forty-four since I was introduced to Albert Lord, from the distance of the back row of a Harvard lecture hall where he orchestrated the appearances of other great scholars—Theodore Andersson, David Bynum, Charles W. Dunn, Einar Haugan, Thorkild… Read more

*1. The Parian Marble

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Appendix 1. Testimonia on the Kreophuleioi of Samos In Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus 4.4 we read how Lycurgus the Lawgiver acquired the Homeric poems from the descendants of Kreophylos in Samos and brought the poems back to the Spartans: ἐκεῖ δὲ καὶ τοῖς Ὁμήρου ποιήμασιν ἐντυχὼν πρῶτον, ὡς ἔοικε, παρὰ τοῖς ἐκγόνοις τοῖς Κρεοφύλου διατηρουμένοις, καὶ … ἐγράψατο προθύμως καὶ συνήγαγεν ὡς δεῦρο κομιῶν. ἦν γάρ τις ἤδη δόξα τῶν… Read more

#Works Cited

Works Cited Austin, J.L. 1955. How to Do Things with Words. Ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. 2nd ed. 1962. Cambridge, MA. Bowra, C.M. 1961. Greek Lyr ic Poetry From Alcman to Simonides. London. Burkert, Walter. 1979. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley, CA. Burkert, Walter. 1977. Greek Religion. Trans. John Raffan 1985. Cambridge, MA. Burnett, Anne Pippin. 1983. Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho. Cambridge, MA. Read more

#Chapter V: The Descent of the Goddess

Chapter V: The Descent of the Goddess The Apotheosis of Difference Ὣς ἔφασαν κοῦραι μεγάλου Διὸς ἀρτιέπειαι καί μοι σκῆπτρον ἔδον δάφνης ἐριθηλέος ὄζον δρέψασαι, θηητόν· ἐνέπνευσαν δέ μοι ἀυδὴν θέσπιν, ἵνα κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα… Hesiod, Theogony How is the poetic voice constituted? The question has vexed critics in one form or another from the time poetry became an accepted speech act. Having seen the differentiation… Read more