Chapter Two. Homer the Classic in the Age of Callimachus 2ⓢ1. An esthetics of fluidity 2§1 Homeric poetry imagines itself as rigid – that is, unchanging like the petrified serpent in Iliad II. That is what I was arguing in Chapter 1. But there is more to it. As I will […]
Chapter One. Homer the Classic in the Age of Virgil 1ⓢ1.An esthetics of rigidity 1§1 The poetry of Virgil, I take it as a given, rivals that of Homer. Historically, Virgil the Classic even displaced Homer the Classic in the Latin culture of the Roman empire (though not in the Greek) […]
Prolegomena: A classical text of Homer in the making Pⓢ1. The Homeric Koine P§1 Homer the Classic centers on ancient concepts of Homer as the author of a body of poetry that we know as the Iliad and Odyssey. This body of poetry, this corpus, became a classical text, but it […]
Author’s Preface The on-line publication date for this book is 2008, since it was “born digital” in that year on the website of the Center for Hellenic Studies. The print publication date is 2009. In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). […]
About the Contributors DEBORAH BOEDEKER, Professor of Classics at Brown University, works mainly on archaic and classical Greek poetry, historiography, and religion. Her publications include Aphrodite’s Entry into Greek Epic; Descent from Heaven: Images of Dew in Greek Poetry and Religion; and essays on Herodotus, lyric poetry, Athenian religion, Simonides, tragedy, and […]
Chapter 13. The “New Sappho” Reconsidered in the Light of the Athenian Reception of Sappho Gregory Nagy The text of the “New Sappho,” found in a Cologne papyrus dated to the third century BCE (P.Köln inv. 21351 + 21376), is different from a later text of Sappho, found in an Oxyrhynchus […]
Chapter 12. A Reading of Sappho Poem 58, Fragment 31 and Mimnermus [1] Marguerite Johnson Much has been written on the Sapphic gaze, primarily in relation to the representation of the various personae in her poems and fragments. [2] I would like to address this subject as it relates to the […]
Chapter 11. Sappho 58: Philosophical Reflections on Death and Aging [1] Ellen Greene Although most contemporary scholars are in agreement that Sappho’s verse appropriates themes and poetic conventions employed by both Homer and male lyric poets, there is considerable disagreement about the extent to which Sappho’s extant poetry ought to be […]
Chapter 10. The New Sappho in a Hellenistic Poetry Book [1] Dee Clayman While most of the interest in the “New Sappho” (Köln. Inv. Nr. 21351 + 21376) has rightly centered on the “Tithonus” poem, fragments of another precede it on the Cologne papyrus and parts of a third follow. [2] […]
Chapter 9. “Once” and “Now”: Temporal Markers and Sappho’s Self-Representation Eva Stehle It is well known that memory plays an important role in Sappho’s poetry. As scholars have emphasized, Sappho vividly evokes the past, even “blurs” past and present, through her poetic recall. [1] But the fragment and the apparently complete […]