5. Of Beards and Boar Hunts, or, Coming of Age in the Odyssey In Homer it is the connection with a paternal model and in general with the model of his male forebears that eventually makes a boy into a man. If the child is unconnected to his father, he is by […]
4. The Little Prince’s Voyage on a Borrowed Ship ‘ἄτοπος δοκεῖ εἶναι Τηλεμάχου ἡ ἀποδημία.’ Scholiast ad Odyssey 1.93 (Dindorf) “Telemachos’ going abroad seems absurd.” Telemachos and Eugene Onegin Let us imagine the world Telemachos has been living in before he sets […]
3. Kleos and Social Identity ‘ὦ πάτερ, ἦ τοι σεῖο μέγα κλέος αἰὲν ἄκουον,χεῖράς τ’ αἰχμητὴν ἔμεναι καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν.’ Odyssey 16.241–242 “Father, truly I used to hear of your great reputation (kleos),that you were warlike with your hands and wise in counsel.” Ἐνὶ οἴκῳ […]
2. Kleos and Oral News ‘ἐγὼ μὲν ἐξ ἐμοῦ τε κοὐκ ἄλλης σαφῆσημεῖ’ ἰδοῦσα τῷδε πιστεύω λόγῳ.’ Sophokles Elektra 885–886 Both oral history and oral tradition spring from orally transmitted messages, [1] or, to use a Homeric term, ἔπεα (literally, ‘words’). [2] As J. Vansina’s now famous analysis […]
1. Kleos and Oral History “Es Tagträumt in mir.” Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung ‘αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν Ἰθάκην ἐσελεύσομαι, ὄφρα οἱ υἱὸνμᾶλλον ἐποτρύνω, καί οἱ μένος ἐν φρεσὶ θείω,εἰς ἀγορὴν καλέσαντα κάρη κομόωντας Ἀχαιοὺςπᾶσι μνηστήρεσσιν ἀπειπέμεν, οἵ τέ οἱ αἰεὶμῆλ’ ἁδινὰ σφάζουσι καὶ εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς.πέμψω δ’ ἐς […]
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Part II. Chapter 7. Remembering Nicole Loraux Remembering Athens [1] I wish this morning to offer a few remarks on method and memory, topics that this anthology asks us to recall and rethink. In the course of these remarks I wish as well to recall explicitly the work of our co-editor Nicole Loraux, whose astonishing series […]
Part II. Chapter 6. Measuring Authority, Authoritative Measures: Hesiod’s Works and Days [1] Observe due measure: and best in all things is the right time and right amount. [2] Hesiod, Works and Days 694 Ἥλιος οὐχ ὑπερβήσεται μέτρα· εἰ δὲ μή, Ἐρινύες μιν Δίκης ἐπίκουροι ἐξευρήσουσιν… Heraclitus fr. 94D-K […]
Part II. Chapter 5. The Poetics of Exchange in the Iliad [1] ξένια γὰρ Ἄρεος τραύματα, φόνοι —scholia Sophocles Electra 96 Τhe far-reaching implications of Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le Don, [2] much admired by ethnographers and anthropological theorists, have contributed greatly to our grasp of how thoroughly […]
Part II. Chapter 4. Genre and Generation in the Odyssey In recent years, much brilliant and invaluable work elucidating Greek myths has been done by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne, [1] who have looked across texts and across historical periods in order to discern and retrieve a given myth’s dispersed but essential […]