Who is the ancient Greek hero?
A while back, one of my Instagram friends @maankawas, kindly requested I elaborate on civic identity and the Greek hero. At the time, I’d been encountering, in Roman scholarship, descriptions of the Greek hero as ‘fighting for himself.’ This ‘selfish’ Greek (and presumably always male) hero was then contrasted with the Roman hero who did…
Some meditations on Meditations
“I myself am not yet harmed, unless I judge this occurrence something bad: and I can refuse to do so.”Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is perhaps the most intimate ancient text I’ve ever experienced. Reading it can at times feel almost intrusive, in particular in the moments when it feels most like a private journal that the…
What are Helen and Andromache weaving in the Iliad?
At two cosmically significant moments in the epic, the poet describes Helen and Andromache weaving diplaka porphyrein, a dark, gleaming, double-folded cloak: At Iliad 3.125-128:“[Iris] found [Helen] in a great room weaving on a great loom,A dark, gleaming, double-folded cloak. She was sprinkling into it the many contestsOf the Trojans, tamers of horses, and the…
Euripides’ Heracles and Theseus
“Theseus: Now then, you who sit there in misery, I bid you reveal your face to a friend. No darkness has a cloud so black as could conceal the depths of your misfortune. Why do you shake your hand at me, showing fear? Are you afraid I may be polluted if I speak to you?…
Plato and Homer
In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima, Socrates’ teacher “in the ways of love,” describes Eros as a daimon megas, “a great superhuman force,” who serves as an intermediary between gods and humans. Eros fills the space between “what is liable to death and what never dies,” and in this way, it “binds together all that is.” Love…
Is ancient Greek verse “literature”?
Recently, I received a request to share a post about the figure of the hero in classical Greek thought. In order to do that, I realized, it may be helpful first to address an adjacent issue, which is this: What do we call ancient texts that have come down to us from (mostly) 5th and…
On translation, again, still
Two questions that I ponder endlessly as I attempt to render Homer in English are these: What do we, as modern readers, want from a text? And if I want to render what the Homeric texts give us, to what extent do I need to set aside what we, as modern readers, want from texts?…
Reception of Homer in Classical Athens
What is a place that you love to return to? One of mine is Delphi. This photo of the Athenian treasury at Delphi is from my last visit in Feb. 2020. It feels like a fitting image for what I’m thinking about today: reception of Homer in classical Athens. Something I’ve been thinking about for…
More Thoughts on Translation and Odyssey 1.1-9
“Any theoretical remarks offered by a translator are bound to be an apology for his failures. Obviously, no sane translator can allow himself to dream of success. He asks only for the best possible failure.” —John Ciardi, Translator’s note, The Divine Comedy As I have been working on rendering Homer in English, one of my…
Verse from a time of conquest
About this time last year, several media outlets reported on six lines of Greek poetic verse dating to around the 2nd century AD. These lines were inscribed on a gemstone that was found in the sarcophagus of a young girl who was wearing it at the time of her entombment:Λεγουσιν | They sayα θελουσιν |…
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