Classical Inquiries

Can Sappho be freed from receivership? Part One

2021.07.19 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In this essay, I make a distinction between, on the one hand, what I describe as a receivership of Sappho in the world of Classics today and, on the other hand, the variegated reception of Sappho in the world of ancient Greek song culture. In making such a distinction, I repeat a term I once used—only once ever before in Classical Inquiries (Nagy 2015.12.31,… Read more

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By Gregory Nagy

Sappho’s looks, and how Sappho looks at beauty

2021.07.12 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Reading the words of Sappho’s songs, we cannot picture her looks, that is, we cannot imagine what she looked like—I say it here in colloquial English. But we can readily imagine what she looked at—especially the beautiful things, the beautiful people. In this essay, I can show that Sappho’s looks in the ancient world—the way she looked—could be pictured as a mirroring of the… Read more

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Art swifter than the wind: on athletes and contests, CI Poetry Project, Recomposing Heroes

Dioscuri, by Agathi Dimitrouka

Translated by Natasha Bershadsky Dioscuri The bodies, sturdy, in their sinewy nature, there is a symmetry. Their youth is a sacrifice to the goddess and the goddess recompensed it. If death were a recompense there would be no living to remember the dead and the exertion of the heroes toward… Read more

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By Gregory Nagy

How are the epic verses of the Hesiodic Suitors of Helen relevant to Achilles in our Homeric Iliad?

2021.07.05 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This essay picks up from where I left off in a succession of two previous essays (Nagy 2021.06.14, linked here, and Nagy 2021.06.21, linked here). In both those essays, I concentrated on evidence that I gathered from the surviving fragments of the Hesiodic composition known as The Suitors of Helen. On the basis of that evidence, I ended the second of the two essays… Read more

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By Gregory Nagy

Text and reperformance: do you really need a text for your reperformance?

posted 2021.06.24, to be reperformed 2021.06.30 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This presentation offers friendly criticism of the views of classicists who use such terms as "text" and "reperformance" without fully taking into account various comparative perspectives that have for some time been made available by way of typological descriptions of "live" performance as observed and analyzed in a wide variety of ethnographical studies. Read more

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By Gregory Nagy

What on earth did Helen ever see in Ajax, her former suitor?

2021.06.21 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In our Homeric Iliad, there is a scene, traditionally known as the Teikhoskopiā or ‘View from the Walls’, where Helen of Sparta, described here as daughter of Zeus, is looking down from where she is standing, high up on the walls of Troy, and, as we view her, she in turn is viewing from up there, from her lofty vantage point, the leaders of… Read more

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The CI Poetry Project

Studies on the Ancient World from the Center for Hellenic Studies

Can Sappho be freed from receivership? Part One

Sappho’s looks, and how Sappho looks at beauty

Dioscuri, by Agathi Dimitrouka

How are the epic verses of the Hesiodic Suitors of Helen relevant to Achilles in our Homeric Iliad?

Text and reperformance: do you really need a text for your reperformance?

What on earth did Helen ever see in Ajax, her former suitor?

Featured Publications at the Center for Hellenic Studies

Equine Poetics

The Tears of Achilles

Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics

Homeric Imagery and the Natural Environment

The Cypria

Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts

One Man Show: Poetics and Presence in the Iliad and Odyssey

Agamemnon, the Pathetic Despot: Reading Characterization in Homer

Who Am I? (Mis)Identity and the Polis in Oedipus Tyrannus