2021.02.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This essay is inspired by a most admirable comment made in an article by Johanna Hanink (2015) about nostalgic attempts, in the early fourth century BCE, at recovering the charisma associated with the former glory days, as it were, of the Athenian Empire as it once had flourished, during most of the fifth century. At one point in her article, in referring to the… Read more
2021.02.20 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I have long admired what I would call the anthropological insights of Euripides into aetiologies, that is, into myths referring directly to rituals that frame these myths. Of course the very idea of applying even the term “anthropological” to the life and times of Euripides is inaccurate in its anachronism, but the actual insights of Euripides into the interweavings of myth and ritual—as anthropologists… Read more
2021.02.13. | By Gregory Nagy §0. In this brief essay, I consider again the beautiful sandals worn by the girl from Lesbos who is described in a song of Anacreon that I analyzed in my previous essay for Classical Inquiries (Nagy 2021.02.06). Even though the poetic dialect of Anacreon is Ionic, the sandals worn by the girl are described in this song with a word that is shaped in the… Read more
2021.02.06 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In consultation with the editorial team of Classical Inquiries, I am preparing to submit to them, for a hoped-for free-standing online publication, a compendium of my published essays on the topic of Sappho’s ancient reception. In essays I have published more recently on this vast topic, especially in Classical Inquiries, I have tried to track, more thoroughly than in my less recent essays, other… Read more
Hark at the shepherdess! Then note her unbelievable distress On finding how her much loved faun is dead. She listened as the shepherds said Her faun was mostly goat. In her lap, she cradled the cut throat And the horned head. She would have cut the shepherds’ throats instead. … Read more
2021.01.29 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This brief essay considers a situation where girls are having an all-night party in celebration of a bride, their girl-friend, who is getting married tomorrow, let us imagine. In previous essays, I have analyzed references, in a wide variety of ancient Greek texts, to such all-night partying by girls, and I tried not to lose track in these essays of the facts of life—that… Read more
