2021.09.19 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This all-too-brief encomium is meant to honor Zoie Lafis, Executive Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, with whom I worked for 21 years in my role as Director of CHS, from the beginning of July 2000 to the end of June 2021, and in my earlier role as Senior Fellow of the CHS, from 1997 to 2000. During all those years, “Zoie and… Read more
2021.09.13 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The date of this posting, 13 September 2021, marks the last day that Angelia Hanhardt works for the Center for Hellenic Studies. Every Monday, for the longest time, this treasured young colleague of mine has been editing my weekly essays submitted to Classical Inquiries in her capacity as Assistant Editor of C.I. In my case, I have usually succeeded in submitting my own weekly… Read more
2021.09.07 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In the classical Athenian vase painting that I have chosen as the lead-off illustration for my essay here, the painter has pictured a woman, seated, reading out loud. Her mouth is part-open, and her lips are moving, it seems. She is reading from a scroll of papyrus—sometimes called a roll—and the painter has fancifully indicated, with stylized dots, the lines of the song that… Read more
2021.08.30 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In the cover illustration for this essay, a painter is picturing Homer at a moment of performance. Or, I could even say that we see Homer here in—not just at—a moment of performance. Homer sings, accompanying himself on his lyre. Viewing him and listening to him most attentively, in the imagination of our painter, are poets from Homer’s future “reception.” Most visible is old… Read more
2021.08.23 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In the medieval textual tradition recording the songs of a troubadour named Jaufré Rudel, who dates back to the 12th century CE, we read references in his Song 5 to ‘a distant love’, un amor de loing, experienced by the poet in the melancholy… Read more
2021.08.16 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In two previous essays posted in Classical Inquiries (Nagy 2021.08.02 and 2021.08.09, linked here and here), I analyzed myths that connect the hero Philoctetes with the goddess Chryse, arguing that these myths can be traced back to Aeolian traditions. Here I go further by arguing that such myths are related to another myth—this one is featured prominently in the Homeric Iliad—about a koúrē ‘girl’… Read more
