MASt@CHS – Summer Seminar 2020 (Friday, June 26): Summaries of Presentations and Discussion
2020.08.07 | By Rachele Pierini and Tom Palaima Notes from the June 2020 meeting of the MASt @ CHS seminar. Read more
Guest Post
Apollonius of Rhodes and Homeric Anger
2020.07.24 | By Stan Burgess §0. There have been many recent studies of various aspects of anger in Greek culture, from Homer through the Hellenistic period, and beyond. However few have examined the role anger plays in the Argonautica. There right away a striking curiosity concerning anger stands out. Apollonius of Rhodes avoids the most common term of his day for anger, ὀργή. Through the Classical period and into the… Read more
The Circle of Fame: Apollo, the Corps de Ballet, and the Song of the Muses at Delphi
2020.06.11 | By Domenico Giuseppe Muscianisi §0. The Pythian movement of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo opens with a great scene of song-and-dance on Olympus (verses 182–206), where certain deities perform together. I will argue that choral melic poetry plays a prime role in this section of the Hymn: in fact, these verses share many features in diction and imagery with melic poetry, and in addition they describe a choral… Read more
Black Bile, Yellow Bile: An Essay on Warrior Dysfunctionality and the Prehistory of Greek Medicine
2020.05.28 | By Roger D. Woodard Ancient Indo-European warriors, possessed by combat rage, functioned properly as wielders of physical force and protectors of society; but such force was given to dark turns that could endanger society. Expressions of dysfunctional-warrior states meaningfully intersect with Greek medical notions of melancholía and suggest the nature of the prehistory of this diagnosis. Read more
Mycenaean and Hittite Diplomatic Correspondence: Fact and Fiction
2020.05.06 | By H. Craig Melchert A consideration of the possible modalities by which a Mycenaean-Hittite diplomatic correspondence might have been carried out, beginning with a review of established facts, well-founded hypotheses, and speculations informed by a close look at the well-known text KUB 26.91, the “Ahhiyawa” letter. Read more
Ecumenism and Globalism in the Reception of Ferdowsi and his Book of Kings: Evidence from the Bāysonghori Preface
2020.03.02 | By Olga M. Davidson The focus here is on two Persianate texts. The first is the monumental poem of a poet retrospectively named Ferdowsi, or ‘man of paradise’, who lived in the late 10th and early 11th century CE. The second text is in prose: it is a comparably monumental preface to a lavish new edition of the Shahnama that was commissioned in 1426 CE and published in… Read more