2018.08.16 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Working on A sampling of comments on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, I have made revisions, concentrating on the need to fill some gaps in my analysis of Homeric poetry. Here I focus on a set of revisions centering on the Muse who is invoked by the Master Narrator in Iliad 1, at the very beginning of the epic. What led to these particular revisions… Read more
2017.11.12 / updated 2018.08.24 and 2020.01.19 | By Gregory Nagy This draft of mine is meant as a first step leading toward a more formal declaration shared by the three founding authors of A Homer commentary in progress: Douglas Frame, Leonard Muellner, Gregory Nagy. The signatures for our joint declaration are represented by thumbnail images of the covers for three books of ours centering on Homer. The books are listed… Read more
2017.08.31 / updated 2018.10.13 | By Gregory Nagy Before the Odyssey comes to an end, the Singer of Tales reaches back to what seems to be the beginning of the Iliad. It is as if the second epic, the Odyssey, could now restart before it ends by reaching back into the first epic, the Iliad. Still, there will be no restart here. The plot of that first epic had started… Read more
2017.08.23 / updated 2018.10.13 | By Gregory Nagy After the killing of the suitors, Eurykleia rushes to the bedroom of Penelope, waking her up. The queen has slept through it all—the first good night’s sleep she has had in the longest time, she admits. Eurykleia goes on to tell Penelope that Odysseus has really returned and has killed the suitors, but the patient wife will need one more test, to… Read more
2017.08.17 / updated 2018.10.13 | By Gregory Nagy At the end of Rhapsody 21, Odysseus has already passed, in rapid succession, two of three successive tests that needed to be endured by the true king of Ithaca. That is, he has already performed a stringing of his mighty bow and has already won an ultimate contest in archery by executing a perfect shot with the very first arrow that he… Read more
2017.08.10 / updated 2018.10.13 | By Gregory Nagy Toward the end of Rhapsody 21, Odysseus will pass an all-important test set by Penelope: he will string his famous bow—which none of the suitors could string, no matter how hard they tried—and he will shoot an arrow straight through all the holes of twelve axe-heads lined up in a row for this one-time occasion, designed to be viewed as the contest… Read more
