2021.01.13 | By Rachele Pierini and Tom Palaima §1. The Summer session of the MASt@CHS seminars represented a unicum within our series. Although we used the usual formula of the MASt@CHS seminars (two presentations, each followed by a debate session), we experimented with some variations. §2. Another element… Read more
MASt@CHS project announcement MASt@CHS Reports MASt@CHS – Summer Seminar 2020 (Friday, June 26) [PDF 6.9MB] MASt@CHS – Fall Seminar 2020 (Friday, November 6) [PDF 1.6MB] Textiles and Cinders: Reconstructing the Process of Washing with Cinders in South and Central Italy in the… Read more
The Mixed Urn Storm-addict Zeus, we’re told on good authority, maintains two urns for forcing human fate. He flings handfuls from one, then the other – a slug of grief, and now some tinkling gold. If there’s any third, a mixed urn -- it’s us, poor contradictions, thrown together, trying… Read more
Apollo and Marsyas Go. Go before I change my mind, Is all He would have thought, and said, If not for the great glee He heard In how Marsyas gripped and played The thin, twig-tied pipes for the Lord Of Light, Prince of Gods, Apollo, The Core Verse incarnate, Father… Read more
Reverse Orpheus And saw his own death happen. But as a mending this time, a cleaning. They shoved his limbs together, Flailed off all the blood, Then dimmed into the distance Like the dots of an ellipsis. The shattered boulders rebounded, Rolled back up their ruts. The sea’s sea-lathered… Read more
They brandished their births like spears. Being there wasn’t enough. Their names Needed their fathers and their cities And their spears and the red air of Ilium. There’s Apisaon lying on his liver As it curdles and leaks out rib-mangled From his wound like a clicking tongue In froth,… Read more
A translation of Nonnus, Dionysiaca 16.244–364 Content notification: God Dionysus, enamored with the nymph Nikaia, drugs her with river water transformed into wine and rapes her in her inebriated sleep. The Dryad, having mocked the god, slipped back into her tree. But Dionysus ardently pursued the maiden; he Was passionate from… Read more
The soul of swift-soled Achilles, hearing me Praise his son, silvered, and then was gone, His long strides causing him to blend, light–bent, Into the shining, maize-meadow cloudbank Shadowed by that one solitary tree It takes sixteen years for light, let alone A soul, to cross. The other dead, who… 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
Abstract: This paper consists of three complementary parts. The first section describes three instances where very technical scholarship on Greek literature overlaps with, and draws attention to, particularly dramatic historical contexts. This section describes an aspect of Greco-Roman studies that is both too demanding and too narrow — too demanding because it assumes that anglophone researchers work with scholarship in languages such as French, German, and Italian, but too narrow… 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
