Agamemnon

By Gregory Nagy

How are the epic verses of the Hesiodic Suitors of Helen relevant to Achilles in our Homeric Iliad?

2021.07.05 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This essay picks up from where I left off in a succession of two previous essays (Nagy 2021.06.14, linked here, and Nagy 2021.06.21, linked here). In both those essays, I concentrated on evidence that I gathered from the surviving fragments of the Hesiodic composition known as The Suitors of Helen. On the basis of that evidence, I ended the second of the two essays… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

What on earth did Helen ever see in Ajax, her former suitor?

2021.06.21 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In our Homeric Iliad, there is a scene, traditionally known as the Teikhoskopiā or ‘View from the Walls’, where Helen of Sparta, described here as daughter of Zeus, is looking down from where she is standing, high up on the walls of Troy, and, as we view her, she in turn is viewing from up there, from her lofty vantage point, the leaders of… Read more

By Gregory Nagy, H24H

About a scene pictured on the Bronze Doors of the Supreme Court, already pictured once upon a time on the Shield of Achilles

2020.07.24 | By Gregory Nagy §0. At the very beginning of my Introduction to The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, at 00§1, where I talk about the “great books” of Greek literature that I will be analyzing, I say that I will also be showing pictures, taken mostly from ancient Greek vase paintings. As I now look back at the pictures in that book, first published online in 2013,… Read more

By Gregory Nagy, Pausanias commentary

About some kind of an epiphany as pictured in Minoan glyptic art, and about its relevance to a myth as retold by Pausanias

2020.05.29 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In this posting, I start by showing a sketch of a picture carved into a gold signet ring originating from the palace at Knossos in Crete and dating from the Late Minoan era. The sketch, in line with conventions followed nowadays by archaeologists, flips the right-to-left orientation pictured on the signet ring itself, so as to show the picture that the ring would make… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Seven Greek tragedies, seven simple overviews

2018.12.27 | By Gregory Nagy I challenge myself here to write up seven elementary “plot outlines”—I call them overviews—for seven Greek tragedies: (1) Agamemnon and (2) Libation-Bearers and (3) Eumenides, by Aeschylus; (4) Oedipus at Colonus and (5) Oedipus Tyrannus, by Sophocles; (6) Hippolytus and (7) Bacchae (or Bacchic Women), by Euripides. In my overviews, I expect of the reader no previous knowledge of these seven tragedies. Read more

By Gregory Nagy, H24H

Artemis and a massacre at the Tree of Life

2018.11.01 | By Gregory Nagy §0. On October 27, 2018, eleven men and women were killed, and more were injured, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the city of Pittsburgh. It was widely reported about the massacre that the man who had opened fire on his victims was at the same time shouting his hatred for Jews, and that this hate was fueled by anger over the help offered… Read more