Classical Inquiries

Augeias
By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XIX, a post-Mycenaean view of Hēraklēs as a performer of his Labors

2019.12.20 | By Gregory Nagy §0. For my brief essay here, TC XIX in Classical Inquiries, I return to an analysis, started at §4 of TC V, 2019.08.22, centering on a myth that tells how the hero Hēraklēs succeeded in clearing the stables of Augeias, king of Elis. These stables had been clogged with vast accumulations of manure produced by the king’s countless cattle. But now the hero single-handedly diverts… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of Hēraklēs as founder of the Olympics

2019.11.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. For my brief essay here, TC XVIII in Classical Inquiries, I return to a point I made in an earlier essay, TC V §§4–10, where I highlighted a remarkable sequence of events narrated in the Library of “Apollodorus,” dated to the second century CE, in the course of an overall narrative about the life and times of the hero Hēraklēs. According to this narrative… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology VIII, Some rough patches along the way toward a prototyping of Hēraklēs

2019.09.13 | By Gregory Nagy Previously, at TC VII §7, I observed that the leveling-out and the smoothing-over of differences in the various different roles of Hēraklēs in various different tellings of ancient myths about this hero could lead not only to a sense of uniqueness but even to a kind of certainty about absolute uniqueness. And this kind of certainty, I went on to observe, could in turn lead… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology V, Reconstructing Hēraklēs forward in time

2019.08.22 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Previously, in “Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology IV,” hereafter abbreviated as TC IV, I was reconstructing the mythological persona of the Greek hero Hēraklēs by tracing him backward in time, back to the earliest reconstructable phases of myths that told his story. Here in TC V, I will trace such myths forward in time, and I will start my procedure of “reconstructing forward” by… Read more