chariot fighting

Guest Post

Chariots on the Lelantine plain and the art of taunting the losers, Part 3: Winning the Lelantine War

2018.05.29 | By Natasha Bershadsky §0. After their victory over the Chalcidians and the Boeotians in 506 BCE, the Athenians dedicated to Athena a bronze chariot drawn by four horses. The sculpture was accompanied by an epigram. This study argues that the chariot portrayed the Athenians as victors in the age-old Lelantine War, while the epigram was constructed to taunt the defeated enemies of Athens by parodying their local traditions… Read more

Guest Post

Chariots on the Lelantine plain and the art of taunting the losers, Part 2: Enter Theseus

2018.05.22 | By Natasha Bershadsky §0. In 506 BCE Athens defeated Chalcis in battle and annexed the lands of the Chalcidian hippobotai. The ritual confrontations between the hippobotai and the Eretrian hippeis, and any attendant chariot-riding, must have come to an end. Intriguingly, however, it is possible to show that the young Eretrian democracy attempted to harness the power and prestige of the obliterated aristocratic tradition, rerouting the chariots onto… Read more

Guest Post

Chariots on the Lelantine plain and the art of taunting the losers, Part 1: Riding into the reenactment

2018.05.17 | By Natasha Bershadsky §0. This inquiry reconstructs the role of chariots in ancient Greek ritual reenactments of primordial battles fought over the Lelantine plain on the island of Euboea from ca. 750 to 506 BCE (the so-called “Lelantine War”). It also considers the possibility of a homoerotic connection between the Euboean charioteers and apobatai, operating in the framework of their progression toward full adulthood. Read more

By Gregory Nagy, H24H

The failed apobatic adventure of Pandaros the archer: A bifocal commentary on Iliad 5.166–469

2015.05.20 | By Gregory Nagy The image below is a detail from a Corinthian Hydria, dated somewhere between 575 and 550 BCE. Walters Art Museum, Accession Number 48.2230. Off to our left, we see the charioteer of Achilles, Automedon (labeled ΑΥΤΟΜΕΔΟΝ in a right-to-left writing), standing on the platform of Achilles’ chariot. In the center, we see Achilles (labeled ΑΧΙΛΛΕΥΣ left to right) about to inflict a mortal blow upon… Read more

By Gregory Nagy, H24H

A Failed Understudy for the Role of Chariot Fighter: the Case of Koiranos, the King Who Never Was

2015.05.15 | By Gregory Nagy In the posting for 2015.05.08, where I studied the athleticism of heroic chariot fighting, I highlighted the example of Mērionēs in Iliad 17, who fights on foot in a situation where we might have expected him to be doing something else, which is, to be driving the chariot of Idomeneus, king of all the Cretans who fought at Troy. In the posting for 2015.05.20, I… Read more

By Gregory Nagy, H24H

The Upgrading of Mērionēs from Chariot Driver to Chariot Fighter

2015.05.08 | By Gregory Nagy In my posting of 2015.05.01, I analyzed the Homeric passage at Iliad 17.608–625 where a hero named Koiranos is killed while driving the chariot of Idomeneus, king of the Cretans. After the killing, which happens at verses 610–612, the hero Mērionēs suddenly appears at verses 620–621, as if out of nowhere, and he grabs the chariot reins dropped by the mortally wounded charioteer. Read more