Posts Tagged by Herodotus
Notes on Xerxes and His Persian Empire
| August 3, 2017 | By Olga Davidson listed under Guest Post |
2017.08.03 | By Olga M. Davidson
Adapted from notes written by Olga Davidson and originally published in The Glimmerglass Festival’s 2017 Program Book. The 2017 Glimmerglass production of Handel’s XERXES, directed by Tazewell Thompson, runs through August 18.
Sappho and Aesop, distinctions between diachronic and historical perspectives
| March 23, 2017 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
2017.03.23 | By Gregory Nagy
A paper presented on March 11, 2017, at the Stoá tou Vivlíou in Athens as part of a conference hosted by the Society for the Promotion of Education and Learning.
Where it all comes together for me: a sacred space of the goddess Hērā
| March 16, 2016 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
Here was the setting for the ordeal endured by Kleobis and Biton as substitutes for the sacrificial oxen that were meant to pull the ceremonial cart carrying the priestess of the goddess Hērā across the length of the plain in a sacred procession that started at the city of Argos and reached its climax at the heights of the sacred space of the goddess, known as the Hēraion.
“Life of Homer” myths as evidence for the reception of Homer
| December 18, 2015 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
This inquiry centers on the surviving texts of ‘Life of Homer’ narrative traditions, to which I refer simply as Lives of Homer. These Lives, I argue, can be read as sources of historical information about the reception of Homeric poetry. The information is varied and layered, requiring diachronic as well as synchronic analysis.
The Lives portray the reception of Homeric poetry by narrating a series of events featuring ‘live’ performances by Homer himself. In the narratives of the Lives, Homeric composition is consistently being situated in contexts of oral performance. In effect, the Lives explore the shaping power of positive and even negative responses by the audiences of Homeric poetry in ad hoc situations of oral performance.
Sappho’s ‘fire under the skin’ and the erotic syntax of an epigram by Posidippus
| July 8, 2015 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy, H24H, Sappho |
In a book soon to be published, Anton Bierl and André Lardinois have collected a set of essays commenting on newly-discovered texts of Sappho’s songs, preserved in papyrus fragments originating from ancient Egypt in the Hellenized phase of its long history.
Herodotus and a courtesan from Naucratis
| July 1, 2015 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy, H24H |
In the History of Herodotus, at 2.134–135, we read about a beautiful hetaira or ‘courtesan’ named Rhodōpis. This woman, according to the reportage of ‘some Greeks’ as opposed to others (metexeteroi . . . Hellēnōn), commissioned the building of the third and smallest of the three pyramids at the site now known as Giza. Herodotus says that this reportage is incorrect.
