Lesbos

By Gregory Nagy

Olympus as mountain and Olympia as venue for the Olympics: a question about the naming of these places

2019.07.06 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The question is, can we connect the name for Mount Olympus with the name for Olympia, the place where the festival of the Olympics was traditionally celebrated every four years? Aiming for a unified answer to this question, which seems simple only on the surface, I will collect here seven facts that may lead to a satisfactory formulation showing a genuine connectedness between the… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

In an octopus’s garden: a story from Lesbos

2015.12.12 | By Gregory Nagy In Plutarch’s Banquet of the Seven Sages, the author imagines a remote time when conversations took place in the city of Corinth at a dinner party hosted by the tyrant of that city, Periandros, a historical figure whose lifetime can be dated to the late seventh and early sixth century BCE. The dramatic setting for this imagined dinner party coincides with the era of Sappho… Read more