Classical Inquiries

Olympus
Guest Post

The Circle of Fame: Apollo, the Corps de Ballet, and the Song of the Muses at Delphi

2020.06.11 | By Domenico Giuseppe Muscianisi §0. The Pythian movement of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo opens with a great scene of song-and-dance on Olympus (verses 182–206), where certain deities perform together. I will argue that choral melic poetry plays a prime role in this section of the Hymn: in fact, these verses share many features in diction and imagery with melic poetry, and in addition they describe a choral… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

A Mycenaean background for Hēraklēs as a model for athletes

2019.07.19 | By Gregory Nagy §0. As I argued in the previous posting, Classical Inquiries 2019.07.12, the name of Olympia as a setting for the myth about the founding of the Olympics by Hēraklēs is linked with the name of Mount Olympus as the setting for the myth about the immortalization of this hero after death. In the present posting here, 2019.07.19, I take the argument further: the various different versions… Read more

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