Posts Tagged by Plato
Musings about a scene pictured by the Achilles Painter
| February 14, 2019 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
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2019.02.14 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. On the cover of an earlier posting of mine for Classical Inquiries, Nagy 2019.01.31, we see a facsimile of a picture painted on an Attic white-ground lekythos, dated somewhere around 440–430 BCE, by an artist who is known to art historians as the Achilles Painter. In that posting, which was all about Sappho, I never explained why I chose that picture for the cover. In the posting for today, 2019.02.14, I offer an explanation, which will require a broader view: that is why the facsimile for the cover here is in three parts: the part on our right is the same picture I showed in the earlier post, but the part in the middle “zooms out,” showing the whole scene that is being pictured—not just a part of the scene, as before—and then the part on our left shows a picturing that I have not shown before. Relevant to my explanation of the overall scene, as we will see, is the day on which this posting is being published, Valentine’s Day 2019.02.14. And, I should add on a personal note, the relevance extends further: whether or not I am right in trying to explain the meaning of the overall scene that is being pictured here by the Achilles Painter, I hope that the picture itself, in all its beauty, will be accepted as a loving Valentine’s Day “card” from Greg to Holly.
[Essay continues here…]Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Part Two
| January 16, 2019 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
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2019.01.16 | By Gregory Nagy
This posting for 2019.01.16 is Part Two of a long-term project that I started in the posting for 2019.01.08, which is Part One of that project. In Part One, I was analyzing various examples of ancient texts composed by male authors who playfully imitate Sappho by appropriating aspects of her songs in their own literary creations. Here in Part Two, I analyze further examples, and the numbering of my paragraphs continues from where I left off at the concluding paragraph §33 of Part One. As I already noted in that paragraph, Part Two of my analysis here will center on the erotic novel Daphnis and Chloe, attributed to a man named Longus, who has conventionally been dated to the second century CE. His novel, as I will argue, is a playful exercise in showing how to soften the potential for hard-core pornographic appropriations of female sexuality by ancient male authors in their imitations of Sappho’s songs. In the course of my argumentation, I will at times view this ancient Greek novel through the metaphorical lens of a modern Italian film, Cinema Paradiso.
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Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part 2: More on the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia
| November 30, 2018 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
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2018.11.30 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. This post, dated 2018.11.30, picks up from where I left off in Classical Inquiries 2018.11.22. Here again I am dealing with problems I have encountered in figuring out the historical circumstances of Homeric performances by professional reciters called rhapsōidoi ‘rhapsodes’ at the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. As before, my starting point centers on what I have already formulated in a set of twin books entitled Homer the Classic (2009|2008) and Homer the Preclassic (2010|2009). And, as also before, I am faced with bibliographical challenges: how to develop further formulations without getting bogged down in secondary bibliography.
[Essay continues here…]Learning to sing, and a dead master of song
| March 14, 2018 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
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2018.03.14 | By Gregory Nagy
This essay recapitulates a part of a larger project concerning the craft of singing to the accompaniment of song—as the craft was practiced in Athens and its environs around the fifth century BCE (Nagy 2012). The focal point of interest is a red-figure painting, by an artist named Douris, on a drinking-cup produced between 490 and 480 BCE. I show here a line drawing of what is pictured in the painting. We see in this picture two scenes showing boys being educated in the learning and the performance of song and musical accompaniment. I will compare these two scenes with what is known about a dead man, buried in a tomb dated to the fifth century BCE, who must have been a master of such song.
[Essay continues here…]The Timaeus-Critias as a re-weaving of the peplos presented to Athena?
| August 10, 2017 | By DM Hutchinson listed under Guest Post |
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2017.08.10 | By DM Hutchinson
More than just a late dialogue concerning natural philosophy, the Timaeus contains a radical project of replacing the Gigantomachy as the charter myth of Athens. In agreement with Gregory Nagy, DM Hutchinson offers some additional considerations for why the Timaeus-Critias constitutes a new peplos to be presented to Athena during the Panathenaic festival.
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On the paraphrase of Iliad 1.012–042 in Plato’s Republic 3.393d–394a
2016.09.23 | By Gregory Nagy
For Plato, mimesis is not a re-enactment as it is for rhapsodes: it is mere imitation. And it is easier to discredit such imitation when you hear a rhapsode paraphrase Homer in prose.
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