Posts Tagged by Plato
Learning to sing, and a dead master of song
| March 14, 2018 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
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.
The Timaeus-Critias as a re-weaving of the peplos presented to Athena?
| August 10, 2017 | By DM Hutchinson listed under Guest Post |
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.
Plato on dithyramb as diēgēsis
| September 22, 2016 | By Marco Romani Mistretta listed under Plato commentary |
![Dionysos and sileni. Attic red-figured cup interior, circa 480 BCE. Photo by Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-05-25) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.](https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Dionysos_satyrs_Cdm_Paris_575-125x125.jpg)
2016.09.22 | By Marco Romani Mistretta
The opening of the Iliad (I.01.12–42) is famously paraphrased in narrative form by Socrates in Plato’s Republic 3, 393d–394a. The paraphrase is meant to illustrate Plato’s distinction between purely ‘diegetic’ and ‘mimetic’ forms of poetic production.
A political term in a paraphrase of Homer by Plato
| September 21, 2016 | By Dave Elmer listed under Plato commentary |
2016.09.21 | By David Elmer
The verb ep-eu-phēmeîn (ἐπευφημεῖν) at I.01.022 is virtually a hapax legomenon in the Homeric corpus: it occurs only here and in Achilles’ repetition of the line when he recounts for Thetis the poem’s opening scene, I.01.376. It is an exceptional, one-off substitute for ep-aineîn (ἐπαινεῖν) ‘approve’, the expected term, within the Iliad’s “grammar of reception,” for the collective approval of an audience in scenes of collective decision-making.
The Vow of Socrates
| April 17, 2015 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy, H24H |
§1. In Plato’s Phaedo 118a, we read this description of the very last seconds before Socrates died from the poison that pervaded his body after he was forced to drink the potion of hemlock that the State had measured out for his execution: Then he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and […]
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.