A great point that the Lotus-Eaters become more like the Lotus-Watchers in Lightning Thief. The temptation is largely visual. Linton's painting is fascinating. His tiny statuette steals the attention from the huge statuary above and the garden as a whole. The distracted group in the back aren't paying attention to… Read more
Greg, thanks so much for sharing! This is terrific. No further comments needed. Read more
The connection between Athen's Eleusinion and the Eleusinian Mysteries is supported, for instance, by another passage of Clement of Alexandria's Protrepticus (3. 45.1), where he tells us that the tomb of Immaradus, son of Eumolpus (the mythical ancestor of the Eleusinian hierophants), was there. There is also epigraphic… Read more
Pausanias's drōmena at Eleusis are at least vaguely reminiscent of the drama mystikon "mystic drama" at Eleusis mentioned by Clement of Alexandria in section 2.12 of his Protrepticus: “[Demeter] and Kore have become by now a mystic drama, and Eleusis holds the torch over the wanderings and the rape and… Read more
This reconstruction does not reproduce the point of vies of someone emerging from the Propylaea but that of a viewer standing to the south-west, roughly at the corner of the precinct of Artemis Brauronia. In this perspective, the background is filled in with the upper part of the Erechtheum. Another… Read more
Very useful on the question of how, or how much of the statue would have been visible on the ascent to the Acropolis and through the Propylaea, is the analysis and review of the issues by Samantha Martin-McAuliffe and John K. Papadopoulos 2012 (“Framing Victory: Salamis, the Athenian Acropolis, and… Read more
The evidence for the existence of a “Promakhos” iconograpic type that is both distinct but in actuality indistinguishable from the Palladium is extremely weak. The epithet is occasionally applied to Athena in late antique sources, and the earliest mention in reference to the statue by Pheidias is in a scholion… Read more
An important article on the Library of Alexandria and Demetrius’ supposed involvement is Bagnall 2002 (especially pages 349–351). Bagnall, R. 2002. "Alexandria: Library of Dreams." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146: 348–362. Read more
Ritoók 1993 usefully distinguishes between three types of stories about the ‘Pisistratid recension’ and shows how the tradition of the Pisistratid recension developed over time. Ritoók, Z. 1993. “The Pisistratus Tradition and the Canonization of Homer.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 34: 39–53. Read more
I've been working on the supposed rivalry between Alexandria and Pergamon, and I very much agree that "such reductive formulations, by implying a symmetrical rivalry between Alexandria and Pergamon, tend to blur the ongoing rivalry of Pergamon with centers of learning other than Alexandria, especially Athens." Well-formulated and I must… Read more