In the aftermath: Surviving the Bronze Age Collapse and looking back to look forward—Papers and Summary of the Discussion held at the Fall 2023 MASt Seminar (Friday, October 20) Dedicating the Fall 2023 MASt seminar to the memory of Diane Harris Cline §1. The MASt team fondly dedicates this seminar… Read more
MASt – Fall Seminar 2021 (Friday, December 17): Summaries of Presentations and Discussion §1. Rachele Pierini opened the Fall session of the MASt seminars by welcoming the participants to the December meeting. In addition to the regular members of the MASt network, colleagues and students who have already attended previous… Read more
MASt – Summer Seminar 2022 (Friday, July 8): Summaries of Presentations and Discussion §1.1. Rachele Pierini opened the Summer session of the MASt seminars by presenting the different structure of the July event, which hosted the mentor(s) and mentee session. During… Read more
2015.02.27, rewritten 2024.02.14 | By Gregory Nagy At H24H 4§20, I formulate this “take-away” from that analysis: “Song 44 of Sappho is an example of epic as refracted in women’s songmaking traditions.” And I simply give a reference there to an earlier analysis that I had attempted, in a book entitled Homeric Questions (Nagy 1996). [The hyperlink directs to an open access version of the book on the CHS website.] I now think that the… Read more
2016.08.31 rewritten 2024.02.13 | By Gregory Nagy The phraseology that we see in Song 44 of Sappho reveals the same kind of formulaic structure that we see at work in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. Such a structure, in the case of Homeric poetry, indicates that this poetry originated from traditions of oral performance. So also in the case of the songmaking exemplified by Song 44 of Sappho, there is… Read more
2009 rewritten 2024.02.11 | By Gregory Nagy [[This essay originally appeared in 2009 in Theater des Fragments: Performative Strategien im Theater zwischen Antike und Postmoderne (eds. A. Bierl, G. Siegmund, Ch. Meneghetti, C. Schuster) 69-102. In this expanded online edition, the page-numbers of the print edition will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example,… Read more
2018.07.20 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In this post, dated 2018.07.20, I have put together a working retranslation of the sad story of Komaithο, priestess in love, as retold by Pausanias at 7.18.8–7.20.2. Some essential parts of this story have already been paraphrased at §1 in the post for 2018.07.13, but now I need to look at the whole story. And, for that, I need to share my working translation,… Read more
2015.12.31 | By Gregory Nagy Horace’s imitations of Sappho in Ode 4.1 and of Pindar in Ode 4.2 show his deep understanding of archaic Greek lyric poetry. Particularly striking is his visualization of Icarus in Ode 4.2 as a negative model for such poetry. The artificial wings of Icarus are seen as a foil for the natural wings of the swan, the sacred bird of Apollo, who is god of… Read more
2024.01.11 | By Gregory Nagy rewritten from 2017.09.08 and 2017.09.14 §0. This pre-edited standalone essay, included in a series of pamphlets published online and also in print (“on-demand”), is about Anacreon and Ibycus, two ancient Greek masters of lyric poetry, and about their patron, Polycrates, who was—in his glory… Read more
Rewritten in Classical Continuum 2023.12.29 from Classical Inquiries 2015.10.15 | By Gregory Nagy Mosaic showing theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy, from the Baths of Decius on the Aventine Hill, Rome, 2nd century CE. [image by antmoose, CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons This essay is dedicated to my… Read more