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Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part II: Viewing the Olympics through the lens of Olympia Essay 5: About a defeat of the Centaurs, and how to imagine such an event in Olympia

for 2022.10.10 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This essay picks up from where I left off in the previous essay. In the last paragraph of that essay, I focused on a myth that told about a defeat of the Centaurs, beastly hominoids who were half horse, half man. Such a… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part II: Viewing the Olympics through the lens of Olympia – Essay 4: What Pausanias saw when he looked up at the pediments of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia

for 2022.10.03 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I have by now lost count of how many times in my life I have visited the Museum at Olympia. And I cannot keep track of knowing what different things I remembered to view, or forgot to view, each time I was there. Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part II: Viewing the Olympics through the lens of Olympia – Essay 3: The metopes of the Temple of Zeus and a rhetoric of occlusiveness in visualizing the Olympics

for 2022.09.26 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In the preceding essay, I was looking at the Olympics from the standpoint of an earlier time in Olympia, around 600 BCE, which is approximately the time when the Temple of Hērā was built there, and I stopped looking, for the moment, at… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part II: Viewing the Olympics through the lens of Olympia – Essay 2: The Chest of Kypselos and a rhetoric of inclusiveness in visualizing the Olympics

2022.09.19 | By Gregory Nagy Reconstruction of the Chest of Kypselos, after Wilhelm von Massow, “Die Kypseloslade,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 41 (1916), Taf. 1. §0. The Chest of Kypselos, crafted in the early sixth century and once on display inside the Temple of Hera, is… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part II: Viewing the Olympics through the lens of Olympia – Essay 1: A rhetoric for visualizing Zeus and Hērā as overseers of the Olympics

for 2022.09.12 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The ruins of the Temple of Hērā in Olympia, even today, are prominently visible, occupying a sacred space that is located to the north-west of the sacred space occupied by the ruins of the likewise prominently visible Temple of Zeus. These two spaces… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part I: Twelve Olympian Essays – Essay 12: Olympian women, Olympian girls, Olympian running

2022.09.05| By Gregory Nagy §0. In this essay, I will quote and translate and comment on an ancient text about female athleticism. The source for this text will describe, uniquely, a traditional athletic event, involving only female participants, that was truly and distinctly “Olympian.” The event, as our ancient source… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part I: Twelve Olympian Essays – Essay 11: An Olympian man

for 2022.08.29 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I rewrite here what was once a self-standing essay (Nagy 2019.05.10) written in honor of Marcel Detienne. I had been inspired by an article published by a young Detienne, back in 1960, concerning a man whom I now describe as an Olympian man. Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part I: Twelve Olympian Essays – Essay 10: Variations of Mycenaean phases in the prototyping of Hēraklēs as a Strong Man

for 2022.08.22 | By Gregory Nagy §0. There are Mycenaean phases—more than one Mycenaean phase—to be discovered in myths about the twelve Labors of Hēraklēs, as also in the multitude of further myths that I describe as the sub-Labors of the hero. In Essay 4, I accounted for all twelve… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part I: Twelve Olympian Essays – Essay 9: Three Phases of Hēraklēs, from Indo-European to Mycenaean to post-Mycenaean

2022.08.15 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Up to now, I have been reconstructing the mythological persona of the Greek hero Hēraklēs as a prototypical Strong Man by tracing him backward in time, back to the earliest reconstructable phases of myths that told his story. Here in Essay 9, I will… Read more

Part I: Twelve Olympian Essays – Essay 8: A Mycenaean Hēraklēs, always a kingmaker and never a king

2022.08.08 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In a separate work, Nagy 2019.10.11, “Hēraklēs at his station in Mycenaean Tiryns,” I focused on references in Greek myth to the stationing of Hēraklēs at the Cyclopean stronghold of Tiryns in the context of the Labors that this hero performs for the… Read more