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Invoking Achilles: Black-figure Iconography and Hero Cult

By Stan Burgess | 2023.05.17 1§1. An over-scaled winged warrior, far larger than life-size, carrying two spears and a Boeotian shield, darts from left to right above a ship under oars towards its bow. The warrior dwarfs the ship. He appears to have flown from a curvilinear black and white… Read more

Odyssey 15

By Leonard Muellner | 2023.05.01 This essay, posted 2023.05.01 in Classical Continuum, is a “preprint” and pre-edited version of a text submitted to the Oxford Critical Guide to Homer’s Odyssey, edited by Joel P. Christensen, forthcoming. Telemachus with Athena as Mentor (1810). Drawing by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia… Read more

About “The Windows” by C.P. Cavafy

From a virtual tour created by Luke Hollis. Notes by Gregory Nagy 2023.04.28 The outside glimpsed from the window pictured here as the cover for my notes is the metropolis of Alexandria in today’s Egypt. The interior from which this exterior is viewed happens to be… Read more

Ajax: Un héros qui vient de loin

This book, made available with the permission of Giampiero Scafoglio, focuses on the character of Ajax, an important hero in the Homeric Iliad and the so-called Epic Cycle. In the “Cyclic” Little Iliad, he is even the protagonist of an ethically dubious episode: the ‘judgment of arms’, with its tragic… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part III: Epilogue

2023.01.02 | By Gregory Nagy Epilogue §0. The book had started with Hippolytus the Charioteer and now ends with Achilles the Charioteer. By now we have seen the supreme prestige of charioteering as a primary form of athletics at the Olympics and at other Panhellenic festivals—most notably at the festival… Read more