Classical Continuum

Glimpses of Aeolian traditions in two different myths about two different visits by Philoctetes to the sacred island of the goddess Chryse

  ed. 2, 2022.06.19; ed. 1, 2021.08.09 | By Gregory Nagy   §0. The featured image for this essay is a drawing, made in the early nineteenth century of our era, which copies with some clarity and flair a picture painted on a vase manufactured in Athens in the fifth… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry – An introduction, Part 4:  Phaedra the hero as a would-be hunter

2022.06.06 | By Gregory Nagy   §0. In Part 3, I have been arguing that the athleticism of Amazons as hunters is connected, by way of myth, to the corresponding athleticism of the hero Hippolytus as a hunter. Earlier, in Part 2, I had argued that the athleticism of Amazons… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry – An introduction, Part 3: Hippolytus the hero as a hunter

2022.05.30 | By Gregory Nagy   Detail of the Amazon Melanippe (named). From a Late Antique mosaic depicting Amazons hunting, ca. 5th–6th centuries CE, found in a villa in Urfa/Şanliurfa (ancient Edessa). Image via Wikimedia Commons. §0. Up to now, I have focused on the role of the hero Hippolytus… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry – An introduction, Part 2: Hippolytus the hero as son of an Amazon

2022.05.23 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The role of the hero Hippolytus as an athlete—specifically, as a charioteer—is relevant to the role of his mother as an Amazon, since Amazons too could be charioteers. For example, in the picture I have chosen to introduce Part 2 here, we see Amazons in… Read more

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry – An introduction, Part 1: Hippolytus the hero as a charioteer

2022.05.16 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The picture that introduces Part 1 here helps me concentrate on heroes, athletes, poetry. What we see pictured here is a hero, Hippolytus, at the moment of his death. It was said in the myth of Hippolytus that he had lost control of… Read more

Homeric Vocabulary, Heaps’ Law and the open-ended nature of epic tradition

This paper makes a simple, but significant, observation. Vocabulary keeps growing in any corpus — there is no final, fixed set of words. That phenomenon appears with any natural language corpus. Here I emphasize the significance for students of Homeric epic. The Homeric Iliad and Odyssey contain about 200,000 running… Read more