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Achilles and Odysseus, formulaic counterparts of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum (Persian translation)

What follows is a Persian translation of Gregory Crane’s “Achilles and Odysseus, formulaic counterparts of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum”, available online at: https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/achilles-and-odysseus-formulaic-counterparts-of-tweedle-dee-and-tweedle-dum/. The translation is made available here courtesy of Farnoosh Shamsian.   آخیلئوس و اُدوسئوس، همتایان الگومند دوقلوهای آلیس در سرزمین عجایب گرگوری کرین… Read more

Achilles and Odysseus, formulaic counterparts of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum

2022.02.17| By Gregory R. Crane [Click here to view this article translated into Persian.] I note here something that I discovered recently that surprised me and that I hope to explore more fully in the near future: the Greek names Ἀχιλλεύς and Ὀδυσσεύς are, from a metrical point of… Read more

Comments on comparative mythology 1, about Apollo

2020.02.14, rewritten 2022.02.14 | By Gregory Nagy Inscribed, by the hand of Georges Dumézil, on the front page of a copy of his book, Apollon sonore, 1982. §0. This essay, posted in Classical Continuum and dated for Valentine’s Day 2022.02.14, is a rewriting of an essay posted in Classical… Read more

Nick Allen of Oxford, anthropologist extraordinaire: some comments on his thinking about myth and epic, Part I

2022.02.07| By Gregory Nagy I§0. The lamented death of my friend Nicholas Justin Allen on 21 March 2020 has taken away from me the intellectual delight of debating with him viva voce, time and again, about matters of intense mutual interest. In particular, our amicable debates tended to center on… Read more

Pausanias 2.32.3-4, on the hero cults of Phaedra and Hippolytus at Troizen

2022.01.31 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This standalone essay is an annotation for Pausanias 2.32.3–4, where our traveler makes comments on a hero cult of Phaedra, not only of Hippolytus, at Troizen. What Pausanias says in this passage is most relevant, I think, to what we read in the Hippolytus of… Read more

A Pausanias commentary in progress, restarted

2022.01.24 | By Gregory Nagy Here in Classical Continuum, I restart what I had described as an ongoing project in a posting for Classical Inquiries (Nagy 2020.08.07): https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/ongoing-comments-on-a-pausanias-reader-in-progress/. My description there, in the introduction to that post, is by now out of date. At the time of my writing that introduction,… Read more

Annotations about archaic Greek lyric, Part 1: Archilochus, poet and cult-hero

Introduction to the series “Annotations about archaic Greek lyric” For English-speakers in the world of higher education, as of this writing, the introductory textbook most often assigned for the study of “archaic Greek lyric” (including elegiac and iambic poetry) has been Greek Lyric Poetry: A Selection of Early Greek Lyric,… Read more

A Draft of the Forthcoming Book, Aeolian Origins, and Other Mycenaean Matters

What follows is a draft (dated 2021.12.31) of 23 chapters taken from the forthcoming book, Aeolian Origins, and Other Mycenaean Matters, by Roger D. Woodard.  [Chapter titles are linked in the Table of Contents on page 3.]… Read more

Things I have learned from students who have taken my seminars in Comparative Literature, Part 1

2021.12.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. As an old teacher, I have often tried to encourage young colleagues who are launching their careers in teaching. I would be telling them stories about what could be described as “eureka moments” to be experienced in the process of teaching. But the Greek… Read more

Penelope and her twin

2021.11.10 | By Natasha Bershadsky John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829-1908), Penelope at her loom (1864). Image via Wikimedia Commons. There are two girls, or young women, portrayed on John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s painting called Penelope. Both are barefoot; neither is cheerful. One, who is seated, is… Read more