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
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
2022.08.01 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In Essay 6, we have seen that Hēraklēs, as an athlete, demonstrates his role as a culture hero of civilization. His very first Labor, the killing of the Nemean Lion, is a shining example, since the choke-hold that Hēraklēs applies to the beast in… Read more
2022.07.25 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Applying methods of reconstruction as I outlined them in the Excursus of Essay 5, I will now start to reconstruct what I have described as Indo-European mythological traditions that shaped the role of Hēraklēs as an athlete, or, to say it better, the role… Read more
2022.07.18 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Before I proceed to analyze various myths about athleticism that can be traced back, by way of reconstruction, to Indo-European mythological traditions, I present here, as an excursus, a summary of methods I use in reconstructing such myths. This excursus is extracted from a… Read more
2022.07.11 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I start to examine here the whole complex of Greek myths conventionally known as the Labors of Hēraklēs. This examination will amount to a reconstruction of the hero Hēraklēs as a heroic model for athletes by way of his Labors—and the reconstruction will proceed… Read more
2022.07.04 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The image that I have chosen as the leading illustration for this essay highlights a benevolent side of a relationship, in myth, between the hero Hēraklēs on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the goddess Hērā together with the god Zeus, her… Read more
2022.06.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. As I started to argue in Essay 1, the name of Mount Olympus as the setting for a myth about the immortalization of the hero Hēraklēs after death—his apotheosis—is linked with the name of Olympia as a setting for myths about the founding of… Read more
2022.06.20 | By Gregory Nagy 0. I proceed to Essay 1, even though the Introduction to this book has been left hanging. I stopped short after I commented on that haunting image of an Amazon rounding the arc of her bounding leap, between life and death—an image that evokes thoughts… Read more
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