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
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
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
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