Classics Commons^™

Jörgensen’S Law Das Auftreten Der Goetter In Den Buechern Ι–Μ Der Odyssee, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Book 6: Odysseus Meets The Maiden, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

It is a commonplace among Homeric scholars that Scheria is a gateway between worlds. In what follows I shift focus to the role the Phaeacians play in facilitating Odysseus’s passage home, beyond doing so literally. My basic claim is that Odysseus is reintegrated into a functioning human society on Scheria before reestablishing his domestic relationships on Ithaca. He there establishes xenia, or guest-friendship, with the royal household, an institution that throughout the poem epitomizes civilized values. In this, Nausicaa plays a central role, and she too stands at the threshold of changing identities, from virgin princess to an adult …

Augustan Poetry And The Age Of Rust: Music And Metaphor In Anaïs Mitchell’S Hadestown, Thomas E. Jenkins

Classical Studies Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Mythic Background, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This essay focuses on the influence of Indo-European and ancient Near Eastern myth on Homeric poetry. It considers the relationship between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad, and the motif of the hero’s combat with a dragon.

Mythic Background, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Myth, according to a well known formulation by Walter Burkert, “is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance” (1979: 23). Andrew von Hendy, who declares Burkert’s definition the “gold standard” in classical studies, offers a Marxist reformulation, so that myth “is traditional narrative with a high degree of ideological saturation” (2002: 269, 277). This definition accords with the fact that muthos, the Greek word that most closely approximates myth, also designates “story” generally, and, as we might expect in an oral culture, “speech” (its meaning of “fiction” is post-Homeric). It also allows …

Homeric Time Travel, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

It has been a commonplace among anthropologists since Malinowski that during the performance of traditional stories the listening community experiences the primordial past when the gods still appeared freely to humans. Significantly, this involves not a return to the past, but a return of the past. The Odyssey not only depicts its own hero as a character from the heroic past, in which the gods were intimately involved with the heroes who fought at Troy, but also as one who brings the past with him when he returns home to an Ithaca that represents a greatly diminished present. In so …

‘A Word From Another World’: Mourning And Similes In Homeric Epic And Alice Oswald’S Memorial, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This article focuses on Alice Oswald’s 2012 Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad and its connections with ancient epic and lament. Oswald’s poem is inspired by the Iliad, but omits the plot and most of the main events to focus on minor characters’ encounters with death and the grief they leave behind. Memorial thus strongly rejects the possibility of heroism on the battlefield, and foregrounds mourning. Oswald’s narrator interacts with both the characters of the poem and the audience, reactivating an ancient tradition for a modern audience, turning readers (and listeners) into mourners, and connecting the dead from the …

Student Edition: Odyssey Book 9, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This document consists of the text of Odyssey Book 9, with exposed vocabulary and grammatical glosses. This document was created by the Trinity Classical Studies Department with contributions from Trinity students.

If you are just starting out with ancient Greek, read Odyssey Book 9 or Euripides’ Medea first, then proceed down the respective list, as the amount of assistance provided will decrease as you advance. We will be adding more files in the coming months and years, but these will remain our ‘entry level’ texts for the Odyssey and Euripides.

The Trouble With Calasiris: Duplicity And Autobiographical Narrative In Heliodorus And Galen, Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In this article, I take a new look at the problem of Calasiris’ ‘duplicity’ as depicted in the long autobiographical narrative he delivers to Cnemon in Books 2-5 of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. A close parallel for Calasiris’ self-presentation can be found in an unlikely source: the medical case histories of the doctor Galen. Through a comparison of Calasiris’ narrative with those of Galen, I demonstrate that both narrators employ similar ‘deceptive’ strategies to showcase their observational and deductive skills to their audience. Calasiris’ foregrounding of such ‘rational’ methods and his downplaying of the prophetic power that others attribute to him …

Human And Asinine Postures In Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This article examines the ways in which Apuleius’ Metamorphoses thematizes the contrast between the prone posture of the ass and the upright posture of the human. A long philosophical tradition, starting with Plato and Xenophon, argued that the human body was especially constructed for celestial contemplation, while the quadruped body was more suited for baser activities such as eating and sex. Physical posture thus becomes another way for Apuleius to emphasize the “unphilosophical” nature of Lucius-as-ass. Moreover, in Book 11, numerous references to celestial contemplation give the theme an ironic climax. Apuleius uses these celestial allusions, I argue, as further …

Homeric Reciprocities, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

A modified version of Marshall Sahlins’s model of reciprocity, which maps the modes of reciprocity across kinship distance, helps elucidate reciprocity in Homer. With important qualifications, Homeric reciprocity can also elucidate the social realities of Archaic Greece. There are three primary modes of Homeric reciprocity: general, or altruistic giving, balanced exchange, and negative taking. The model for general reciprocity is family relationships, and it characterizes a ruler’s relationship with the community, where it masks the reality that the upward flow of chiefly tribute exceeds the downward flow of the ruler’s largesse. Balanced reciprocity is practiced between peers within the same …

Mourning Lions And Penelope’S Revenge, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This paper focuses on the simile comparing Penelope to a lion encircled by men in Odyssey 4.791–94. Lion similes in Homeric poetry typically depict warriors in combat situations and so the description of Penelope as a trapped predator facing battle is surprising. The encircled beast of the simile is in a dangerous situation, but the lion’s plight is left unresolved as Penelope falls asleep. Many critics note the connection between Penelope the lion and Odysseus, who is compared to the same animal on five occasions in the poem, most notably in Books 22 and 23 after he slaughters the suitors. …

The Philosophy Of Mythology, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The early German romantic philosophy of myth can help elucidate the nature of romanticism itself, which notoriously resists descriptive or theoretical definition. To be sure, myth is an equally problematic term, whose precise meaning varies among romantic philosophers, though its role in the romantic project remains usefully consistent: myth is offered as a solution to the crisis of modern alienation, or, more radically, to the crisis of the subject object dichotomy. The sources of this alienation are likewise varied but broadly coherent. I will mention those relevant to the task at hand.

God, Space, & City In The Roman Imagination [Review], Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This ambitious book aims to convey what ancient Romans saw, thought, and felt as they experienced their city. Jenkyns focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on literary sources in his attempt to reconstruct how the Roman worldview of the late Republic and early Principate was shaped by the city of Rome itself, and vice versa. The built environment and public space are the principal points of emphasis, but the volume ranges widely over many other topics as well, including religious devotion, attitudes to the countryside, and Roman tourism.

Theban Walls In Homeric Epic, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Throughout the Iliad, the Greeks at Troy often refer to the wars at Thebes in their speeches, and several important warriors fighting on the Greek side at Troy also fought at Thebes and are related to Theban heroes who besieged the Boeotian city a generation earlier. The Theban wars thus stand in the shadow of the story of war at Troy, another city surrounded by walls supposed to be impregnable. In the Odyssey, the Theban connections are less central, but nevertheless significant as one of our few sources concerning the building of the Theban walls. In this essay, …

Women After War: Weaving Nostos In Homeric Epic And In The Twenty-First Century, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

While women play a circumscribed role in ancient epic, Homer's Odyssey depicts both Helen and Penelope as undergoing their own forms of homecoming, or nostos, after the Trojan War: Helen returns to her husband Menelaus after experiencing the war firsthand at Troy and a ten-year separation; Penelope stays home, but Odysseus' return is in many ways as much a challenge for her as it is for him and the Odyssey portrays her domestic ordeal as a form of heroic nostos. In this essay, I explore female ways of homecoming in the Odyssey and draw connections between Homeric heroines …

Herakles And The Idea Of The Hero, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The son of a divine father, Zeus, and a mortal mother, Alkmene, Herakles is often described by ancient sources as the greatest of the Greek heroes. When we think of Herakles (or Hercules, as the Romans called him) in the modern world, we remember primarily his labors, and perhaps a few other legends surrounding him, such as the one about how his supernatural strength allowed him, even as a baby, to strangle the two massive snakes sent to kill him in the cradle by the ever- jealous goddess Hera. The ancient Greeks also thought of Herakles primarily in terms of …

Signs Of Writing? Red Lustrous Wheelmade Vases And Ashkelon Amphorae, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

One important question about Bronze Age potmarks is whether they are signs of writing. An affirmative answer has significant implications for our understanding of how widely a script was used within and between communities. This essay discusses two instances for which the claim of writing on ceramics has been made: Red Lustrous Wheelmade (RLWM) pottery and the “inscriptions” found at Ashkelon. In both cases, the question is whether the marks incised into these vases are to be identified as signs of the Cypro-Minoan script. The answer is important in the first instance for our understanding of the diversity and specialization …

Structure As Interpretation In The Homeric Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The Odyssey is structured through a series of ring-compositions. Although scholars have ubiquitously identified ring-compositions in Homer, the technique has not been adequately theorized. This paper argues that the ring structures contribute to a thematic development that assimilates Odysseus’ return into natural cycles, and implicitly promise prosperity to those who properly receive the narrative and even immortality to those who imitate its heroes. The poem even enacts the theme of Return by bringing the past vividly into the present. This use of a conventional pattern to direct audience reception distinguishes Greek epic from the oral epic traditions worldwide that it …

Appendix Ii: Marked Pottery At Pyla-Kokkinokremos, 2010-2011, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Seven marked vases or vase fragments were discovered in the course of the 2010-2011 excavation season at Pyla-Kokkinokremos. Six are handles with incised marks and there is a Mycenaean pictorial amphoroid krater with two marks painted on its lower body. Two of the marks occur on Cypriote pottery (Plain White jugs), two on imported pottery (Minoan and Mycenaean amphoroid kraters); the three marked amphoras are also probably imported. Of special significance are the inscription (no. 72) and the amphoroid krater with painted marks found in a non-funerary context (no. 76).

"Go Back To Your Loom Dad": Weaving Nostos In The Twenty-First Century, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

For centuries writers and artists have adapted and transformed Homer's Odyssey in endlessly inventive and surprising ways. Yet the disposition of genders in the poem is seldom altered from its ancient pattern: a man leaves, a woman stays at home and waits until he returns. In her 2007 play, Current Nobody, Melissa Gibson departs from this conventional fidelity to the ancient narrative by rewriting the Odyssey as a twenty-first century family story with a wandering wife and a husband who is left behind. In Gibson's playful tragicomedy, Pen, a female war photographer, leaves her husband, Od, and daughter Tel …

The Contemporary Relevance Of The Iliad, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

I initially balked at the request to talk about the contemporary relevance of Homeric poetry. I did so because I am of the camp that maintains great art does not need to be defended on these terms, which is to say its skill, beauty, and profundity give it all the relevance it needs to be of lasting relevance. But I do recognize that my justification, which also keeps me from studying ancient graffiti and medieval doorknockers, assumes that at some level of remove there are enduring qualities to these works that do indeed, and will always, give them contemporary relevance. …

Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement And Space [Review], Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Archaeologists and historians have set out to reconstruct Rome, in one way or another, from the very beginning of the profession. More recently, scholars have begun to design 3-D simulations of ancient sites and monuments; even Google Earth offers the option of ‘visiting’ ancient Rome as it appeared in A.D. 320. According to the editors of this stimulating volume, however, these reconstructions, with their vast empty spaces and pristine monuments, ignore an important part of ancient Rome: the people, animals, and vehicles that moved through the cityscape. And as anyone who has ever traveled knows, different cities move in different …

Orality, Folktales And The Cross-Cultural Transmission Of Narrative, Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The last several decades have witnessed a renewed interest in exploring the remarkable similarities of motifs, plots and themes between Greco-Roman narrative and that of other ancient literary traditions (e.g., Egyptian, Persian, Jewish). If such commonalities are not coincidental or the result of independent development (and research indicates that they are not), it would be reasonable to raise the question of transmission, that is, by what means they passed from one culture to another. In the past, however, scholarly energies, caught up in the debate over the novel's origins, were more directed toward establishing the chronological priority of one narrative …

Woman Trouble: True Love And Homecoming In Pedro Almodóvar's Volver (2006), Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

A meditation on the notion of return, Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 Volver focuses on the modern experience of love, memory, and identity in a manner that is at once indebted to the past and resolutely contemporary. Some films represent the ancient world directly, drawing on historical or literary sources, but many that focus on contemporary narratives can be shown to be inspired—directly or not—by ancient myths whose history is so influential that they pervade many of our notions about the human experience. In particular, insofar as Homer's poem is the foundational text in Western culture of the very idea of homecoming—or …

Introduction To The Iliad, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Sing of rage, Goddess, that bane of Akhilleus,Peleus' son, which caused untold pain for Akhaians,sent down throngs of powerful spirits to Aides, war-chiefs rendered the prize of dogs and everysort of bird.

Edward McCrorie’s new translation of Homer’s classic epic of the Trojan War captures the falling rhythms of a doomed Troy. McCrorie presents the sundry epithets and resonant symbols of Homer's verse style and remains as close to the Greek's meaning as research allows.

The work is an epic with a flexible contemporary feel to it, capturing the wide-ranging tempos of the original. It underscores the honor of soldiers …

Appendix Iv: Potmarks, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

I. Potmarks from the Limassol area tombs

The excavation of any Late Cypriote site settlement, tomb, shipwreck usually yields pottery marked with incised, impressed, or painted signs. The collection of marked pottery presented here is significant especially because it fills in the heretofore geographic lacuna between the substantial assemblages of Late Cypriote potmarks discovered in the Kouris (Smith 2012) and Vasilikos (E. Masson 1989; Cadogan, Driessen, and Ferrara 2009, 145) River Valleys. Smith has demonstrated how much marked pottery, considered in the context of other indications of administrative control, can reveal about the administrative, economic, and political organization of a …

Epiphany In The Homeric Hymn To Demeter And The Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In the following essay I investigate the Odyssey’s sustained engagement with the theme of epiphany. Within the poem’s own narrative, the central epiphanic moment is the recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope, and it resonates powerfully with a series of other such moments throughout the poem, beginning with Athene’s epiphany to Telemakhos in Book 1. But I also hope to show that these Odyssean scenes resonate just as powerfully with Demeter’s epiphanies in the Homeric hymn to the goddess.

Some Homeric Hymns [Review], Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

R. offers a new edition of Hymns 3, 4 and 5. The volume follows the typical Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics format and includes a broad discussion of the Homeric Hymns, individual introductions for each hymn discussed, a section on the Homeric Hymns and Hellenistic poetry, a chapter on the transmission of the text, and three maps. R.’s text is based on previous editions, and he uses Càssola’s apparatus criticus as his ‘base’ (p. 33). In his general introduction, R. elegantly deals with questions of dating, authorship, the order of the poems and their function as preludes. The individual …

The Cypriot Ceramic Cargo Of The Uluburun Shipwreck, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The ship that sank at Uluburun was carrying about 130 pieces of Cypriot pottery in its cargo, mostly fine bowls and juglets but also lamps and wall brackets. Some coarse-ware bowls, pitchers, kraters, and the pithoi may also have been intended as cargo. This ceramic shipment is diverse in substance and unassuming in quality. By tracing how the Cypriot vases spilled and broke apart during the shipwreck, it has been possible to determine that they were originally packed into three pithoi for transport. The odd assortment of vases suggests that this cargo was not acquired at a manufacturing center. More …