by phillipw | Apr 11, 2020 | AN, GR
Also Sprach Nietzsche “ ‘Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes in the Iliad?’ asks Friedrich Nietzsche. We modern readers do not even begin to understand them ‘in a sufficiently “Greek” manner’. If we understood them in Greek, ‘we should...
by phillipw | Apr 11, 2020 | AN, PO
Before the Internet in the Ancient World “Hellenistic culture was of necessity a culture of the book . . . : the age of the reader had arrived, and a poet was often a man speaking to a man, not to men.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 13...
by phillipw | Apr 10, 2020 | AN, PO
Heroes, Victims, and Poseidon The metre of ancient Greek poetry succeeds in “achieving a length and complexity that are unusual in the heroic verse of other literature.” ~ Michael Grant, The Rise of the Greeks, 325, as quoted in Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 16....
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | AN, BE, PO
Upon the Face of Agamemnon “and also he [King Priam of Troy] admires Agamemnon for his beauty” ~ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 906 Forget that Helen for a moment. Think Of gorgeous men. The King of Troy could not Resist men’s beauty. Helen caused a stink That...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | AN, EL
Hoot Elegies “Initially the elegy was not restricted to laments. On the contrary, there was the erotic elegy (brilliantly taken up by the Latin poet Ovid)” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 11 In long gone centuries elegies were hot With sex. The...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | AN
Scholarly Blindness “Since before 450 BC there was no prose literature, [sic] our only windows on the ancient world are the poems.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 8 It only goes to show that scholars love To focus narrowly. He looked so hard At...
