In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic by Theodore ZiolkowskiJohannes HauboldTheodore Ziolkowski. Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011. xvi + 226 pp. 3 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $35.This book surveys modern receptions of the Gilgamesh Epic from the earliest lectures and publications of George Smith to recent reworkings of the epic in (...) Western literature and art. The argument is divided into five chapters. After an introduction which outlines the contents of the poem and tells the story of its rediscovery, chapter 1, “The Initial Reception (1884–1935),” takes us from Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton’s Ishtar and Izdubar of 1884 via the “Babel and Bible” controversy of the early twentieth century to the predominantly German reception prior to World War II. Several major figures make an appearance here, including Freud, Jung, Rilke, Hesse, Mann, Döblin, Canetti, and Pannwitz. Chapter 2, “Representative Beginnings (1941–1958),” takes up the thread of German engagement with the towering achievements of Hermann Kasack’s Die Stadt hinter dem Strom (61–64) and, especially, Hans Henny Jahnn’s Fluß ohne Ufer (67–74), an enigmatic re-imagining of the Gilgamesh story on a scale that deserves a monograph study of its own. Elsewhere, the reception of Gilgamesh continues with “four poets in English” (Lucas and Bridson in Britain; Olson and Corso in the United States; 48–59) and with the first musical settings, among them Martinů’s oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh (75–77). Chapter 3, “The Popularization of Gilgamesh (1959–1978),” surveys new translations into the major European languages (79–80), and with them a range of popular responses. Ziolkowski notes a surge in adaptations for children, as well as other initiatives aimed at a wider public (81–82). It is against this background, he argues, that we need to see more ambitious experiments in musical and literary reception, including Per Nørgård’s opera Gilgamesh (105–7); Louis Zukofsky’s “canto 23” (which forms part of his larger poetic cycle entitled “A,” 85–88); Stanisław Lem’s review of an imaginary Gilgamesh adaptation in his A Perfect Vacuum (Doskonała Próżnia, 97–99); and the “fictional exuberances” of John Gardner’s The Sunlight Dialogues, Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel, and Rhoda Lerman’s Call Me Ishtar (99–105). Ziolkowski also draws attention to what he argues was the first overtly gay reworking of Gilgamesh, in Guido Bachmann’s novel of the same name (91–94). Chapter 4, “The Contemporization of Gilgamesh (1979–1999),” continues the theme of popularization in a political key: Ziolkowski takes us on a whistle-stop tour of late twentieth-century preoccupations, from successive crises in the Near East (109) to post-colonialism (109–10); the spread of psychoanalysis, both in a Freudian and a Jungian key (112–19); deconstruction (118–19); the rise of ecologism [End Page 669] (110, 123–35); and minority politics in the USA (135–38). Chapter 5, “Gilgamesh in the Twenty-First Century (2000–2009),” sets out to show that “Gilgamesh, who was born and flourished in the mid-third millennium b.c.e., is alive and well” (154). Ziolkowski identifies “a new focus” (167) on cultural and religious conflict in the wake of Samuel Huntington and the events of 9/11, although it must be said that the responses of Schrott and Begrich (171–78) do not fit this framework particularly well, and in practice much of the chapter seems designed to tie up loose ends. The book is equipped with a timeline of works discussed (199–205), end notes (207–20), and an index (221–26), but no bibliography.In lucid and unpretentious prose, Ziolkowski sets out what he sees as the most significant “Western” responses to the epic of Gilgamesh. He leaves the Near and Far East to “appropriately qualified scholars” (x): one hopes that others will take up the invitation, and that they will make connections with the materials explored in this book. Ziolkowski also passes over Latin America and the Caribbean—perhaps he felt there was nothing to say (for a possible starting point, see C... (shrink)

A delightfully straightforward and lyrical retelling of the ancient Indian epic of loyalty, betrayal, redemption, and insight into the true nature of life -- one of history's most sacred ethical works, rendered with completeness and sterling accuracy for the modern reader. Here is one of the world's most hallowed works of sacred literature, the grand, sweeping epic of the divine bowman and warrior Rama and his struggles with evil, power, duplicity, and avarice. The Ramayana is one of (...) the foundations of world literature and one of humanity's most ancient and treasured ethical and spiritual works. 'This new version is so simply and beautifully written -- it will stir the soul!' --David Lynch. (shrink)

This article explores the significance of the following fact: in neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey does one find a simile about Zeus. I argue that just as ancient Near Eastern texts characterize a god by declaring it impossible to fashion a comparison about him or her, so the Homeric epics characterize Zeus by avoiding statements in the shape “Zeus (is) like X.”.

Epic Tales from Ancient India: Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art. Edited by Marika Sardar. San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 2016. Pp. 164. $45. [Distr. by Yale Univ. Press.].

Although the influence of Homer on Western literature has long commanded critical attention, little has been written on how various generations of readers have found menaing in his texts. These seven essays explore the ways in which the Illiad and the Odyssey have been read from the time of Homer through the Renaissance. By asking what questions early readers expected the texts to answer and looking at how these expectations changed over time, the authors clarify the position of the Illiad (...) and the Odyssey in the intellectual world of antiqueity while offering historical insight into the nature of reading. The collection surveys the entire field of preserved ancient interpretations of Homer, beginning with the fictional audiences portrayed within the poems themselves, proceedings to readings by Aristotle, the Stoics, and Aristarchus and Crates, and culminating in the spritiualized allegorical reading current among Platonists of the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. The influence of these ancient interpretations is then examined in Byzantium and in the Latin West during the Renaissance. Contributors to this volume are Robert Browning, Anthony Grafton, Robert Lamberton, A.A. Long, James Porter, Nicholas Richardson, and Charles Segal. Robert Lamberton is Assistant Professor of Classics and John J. Keaney is Professor of Classics, both at Princeton University. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Evidence of the intimate linkage of the shaman's song and divinatory procedures may be viewed in the ancient epics. These narrative poems contain structural and thematic elements recognizable from the shaman's song—in particular his or her voyage to the Otherworld and the guidance of oracular powers. In this paper, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Euripedes' Ion, and The Ozidi Saga (a living epic from West Africa) are examined as recuperations of the orally composed and transmitted song of the (...) shaman. I argue that the epics—the origins of which predate their composition in literary form—bear witness to these most ancient and mysterious forms of linguistic expression. As depictions of Otherwordly journeys, they can be viewed through a metaphysic outside of time, rendering divination not only possible but inevitable, and necessitating a language of abstraction, allusion, and ambiguity. Today's experimental poetries may not all partake of a conscious recuperation of shamanic themes and forms, but they share an imaginary (yet not imagined) repositioning of reality, an open questioning of consensus forms of awareness, and an aesthetic shaping of what Jean Gebser calls “Integral Consciousness” (15), the simultaneous integration-disintegration of archaic, mythic, magic, and mental paradigms in an intensification of awareness which sees time as diaphanous, and Mind as a doorway between possibilities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epic and Tragic Music: The Union of the Arts in the Eighteenth CenturyJoshua BillingsI. The Union of the Arts in WeimarAround 1800 in Weimar, thought on Greek tragedy crystallized around the union of speech, music, and gesture—what Wagner would later call the Gesamtkunstwerk. Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder both found something lacking in modern spoken theater in comparison with ancient tragedy’s synthesis of the arts. Schiller’s (...) 1803 “Trauerspiel mit Chören,” Die Braut von Messina, represents a radical experiment in recreating the ancient union of the arts.1 The Greek tragic chorus, revived in Schiller’s drama, becomes the modern locus for this union. In a preface appended to the published version of the play, Schiller writes,The tragic work of poetry first becomes a whole through its theatrical performance: the poet only gives the words; music and dance must be added as well to enliven them. As long as the chorus lacks this powerful sensory accompaniment, so long will it appear in the economy of a tragedy as an alien element, a foreign body, a retardation.2 [End Page 99]Exactly contemporary (and possibly in response), Herder’s discussion of drama in his journal Adrastea similarly views the union of the arts in ancient tragedy as a corrective for modern drama:3A Greek who attended our tragedy [Trauerspiel], used to the musical voice of his own, would have to find in it a sad play [trauriges Spiel]. “How wordy-mute,” he would say, “how dull and soundless! Have I stepped into a decorated grave? You shout and sigh and bluster! Move your arms, strain your facial features, reason, declaim; but does your voice and feeling never become song? Do you not miss the strength of this demonic expression? Do your rhythms, your iambs never urge you on to the accents of the true language of the gods?”4The focus on media distinguishes these Weimar discussions of tragedy both from the Jena aesthetics of the Schlegel brothers and from the Idealist “philosophy of the tragic” already underway in the works of Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hegel.5 Though both Schiller and Herder are relatively indifferent to dance, their writings reflect strong interests in music.6 Their considerations [End Page 100] of tragedy show a close engagement with the sensory experience of drama that is unusual for its time, and has little precedent in Germany.For Schiller’s late poetics, the union of words, music, and gesture is a means of radically dividing the experience of theater from daily life. The tragic chorus “should be for us a living wall, which tragedy sets up around itself in order to close itself off wholly from the real world.”7 It “justifies the tragic poet in this raising of tone, which fills the ear, which strains the spirit, which broadens the whole mind.”8 Musical speech, Schiller argues, allows for an expression that transcends conventional language and quotidian existence. Schiller had hoped “to let [the choral intermezzos] be recited in the way of song and to accompany them with an instrument,” though his wish went unfulfilled in the first, and subsequent performances.9 Yet even after relinquishing the real possibility of a union of the arts in performances of Braut, Schiller upheld it as an ideal in his preface.Herder is remembered today primarily for his elaboration of an organic historicism, which understands cultural phenomena according to the circumstances of their creation. Yet his concern was more than merely historical; especially in the Adrastea, he continually sought guidance for the present in the events of the past. A contemporary, writing shortly after Herder’s death, saw the two orientations, historical and critical, as equally important: investigation of the past was intended as “a didactic or warning image” for his own time.10 The guiding idea of the journal was similarly educative, based on Herder’s understanding of Adrastea as a principle of justice and moderation.11 In Herder’s thought, as in most writing on ancient literature of the eighteenth century, there is no absolute division between scholarly and critical concerns: the study of ancient works was both an end in itself and a... (shrink)

The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India. Vol. 6: Yuddhakāṇḍa. Translation and annota tion by Robert P. Goldman, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, and Barend A. van Nooten. Introduction by Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton. Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. 1655 + xviii. $210, $75. The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India. Vol. 7: Uttarakāṇḍa. Introduction, translation, and annotation by Robert P. Goldman and Sally (...) J. Sutherland Goldman. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Pp. 1522 + xxii. $175. (shrink)

This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the Sophists (...) to present themselves as the heirs of traditional education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists' intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically, encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic, discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus, as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus' Heroicus and Imagines. (shrink)

In antiquity, works of culture, created by the Greek-Roman people, passed centuries, the test of centuries and reached our era. Many samples of European literature, born in the Modern Age, have long been forgotten, and unique works, such as the Homeric epic and the tragedies of Sophocles, have been translated again and again, always bringing spiritual energy and aesthetic pleasure to readers’ hearts. Homer was unique among the poets of that time, and indeed the supposed author of the Iliad (...) and the Odyssey must undoubtedly be one of the world's greatest literary artists. The two epics formed the basis of Greek education and culture throughout the classical era and laid the foundation of human education up until the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity so this is proof that Homer is also one of the most influential authors in the broadest sense. The article reveals the ideological and artistic features of the ancient Greek poet Homer’s poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. The authors of this article analyze the thematic, ideological, and artistic features of these epic works. The methodological basis of the work is the principle of historicism, which contributes to the objective study and evaluation of literary phenomena in the process of evolutionary development. The scientific article uses a traditional set of analysis methods: typological, systemic, and comparative. (shrink)

J.G.A. Pocock has been a dominant force in the history of political thought since his first major work, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, was published in 1957. This article is focused on the contribution he has made to the study of the revolutions of seventeenth-century England and the extraordinary body of political discourse to which they gave rise. It begins with an examination of the ways in which ideas about continuity, innovation, institutions and historiography have shaped his (...) approach to the history of political thought and their application to seventeenth-century conditions. Central to a fundamental continuity in his ideas over the last five decades have been notions about the interface of 'paradigms' with both language and socio-political circumstance in the construction and deconstruction of both historiographies and political theories. The article then offers a critical assessment of his contribution to our understanding of the English Revolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.2 (2000) 324-328 [Access article in PDF] Michael C. J. Putnam. Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. xii 1 257 pp. Cloth, $35. This is a book about ekphrasis, about the Aeneid, about ancient Greek and Latin literature, about poetry and poetics, and about the ways in which literature can affect the way we (...) live our lives. But most of all, it is a tremendous book on the Aeneid.The six chapters focus on notable points of ekphrasis: Dido's Murals, the Cloak of Cloanthus, Daedalus' Sculptures, Silvia's Stag, the Shield of Aeneas, and the Baldric of Pallas. The dominant figure characterizing ekphrasis in the Aeneid is synecdoche: that is, ekphrasis, Putnam shows us, serves as a mise en abîme in the Aeneid, in which the circularity of ekphrasis both interrupts and comments on the narrative linearity of epic (97, 204, passim). Ekphrasis and epic complement and analogize one another, and therein Virgil is teaching us about major themes of the Aeneid. The most abstract of these themes can perhaps be paraphrased as follows: epic poetry is linear, historical, teleological, and temporal; ekphrasis, something of a lyric mode within epic, is circular, repetitious, and atemporal. The linearity of history becomes a falsifying teleology, a deceptive myth of progress. This is counterbalanced by the ekphrases; their circularity, both in form and content, points to the circular, cyclical nature of history--there is, in the end, no progress (see, e.g., 31, 42, 46, 61, 154-55, 209).Most of what I think is important about ekphrasis is in this book; moreover, much that I had never considered before now seems obvious, after reading it. I cannot, however, summarize the book, and what follows is an exhortation, rather than an outline. The force of Putnam's analysis does not lend itself well to summary, even his own--it would be a mistake to read merely his introduction and conclusion. Reading Putnam I am reminded of William Blake's Assumption of Total Significance, as named and brought to us again by the linguist Háj Ross: this is the assumption that any and every aspect of a text (or other work of art) has the potential to be of the utmost importance. Putnam proves this by his own practice, tracing threads of meaning and resonance from the specific details of the language of the text, with interpretation both bold and securely grounded. In doing so, he shows and recommends a fruitful, almost Emersonian, faith in the individual passage as a microcosm (as synecdoche, as a mise en abîme), a faith borne out in spades by his analysis. At times, some readers will not accept his interpretations, but this is not a problem. Putnam invites [End Page 324] us to go with him on a slow, careful walk through the Aeneid; if we do not see what he sees, that is fine; but he tells us carefully, forcefully, and with great clarity why he himself sees it. Those who are rapid readers may thus not understand the significance of this book and may likely give it short shrift: the best of it cannot be skimmed. But then such rapid readers are very unlikely to understand or care about poetry, especially Virgilian poetry. The details of Virgil's language and the detail of Putnam's discussion are what will, in William Carlos Williams's phrase, "startle us anew."It is most useful, then, to give a sample, but it is not easy to choose. To my mind, the most compelling chapter is that on Daedalus. The association of Virgil and Daedalus is powerfully illustrated; Putnam argues that in Daedalus Virgil is giving us his own "spiritual and psychic" biography as an artist. Neither artist can idealize, neither can bring to completeness, neither can accept the tempting comfort of beauty, the "veneer of charm over terrible truths," and neither can help but see "nature's final pyrrhic triumph over art" (e.g., 84, 91, 94, 95). I quote an... (shrink)

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710–760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate – derived (...) from a shared ancestral word – or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources. (shrink)

I argue that a specific compositional device, the so-called “anticipatory doublet,” can be observed in ancient accounts of the poems of the Epic Cycle. This insight can help shed light on the narrative and thematic structure of these poems and buttresses the view that their authors were well-versed in the compositional methods of the old oral tradition.

The role of the gods in the classical world's epic tradition has long been the subject of controversy. In the first book to discuss the problem of the gods across the entire classical literary tradition, rather than in a few individual works, Professor Feeney draws upon the writings of the ancient critics, and looks in detail at the work of the poets themselves.

The most illustrious tradition of romantic poetry on oriental subjects, from the Westöstlicher Diwan to Rückert, Platen, Hugo and Leconte de Lisle, was inspired essentially by Indian and Persian epic, lyric and gnomic poetry, referring only to a minor degree to the ancient poetry of the Arabs—although it is precisely Rückert to whom we are indebted for a version of the Hamâsa, a famous anthology of pagan Arabic poetry. Goethe approached this anthology through the versions of Jones, described (...) it briefly in the “Notes and Commentary” to the Diwan, and among other sections retold one tale splendidly in verse: the “Song of Vengeance” of Taâbbata Sharran. Here the force of his genius lifted him well above the bristling Latin of Freytag, through whom he had come to know the song, and brought him very close in lyrical intuition to the original of this masterpiece of debated authenticity. But on the whole, the poetic heritage of the ancient Arabs was not adequately echoed in the literature of the romantic age. Rückert himself, inspired by pagan Arabic poetry, is read by few people today; and the poetry that was his model is studied rather by philologists, for its documentary value. Theodor Noeldeke, at the beginning of his classic study of the Mu'allakat, declared frankly: “It is questionable whether the aesthetic pleasure provided by the study of ancient Arabic poetry is worth the great pains required even to approach an understanding of the same.” It is difficult to stand in opposition to the authority of the “old master” of German orientalists, who confessed that “the more he studied the Semites, the more he loved the Greeks.” Even the most humble author of these lines dares to appropriate for himself the lines of Noeldeke; and yet, beyond every comparison, which cannot help resulting unfavorably for the ancient poets of the desert, he who knows how to love and seek out poetry will find in them authentic artistic values. Even the harsh pagan song can in certain passages interest us, fill us with enthusiasm, and move us. (shrink)

This is a major study of conceptions of selfhood and personality in Homer and Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. The focus is on the norms of personality in Greek psychology and ethics. Gill argues that the key to understanding Greek thought of this type is to counteract the subjective and individualistic aspects of our own thinking about the person. He defines an "objective-participant" conception of personality, symbolized by the idea of the person as an interlocutor in a series of psychological and (...) ethical dialogues. (shrink)

This volume deploys recent feminist epistemological frameworks to analyze how concepts like knowledge, authority, rationality, objectivity and testimony were constructed in Greece and Rome. The introduction serves as a field guide to feminist epistemological interpretations of classical sources, and the following sixteen chapters treat a variety of genres and time periods, from Greek poetry, tragedy, philosophy, oratory, historiography and material culture to Roman comedy, epic, oratory, letters, law and their reception. By using an intersectional approach to demonstrate how epistemic (...) systems exclude and pathologize the experiences of ancient women and other oppressed groups, these contributions aid in the recovery of non-dominant narratives and reveal issues of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, religion, age, class, familial status and citizenship in the ancient and modern world. The volume contributes to a more inclusive and equitable study of classical antiquity and builds transhistorical connections capable of exposing similar injustices in our own time. (shrink)

As the first poem of the last book of Ovid'sAmores, 3.1 parallels the programmaticrecusatioof the first two books, which present the traditional opposition of elegy to epic. InAmores3.1, the personified Elegy and Tragedy compete for Ovid's poetic attention, and scholars have accordingly scrutinized the generic tension between elegy and tragedy in this poem. My study, by contrast, focusses on the import of the metapoeticlocusin which Ovid sets his contest between the two genres, by considering the linguistic and allusive play (...) in the opening lines. Ovid exploits the metaphor of literary tradition as an ancient and sacred forest to transform an author's choice of poetic genre into a walk in the woods. Moreover, allusions to Virgil'sAeneid6.179 and Ennius'Annales175 (Sk.) in the first line guide Ovid's audience to expect the more traditional opposition of elegy and epic. The less conventional contest between the genres of elegy and tragedy soon overturns this expectation; nevertheless, elegy's customary opposite, epic, maintains a presence in the form of a woodland context for Ovid's innovative generic opposition. (shrink)

The roots of ‘ancient sport’, or Zurkhaneh, as its name implies, go back to ancient Iran and the rituals of Mithraism, in which believers pray and learn morality and humanity in cave-shape temples built in connection with running water. After the advent of Islam and the fall of the ancient religions, temples gave way to Zurkhanehs, and athletes who, while learning moral teachings, cultivated physical strength to resist external enemy forces and internal oppression, grown in those Zurkhanehs. (...) With a tendency to Sufism, Shi`ism and following the first Imam of the Shiites, athletes became heroes and knights, many of whom today, after hundreds of years, are still the cultural myths of the people of Iran. The ancient sports such as wrestling are a symbol of human and moral virtues, the promotion of which can lead to the growth and development of the moral beauty and chivalry culture among all athletes in various sports and lead to institutionalize characteristics of heroism and magnanimity in society. Ancient sports exercising tools, art and architecture of Zurkhaneh, poems, rituals and personalities form the nature of Zurkhaneh and ancient sports have a great impact on the formation of heroic identity and the way to perform the sport movements with the special instruments of Zurkhaneh, which is accompanied by epic and religious poems. In fact, Zurkhaneh instruments, the type of poems that are recited and the existence of epic and religious patterns complement each other. This process increases the effect of Zurkhaneh on the formation of athletic and heroic identity among sportsmen. As such, it will be suggested that Zurkhareh offers an ethical ideal from which globalized Western sport can learn. (shrink)

Two Reasons to Study Ancient Greek Philosophy Ancient Greek philosophy began with Thales, who correctly predicted an eclipse that occurred in 585 BCE, and culminated in the monumental works of Aristotle, who died in 322.1 (Unless otherwise noted, all dates in this book are BCE.) The simple fact that these thinkers lived over 2,000 years ago should provoke a question: in the age of the microchip and the engineered gene, why bother with them? One good answer immediately springs (...) to mind: to become educated. The Greeks were the intellectual ancestors of western culture. They laid the foundations for all future developments in the natural sciences, medicine, mathematics, history, architecture, sculpture, tragic and comic drama, lyric and epic poetry, as well as philosophy. To the extent that one must know one's heritage in order to know oneself, it is imperative to study the ancient Greeks. (shrink)

An incisive exploration of the way Greek myths empower us to defeat tyranny. As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, tales told in ancient Greek epics and tragedies provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not exist until the Greeks coined the term and tried the experiment, but the idea can be traced to stories that the ancient Greeks told and retold. From the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE, Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies exposed the (...) tyrannical potential of individuals and groups large and small. These stories identified abuses of power as self-defeating. They initiated and fostered a movement away from despotism and toward broader forms of political participation. Following her highly praised book Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, the classicist Emily Katz Anhalt retells tales from key ancient Greek texts and proceeds to interpret the important message they hold for us today. As she reveals, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus's Oresteia, and Sophocles's Antigone encourage us—as they encouraged the ancient Greeks—to take responsibility for our own choices and their consequences. These stories emphasize the responsibilities that come with power (any power, whether derived from birth, wealth, personal talents, or numerical advantage), reminding us that the powerful and the powerless alike have obligations to each other. They assist us in restraining destructive passions and balancing tribal allegiances with civic responsibilities. They empower us to resist the tyrannical impulses not only of others but also in ourselves. In an era of political polarization, Embattled demonstrates that if we seek to eradicate tyranny in all its toxic forms, ancient Greek epics and tragedies can point the way. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Besila is a paradisical setting in the Kushnameh, an early twelfth-century Persian epic that combines the ancient Iranian messianic legend of Kangdez with more recent geographical knowledge, based on travelers' reports, of China and Korea. Besila’s messianic role in the narrative, its antipodal location, and its quasi-fictional status are quintessentially utopian, and yet little is revealed about the society of Besila. The Kushnameh instead emphasizes the means by which paradises are formed, including the rational origins of Besila’s monotheistic (...) creed, organic growth, translatio imperii, travel, and geographical knowledge. The Kushnameh’s vision of universal monotheism anticipates the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a later utopia with important connections to the development of Islamic political theory. The case of Besila thus suggests that the early modern genre of utopia has deep roots in the medieval discourse of travel and travelers. (shrink)

The detrimental effect of the public recital on the quality of epic production in the first century is a stock theme both in ancient and in modern literary criticism. While previous studies on the epic recital emphasize its negative effects, or aim at its reconstruction as social reality, I focus on its conflicting representations by the ancients themselves and the lessons that we can learn from them. The voices of critics and defenders reveal anxieties about who controls (...) the prestigious high genre of epic and about the construction of gender and social status through epic's public performance. Critics of the recitatio such as Horace, Persius, Petronius and Juvenal represent it as an informal and popular event that panders to public taste and incurs infamy. These critics charge that the epic recital has an effeminizing effect both on the recitator and on his audience, a charge traditionally advanced against orators and actors. Because the epic recital in Rome lacks a performative context similar to the rhapsodic performances in Greece, its public image mirrors that of other public performances . The main point of divergence is the presence of the book, the symbol of permanent fame, which casts upon the recital the shadow of an evanescent entertainment. Defenders see the recital as instrumental to the maintenance of literature's value in society. This means that well into the first century there were those who felt nostalgia for the epic recital as a bulwark of male aristocratic values and who wanted to reclaim its prestige. Both Statius as a poet, who performed regularly at Domitian's court, and Suetonius, who acted as Hadrian's ab epistulis some twenty years after Statius' death, defend the waning reputation of the contemporary epic recital in an effort to reclaim it as a prestigious component of imperial literary culture. While critics unanimously negate the recital's role in the achievement of poetic fame in favor of the book, Suetonius chooses anecdotal evidence about the early performances by grammarians grammarians that show the important role of the recital in forging poetic fame. The emperor and the members of the new aristocracy whom Statius explicitly names as the target audience of his epic recitals have a stake in reclaiming for imperial culture an institution that went back to the second century B.C.E. and carried the prestige of an aristocratic event. (shrink)