Philo waxes Virgillian in his celebration of Augustus’ victory at Actium (31 B.C.): “European and Asian nations from the ends of the earth had risen up and were engaged in grim warfare, fighting with armies and fleets on every land and sea, so that almost the whole human race would have . . . . Continue Reading »
Rousseau ( Emile: Or, On Education , 322-3 ) exults in “what the ancients accomplished with eloquence,” but notes that for them eloquence “did not consist solely in fine, well-ordered speeches.” Rather, “what was said most vividly was expressed not by words but by . . . . Continue Reading »
“Despite the contemporary belief that ‘the normal sacrificial cult is a cult without revelation or epiphany,’” writes Kimberley Patton in her Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity , “primary evidence suggests that the Greeks believed that the gods both . . . . Continue Reading »
In their classic study of The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks (13), Detienne and Vernant describe how the distribution of meat from a sacrificed animal traces the boundaries and ranks of a social order: “The commensal meal begins with division. Two systems seem to compete, both in the . . . . Continue Reading »
When an Athenian father introduced his child to the phratry, the child had to go through a purification rite. In various occasions, places also had to be purified. Robert Parker describes the purification rites ( On Greek Religion (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology) , 158-9): . . . . Continue Reading »
David C. Young points out in his A Brief History of the Olympic Games that “The term Olympic Games is . . . a bad mistranslation of Greek Olympiakoi agones .” The problem is that agones gets converted into ludus , ludi , ludicrum , ie, diversions and games. “The Romans did not . . . . Continue Reading »
JW Hewitt calls the prayer of Cyrus recorded at the end of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia “the loftiest and purest thanksgiving I have found anywhere in Greek literature.” Curious that it is put into the mouth of a Persian. The prayer reads (in Walter Miller’s translation): “O . . . . Continue Reading »
Bonnie MacLachlan ends her fascinating The Age of Grace (p. 147) by suggesting that the starting point for the Greek idea of charis is that it is a “social pleasure.” In some of the poetry she examines, though, “the accent was placed on the element of reciprocity, on the . . . . Continue Reading »
Bonnie MacLachlan considers archaic Greece the The Age of Grace . Charis was everywhere: It “flickered when beautiful women sparkled; soldiers brought charis to their commanders when they fought well; charis graced appropriate behavior and speech and was a distinguishing mark of nobility; it . . . . Continue Reading »
At the end of a highly technical 1966 article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies , JH Quincey contrasts Greek expressions of thanks to modern English expressions: “The Greeks’ habit in accepting an offer, service, etc. was to confer praise and not thanks. The difference between their . . . . Continue Reading »
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