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Article

Nausicaa  

Herbert Jennings Rose and Jenny March

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Nausicaa, in Homer'sOdyssey the young daughter of *Alcinous (1), king of the Phaeacians (see scheria), and Arete. In book 6, moved by *Athena in a dream, she goes to the river-mouth to do the family washing, and is playing ball with her maids when the shipwrecked *Odysseus comes out of hiding and begs her help. He is almost naked, and the maids run away in fear; but Nausicaa, given courage by Athena, stands her ground and promises him her help. She gives him food, drink, and clothing, shows him the way to the city, and advises him on how to behave to her parents. She admits to herself that she would like to marry him, and Alcinous is ready to agree to this (7.311 ff.), but Odysseus is eager to return home to *Penelope. He bids farewell to Nausicaa, assuring her that he owes her his life and will remember her always (8.457–468). According to a later story, she married *Telemachus (Hellanicus, FGrH 4 F 156).

Article

Aristarchus (2) of Samothrace, librarian of Alexandria (1), c. 216–144 BCE  

Francesca Schironi

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
Aristarchus of Samothrace is the most important Hellenistic philologist. He was head librarian of Alexandria, and produced editions of many Greek authors. Among his most important achievments (the one we have most information) is his edition with commentary of Homer, which had a great impact on the history of the Homeric text.Aristarchus (c. 216–144bce) was born in Samothrace but spent most of his life in Alexandria, where he was a pupil of Aristophanes of Byzantium. Ptolemy VI Philometor (king from 180 to 145bce) appointed him as a tutor to his sons (Sudaα 3892 and POxy. 1241, a papyrus dating to the 2nd centuryce), probably around 155bce. At Alexandria royal tutors often were also the head librarians in the Royal Library. Aristarchus occupied this role as a successor of other important scholars (Zenodotus, Apollonius Rhodius, Eratosthenes, and his own teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium) in the first half of the 2nd century .

Article

the self in Greek literature  

Christopher Gill

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 March 2017
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Philosophy
The notion of “self” is a non-technical one, bridging the areas of psychology and ethics or social relations. Criteria for selfhood include psychological unity or cohesion, agency, responsibility, self-consciousness, reflexivity, and capacity for relationships with others. “Self” is a modern concept with no obvious lexical equivalent in Greek (or Latin); the question therefore arises of the relationship between the modern concept and ancient thinking, as embodied in Greek literature. Three approaches to this question can be identified. One focuses on the idea that there is development within Greek literature towards an understanding of the self or person as a cohesive unit and bearer of agency and responsibility. Another approach sees certain aspects of Greek literature and philosophy as prefiguring some features of the modern concept of self. A third approach underlines the difference between the Greek and modern thought worlds in the formulation of concepts in this area, while also suggesting that Greek ideas and modes of presenting people can be illuminating to moderns, in part because of the challenge posed by their difference. These approaches draw on a range of evidence, including psychological vocabulary, characterization in Greek literature, and Greek philosophical analyses of ethical psychology. There are grounds for maintaining the credibility of all three approaches, and also valid criticisms that can be made of each of them.

Article

Batrachomyomachia  

A. Sens

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
The Batrachomyomachia (BM), the “Battle of Frogs and Mice,” is a mock epic poem of slightly more than 300 dactylic hexameter verses, broadly imitating the language and style of Homer. The poem was widely read as a school text in the Byzantine period. As transmitted in the manuscripts, it contains a number of interpolated verses, and the generally problematic character of the textual tradition complicates the assessment of a number of passages. The work has been variously dated, but it is more likely to be the work of the late Hellenistic period than of the early Classical age, since it contains what appear to be allusions to Moschus’s Europa and Callimachus’s Aetia, and its language shows the influence of Latin. References to the poem in the preface to the Silvae of Statius (1 pr.) and in an epigram of Martial (14.183) provide a terminus ante quem in the last decades of the 1st century ce.

Article

careers, poetic, Latin  

Joseph Farrell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
28 June 2017
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
The idea that a writer’s works form the record of a clearly defined career is a familiar but relatively understudied aspect of ancient literary history. In Greek literature, relevant motifs appear already in Homer (in the Iliad, Achilles’ self-referential singing of klea andron (9.189) in combination with Telemachus’s defense of Phemius’s novel, post-Iliadic theme in the Odyssey (1.345–352), and Hesiod (initiated by the Muses at Theogony 22–34 and at Works and Days 650–662 previously victorious—with Theogony?—in a singing contest at the funeral games of Amphidamas). But thinkers of the archaic and classical periods generally considered a poet’s work in a single genre as an expression of his immanent character, and not as the result of a career choice. Beginning with Thucydides and Xenophon, however, retired military men and politicians establish a normative career pattern in the genre of history. But in the Hellenistic period, as poets cultivate expertise in many genres (polyeideia), the career motif begins to come in to view.

Article

thymos  

Douglas Cairns

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 March 2019
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Philosophy
Thymos (or thumos), cognate with Indo-European words meaning “smoke,” is one of a number of terms in Greek which associate psychological activity with air and breath. In the Homeric poems, thymos is one of a family of terms associated with internal psychological process of thought, emotion, volition, and motivation. Though the range of the term’s applications in Homer is wide, that in itself gives us a sense of the unity of cognitive, affective, and desiderative processes in Homeric psychology. No post-Homeric author can rival that range, but something of the richness of the Homeric conception of thymos as an interrelated set of motivations re-emerges in Plato’s conception of the tripartite soul in the Republic and the Phaedrus. Plato’s thymos represents a pared-down model of human agency typified by one central desire or aim in life but also exhibiting whatever further capacities of persons are necessary to enable it to pursue that aim in interaction with the other elements of the personality. As in Homer, the metaphorical agency of Plato’s thymos does not detract from the notion of the individual as the real centre of agency.

Article

Triphiodorus, of Panopolis  

Laura Miguélez-Cavero

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
Triphiodorus, who originated from Egypt and lived in the 3rd century ce, was an epic poet and teacher of grammar whose only extant work is The Sack of Troy (691 lines, narrating the final events of the Trojan War).Triphiodorus means “gift of Triphis,” a local deity of Panopolis (modern Akhmim) in Upper Egypt, and was a common name in Panopolis itself and all over Upper Egypt. This and the entry of the Suda (T 1111), calling him an Egyptian, have led to the conclusion that he originated from the area of Panopolis. The Suda actually includes two entries under the same name, the first (T 1111) calling him a poet and grammarian (γραμματικὸς καὶ ποιητὴς ἐπῶν) and attributing to him Marathoniaca (Μαραθωνιακά, on the battle of Marathon, or more likely on Theseus and the Marathonian bull, as in Callimachus’ Hecale), The Sack of Troy.

Article

epic  

Philip Hardie

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Latin Literature

At the summit of the ancient hierarchy of genres, epic narrates in hexameter verse the deeds of gods, heroes, and men The authority of Homer, the name given to the composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey, ensures that the forms and conventions of the Homeric poems are determinative for the whole of the Greco-Roman tradition of epic. From an early date, the production and reading of epic poems was accompanied by intensive scholarly and critical activity. Over the centuries, numerous epics were written on both legendary and historical subjects, as the genre responded to changing aesthetic and ideological conditions. In Rome, Virgil’s Aeneid successfully established for itself an authority comparable to that of the Homeric poems, and all later Latin epics place themselves within a Virgilian tradition. Epic in Greek and Latin continues to flourish in late antiquity, when Christian writers appropriate its forms to propagate their own messages and praise their own heroes.

Article

centaurs  

Alan H. Griffiths, Christopher Burden-Strevens, and Aedan Weston

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
  2. Roman Myth and Religion
In Classical mythology, centaurs were half-man, half-equine beasts whose representation in art and literature changed significantly throughout antiquity.Centaurs (Κένταυροι; for the etymology, and their ancestry, see Ixion), a tribe of “beasts” (φῆρες, Aeol. for θῆρες, Il. 1.268, 2.743), human above and horse below, the wild and dangerous counterpart of the more skittish satyrs, who are constructed of the same components but conceived of as amusing rather than threatening creatures. In both cases it is the very closeness of the horse to humanity that points up the need to remember that a firm line between nature and culture must be drawn. Pirithous, the king of the Lapiths, a Thessalian clan, paid for his failure to absorb this lesson when he invited the Centaurs to his wedding-feast: the party broke up in violence once the guests had tasted wine, that quintessential product of human culture (Pind., fr. 166 Snell–Maehler), and made a drunken assault on the bride (see the west pediment of the temple of Zeus at .

Article

Erichthonius (2), mythical Trojan king  

Adam Rappold

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
28 March 2018
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Greek Myth and Religion
A mythic king of the Trojans, son of Dardanus and Batea, and father of Troos. Little is known about the Trojan Erichthonius, apart from what is related in Homer—he was the grandson of Zeus, son of Dardanus and the father of Troos, the progenitor of the Trojans (Iliad20.215-234).1Later elaborations add that his wife is named either Callirrhoe (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.62.2) Astyoche, and that his siblings alternatively include Ilus (Apollod. 3.12.2) or Zacynthus (Dionys. Ant. Rom. 1.50.3), along with a sister named Idaea (Diod. Sic. 4.43).Fabulously wealthy, he had a beautiful herd of horses with which Boreas mated, producing a line of supernatural horses that could run on the water (Iliad20.215-234, possibly Hesiod, fr. 177, lin. 14 =P. Oxy. 1359 fr. 2, ed. Grenfell–Hun, Oppian Cynegetica 1.225)—and are probably a mythic variant for the supernatural horses that Troos receives from Zeus in exchange for Ganymedes (Apollod.

Article

Arcado-Cypriot dialect  

Albio Cesare Cassio

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
17 December 2020
Subjects:
  1. Linguistics
In spite of being spoken in areas so far away from each other, Arcadian (written in the Greek alphabet) and Cypriot (written in a special syllabary) were two closely related ancient Greek dialects, hence the modern appellation “Arcado-Cypriot.” They descended directly from Mycenaean, some archaic vocabulary is unique to Homer, Mycenaean, and Arcado-Cypriot, and various other features set them apart from all the other Greek dialects.Arcado-Cypriot is a modern name used for two ancient Greek dialects, Arcadian and Cypriot, which share in a number of peculiarities—both archaisms and innovations, the latter being of central importance for the reconstruction of an earlier Arcado-Cypriot unity (which was not recognised in antiquity). Obviously, beside numerous similarities, there are remarkable differences between Arcadian and Cypriot.It is likely that both dialects, neither of which seems to have given rise to literary texts, descend directly from Mycenaean, hence the frequently used label of “Achaean” dialects. In archaic and classical times Arcadian was spoken by a population inhabiting central .

Article

poetic unity, Greek  

Richard Hunter

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
05 April 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Philosophy
Greek discussion of unified organic form, as both a biological principle and a literary virtue, has been very influential in Western criticism. What survives before late antiquity of that Greek tradition as applied to literature is, however, relatively sparse; crucial above all are the Homeric poems and ancient discussion of them, together with some passages of Plato and Aristotle. The fact that the bulk of later surviving criticism derives from rhetorical teaching, heavily indebted to the Isocratean tradition, means that much greater prominence is given to the closely related ideas of variety (poikilia) and the avoidance of monotony over the course of a long work, and to the arrangement and ordering (taxis) of narrative than to “unity”; there is no standard term for “unity” in Greek criticism.Homer announces the subject of the Iliad as the wrath of Achilles, which wrought terrible destruction upon the Greeks, but, however dominant the story of the wrath and its consequences, the scope of the poem is clearly not limited to that subject. Reflection upon the Iliad stands at the beginning and the heart of ancient discussion of unity, and it is the Iliad that shows why “unity” and “variety” are entirely compatible in ancient criticism.

Article

Achilles  

Jonathan S. Burgess

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Greek Myth and Religion

Achilles is the grandson of Aeacus of Aigina and son of Peleus and the Nerei.d Thetis. He rules the Myrmidons of Phthia in southern Thessaly and is generally considered the best (aristos) of the Greeks in the Trojan War. In Homer’s Iliad he is said to have led fifty ships to Troy (2.681–685). The Iliad’s plot turns on his withdrawal from battle in anger at the Greek commander Agamemnon and his return to take vengeance on Hector for killing his close friend Patroclus. Many episodes in the life of Achilles, including his early life and death at Troy, were popular in Greek and Roman literature and iconography. Summaries of mythological events found in the life of Achilles can be found in the Epitome of Apollodorus and the Fabulae of Hyginus (1st century bce to 1st century ce). Reception of myths about Achilles has continued in post-antiquity.

Article

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Greek epic poet, 2nd/3rd century CE  

Silvio Bär

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
Quintus Smyrnaeus was a poet of the late 2nd or 3rd century ce, the author of the epic poem the Posthomerica (14 books, 8,786 lines), which covers the narrative lacuna between Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey and thus treats stories that were originally covered by the Epic Cycle. The narrative technique is more episodic and linear than that of the Homeric epics, but it does not lack plot coherence and an overarching design. The language and style is strongly Homericising: vocabulary, syntax, and the use of formulaic phrases resemble that of the Homeric epics to a large degree. At the same time, Quintus’s language is also characterised by Alexandrian traits. In a wider cultural context, Quintus belongs to the same period as the Second Sophistic, and the Posthomerica can be understood as a response to revisionist tendencies against Homer. Scholars debate the question as to whether Quintus still had access to the Epic Cycle and whether he was influenced by Roman authors, especially by Vergil’s Aeneid.

Article

Ilion  

Charles Brian Rose

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
24 February 2022
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture: Bronze Age
  2. Greek Material Culture
The name of Ilion is generally applied to the site of Troy to designate the settlement in existence there following the end of the Bronze Age. After the destruction of Troy (VIIb2) in the mid-11th century bce, probably by an earthquake, a few of the buildings were repaired but the town was not systematically rebuilt as in earlier periods. Some of the Protogeometric pottery uncovered at the site is paralleled in mainland Greece, especially in and around Euboea, Phocis, and Macedonia, so Ilion was clearly still part of an Aegean trade network at this time.1The fortunes of the city began to rise again during the late 9th and early 8th centuries bce, when there was new construction in the West Sanctuary, a complex on the southwest side of the citadel mound. One of the ruined Late Bronze Age structures in the sanctuary was rebuilt with benches inside and out, as well as a stone base that may have supported a cult image (Figures 1 and 2).

Article

Ilias Latina  

Steven J. Green

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
The Ilias Latina is a short poem composed in Latin hexameter that retells Homer’s Iliad. It is generally attributed to Baebius Italicus and dated to c. 54–65 ce. The analysis of the poem reveals how the Homeric Iliadic material has been reimagined to fit Roman, post-Virgilian and Neronian sensibilities, and to showcase the human emotions underlying the Trojan War.The Ilias Latina is a poem composed in Latin hexameter that retells Homer’s Iliad in 1,070 verses. Most commonly referred to as Ilias Latina [Latin Iliad], a title coined by Emil Baehrens in his 1881 edition, the manuscripts refer to the poem variously as Epitome Iliados Homeri [Epitome of the Iliad of Homer], Liber Homeri [Book of Homer], or Homerus (de bello Troiano) [Homer (concerning the Trojan war)]. It is popularly attributed to Baebius Italicus, following the manuscript Vindobonensis Latinus 3509 [Bebii Italici] and taking note of an apparent acrostic created (with small emendation) from the first letter of the opening and closing eight verses of the poem: .

Article

Epic Cycle  

Jonathan Burgess

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
Epic Cycle refers to an ancient gathering of thematically linked epics of the Archaic Age on the origins of the gods, the Theban Wars, and the Trojan War. The poems are lost, with few fragments remaining; testimony for their contents and authors. The 9th-century ce Photius provides a general overview. Summaries of the Trojan War epics by Proclus, a 5th-century ce scholar (the date is disputed in modern scholarship), have survived in the manuscript tradition of the Iliad. The contents of the epics were popular throughout Greco-Roman antiquity.Epic Cycle (ἐπικὸς κύκλος) is the term given to a gathering of originally independent epics of the Archaic Age. The poems are mostly lost: less than a hundred and fifty lines of verse survive. Our primary source of information is a concise summary by Proclus of the Trojan war section of the Cycle, preserved in the famous 10th-centuryce manuscript of the .