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Category Archive: Classics

Gratitude in ancient thought - October 22, 2007
Griffin begins her essay: "The exchange of beneficia - gifts and services - was an important feature of Greek and Roman society at all periods. Its prominence was reflected in the number of philosophical works that analyzed the phenomenon. From...

Tears of things - November 13, 2006
And/Or: Virgil is aware that the furor of civil war can be curbed only by an opposing, and more intense, furor. That, as Milbank says, is the way of paganism - peace established only by superior violence against violence. But...

Sentimental cruelty - November 13, 2006
Virgil is not a critic of empire, but he's not quite an unqualified celebrant either. He knows the costs, and mourns them. But neither he nor his hero wishes the conquests away. Sunt lacrimae rerum, indeed, but neither the tears...

Honor skeptics - August 28, 2006
In his recent book on the cultural history of honor, James Bowman notes that "both Greeks and Romans had a history of skepticism about honor that ran in parallel with the mainstream culture's celebration of it. Plato anticipated a particular...

Boyish Greeks - August 22, 2006
Stephen McKnight points out in his recent The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon's Thought (University of Missouri, 2006) that Bacon dismissed classical Greek thought in favor of a knowledge both more ancient and more recent: "Bacon introduces another memorable image...

Plato's forms - August 16, 2006
In his "Hortatory Address," Justin claims that Plato's theory of forms came from a misreading of the tabernacle texts of Exodus: "And Plato, too, when he says that form is the third original principle next to God and matter, has...

Types and Shadows - August 16, 2006
As Hugo Rahner made clear in his classic study of the patristic uses of Greek myth, the church fathers saw Christ anticipated not only in the OT but in ancient literature and philosophy generally. Some examples: In Plato's Republic (2,...

MacIntyre on Heroic virtue - August 16, 2006
In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre provides a neat discussion of the virtue and selfhood in Greek antiquity. The unity of ARETE, virtue, "resides . . . in the concept of that which enables a man to discharge his role," and...

Life of Heraclitus - August 16, 2006
Some selections from Diogenes Laertius' "Life of Heraclitus, from his "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers: "He was above all men of a lofty and arrogant spirit, as is plain from his writings, in which he says, 'Abundant learning does...

Homer and Enuma Elish - July 08, 2006
Walter Burkert has spent a good bit of his life tracing Greek art, mythology, language, and social practices to ANE origins. In his 2004 Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis he analyzes the passage from the Iliad where Hera deceptively tells Zeus she...

Roman Mimesis - July 04, 2006
In a recent book on Roman images, Tonio Holscher notes that Roman artists borrowed from every phase of Greek art because all phases of Greek art were available simultaneously. According to the TLS reviewer of his book (May 12), "In...

Imperial Odysseus - June 24, 2006
In a rapid survey (TLS May 26) of the cultural uses of the Odysseus-Cyclops encounter that ranges from Kant's "Cyclopean thinking" to Charles Lamb's version of the Odyssey to Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, and the X-Men Edith Hall includes...

Oresteia in Modern World - June 24, 2006
In his autobiography, Wagner describes the effect of Aeschylus' Oresteia on his sensibilities and work: "I could see the Oresteia with my mind's eye, as though it were actually being performed; and its effect on me was indescribable. Nothing could...

On Seneca, de Beneficiis, Books 1-2 - March 23, 2006
Seneca suggests that ingratitude is the worst of vices, and nothing is more "harmful to society" than ingratitude (I.1). Later in Book I, he lists a series of moral ills that plague society – "homicides, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious,...

What Plato Owed Athens - March 20, 2006
Socrates' explanation of his willingness to submit to the laws of Athens, from the Crito. Since he owes the city his very existence, he has no right to renounce the laws when they turn against him: Soc. "And was that...

Persians and ingratitude - March 20, 2006
Xenophon describes the Persian training of boys in the Cyropaedia (1.2.6-7), highlighting the effects of ingratitude: "The boys go to school and give their time to learning justice and righteousness: they will tell you they come for that purpose, and...

Aristotelian gratitude - March 20, 2006
Some excerpts from Aristotle's discussion relevant to gratitude in Nicomachian Ethics. First, a treatment of the reasons for making return on a benefit received (from 9.1): "But who is to fix the worth of the service; he who makes the...

Ocularity and the ancients - March 05, 2006
A TLS reviewer examines what sounds like a fascinating book on Plato and Aristotle's appropriation of "theoria" (originally referring to spectators who watch the Olympics and other festivals in a kind of "sacralized spectating"). Along the way, the reviewer comments...

Odysseus' return to himself - September 13, 2005
Charles Segal argues in his Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey that Odysseus' return to Ithaca is a return to himself. This works in several dimensions. Through the second half of the epic, various characters reconstruct the story of...

Contradictions of heroism - September 08, 2005
In an essay on manhood and heroism in Homer, Michael Clarke describes Achilles' towering rage as he returns to the field to avenge Patroclus, and asks: "is Achilles' heroic excellence fulfilled or undone by his wildness as he moves towards...

Odyssey as Wisdom Literature - September 08, 2005
Proclussaid of the Odyssey, "Many are the wanderings and circlings of the soul: one among imaginings, one in opinions and one before these in understanding. But only the life according to NOUS has stability and this is the mystical harbor...

Fundamentalist Athens - September 05, 2005
There are still, surprisingly, some classical scholars who minimize the influence of religion on Athenian democracy. Hugh Bowden's recent Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle is a direct assault on this secular vision. As summarized by Joy Connolly in the...

Poets and Philosophers - April 24, 2005
Luc Brisson's 2004 book, How Philosophers Saved Myths examines how both classical and Christian writers in antiquity employed allegorical interpretation to find meaning in ancient mythology. His opening pages offer a neat summary of the transition from poetry/myth-making to philosophy...

Coetzee on the Classics - May 25, 2004
J. M. Coetzee, the South African novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature last year, offers an intriguing exchange concerning the classics and faith in his novel, Elizabeth Costello (I can't read that without thinking "Elvis.") Costello is a...

What We Learn from the Ancient Gods - April 13, 2004
Mary Lefkowitz's Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths was published last year, and has been a recent selection for the Conservative Book Club. Lefkowitz argues that though we no longer share ancient theology, we "still have...

Moral Luck and the Fragility of the Good Life - February 11, 2004
In Nussbaum's treatment, "tragic" and "Aristotelian" conceptions of moral luck and the fragility of the good life are at one. In excluding poets, Plato not only kept certain forms of literature at bay, but was protecting against the tragic potential...

"Nomos" in Greek Culture - February 11, 2004
There is further evidence concerning the meaning of nomos in Greek culture, coming from Martha Nussbaum's Fragility of Goodness. In a discussion of Euripides's Hecuba, Nussbaum points out that Polyxena, Hecuba's daughter who is offered as a human sacrifice by...

Guest Friendship in Greek Culture - February 10, 2004
A student of mine, Erin Linton, is working on the rituals and theory of guest friendship in Greek culture, particularly in the Homeric epics. She has pointed to the inclusio within the Iliad, which begins with a duel between Menelaus...

Cahill on Euripedes - January 28, 2004
In his beautifully written tribute to the ancient Greeks. Thomas Cahill interprets Euripides' Medea as a cautionary tale to aristocratic Athenian men. The question he poses to the audience is: "What could drive a woman to such extremes that she...

More Thoughts from Segal - January 14, 2004
Some more thoughts from Segal's book: 1) He points out the optimism that gripped Athens in the Periclean period, an optimism about the ability of human LOGOS and NOMOS to stave off the savage potential of man's PHUSIS. But that...

civilization in Sophocles - January 14, 2004
In his study of Sophocles, Tragedy and Civilization, Charles Segal points to several Greek terms that might be translated as "civilization" and that capture various aspects of civilized life: NOMOS = the established institutions, customs, and norms of a people...

Another Insight from Sourvinou-Inwood - January 05, 2004
Another insight from Sourvinou-Inwood: After offering a reconstruction of the development of tragedy from the hymns of the TRAGODOI through "prototragedy" (which introduced mimetic elements), she gives a brief review of the development of comedy. At the end, she contrasts...

Athenian Tragedy - January 05, 2004
Discussing the religious origins of Athenian tragedy in her recent Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood first examines the early forms of the festival of the City Dionysia. She points out that "tragedy" comes from tragos, a male goat, and...

Nature and Culture - December 03, 2003
I believe that some time ago I made the connection between Derrida's "supplement at the origin," tragedy, and conceptions of the relation of nature and culture. In some systems of thought, culture is a "supplement" to nature and participates in...

Atargatis's Rites - November 12, 2003
Thousands of years before David Blane, there was this, reported in a text called "On the Syrian God" purportedly by Lucian, which describes the orgiastic rites of the goddess Atargatis: "Two [phalli] at the entrance of the sanctuary, 1,800-foot-high monsters....

The Lost City - October 06, 2003
During a literature exam today, one of my students exclaimed (in some frustration) that the Greeks never got over the Trojan War. That's exactly right. Homer wrote about it, some time after the event. Centuries later, tragedians like Aeschylus (Oresteian...

Polupragmosune - October 02, 2003
Every great civilization has some equivalent of what the fifth-century (BC) Athenians called polupragmosune. As defined by William Arrowsmith, that word "connotes energy, enterprise, daring, ingenuity, originality, and curiosity; negatively it means restless instability, discontent with one's lot, persistent and...

Virgil on Roman Empire - September 30, 2003
Virgil seems nearly to have come to the Augustinian insight that the Roman empire is nothing more than civil war writ large. Aeneas, the "pius" hero, has to combat "furor," which is passion, anger, rage, everything that causes disorder in...

Euripides' Gods - September 26, 2003
The gods in Euripides are savage, unpredictable, random, liable to sneak up and destroy you at a moment's notice. No wonder that Paul's announcement that Jesus had defeated the principalities and powers came as such great good news....

Imperium Sine Fine? - September 23, 2003
Virgil calls Rome an imperium sine fine. Can he be serious? Every other city that appears in the epic �ETroy, Carthage, Latium �Eis doomed. How can Rome escape? How has the world changed to make a permanent city possible? Perhaps...

The Tragic Ancient World - September 23, 2003
The whole ancient world is tragic because the only way to bring happiness and peace is through imposition of power. Aeneas is the hero of pietas, which includes the meaning of pity; he conquers with tears in his eyes because...

Aeschylus - September 19, 2003
After reading through a stack of papers on Aeschylus's Oresteian trilogy, a few thoughts have occurred to me, mainly having to do with my unbegun and doubtless forever unfinished work on the atonement, sacrifice, and so on. Essentially, these thoughts...

Yeats on the Classical World - September 17, 2003
Yeats said that the classical world was fundamentally tragic, with the Oedipus myth as the founding myth �Ethe man kills his father and marries his mother. Yeats would have been better off pointing to the myth of Zeus, for that...

Prometheus Bound - September 17, 2003
Looking at Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound for an article, I came across this statement: Speaking of the senselessness of men before Prometheus gave them sense, he describes men as "seeing, they saw amiss, and hearing heard not." The similarity to Jesus'...

Odysseus Today - September 03, 2003
In a post-war world, you need stealth, finesse, cunning. You need, in short, Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, who is the perfect post-war hero. Odysseus would be great in Special Forces....

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