Archive

The Rhythm of Greek Oral Poetry: Prosody, Accentual Groups and Metrical Anomalies

In October 2018, I applied to Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies (henceforth CHS) with the project “The Rhythm of Greek Oral Poetry: Prosody, Accentual Groups and Metrical Anomalies”. The aim of this project was a study on rhythm through an application of linguistic theory on phonetics and phonology to Ancient Greek oral poetry, exploring the concept of prosodic word, namely on the basis of accentual groups and metrical anomalies,… Read more

The End of the Histories: Land, Wealth, and Empire in Herodotus

The monograph interrogates the close of the first historical work, Herodotus’ Histories, as an entrée to key refrains in the work as a whole, including migration, wealth, and empire. K. Scarlett Kingsley (Agnes Scott College) and Tim Rood (Oxford) approach this passage ‘in the round’, examining its immediate context at the end of the Greco-Persian Wars and the beginning of Athenian imperial dominance; its interrelations with episodes stretching back to… Read more

Xenophon on Liberality and Freedom: Ancient Aristocratic Values and Contemporary Inequalities

Xenophon’s use of slavery as an analogy for political unfreedom permeates his writings, including those revered by the country’s Founding Fathers, the Cyropaedia and the Memorabilia. Xenophon identifies the virtuous leading citizen and ruler through the absence of qualities described as andrapodes (‘of a man-footed beast’, perhaps ancient Greek’s most dehumanising term for the enslaved) and aneleutheron (‘unfree’). The restatement of the link between freedom and unfreedom as character traits… Read more

Portraits of a Pharaoh: The Sesostris Tradition in Ancient Literature and Culture

When Greeks and Romans thought about Pharaonic Egypt, they would have named Sesostris as the land’s most iconic ruler. From his first appearance in Herodotus’ Histories to his afterlife in Byzantine historians, the Sesostris character played the roles of world-conqueror and Egyptian culture hero in Greek and Roman texts. Yet, while the Sesostris character was a creation of legend, he was based on three pharaohs of the Egyptian 12th Dynasty… Read more