Those who are here at the Center know that I have been puzzling over Theocritus’ Idyll 15, the Women at the Adonis-festival, since the fall, and in an earlier blog I announced that I would post some thoughts about it… So here we are. Idyll 15 contains a brief ekphrasis… Read more
I’m happy to announce a talk I will be giving at Catholic here in DC next Wednesday. Here is the poster. CUA talk POSTER The point of departure of the talk is the following observation: in many ancient descriptions of spectacles the focus is very much on the… Read more
In a recent article on artists' signatures in antiquity, Osborne has argued that such signatures reveal the socially embedded nature of pots, sculpture, gems etc., a collaboration between artist, object and end-user. As Osborne states, "What they all [plastic arts and literature] share is the sense that there is an 'author,' that the identity of the creator of these works is something worth knowing—and worth knowing because these are works… Read more
Perhaps I’m simply becoming provocative for the sake of provoking; or maybe I’m losing my mind; but in the process of writing this book on mathematical Pythagoreanism and its supposed progenitor Hippasus of Metapontum (fl. early-mid 5th Century BCE), I am beginning to see mathematical Pythagoreanism everywhere. And I mean… Read more
We all know that Typical Euripides likes gods at the end of his plays and he likes etiology. But that guy, Typical Euripides, doesn't really exist and too often obscures the real playwright underneath. Such is the case for the end of that other Hippolytus play, Euripides' Hippolytus Veiled. Read more
