Weekday Greek

hAp 300-352. Near the temple at Delphi is a spring, where Apollo killed the dragon. This dragon once nursed Typhaon, whom Hera bore in anger against Zeus because he gave birth to Athena. Hera said, angry, to the assembled gods that Zeus was dishonoring her and so she would bear a child without him. She leaves, hits the earth, and asks earth, sky, and the Titans to give her a son stronger than Zeus. She waits for a year in her temple and gives birth to Typhaon. 1) generally this inset story of Typhaon is just weird. It doesn't really have anything to do with Apollo, and nothing really comes of it: Typhaon is given to the serpent to raise, and that's the end of him in the hymn. Pretty anticlimactic. One can make an argument that it furthers some themes of the hymn (lots of female speech, angry Hera opposes our heroes), but even so it's weird. 2) It is pretty Hesiodic -- gaia gives birth to monsters, sons are greater than their fathers (very explicit at 339 ἀλλ' ὅ γε φέρτε...

Callinus fr. 1. The speaker urges his addressee, young men, to fight. Why do they sit relaxed, when battle consumes the whole earth? It is a honorable thing to fight for land and family, and death comes whenever the Fates spin it. The shirker is not loved by his people, while the great fighter is honored. 1) Much of the language of this poem, down to the formulas and placement in the line, is the same as Homer. But rather than dependence on Homer, seems to me that it's the reverse; Homer's usage of this material seems (to me) to play on a tradition of martial exhortation. 2) Hard for me to see this as a genuine exhortation -- too long, insufficiently pointed. I like the suggestion of a sympotic context, where the neoi can consider at leisure the merits of fighting 3) There's a movement over the poem from something more interactive to something more sententious. The first few couplets are questions to the audience, with enjambment across the couplets; but the last few couple...

hAp 254-299. Apollo begins laying his foundations at Telphousa, who grows angry and speaks: she warns that there will be a lot of noise of horses and chariots, and suggests that he build instead at Krisa under Parnassus. Apollo goes there and repeats his speech that he will build a temple here; again he lays foundations, but this time the sons of Erginus lay down stone on top and the tribes of men build a temple. 1) I find the anthropomorphization of places confusing in this hymn. Delos and Telphousa can speak and have feelings; but then Crisa doesn't, and is happy to accept the temple? A little baffling to me 2) The location of the spring Telphousa is apparently disputed. This 1969 piece in TAPA proposes a location near the town of (mod.) Ypsilanti, but I don't see the photographs that supposedly accompanied it. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935905 3) A little strange to me that Telphousa persuades Apollo with the fear about the sound of horses and chariots -- isn't that b...

hAp 201-253. Leto and Zeus delight in Apollo playing the kithara. The narrator wonders: how should he hymn Apollo? With an erotic story? No, with how he founded the first oracle. Apollo wanders from Olympus, down through Euboea and Boeotia (digression on horses and chariots at Onchestus), before finally arriving at Telphousa; he asks Telphousa if he can found his oracle there. lots of interest here. but quickly: 1) some words here are hapaxes that only recur in learned later poetry, including euklostos (recurring 1x in Grk. Anth.) and anakteria (1x in Apollonius Rhod.). Presumably learned poets mined this poem like they did Homer.  2) lots of interesting stuff with woods here. Thebes is uninhabited and lacks paths and wheat-bearing fields because it's a forest. but Apollo seems to be seeking that kind of place -- as with Delos, he's interested in establishing a temple and wooded grove, repeated several times here. is Apollo in particular associated with remote, uninhabited, woo...

hAp 151-201. The narrator describes the gathering of the Ionians on Delos: their wrestling, dancing, and singing delights Apollo and any onlooker, as well as the amazing group of Delian maidens, who hymn gods and men. They praise the blind bard of Chios as the best of all time. Apollo travels to Delos playing the phorminx, and then to Olympus, where the Muses hymn the gods' immortal gifts and mortal sufferings, while goddesses dance. 1) The gathering of the Ionians delights Apollo (149-50): οἱ δέ σε πυγμαχίῃ τε καὶ ὀρχηθμῷ καὶ ἀοιδῇ  μνησάμενοι τέρπουσιν ὅταν στήσωνται ἀγῶνα. Reminds me of the Achaean paean in Il. 1 (470-4): κοῦροι μὲν κρητῆρας ἐπεστέψαντο ποτοῖο,  νώμησαν δ' ἄρα πᾶσιν ἐπαρξάμενοι δεπάεσσιν·  οἳ δὲ πανημέριοι μολπῇ θεὸν ἱλάσκοντο  καλὸν ἀείδοντες παιήονα κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν  μέλποντες ἑκάεργον· ὃ δὲ φρένα τέρπετ ' ἀκούων.  Apollo is consistently characterized as enjoying song in his honor -- presumably why people sing to him.  2) Lots of me...

Peter Heather. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford: OUP, 2006. Heather’s Fall of the Roman Empire is a narrative history surveying political history in the Western Roman Empire from ~375 - ~475 CE. It consists of three major parts: part 1 (“Pax Romana”) outlining the political and cultural background of the Empire c. 375, part 2 (“Crisis”) describing in detail political and military developments during its period, and part 3 (“Fall of Empires”) describing the final political collapse of the western Empire and some historiographical assessments. His approach is conservative: 476 is an important date, and his main thesis is that the West fell primarily because of the shock of external barbarian invasions, not because of internal cultural or institutional failures. He presents his main thesis and methodology in a telling paragraph: I take an entirely different view, therefore, from one writer on fifth-century events who has commented: ‘What we c...

Summary: 1.1-5: Proem, women snatching by Greeks and barbarians 1.6-25: Kings of Lydia before Croesus (Gyges through Alyattes), including the stories of Gyges' rise to power and Arion 1.26-58: Croesus: Solon's visit, Adratus & Atys, Croesus tests oracles 1.59-64: Athens at the time: Peisistratus the tyrant 1.65-70: Sparts at the time: the Spartans successfully conquer Tegea 1.71-94: Croesus' war against Cyrus, ending in his miraculous salvation from the pyre 1) the Gyges story interestingly contrasts hearing and vision as means to belief: ὦτα γὰρ τυγχάνει ἀνθρώποισι ἐόντα ἀπιστότερα ὀφθαλμῶν (1.8). Candaules uses this argument to justify why Gyges should sneak in and see Candaules' beautiful wife naked. But when Gyges goes to see, bad things happen -- the wife makes Gyges kill her husband, ultimately leading to a curse on his whole family (incidentally we don't learn if the wife is so beautiful). In this case it would have been better for Gyges to rely on hearin...

A dialogue between Klonarion and Leaina. Klonarion asks Leaina about a rumor that the Lesbian Megilla has been loving Leaina like a man. Leaina explains: after a drinking-bout Megilla organized, Leaina shared a bed with Megilla and another courtesan Demonassa. They kiss her and fondle her breasts, and Megilla takes off her wig, revealing a skull as bare as an athlete's.  Megilla explains: she is in fact a man Megillos, and Demonassa is his wife. He is not a concealed man, like Achilles; he has no penis; he is not a hermaphrodite; nor has he changed gender, like Teiresias. Rather, he was born a woman, but his mind, desire, and everything else is a man's. Leaina can find out for herself. Leaina agrees after he pleads and gives her a necklace and cloths. He seems utterly satisfied, but Leaina refuses to tell Klonarion what exactly he did. 1) I think this text and Megilla/Megillos in particular are, to my knowledge, pretty much unique in ancient Greek sources. The explanations Megi...

hAp 101-150. The goddesses send Iris to Eileithyia with a promise of a necklace. Iris runs to Olympus, Eileithyia agrees, and they run back like doves. The labor succeeds and the goddesses swaddle baby Apollo and Themis feeds him ambrosia. As soon as he eats ambrosia, he rips out of his swaddling cloths and proclaims his identity: Apollo will love the cithara and bow and will give oracles. Delos rejoices. Apollo loves many places, but most of all Delos.  1) The offer of a necklace to Eileithyia is typical of epic, which associates women with necklaces; in the Odyssey, women are distracted by a traveling merchant with a necklace (Od. 15.460) and Eurymachus offers Penelope a necklace as a gift (Od. 18.295). 2) The image of super Apollo ripping out of his swaddling cloths is kinda funny Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ Φοῖβε κατέβρως ἄμβροτον εἶδαρ,  οὔ σέ γ' ἔπειτ' ἴσχον χρύσεοι στρόφοι ἀσπαίροντα,  οὐδ' ἔτι δεσμά σ' ἔρυκε, λύοντο δὲ πείρατα πάντα.  αὐτίκα δ' ἀθανάτῃσι μετηύδα Φοῖβος Ἀπ...

hAp 51-101. Leto asks Delos to be the seat of Apollo, and in return Delos will have sacrifices. Delos is interested but is worried that Apollo will go to some better place and thrust her into the sea; she wants Leto to swear an oath. Leto agrees and swears by the river Styx that Delos will always have Apollo's alter and sanctuary, and that he will honor her. Leto then is in labor for nine days surrounded by all the best goddesses (short catalogue), except Eileithyia, whom Hera restrained on Olympus. 1) Initially I thought that the use of articles in the oaths was more like Attic than Homer, but I was totally wrong about that. All that oath language has a lot of shared formulas with Homer. E.g.  ἴστω νῦν τάδε γαῖα καὶ οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ὕπερθεν  καὶ τὸ κατειβόμενον Στυγὸς ὕδωρ, ὅς τε μέγιστος  ὅρκος δεινότατός τε πέλει μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν·  occurs here, 1x Iliad, and 1x Odyssey, including what first caught my eye, τὸ κατειβόμενον Στυγὸς ὕδωρ. 2) Other bits of language do see...

  hAp 1-50. The narrator remembers Apollo, who comes to Olympus and shares the other gods; but Leto undoes his weapons and shows him to his seat, where Zeus toasts him. The narrator tells Leto to rejoice, who bore admirable children. The narrator wonders how to hymn Apollo, since the whole 'range of song' is laid out for Apollo. He decides on how Leto bore Apollo, who now rules over everyone that a catalogue of places contains. Leto went to all those places trying to give birth but none dared receive her, until she came to Delos. 1) the opening is weird to me, in its mix of narrative and generalizing statement. I think Jenny Strauss Clay built up a whole theory around the hymns as all about integrating the new gods to Olympus, which does kinda work here narratively, but I feel like doesn't capture the strange formal elements of this 'proem' 2) This hymn, like Demeter, has a large scope of action; but whereas Demeter, I think, emphasized land/sea/sky and Olympus/land...