// Latest Posts

An end and a beginning

This is a farewell post.  I am retiring from my University position at the end of this week, having joined the staff in 1974 (not 1947, as was said in the blurb of one of my books!) and served for 14,368 days; simultaneously, this blog is being absorbed into the Classics Department’s new teaching and …

Bitter Almonds

Hyacinthus was a beautiful boy from Amyclae (near Sparta) who was loved by the god Apollo.  According to the usual story, Apollo killed him accidentally with a discus throw – misdirected, deflected, or diverted by a jealous rival (Zephyrus, the west wind); this was the foundation myth of the important Spartan festival of the Hyacinthia.  …

Martin Litchfield West OM

Humble and hearty congratulations to Martin West on his appointment as a member of the Order of Merit.  He is the seventh classical scholar to receive this exclusive honour in the 111 years of the Order’s history, following Sir Richard Jebb (1905), Henry Jackson (1908), Sir James Frazer (1925), J.W. Mackail (1935), Gilbert Murray (1941), …

Out with the New (New Comedy, that is)

Announcing, at last, the publication of Menander in Contexts, the book of the Nottingham conference of July 2012, containing sixteen papers on the comedies of Menander seen in the contexts of the society and thought of his day, of earlier literature, and of subsequent receptions and responses.  My edition (with introduction and commentary) of one …

Triptolemus’ Trips, or Around the World by Snake Power (part 2)

As I explained last week, the greater part of what we know about Sophocles’ early play Triptolemus relates to the instructions given by the goddess Demeter to Triptolemus of Eleusis for his journey or journeys to various parts of the world spreading the knowledge of grain cultivation and probably also of the Eleusinian mystery-cult. What …

Triptolemus’ Trips, or Around the World by Snake Power (part 1)

In 468 BC the tragic dramatist Sophocles won the City Dionysia for the first time.  He was about twenty-eight years old, which was good going; Aeschylus gained his first victory when he was forty, Euripides when he was thirty-eight or so, and each of them had been competing at the festival, on and off, for …

Menander

Just to mention that two books of mine about Menander are due to appear in the next few weeks. The first is an edition of his comedy Samia (The Woman from Samos) with introduction and commentary – the first edition of a play of Menander (or indeed of any text that has survived only in …

Only seen dead

Greek tragedy was not always about death, but it very often was:  of the 32 tragedies that survive in full (or almost in full), there are only nine which do not include the death of at least one character.  What is more, while violent death was not seen on the tragic stage (with the very …

Connected

In last week’s post, I asked: “How does Menander connect a Japanese warlord, a world chess champion, a British prime minister, a Native American chief, and a song about a lamp-post?” The answer will be found in Mario Lamagna’s chapter, “Military Culture and Menander”, in my forthcoming edited volume Menander in Contexts (London: Routledge, 2014).  …

Connections

“Menander is a vital connecting link. He connects the society of classical Athens … with the era of Hellenistic kings and of mercenary armies; he connects, too, the language of classical Athenians with that of later Greeks; he connects the arguments and theories of medical men and [philosophers of Aristotle’s school] with the life and …