More specifically concerning: Homer
30.01.02 – Wednesday
30 January 2002, around 17.25.
Just so you know, this post has been edited. Vergil is a hack.1 Homer (being collective) had it right; I don’t care if Iuno foments mishap for that man so blatantly remarkable for pietas (face it, Aeneas is a square – that’s what having a destiny does to people). I’d rather spend time with some […]
Byzantine Biographers
21 January 2003, around 11.03.
Reading the Alexiad (or life of the Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus), which was written by his daughter, Anna Comnena, when she was an old woman. She describes everything homerically, from the Odysseus-like Alexius, to his Nausicaa-bride, Irene; and Robert of Lombardy, his foe during the first few books, is obviously nothing more (or less) than […]
Terrible learning, Mr. Newman
29 April 2003, around 7.34.
Correctly,—ah, but what is correctness in this case? This correctness of his is the very rock on which Mr. Newman has split. He is so correct that at last he finds peculiarity everywhere. The true knowledge of Homer becomes at last, in his eyes, a knowledge of Homer’s ‘peculiarities, pleasant and unpleasant.’ Learned men know […]
poena sine fine
6 August 2003, around 8.05.
After reading Donna Wilson’s Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the ‘Iliad’ (based on the dissertation she prepared for the University of Texas, Austin) the largest question I have for the author concerns her relationship with her father. Her discussion of the character of reparation in the Iliad emphasizes the role of the father in […]
cunning & resourceful
23 April 2017, around 15.47.
A pity they don’t have name tags, isn’t it? Good thing you can tell them apart by their hats. Mimesis has been on my list of books to read for quite some time. The notion that it was written from memory, without access to a present library of familiar reference books appealed to me. So […]