Tag: Greece
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More Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 2)
Last week, we talked about myths as half-remembered histories and cultural origin stories through the lens of Egyptian myth. This week we’re going to shift more thoroughly to the Greeks and dissect Plato’s idea that myths-as-stories that are based on the gods having passions and struggles — what he calls false myths — and try…
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Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 1)
Because I spend too much time (i.e., any time) lurking on classical-centric social media, and in this case, especially Twitter, I’ve been thinking a lot about mythology, third-wave feminism, and contemporary scholarship. Mostly, I love the direction of modern academia in the classical world and history in general, where it’s moving towards being more inclusive…
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No Business Like Show Business: The Greeks and the Invention of Western Theatre
ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωμιδιώτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων (“[You have become] a quibbler of words, a maker of maxims, a Euripidaristophaniser”) — Cratinus on Aristophanes As case numbers for the delta variant in the US continue to rise, and what would have been the summer concert season draws ignobly to a close, I’ve been feeling nostalgic for live theater, one…
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Glory of the Gods: A Brief History of the Ancient Olympic Games
You must be swift as the coursing river/ With all the force of a great typhoon/ With all the strength of a raging fire/ Mysterious as the dark side of the moon — “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”, Mulan This week, I thought we’d tackle something topical and talk about the original Olympic Games,…
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Mediterranean Bandstand: Music in the Ancient World
Slide your feet up the street, bend your backShift your arm then you pull it backLife is hard you know (oh way oh)So strike a pose on a Cadillac – The Bangles, Walk Like an Egyptian This week, I thought we’d get back into some more historical pursuits and take a look at the diverse…
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Field Day Part 2: The Carnegie Museums and the Classical World in Imitation As promised, this week we’re going to continue our tour through the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) and Natural History (CMNH), but I also promise to finally let all of you out of the single room I confined you to last week.…
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Field Day Part 1: The Carnegie Museums and the Classical World in Replica
“One of them said we made going to the moon as exciting as taking a trip to Pittsburgh.” — Henry Hunt, Apollo 13 Now that we’re fortunate enough stateside to be (finally) enjoying a reprieve from Covid restrictions, I was able to resume my nineteen year-strong love affair with Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in some semblance of…
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Beer Here! : Potent Potables of the Ancient World
Candy/ is dandy/ But liquor/ is quicker — Ogden Nash Over some lovely late-spring cocktails with my parents this past weekend, I asked my mother what I should talk about here this week, and she pointed out I haven’t talked about consumables yet. Ancient food and drink covers a lot of ground, so I thought…
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Working Girls: Hetaerae and Mediterranean Prostitution
“We could choose no better model of wisdom than Milesian Aspasia, the admired of the admirable ‘Olympian’; her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration…” — Lucian, A Portrait Study,XVII Since I made you all deep dive into medieval poetry and Shakespeare last time, I thought we’d turn to something perhaps a little more salacious…
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Greek Tragedy, Courtly Love, and Renaissance Satire: The Changing Face of Troilus & Cressida
“Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion.” — Thersites, Troilus & Cressida Before we start this week, I want to apologize to all of you for a very stupid blunder on my part. Mainly that all of my notifications for this blog were being sent to a filler email account to which I…
Sarah Holz 