Greek Epics Research Articles

Flavian Epic Poetry

Flavian Epic Poetry is considered one of the most important literary works that distinguished the period of the rule of the Roman emperors from the time of Vespasian to Domitian. Flavian epic poetry was named after the Emperor Vespasian, which indicates that most of the epic works were organized to glorify the emperors and celebrate their military victories. This flattery is considered to be a famous characteristic of the style of that period. Among the most famous poets who wrote epic works in this era were Valerius Flaccus, Papenius Statius, and Silius Italicus. Each of them composed a number of epics similar to the Greek epics for the sake of imitating their precious treasures, like Argonautica, who was imitated by Valerius, the Thebaid by Statius, and the Punica by Italicus. Flavian epic poetry was characterized by exaggeration, especially regarding the description of events and the use of gods who intervene in the course of things in order to achieve their benefits. The heroic nature that the epics aimed to highlight is also evident in epic poetry.

Women in Indian and Greek Epics: Some Reflections

In the two famous Indian epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, there are five admirable women - Ahalya, Draupadi, Kunti, Tara and Mandodari. These are five special women with remarkable power, wisdom, dedication, and sacrifice which are honoured across periods of the Indian civilisation. Similarly, in Greek mythology also, there are important powerful women characters having exceptional capacity and power. They are Helen, Hecuba, Medea and Thetis. They have not only portrayed their sexuality and motherhood but also demonstrated their power, virtues, kindness, grace and capacity to withstand crisis. In this paper, we take a look at the five women from the famous Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and attempt a comparison of some aspects of their lives with important women characters from the legendary Greek epics, Iliad and Odyssey. In the study of these interesting, dynamic and complex women characters we have found that the customs and norms of those societies dominated by patriarchy have immensely affected their lives. However, it will be grossly unfair to treat them as women only. Their lives were affected by brave, power hungry warriors on one hand but on the other hand all these women have emerged as political entities involved in the intricacies of war from behind and not merely as the observers of incidents of wars. These characters have enjoyed much more power than one may perceive from these epics. This vindicates that it is the power that mattered more than gender notwithstanding the fact that patriarchy remained as an influential force in the society.

Philosophy of Greek Myth from a Historical Perspective (1300-1100 BC)

This research intends to provide an academic viewpoint on the value of studying "Greek Mythology" in a historical context by tracing its roots as a primary philosophy. Myths are complex because they contain historical information. The study subject focuses on the success of the Greek epics poet "Homer," who mixed mythology with history in a philosophical and literary framework. Both epics incorporated rhetorical visuals, graphic arts, supernatural, and philosophical elements. The research relies on a historical, descriptive technique, examining important documents, books, papers, and research. According to the study, the Iliad and the Odyssey reveal the influence of myth on Greek thinking and ideology. The Iliad reveals "Trojan War" mysteries and facts. Homer's descriptions of events and episodes are consistent with those of Greek historians, especially Thucydides. The research made several important recommendations, including the need to include in university curricula topics on the philosophy of history that provides for eastern and western mythological symbols because of their importance as part of the cultural heritage of peoples that must be revived in all countries, and the need to hold seminars and scientific conferences to shed light on the importance of the symbols.

About the Heroic Image in the Epic «David of Sasun»

The article is devoted to the heroic image in the national epic «David of Sasun», which is an ancient Armenian heroic epic, as well as the pinnacle of Armenian classical folk literature. The subject of the study is the heroic image of four generations of Sasun. The purpose of this study is to study the typological features of the heroes of Sasun, to explain their origin and the transformation of characters due to territorial features. The article shows that to a large extent they are similar to the images of early ancient Homer's heroes with primitive colors, noble origin and mighty power. They are distinguished by amazing strength, great kindness and bravery, an acute sense of justice and compassion, a high degree of patriotism, strong sense of collectivism and valuable civilian consciousness. In general, being a kind of symbol, the image of the Sasun’s heroes reflects the deep desire of the Armenian people, who have suffered from foreign aggression for a long time, for world peace, national independence and a strong national defender. But at the same time, the author identifies those features that distinguish them from the heroes of other epics in the article. The fact is that over time, being passed from mouth to mouth, they "localized" on the territory of the Armenian Highlands and acquired the qualities inherent in this people with fundamentally different thinking, activities and ideas about bravery, about war. The article shows the similarities and differences between the heroes of the Armenian and Greek epics, the distinctive characteristics of the behavior and character of the heroes of the Armenian epic. The major research methods are text analysis and comparative study.

Odysseus at Shabbat Dinner: Hospitality Ethics in Genesis and The Odyssey

The Hebrew Bible and Homer’s Greek epics differ significantly in their attention to detail, among other significant literary aspects, but their uniquely massive size relative to other ancient works lends them particularly well to analysis. This investigation can yield deeper understandings of their moral stances. Within ancient Greek literature, hospitality stands alone as an unquestioned moral imperative, while the Hebrew Bible is filled with prescriptions for moral living. With this in mind, hospitality provides a valuable perspective for comparison between these two cultures. Genesis and The Odyssey each heavily feature hospitality, so comparing these two monumental works allows us to flesh out how differing hospitality expectations reflect each society’s ethical emphases. My findings contradict and challenge the misconception that Greek hospitality is not concerned with a guest’s identity, and shows how the hospitality ethics in Genesis and The Odyssey diverge with regards to their treatment of guests whose social class is ambiguous.

Re-considering Epic and TV

This article builds on Kozak’s 2016 monograph, Experiencing Hektor, which argued for using television narrative strategies to re-conceptualise ancient Greek oral epic. Inverting this dynamic, this article looks at how certain features of ancient oral epic can be useful in considering television’s narrative strategies, especially when it comes to repetitive narrative elements, from diverse forms of type-scenes to repeated phrases, character epithets, and longer formulae. The article also foregrounds the roadblocks for such an approach, from confusion over what constitutes a callback in both media, to considering the episode as a narrative unit, as epic episodes are not clearly delineated, and the season-drop continues to challenge the episode as a primary unit of narrative within contemporary television. Finally, the article points to several avenues of narrative analysis for both forms moving forward, urging scholars of Greek epics to think of narrative strategies beyond the constraints of oral composition, and urging television scholars to consider using the close-reading and televisual/textual analysis and data collection that remains central to classics as a discipline, but which are still primarily reserved for fans and popular media critics of television.

ANCIENT BELIEFS AND THEIR RELIGIOUS AND MYSTICAL SYMBOLS

The article examines the concept of religious symbols, the history of the origin of religious-mystical symbols in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, their essence and content and meaning today. Also, the author’s views on the introduction of the concepts of symbol and religious symbols into scientifc circulation are expressed, various defnitions of these concepts by Western scientists are given, the role of symbols in society is determined. It is noted that in ancient Egyptian beliefs, each tribe worshiped and revered not only its own god, but also a certain animal that was somehow connected with this god, regardless of whether they were both in separate forms or zoo-anthropomorphic, that is, presented in the form religious symbol «man-animal». In particular, from the article you can learn a lot about such popular symbols as the Ankh Amenti, Ba, Shenu, Jed, The pen Maat, Urey, Ujat. Also, the work contains information about the symbols represented in the religious beliefs of Ancient Greece from various sources that have come down to us, ancient Greek epics, the works of Greek philosophers. Since the ancient Greeks and Romans often deifed several animals and birds, the moon and the sun, gods in human forms, based on the mythologies of these peoples, a comparative analysis of some religious and mystical symbols was carried out, such as Ares - Mars, Asclepius, harpies, Hermes - Mercury, Zeus - Jupiter, Nika - Victoria, Pegasus, Themis. Besides, this scientifc study reflects the scientifc views that the religious worldview of the ancient Romans was associated with agriculture, rituals deifying nature, mysticalreligious images and ancestral spirits, which were usually carried out by the head of the family. Shows the essence and content of attributes and symbols that appeared later in ancient Roman beliefs as a result of rituals of animal and plant sacrifces, worship and special rituals

Automated metric profiling and comparison of Ancient Greek verse epics in Hexameter

This article describes a software tool, named Dactylo, which is capable of performing metrical analysis, alias scansion, of epics written in hexameter. The automated scansion is based on well-known scanning rules of various theoretical works. The development methodology introduces the concept of computerized metric profiling and metric distance, which is a measurement value that reflects the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between different epics. For this purpose, eight renowned epics have been scanned, including Iliad and Odyssey, with plenty of statistical information. Based on these outcomes, these epics can be classified in groups that reflect very well the three periods of their creation, namely Classical, Hellenistic and Late Antiquity. Dactylo demonstrates its ability to produce statistics for hexameter’s metric patterns in a massive scale, easily and accurately, becoming so a contribution of Computational Linguistics to the diachronic comparative and quantitative language studies.

ARTISTS CHANTING - NARRATING EPIC POEMS PROFESSIONAL OR UNPROFESSIONAL?

Homer’s creative works Iliad, Odyssey have undergone a history of thousands of years, but the Homeric issues have never ceased to be new to generations of researchers. There still remain unanswered questions: Was Homer a professional writer or a folk artist? Did his epical compositions belong to the written or oral literary genre? Were Homer's poems the works of a single poet or of many contributors? We refer to Homer as an artist, a collector and compiler of Greek epics in relation to the type of epic artists in Vietnam. A study of the artists chanting-narrating epic poems from various perspectives: society - profession (professional or amateur?), mode of artistic creation (folk or scholarly?), the relationship between performance and context (ritualistic or non-ritualistic?) ... will clarify the characteristics of the artists chanting - narrating epic poems and the nature of the artistic creation process, and probably put forward suggestions for the preservation of the epic repertoire of ethnic groups.

From the History of Classical Philology: Alexei F. Losev and Bruno Snell

This article delves into the history of classical philology and the relationship between two prominent classical philologists, one Russian and one German: Alexei Losev (1893–1988) and Bruno Snell (1896–1986). The article shows that both scholars worked at the intersection of philosophy, philology, and history of concepts, and both were interested in the history of ideas, terminology, aesthetics, and mythology and in the language of ancient Greek epics. Unlike Snell, who did not speak Russian and was unable to familiarize himself with Losev’s work on the history of ancient thought, Losev relied on Snell’s work from the mid-1920s until the very end of his life, using Snell to defend his own views on various controversial issues (e.g., reconstructing Homer’s archaic notions of the cosmos, debating the meaning of Heraclitus’ term “ethos,” or discussing the usage of the word sēmainō, and so forth). The subject of analysis is Losev’s 1962 review of the Dictionary of the Early Greek Epic (Lexicon des frühgriechischen Epos), edited by B. Snell, as well as the two scholars’ correspondence in 1959–1960.

Homeric Epics and Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors

The comparison between Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors and ancient Greek epics especially with two epics of Homer “Iliad” and “ Odyssey” are very important because both epics show the highest part of ancient culture, and they are seem as thematic fortune and linguistic value. They had an extraordinary spread and influence. According neighborhood between Albanian and Greek nation a famous linguist Ecrem Qabej emphasized “in Balkan peninsula always continued contact of both languages ” (Greece-Albania) for a long period of historic time which goes from prehistoric until now. Whenever the cradle of Balkan was and whatever the source of Albanian language is one thing is certain that Greeks and Albanians are neighbors for 3.000 years.

Injuries in the Greek epics of Homer

Trauma and the need of medical care exist since the beginning of human history. This research is aimed to identify and analyze trauma in antiquity. After a review of bibliography, the first reports of trauma (in Europe) were found in the Greek Epics of Homer. The analysis of these texts showed that injury could be caused to any part of the human body. The main cause of trauma was primarily participation in wars (178 cases), and then participation in sports (6 cases) and other activities (6 cases). This study identified a total of 190 injuries in both Homer epics. The more serious injuries, many of which proved fatal, were observed from participation in military activities.

Learning How to Get Lost: Goethe in Italy

This essay investigates Goethe’s 1786–88 Italian journey in the context of the history of “getting lost”—from Greek epics, to fairy tales, to postmodernity—and asks: Why does Goethe get lost on purpose? What were the literary, psychological, and political stakes of this? And how does it relate to his apparent “discovery” of classicism? By comparing Goethe’s contemporaneous travel notes with his revisions for the 1816–29 publication, the author argues that Goethe deliberately repeats the Odyssean narrative of lost-and-found in order triumphantly to find himself, both psychologically and as a writer. Yet Goethe simultaneously demonstrates a strikingly sophisticated anticipation of modern theories of literature and travel. Realizing that he can never really lose himself—geographically, psychologically, literarily—he meditates on this impossibility and discovers the necessity of walking in others’ footsteps.

Jacint Verdaguer, Andrejs Pumpurs and Petar Petrović Njegos: Three Moments in the Romantic National Epic of 19th-Century Europe

In the course of the 19th century, from one extreme to another, literary manifestations of nationalism have shown up in several different genres, and meaningfully in the epic genre, which is perceived, according to the Western literary canon, with its beginning in the Greek epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey , as a primary expression of the cosmogonic myths of an ethnic group in search of the national identity. This paper, through the analysis of the works of three major European poets, the Catalan Jacint Verdaguer, the Latvian Andrejs Pumpurs, and the Montenegrian Petar Petrovic Njegos, each one of them writing without knowing the other two, tries to state that despite the obvious social, historical, geographic and linguistic differences separating them (which are also the subject of research), there is one common spirit rooted in the Romantic Movement, connecting and providing them with similar motives and topics.

Teaching Augustine’s Confessions in the Context of Mercer’s Great Books Program

Students in Mercer University’s Great Books program read Augustine’s Confessions in the third semester of a seven-semester sequence. Their previous reading of Greek and Roman epics and philosophical treatises as well as Biblical material equips them with a solid foundation for reading and discussing Augustine. This essay reflects on that preparation and models ways that instructors can use opening discussion questions related to those earlier readings to guide students into substantive reflection on the Confessions.

West-östliche Divan and the “Abduction/Seduction of Europe”: World Literature and the Circulation of Culture

For Reza in Gottingen1World literature does not require that its readers travel; instead, the texts are brought to us, so that we do not need to go out into the world to find them.1 By the nineteenth century, several generations of academics had already compiled and translated narratives acquired through global exploration. Enlightenment scholars gave precedence to travelogues and memoirs when formulating their own anthropological theories about distant societies.2 To be sure, armchair anthropologists were always subject to criticisms from world travelers, yet at the start of the nineteenth century Europeans interested in learning Mandarin, Persian, or Sanskrit were more likely to visit the royal libraries than they were to cross the Indian Ocean.3 A parallel emerged between Europeans' consumption of Asian luxury products and their reading of foreign literature. Already at the start of the eighteenth century, the consumption of fine goods such as tea, porcelain, spices, and perfumes set an aesthetic precedent for the intellectual engagement with foreign literature. Paris and London were the most important nodal points in the European network that amassed books, goods, and art together in large collections. These concentrations allowed consumers to see a material world culture before their eyes-yet front the start Goethe and his contemporaries juxtaposed the benefits of such large agglomerations against the injustice perpetrated in their acquisition. In the West-ostliche Divan (West-Eastern Divan, 1819) Goethe raises the question of how to treat foreign treasures, literary and material, as he formulates an aesthetic that intertwines the public presentation of poetry with luxury consumption. Even as he eschews the strict separation of art from commerce typical of Weimar classicism and finds inspiration in Hafez's ghazals, he continues to rely on Greek epics and myths as representations of the violence and robbery that precede the idyll.In proclaiming the era of world literature, Goethe stresses that the end of the Napoleonic Wars has renewed communication and exchange between European nations and the world at large.4 Many types of exchange are assumed in such a generalization. One of the complexities within Goethe's idea concerns the exact relationship between the circulation of culture and the demarcation of political territories. World literature, as Goethe states quite clearly, becomes conceivable only after the lifting of strict enforcement of territorial boundaries, in this case the British assertion of its control over the flow of goods to the European continent. Translations attempt to cross linguistic and political boundaries through philological negotiation, a model of international relations that Etienne Balibar presents as an instrument, as well as a regulative ideal, of multiculturalism.5Running parallel to the media flow of communication are commercial trade networks. The lifting of England's blockade after Napoleon's fall allowed continental Europe to import commodities from abroad again- not just newspapers and books but also consumer goods and raw materials. However, the movement of world literature cannot be reduced to international commodity exchange. As Napoleon's amassing of art in Paris demonstrated to his contemporaries, the circulation of cultural artifacts does not always include only legally sanctioned, open-market purchases but may also, of course, encompass the spoils of robbery, administrative transfer, expulsion, exile, and so forth. The ancient definition of translation as the transfer of sacred relics from one church to another included furtive stealing and political threats. The stealing of Saint Mark's bones in 828 from Alexandria by Venetian merchants and Barbarossa's gift of Milan's relics of the Three Kings to the Cologne cathedral are just the most famous examples of forced translation. Napoleon's military acquisition of art from across Europe and its eventual repatriation after his defeat were widely discussed as Goethe was writing the West-ostliche Divan. …

A Biblical Poetics for Filmmakers

In this paper, we present a poetics, or guide manual, for making narrative films that resemble biblical narratives. It is similar to Aristotle’s Poetics, only his was for creating drama (though it is of course often used for film now) and was based on Greek dramas and epics. Our poetics is specifically for making films and is based on an even more ancient body of narratives—the Hebrew Bible. In articulating a biblical poetics for filmmakers, we draw heavily on the work of a few of the many biblical-narrative scholars of the last half-century, who draw in turn from the even more extensive research that has been done on narrative theory in general. Our project is one that Aristotle might have undertaken if he had read the Bible and its commentators and known about film.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Stephen Donadio This Is My Last Issue as Editor of NER, And Some Readers May Be wondering how it came to be a large double issue containing a special section entitled “The Russian Presence.” There are many reasons for this, including the arrival of Rosamund Bartlett’s fine translations of an intriguing duet of Chekhov stories, but at some point I found myself remembering that for my first issue (Vol. 17, No. 3)—just about twenty years ago—I had asked my late, beloved colleague Eve Adler, who was spending a year in Russia, if she could provide us with a “Letter from Moscow.” A brilliant scholar of Classics, over the course of her career she had also learned Arabic, Hebrew, and German, as well as a full range of Romance languages, and because she had heard that the best translations of the Greek epics were in Old Church Slavonic, she taught herself that language, too. This soon prompted her to teach herself Russian, and fascinated by the language and the culture, she began spending as much time as she could in that country, which was how she came to be there in 1994–95. When she asked me what sorts of things to include in her account of daily life, I suggested that she try to give our readers a sampling of the kinds of jokes that she was hearing; so she concluded her letter with a series of the “Armenian Radio” jokes that were then circulating in the Russian capital. The last joke in the series was this one: Armenian Radio has been asked: Is there life on Mars? Armenian Radio answers: No, not there either. Her remarkably observant letter also noted that at that time people in Moscow were worried “about the Chechnya war” and confirmed that “the reports from Chechnya are indeed alarming.” As evidence, she provided a particularly vivid account of the situation, then went on to point out that the report she had quoted was actually “from Tolstoy’s story ‘Hajii Murat,’ first published in 1912, and referring to the events of 1851. My Russian friends [she continued] complain that their government’s wrongheadedness in Chechnya is the result of poor literary education. Haven’t those jerks read Tolstoy?” In light of her spirited participation in such free-wheeling conversations, it hardly seems surprising that within a year she would be the co-author of a dictionary of Russian slang, from which a few representative entries have been taken for this issue. Over the next seven or eight years, before her untimely death, Eve Adler also supplied us with her translations of the highly original and insistently [End Page 8] uncategorizable writings of the Russian political philosopher Mikhail Epstein, and she told me that I should be sure to get to know Michael Katz, who was leaving the University of Texas at Austin to join the Middlebury College faculty and direct the Language Schools and Schools Abroad. During one of the first talks I had with him, I mentioned that I was interested in publishing a new translation of Chekhov’s wonderful comic monologue entitled “On the Harmfulness of Tobacco” and asked him if he might be willing to undertake that job. Funny thing, he said—as a matter of fact, he was just at that moment working on a translation of that very work. We published his translation in 1998, and in the years since then, in addition to numerous critical articles, many of his translations from Russian have appeared in our pages—of works by an unusual range of writers, including Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Akunin, Shcheglov, An-Sky, Jabotinsky, and Sophia Tolstoy. Besides a great deal of editorial assistance, for the special Russian feature in this current issue Michael Katz has provided us with excerpts of his new translation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, as well as a new translation—for the first time with detailed annotations—of the record kept by Frida Vigdorova of the 1964 trial of the poet Joseph Brodsky. As it happens, also included in my first issue of NER was an essay by P. Adams Sitney, whose intricate analysis of the densely-conceived films...

A Comparative Study of the Story of Esfandiar in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and Achilles in Homer's Iliad

Epic is a kind of descriptive poem which is based on describing heroic and manhood actions and prides of a nation or person so that it includes different symbols of their life.Iliad and Odysses of Homerus, Ramayana and Mehabeharatay of Indians and Shahnameh of Ferdowsi are three great epics of the world.These three epic works are related to Aryan race which has been divided into different branches and everyone has been settled in a land and this is why that there are some common characteristics between them. As epic of every nation is a mirror that shows their culture, nature and endogenous life, these relations and coordination of two Iranian and Greek epics, Shahnameh and Iliad and Odysses show proximity of the two nations in mirror of history. .Shahnameh has been divided into three mythological, heroic and historical parts Iliad and Odysses has been also composed by Homerus, famous Greek poet. Iliad book includes explanation of ten years war between Greece and Troas in 24 chapters and Odysses, which has 24 poems, is about Olis, one of heroes of Troas war and figures his braveries. These two great epics which show two known old culture, can be compared from different characteristics. There are many behavioral likenesses in view of individual, social relationships and acquaintance with different kinds of their natures in addition to structural likenesses. Existence of heroes such as Esfandiyar and Achilles, greedy and chimerical kings such as Keykavoos and Agamemnon, experienced masters such as Piran and Odysses, beautiful and sly women such as Soodabeh and Helen and devotedand portentous teenagers such as Bahram and Patrocelos, all show much likeness of these two epics. As one of important elements of epic texts is heroic element and Esfandiyar and Achilles are two considered heroes in shahnameh and Iliad and their life is similar to each other and both are invulnerable heroes of Iran and Greece who their bravery determined fate of two nations, we decided to introduce story of Esfandiyar and Achilles after defining epic and its elements and introducing Shahnameh of Ferdowsi and Iliad of Homerus and explaining likeness of them and explain likeness and difference between these two story while figuring bravery of this two invulnerable heroes of Iran and Greece. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n7p550

Cultural Assimilation Shown in the Concepts of Justice·Labour·War in the Ancient Greek Epics and the Hebrew Bible - Centering on the Hesiodos' Works and Days

Cultural Assimilation Shown in the Concepts of Justice·Labour·War in the Ancient Greek Epics and the Hebrew Bible - Centering on the Hesiodos' Works and Days