'War, the bringer of tears...' For 2,700 years the Iliad has gripped listeners and readers with the story of Achilles' anger and Hector's death. This tragic episode during the siege of Troy, sparked by a quarrel between the leader of the Greek army and its mightiest warrior, Achilles, is played out [...]
This book offers a new approach to the study of Homeric epic by combining ancient Greek perceptions of Homer with up-to-date scholarship on traditional poetry. Part I argues that, in the archaic period, the Greeks saw the lliad and Odyssey neither as literary works in the modern sense nor as the pro[...]
"AN ENGAGING INTRODUCTION TO A FASCINATING TOPIC . . . GRAZIOSI NARRATES THE MANY METAMORPHOSES OF THE GREEK GODS WITH HUMOR AND ERUDITION."--"The Christian Science Monitor
"The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel,[...]
This book deals with the afterlife of the classical gods: how they travelled the world, shaped our history and culture, and turned up in the strangest places - from Chinese cave temples to Borges' dreams. Elegant and entertaining, this is the history of the most vibrant characters in classical civil[...]