Athanassios Vergados - Böcker

The Reception of the Homeric Hymns is a collection of original essays exploring the reception of the Homeric Hymns and other early hexameter poems in the literature and scholarship of the first century BC and beyond. Although much work has been done on the Hymns over the past few decades, and despite their importance within the Western literary tradition, their influence on authors after the fourth century BC has so far received relatively little attention and there remains much to explore, particularly in the area of their reception in later Greco-Roman literature and art. This volume aims to address this gap in scholarship by discussing a variety of Latin and Greek texts and authors across the late Hellenistic, Imperial, and Late Antique periods, including studies of major Latin authors, such as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and Byzantine authors writing in classicizing verse. While much of the book deals with classical reception of the Hymns, including looking beyond the textual realm to their influence on art, the editors and contributors have extended its scope to include discussion of Italian literature of the fifteenth century, German scholarship of the nineteenth century, and the English Romantic poets, demonstrating the enduring legacy of the Homeric Hymns in the literary world.

This novel, ground-breaking study aims to define Hesiod's place in early Greek intellectual history by exploring his conception of language and the ways in which it represents reality. Divided into three parts, it addresses a network of issues related to etymology, word-play, and semantics, and examines how these contribute to the development of the argument and the concepts of knowledge and authority in the Theogony and the Works and Days. Part I demonstrates how much we can learn about the poet's craft and his relation to the poetic tradition if we read his etymologies carefully, while Part II takes the discussion of the 'correctness of language' further - this correctness does not amount to a naïvely assumed one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified. Correct names and correct language are 'true' because they reveal something particular about the concept or entity named, as numerous examples show; more importantly, however, correct language is imitative of reality, in that language becomes more opaque, ambiguous, and indeterminate as we delve deeper into the exploration of the condicio humana and the ambiguities and contradictions that characterize it in the Works and Days. Part III addresses three moments of Hesiodic reception, with individual chapters comparing Hesiod's implicit theory of language and cognition with the more explicit statements found in early mythographers and genealogists, demonstrating the importance of Hesiod's poetry for Plato's etymological project in the Cratylus, and discussing the ways in which some ancient philologists treat Hesiod as one of their own. What emerges is a new and invaluable perspective on a hitherto under-explored chapter in early Greek linguistic thought which ascertains more clearly Hesiod's place in Greek intellectual history as a serious thinker who introduced some of the questions that occupied early Greek philosophy.

Hesiod was and is regarded as one of the founding figures of Greek literature and culture, alongside Homer, and his Theogony is the first extant attempt to give an account of the whole, of the gods and of the cosmos, how it came to be, from what, and how it achieved its present state. Strong parallels can be identified between it and various myths and texts from the ancient Near East. Moreover, it was highly influential on subsequent Greek and Latin literature and philosophy. This, the first modern commentary in over half a century, includes all the necessary linguistic, textual, metrical, and literary material that will allow students to understand and enjoy the Theogony and its place in the literary tradition. It is intended primarily for advanced undergraduates and graduate students but will also be considered valuable by scholars of Greek literature and thought.

Hesiod was and is regarded as one of the founding figures of Greek literature and culture, alongside Homer, and his Theogony is the first extant attempt to give an account of the whole, of the gods and of the cosmos, how it came to be, from what, and how it achieved its present state. Strong parallels can be identified between it and various myths and texts from the ancient Near East. Moreover, it was highly influential on subsequent Greek and Latin literature and philosophy. This, the first modern commentary in over half a century, includes all the necessary linguistic, textual, metrical, and literary material that will allow students to understand and enjoy the Theogony and its place in the literary tradition. It is intended primarily for advanced undergraduates and graduate students but will also be considered valuable by scholars of Greek literature and thought.