From the Greek dramatists to Joyce and Kazantzakis, the character of Odysseus has continued to fascinate. Robert Fagles has done such a superb job in his translation of “The Odyssey” that perhaps not since Homer has this epic hero seemed both so grand and so human. The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles; introduction [...]
As enticing as Odysseus’ adventures are, questions remain: what of Penelope, Telemachus, Laertes, and indeed Ithaca left behind? What about their twenty years without a King, a father, a husband, and a son? Odysseus’ brief encounter with his faithful dog Argos demonstrates the price paid by those left behind. When Odysseus, the man of wily [...]
A hero is someone you admire to the point of losing sleep over. A hero is one the ancients were tempted to worship, with the ardent hope that some of the strength from his dead body would seep into the ground and make their crops fertile. A hero, you admit, is better than you are, [...]
We can encourage openness of expectation in ourselves and in one another, so that the mysterious gifts of experience, strange exhilarations and wonders, gifts from we know not where, will not be lost on us. A just expectation of life may include an expectation of moments that seem mysterious gifts from we know not where. [...]
What is the good of seeing a terrible state of soul displayed onstage, disclosed in all its humiliation and rage? After my first morning of classes at Wyoming Catholic College on August 27, I returned to the office to find the news of the shootings at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis all over the internet. [...]
Should honor and fame no longer be ends of ambition in such a world? The ancient philosophers doubted the ultimate merit of fame, but they also looked for the most spirited students, those most inclined to “undertake extensive and arduous enterprises." In response to my essay about baptizing ambition, a friend from Boston College recommended [...]
Oh, dear sons of the twenty-first century, do not balk at those who call you to live up to your father’s reputation. Do not define yourself against him, as so many of your age have done. If you do, you will dash yourselves on the rocks and miss out on your greater calling. Author’s Introduction: [...]
Here is my effort to construct a solid program of reading for a classical high school curriculum. Last month I wrote an essay for The Imaginative Conservative on “Classical Education and American Literature” in which I explained the rationale for the selection of titles by American authors for a high school literature curriculum. One of [...]
There is dignity and value in work. You who live in America once knew this. You did not think lesser of a man because he got his hands dirty with honest toil. To the contrary, you thought it a grand thing to build and to create. But all that has changed. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if [...]
Though I celebrate courage in my "Iliad" and perseverance in my "Odyssey," there is a third, greater virtue, apart from which civilization can neither thrive nor survive. I speak of xenia, a word that your age would translate as hospitality, but which means far more, having to do with the relationship between a stronger and [...]
Sign up for Joseph Pearce’s course on Classical Epic and Tragedy this Fall: https://rosary.college/applicant-registration/ What do the great literary epics tell us about the epochs in which they were written? And, more important, what do these epics and epochs tell us about our own epoch? To what extent are literary epics the children of their [...]
A culture that fails to represent, or that misrepresents its wars in all their glory, gravity, and tragedy, is a weaker polity. Epic poetry, with its stark recording of the facts and feelings of war, can give cultures and communities access to the reality of warfare and inscribe its memory on the collective consciousness and [...]
Who's the hero of The Iliad? Is it Achilles or Hector? Or should they both be considered heroes? If we are to answer these questions, we need to know what is meant by heroism. We also need to know what Homer meant by heroism. Was the pagan Greek understanding of heroism different from ours? If [...]
You teach your students that the men of the past looked upon their wives as chattel, that they saw them as possessions rather than as people of value and worth. How deeply mistaken you are; how far from the truth. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient [...]