Warfare in Epic Poetry

By |2023-11-30T18:26:47-06:00November 30th, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Civilization, Culture, Heroism, Homer, Iliad, Literature, Poetry, Timeless Essays, War|

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 [...]

Homer versus Virgil

By |2023-10-14T16:49:32-05:00October 14th, 2023|Categories: Greek Epic Poetry, Homer, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virgil, Western Tradition|

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 own times, expressions of their own particular zeitgeist, and to what extent are they [...]

Homer’s Advice for Husbands and Wives

By |2023-04-25T15:26:18-05:00April 25th, 2023|Categories: Homer, Imagination, Letters From Dante Series, Timeless Essays|

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 [...]

Odysseus: Patron Hero of the Liberal Arts

By |2023-05-21T11:28:41-05:00February 19th, 2023|Categories: Classics, E.B., Education, Eva Brann, Featured, Homer, Liberal Arts, Odyssey, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

I am to write about my hero Odysseus and to connect him to Liberal Arts. A tall order, you might think, considering that this clever young king of Ithaca and wily old warrior at Troy probably — no, certainly — never read a book in his life, and that to me, at least, the liberal [...]

Do You Know What an Odyssey Is?

By |2023-08-13T19:30:08-05:00January 20th, 2023|Categories: Classics, E.B., Essential, Greek Epic Poetry, Homer, Liberal Learning, Odyssey, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

An odyssey is an adventurous and searching journey, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. It is the proper name for the life of learning. One can shape one’s own odyssey into a journey that lacks neither enchantment nor definition. My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each of [...]

Husbands and Wives in Homer

By |2023-01-15T11:42:22-06:00January 15th, 2023|Categories: Great Books, Homer, Iliad, Literature, Louis Markos, Marriage, Odyssey, Western Civilization|

How do I know that there were dead white males who loved and respected their wives? Because the twin literary fountainheads of Western literature each highlights a mature and faithful couple who share mutual affection and regard for one another: Hector and Andromache in the "Iliad"; Odysseus and Penelope in the "Odyssey." As a Texan [...]

Honor and Fame

By |2022-10-23T14:01:17-05:00October 23rd, 2022|Categories: Aristotle, Conservatism, Culture, Glenn Arbery, Homer, Plato, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare, Wyoming Catholic College|

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 [...]

The Family & the Orchard: The Story of Civilization in the “Odyssey”

By |2023-08-10T14:37:19-05:00September 13th, 2022|Categories: Family, Homer, Love, Mitchell Kalpakgian, Odyssey, Timeless Essays|

The planting of trees in the orchard—the passing down of tradition, of the moral wisdom of the past, of the torch of life, and of the beauty of life’s simplest but richest and pleasures—produces the great harvest of joy that culminates in the final chapters of the "Odyssey." Editor’s Note: This is the final essay [...]

Gifts From We Know Not Where

By |2023-08-26T16:16:16-05:00September 1st, 2022|Categories: Beauty, Culture, Essential, Featured, Graduation, Great Books, Homer, Mystery, Odyssey|

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. [...]

In the Land of the Lotus-Eaters

By |2022-09-01T12:13:31-05:00August 31st, 2022|Categories: Culture, Homer, Odyssey, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Much like the weary Greek scouts who succumbed to the effects of the alluring lotus fruit in the “Odyssey,” we have lost sight of the higher ends for which we are designed. The Western world no longer possesses a firm sense of purpose or understanding of itself. But what has led to such a general [...]

Homer’s “Odyssey” Is a Gift

By |2022-08-13T10:36:36-05:00August 13th, 2022|Categories: Classics, Essential, Eva Brann, Featured, Great Books, Homer, Odyssey, St. John's College, W. Winston Elliott III|

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.” So begins Homer’s Odyssey. Long ago I launched my ship in pursuit of the true, the good, and [...]

Warfare in Epic Poetry

By |2022-05-29T22:48:20-05:00May 29th, 2022|Categories: Death, Great Books, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, Timeless Essays, War|

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 [...]

The Mantle of Eumaios

By |2022-02-08T09:44:00-06:00February 8th, 2022|Categories: Glenn Arbery, Great Books, Homer, Odyssey, Senior Contributors|

Why is it, we might ask, that the "Odyssey" ultimately feels so consonant with the Old Testament in its depiction of the punishments of sensuality and perfidy, and so profoundly pre-Christian in its elevation of simple, hidden people into rewards they could never have expected? At the risk of undercutting my ethos, I want to [...]

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