The human characters of Homer’s grand epic, the “Iliad,” embody what Homer is driving home at with his poem: the tension between strife and love. Achilles transforms from a rage-filled and strife-filled killer to a forgiving lover touched by the very power of love. Homer’s Iliad is the defining epic of Western literature. Its [...]
My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each of you to ask yourself: “Do I know what an odyssey is?” In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around [...]
What we need today to re-create the beautiful city, an icon through which to see the glorious City of God, is a new Iliad, a new story that will manifest “what the many do together,” for what the many do together “rarely lacks a certain nobility, or beauty”… In his Metamorphoses of the City, [...]
Man, it is often said, cannot jump over his own shadow. The poet—and by “poet” I mean a writer of imaginative works in verse or prose—leaps over the universe… Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. I We not only read a novel, we enter into its created world. [...]
“One Being, the only truly wise, does not and does agree to be called Zeus.” – Heraclitus This reading of the Euthyphro will grapple with the accusations of impiety leveled against Socrates. It will set out to answer certain basic questions about Socratic piety that arise and are not satisfied by repeated readings of [...]
The Greeks told the tragic story of Orpheus, the son of the great god Apollo. Orpheus was the master of music, the prince of poetry, the one who gave the rites to the mortals for the practice of their religion. He fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice, who died after being bitten by [...]
Perhaps most readers are familiar with the account of the beginning of the universe found in the Bible: “1 God, at the beginning of time, created heaven and earth. 2 Earth was still an empty waste, and darkness hung over the deep; but already, over its waters, stirred the breath of God. 3 Then [...]
In the ancient world the perimeters of tragic vision and experience were clearly established and recognized. One could be quite clear as to the meaning of tragedy and the manifestations of tragic experience and tragic heroism. One could readily comprehend the noble stature and the transcendent realm of tragedy. One could, in short, measure [...]
The centuries ebb and flow on a cosmic tide between faithfulness and depravity as men commit their lives to a seemingly infinite range of virtuous and vicious acts. Though man tears himself away from the face of God in pursuit of idols, God never abandons His creation. The glorious age of the Ancient Greek pagans [...]
Odysseus with the Sirens My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each of you to ask yourself: “Do I know what an odyssey is?” In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to [...]
The Iliad by Homer, translated by Herbert Jordan (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008) It is noteworthy that when the freedman Livius Andronicus (c. 250 B.C.) gave the Romans their first translation of Homer it was the Odyssey, not the Iliad he chose to render in the old Saturnian verse: Virum mihi Camena, insece [...]