Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Josh Billings and Christopher Moore join me in the Lesche to discuss the fifth-century BCE 'sophists', the subject of their new edited volume The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists.Works and fragments of the 'sophists' are most easily accessible in:André​ Laks, Glenn W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy. 9 volumes. Loeb Classical Library, 524-532​. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016.Primary textsLots, but especiallyWorks of the Presocratic philosophersGorgias, Encomium of Helen and Defense of PalamedesWorks of PlatoThucydides, History of the Peloponnnesian WarPlays of EuripidesAlso mentionedKerferd, G.B., 1981, The Sophistic Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.About our GuestsJosh Billings is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His research centers on ancient Greek literature and philosophy and modern intellectual history, with a particular concentration on tragedy. He is the author of Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy (Princeton 2014) and The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens (Princeton 2021).Christopher Moore is a Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Penn State University. He has published three monographs focusing on topics in classical philosophy, principally on the form taken by early debates about eventually-canonical philosophical topics (self-knowledge, virtue, philosophy itself). He is currently completing a book on intellectual culture in the fifth century BCE.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

Andromache Karanika joins me in the Lesche to discuss how we can detect traces of wedding poetics in early Greek literature, especially poetry (hexamter and lyric). Andromache is the author of Wedding, Gender, and Performance in Ancient Greek Poetry (OUP 2024).Primary textsIliad, esp. the Teikhoskopeia (Book 3) and the Deception of Zeus (Book 14)Odyssey, esp. the start of Book 6Homeric Hymn to DemeterSappho 21 (virginity poem), 44 (Wedding of Hector and Andromache)Pollux 9, on the "tortoise game"The ballad of the 'bride who suffered misfortune' (της νύφης που κακοτύχησε/κακοπάθησε, Modern Greek folk song)Also mentionedM. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (2nd ed. Rowman and Littlefield 2002 [1st ed. 1975]).A. Lardinois and L. McClure, eds., Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton 2001).J.H. Oakley and R. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Ann Arbor 1993).  R. Seaford, 1987. 'The tragic wedding', JHS 107: 106-30. About our guestAndromache Karanika is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Voices at Work: Women, Performance and Labor in Ancient Greece (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) and Wedding, Gender, and Performance in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press), and co-editor of Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions (2020). She served as editor of TAPA (2018-2021) and President of CAMWS (2023-2024).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

James Diggle joins me in the Lesche to discuss the 2021 Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2 vols.) of which he was editor-and-chief. We discuss why it was time for this sort of thing (and why it took 24 years to complete), how to use it, and why it improves on LSJ ... plus, how the team approached translating some of the naughtier words. Some links'Liddell and Scott' poem by Thomas Hardy (1843)Cambridge Greek Lexicon project page, where you'll also find a video of the Faculty of Classics' publication celebration.Alison Flood's review in The Guardian: English dictionary of ancient Greek ‘spares no blushes’ with fresh look at crudity Peter Jones' review in The Spectator: The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is an eye-opener for classical scholars About our guestJames Diggle, CBE, FBA, is Professor Emeritus of Greek and Latin at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Queens' College, where he was Director of Studies in Classics for over forty years. His publications include The Phaethon of Euripides (Cambridge, 1970), Flauii Cresconii Corippi Iohannidos Libri VIII (joint editor, Cambridge, 1970), Euripidis Fabulae (Oxford Classical Text, 3 vols., 1981–1994), Studies on the Text of Euripides (1981), The Textual Tradition of Euripides' Orestes (1991), Euripidea: Collected Essays (1994), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Selecta (1998), Theophrastus, Characters (Cambridge 'Orange' 2004; 'Green and Yellow' 22). He was University Orator at Cambridge for eleven years and has published a selection of his speeches (Cambridge Orations 1982–1993 (Cambridge, 1994)). He is also joint editor of The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman (Cambridge, 1972), joint author of Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca (Cambridge, 2005), and Editor-in-Chief of The Cambridge Greek Lexicon (Cambridge, 2021). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens.   ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

John Ma joins me in the Lesche to discuss the longue durée of the Greek polis. John is the author of the new, monumental, and much anticipated book Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity (Princeton 2024). Happy Holidays!About our guestJohn Ma was born in New York of Chinese parents. He grew up in Geneva, where he studied Greek and Latin at school and outside school. He went on to study Classics, then ancient history at Oxford. He has taught ancient history in Classics Departments at Princeton, Oxford, and Columbia. Ma is deeply interested in studying Greek history, especially in the Hellenistic period, using documentary and material sources.Ancient textsArchaic poetryAristotle, PoliticsXenophon, HellenicaAnd many more...Also mentionedToo many to list! But I'll note: Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton 1989).Mogens Herman Hansen and Thomas Heine Nelson, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Greek Poleis (Oxford 2004).Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State (OUP 2006)The Polis Inventory App________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

(Spoiler alert! This episode is jam-packed with plot spoilers for THE RETURN.) Homeric scholar Barbara Graziosi joins me in the Lesche to discuss Umberto Pasolini's THE RETURN, a film adaptation of the second half of the Odyssey starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope.About our guestBarbara Graziosi is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at Princeton, holding the C. Ewing Chair of ancient Greek. Graziosi attended Oxford University (Corpus Christi College B.A. and MSt in Classics) and Cambridge University (Ph.D. in Classics) and taught at Oxford, Reading, and Durham before joining the faculty at Princeton in 2018. She also held various visiting positions in Italy. She has written widely on ancient Greek literature (especially Homer) and its reception, as well as more autobiographical pieces on how we make ancient literature our own. Her latest books are Homer (OUP 2018) and Classics, Love, Revolution: The Legacies of Luigi Settembrini, with Andrea Capra (OUP 2024).Ancient textsHomer's Iliad and OdysseyAlso mentionedEmily Wilson's discussions of the murder of the "disloyal" enslaved women in Odysseus' household -- and the sexual politics of translation. See, e.g., Wilson's New Yorker article: "A translator's reckoning with the female characters of the Odyssey" (Dec. 18, 2017).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

Emma Greensmith and Tim Whitmarsh join me in the Lesche to discuss how Imperial Greek epic fits into our understanding of Ancient Greek epic as a whole. Emma has just edited the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic, and she was also a member of the research project Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History, which Tim directed. About our guestsEmma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John’s College.  She is the editor of Omnibus and an associate editor for the Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic. She specialises in imperial Greek literature, particularly epic poetics and religious culture. Her 2020 book, The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic, offers a new reading of the role of epic and the reception of Homer in the Graeco-Roman world. She has written many articles on ancient Greek literature and has co-edited a volume on ‘Writing Homer Under Rome’ (2022). She works on several public engagement initiatives with the charity Classics for All, and recently filmed a documentary on Homer’s Odyssey and its cultural legacy.Tim Whitmarsh FBA is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College. A specialist in the literature, culture and religion of ancient Greece, he is the author of 10 books, including Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (Knopf 2015), and over 100 academic articles. He has contributed to newspapers such as The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, and to BBC radio and TV. Ancient textsHomer's Iliad and OdysseyTriphiodorus, Sack of TroyQuintus of Smyrna, PosthomericaAnon., Vision of DorotheusNonnus, DionysiacaEudocia, Homeric CentonesColluthus, Abduction of HelenAlso mentionedJasper Griffin, "Greek Epic," in the Cambridge Companion to the Epic (Cambridge 2010). ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator, joins me in the Lesche to discuss the challenges and pleasures of translating the Iliad. We discuss the Greek of two passages in detail: Book 6 lines 482-502 and Book 22 lines 199-204 (lines as in the OCT).Ancient textsHomer's Iliad and OdysseyPlato, Hippias MinorLonginus, On the Sublime (ch. 9)  Also mentionedKaren Emmerich, Literary Translation and the Making of Originals. Bloomsbury 2017. "Munro's Law", i.e., D. B. Munro's observation that there is no overlap in the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey (more info here).Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. A (5th ed.)Johanna's review of Emily's translation of the Iliad for Slate (here)About our guestEmily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.Emily's substackEmily on Blue Sky________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

David M. Pritchard joins me in the Lesche to discuss what appears to have been, in Nicole Loraux's famous words, a "very Athenian invention": the epitaphios logos, or funeral oration given over the war dead at their public burial. Both the Athenian funeral oration and the legacy of Nicole Loraux's pioneering study of it are the subjects of David's new edited volume The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux.  About our guestDavid M. Pritchard is Associate Professor of Greek History at the University of Queensland in Australia. He is well known internationally for researching the symbiosis between war, democracy and culture in classical Athens. He has held some fifteen fellowships in Australia, Europe and the US. Associate Professor Pritchard speaks on radio and regularly writes for newspapers around the world.Ancient textsAthenian funeral orations "Historical” texts: Thucydides 2.34-46, Demosthenes 60, Hyperides' Funeral Oration"Literary" examples:  Gorgias' fragmentary funeral oration, Lysias 2, Plato's Menexenus, Isocrates' PanegyricusAlso mentionedCornelius Castoriadis, L'institution imaginaire de la société (Paris 1975).Nicole Loraux, L'invention d'Athènes: Histoire de l'oraison funèbre dans la "cité classique" (Paris 1981 [1st ed.]; 1993 [2nd abridged ed.), translated into English by Alan Sheridan as The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (HUP 1986/reprint PUP 2006)Nicole Loraux, Les enfants d'Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division des sexes (Paris 1984), translated into English by Caroline Levine as The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and Division Between the Sexes (PUP 1993).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great.About our guestRachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in ancient Greece, and the representation of gender and power in the Mediterranean world. For her work, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts. She’s published articles in Art Bulletin, American Journal of Archaeology, and Res: Archaeology and Aesthetics, as well as two books with Cambridge University Press. Rachel is currently the chair of the Classics Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a professor of ancient art and archaeology at Brooklyn College. She has a B.A. in Classics and Art History from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Ancient textsPolybius, HistoriesDiodorus, BibliothecaCurtius, Historiae Alexandri MagniPlutarch, Life of AlexanderArrian, Anabasis AlexandriAlso mentionedBrooke Allen, "Alexander the Great: Or the Terrible?" The Hudson Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 220-230.Pierre Briant, The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire (translated from the French by Nicholas Elliott), Harvard 2017.Michael Kulikowski, "A Very Bad Man: Julius Caesar, Génocidaire." London Review of Books, 18 June 2020.Alexander scholarship by W. W. Tarn, Ernst Badian, and Brian Bosworth.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

Ferdia Lennon joins me in the Lesche to discuss his award-winning and bestselling novel, Glorious Exploits (UK Penguin Fig Tree/US Macmillan 2024), which is set in Syracuse in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.About our guestFerdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime, was a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024. After spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son. Ancient textsPlutarch, Life of NiciasThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian WarEuripides, various tragediesAristophanes, various comediesAlso mentionedLouis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit)Karl Ove Knausgaard, InadvertentMary Renault’s historical novelsFurther readingKathryn G. Bosher, Greek Theater in Ancient Sicily. Cambridge 2021.Kathryn G. Bosher, ed., Theater outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy. Cambridge 2012.Emily Greenwood, "Thucydides on the Sicilian Expedition," in S. Forsdyke, E. Foster, and R. Balot, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides. Oxford 2017.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form