When considering the question of what makes us human, the ancient Greeks provided numerous suggestions. This book argues that the defining criterion in the Hellenic world, however, was the most obvious one: speech. It explores how it was the capacity for authoritative speech which was held to separate humans from other animals, gods from humans, men from women, Greeks from non-Greeks, citizens from slaves, and the mundane from the heroic. John Heath illustrates how Homer's epics trace the development of immature (...) young men into adults managing speech in entirely human ways and how in Aeschylus' Oresteia only human speech can disentangle man, beast, and god. Plato's Dialogues are shown to reveal the consequences of Socratically imposed silence. With its examination of the Greek focus on speech, animalization, and status, this book offers new readings of key texts and provides significant insights into the Greek approach to understanding our world. (shrink)

The Homeric influence on two prominent avian images in the parodos of the Agamemnon—the vulture simile and the omen of the eagles and the pregnant hare —has long been noted. In 1979 West suggested that the animal imagery also derived in part from Archilochus’ fable of the fox and the eagle , and his discussion was quickly welcomed and supplemented by Janko's reading of the eagle and snake imagery used by Orestes at Cho. 246–7. Capping this triennium mirabile of critical (...) interest in Aeschylus’ birds of prey, Davies argued that the convincing resemblances between the fable and the Aeschylean passages in West's thesis—the anthropomorphism implied in παίδων and δεγπνον and the concern of Zeus for aggrieved animals —derive more generally from the nature of fable rather than from any one particular tale. Thus we have, according to Davies, an example of Aeschylus ‘exploring the resources and familiar modes of expression of a popular and well-known genre’ and transforming it into ‘the purest and sublimest type of poetry’. (shrink)

Critical consensus has emerged concerning the significance of the name of Ovid’s elegiac puella. Corinna is: 1) an allusion to the Greek poet that conjures up her beauty and the complexity of her poetry; and 2) a bilingual pun through which the poet slyly admits to the fabrication of his mistress. Only the second of these arguments is supported by a close examination of the evidence. The Tanagrean Corinna was famous for her manipulation of myth. This reputation is supported by (...) her own statements and the analysis of the fragments of her poetry. Ovid’s adoption of Corinna as a symbol of his elegiac poetry suggests a link with the poetess’s particular prowess: his own poetry will view love through the lens of myth. (shrink)