First published in 2001. This study looks at Homer’s use of descriptive expressions for the Gods in his works of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is an organised and exhaustive digest of Homer’s systematic nomenclature for the gods and goddesses. Included here is not just the repository of the formal epithets such as “earth-shaker” Poseidon or “ox-eyed” Hera or “grey-eyed” Athene, but also such supplementary items as words and expressions for family relations, terms of reproach, and adverbial phrases.
At the centre of the commentary on Book 19 of the Iliad is the interpretation of speeches and events at the assembly of the Achaean army. It is here that the argument between Achilles and Agamemnon was settled, thus enabling the Achaeans to take the field in the decisive battle against Hector and the Trojans.
Research into traditional areas of Homeric scholarship (e.g., language, the structure of the text, etc.) has come a long way since the last comprehensive commentaries on the Iliad were carried out, that is, the commentary by Ameis-Hentze in German language in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century as well as the Cambridge commentary by Kirk et. al. in English language in the 1980/90s. Much of this kind of research is now set upon a much surer methodological and theoretical foundation. Developments in the field of Mycenology and in the study of Linear B, oral poetry, and the history of ancient Troy in particular, have made possible a number of new insights and interpretive possibilities in Homer’s epic. Moreover, modern secondary literature of all major languages has been systematically covered. The "Basel Commentary" to the Iliad is a new, up-to-date, standard work that addresses these issues directly and will be of interest to scholars, teachers, and students alike. Central to the commentary on Iliad 24 is the interpretation of one of the most exciting and most moving scenes of the Iliad: how Priam, the king of Troy, makes his way to his mortal enemy Achilles, by whose hand his son Hector had fallen; how the god Hermes leads the old man almost magically into the army camp of the Greeks; how Achilles, at the end of an emotional encounter with Priam, leaves the body of Hector for burial.
The Prolegomena provide an introduction to the Basler Iliad commentary. The volume includes essays on the history of Iliad commentaries and the text, formulaic language and the oral tradition, grammar, meter, characters, plot and chronological structure, narrative technique, and developments in Homeric criticism, as well as an Index of Mycenaean words with brief explanations.
This volume is the first English-language survey of Homeric studies to appear for more than a generation, and the first such work to attempt to cover all fields comprehensively. Thirty leading scholars from Europe and America provide short, authoritative overviews of the state of knowledge and current controversies in the many specialist divisions in Homeric studies. The chapters pay equal attention to literary, mythological, linguistic, historical, and archaeological topics, ranging from such long-established problems as the "Homeric Question" to newer issues like the relevance of narratology and computer-assisted quantification. The collection, the third publication in Brill's handbook series, "The Classical Tradition," will be valuable at every level of study - from the general student of literature to the Homeric specialist seeking a general understanding of the latest developments across the whole range of Homeric scholarship.
The clothing and ornament of Greek women signalled much about the status and the morality assigned to them. Yet this revealing aspect of women's history has been little studied. In this collection of new studies by an international team, ancient visual evidence from vase-painting and sculpture is used extensively alongside Greek literature to reconstruct how women of the Greek world were perceived, and also, in important ways, how they lived.
Arguing that all Pauline interpretation depends significantly on the ways in which readers formulate their own images of the apostle, Margaret M. Mitchell posits that John Chrysostom, the most prolific interpreter of the Pauline epistles in the early church, exemplifies this phenomenon. Mitchell brings together Chrysostom's copious portraits of Paul--of his body, his soul, and his life circumstances--and for the first time analyzes them as complex rhetorical compositions built on well-known conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Two appendices offer a fresh translation of Chrysostom's seven homilies de laudibus sancti Pauli and a catalogue of color plates of artistic representations that graphically represent the author/exegete dynamic this study explores.
