Tag: Greek history
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Hesiod & The Five Ages of Mankind
Marble bust of Hesiod The Five Ages of Man is a creation story written by a Greek shepherd named Hesiod, who lived somewhere between 776 BC and 650 BC, who along with Homer was one of the epic writers of Greek poetry. It is likely that Hesiod ‘borrowed’ some of his poem from an unidentified…
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A poem by Sappho
A Fayum mummy portrait, a painted portrait on wooden board attached to the body of an usually upper class person before burial in Roman Egypt. Immortal Aphrodite, on your intricately brocaded throne, child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, this I pray: Dear Lady, don’t crush my heart with pains and sorrows. But come here, if ever before, when you heard…
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Pericles’s Funeral Oration: The Influential Speech of 431 BC
Pericles’s Funeral Oration by Philipp Foltz (1852) In 431 BCE the Athenian statesman Pericles (495 – 429 BC) delivered one of the most influential speeches of all time, his Epitaphios or Funeral Oration. The occasion was at the funeral of the first Athenian soldiers to lose their lives in the Peloponnesian War. The speech was recorded by…
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Medusa Misunderstood
Luciano Garbati, Medusa holding the head of Persues, 2008 To some, the Greek myth of Medusa is a nightmarish tale, one of madness, a demonic monster with snakes for hair and a glance that has a petrifying power, while others such as the Roman poet Ovid, have interpreted her as a wronged woman, a symbol…
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