A student in one of my English classes recently asked about the endless references to drinking wine in “The Odyssey.” The question, which had nothing to do with my lesson, was a good one. Wine has a constant presence in the epic poem, whose most famous image is probably Homer’s evocation of the “wine-dark sea” that Odysseus sails in search of his native Ithaka. Sometimes it is mere tonic on an impossibly long journey home from the Trojan War, but on occasion wine is more powerful than the sword, as when Odysseus escapes from the Cyclops by getting him drunk. Homer may have been blind, but his taste buds were alive to wine, and he reserved his richest adjectives for it: heady, mellow, ruddy, shining, glowing, seasoned, hearty, honeyed, glistening, heart-warming, and, of course, irresistible.

…

But my student’s question did engender a lively, if brief, conversation. Someone thought that it was unseemly for a hero to drink, while others figured that with his sights set on home, Odysseus didn’t have much time to nurse a hangover. There would be time for wine to flow, they argued.

I wasn’t quite satisfied, and the question continued to bother me until, days later, I found a passage in “The Odyssey” that succinctly captures the complexity of the Greek attitude towards alcohol. Odysseus is speaking to a sympathetic swineherd, and though he is in disguise, the words have the unmistakable ring of honesty:

[I]t is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool – it drives the man to dancing…it even
tempts him to blurt out stories better never told.

After two decades away from home, there must have been so much to say, so many bottled-up tales of friends lost and battles won. Somebody get the poor guy another round.

Euripides is perhaps best known as an avant-garde playwright whose plays (Medea, Bacchae, Trojan Women) offer powerful female protagonists, bold new handlings of myth and an interest in psychology. Dr Chong-Gossard (Lecturer at the University of Melbourne) introduced us to a lesser known Euripidean tragedy, his Hypsipyle, a play preserved only in fragments. Chong-Gossard is currently working on the
first major study of the Hypsipyle as a work of drama. His lecture explored the theme of
consolation, demonstrating that the play dramatizes consolatory gestures in an innovative
way and makes a bold statement about forgiveness in the face of human tragedy.

goddamned-Jay Brannan

After a closer examination of the Antikythera Mechanism, a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.

The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, in Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with the great Archimedes.

Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course.

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C.

Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar.

Read the rest here.

“War of the Gods!”

The first is they have landed director Tarsem Singh (”The Fall,” “The Cell”) to helm “War of Gods!” They say it’s another Greek film like “300″ was. They say they’re going to use the stuff they learned on “300″ to make the film and they said it’s going to start filming in the first quarter of next year. For more info…watch the interview.

“299″ and “301″?

The other bit of news is on “300.” They announced they’re working on a new Blu-ray edition of the film and they dropped a bomb…they’re trying to make a sequel/prequel to the film.

At first I didn’t believe them, but later in the night I spoke to Zack Snyder again and he confirmed what they said. He said Frank Miller is working on a new story of some kind and if they all really like it they’ll make it! Crazy news….I know!

Classic Moms
The meddler and the martyr. That’s what Achilles and Odysseus had to deal with.

On Achilles’ mother Thetis, who lobbies Zeus on behalf of her son and helps to secure his future glory:

consider Thetis only as Achilles’ mother — the meddling type who has difficulty cutting the apron strings. First, worried that her precious boy has been sullied by mortal blood, she tries to render her infant son immortal by dipping him either into the water of the River Styx or into fire, depending on which myth you prefer. Either way, she holds him by the heel, which doesn’t get the treatment; hence Achilles’ weak heel.

But she’s not done trying to manipulate her son. A prophecy states that if he fights at Troy, Achilles will gain renown but also surely perish. Thetis tries to keep him away from the war by dressing him as a girl. Yes, Achilles’ mother turns her warrior son into the Cpl. Klinger of Bronze Age Greece, 3,000 years before “MASH.” Thetis fails in her endeavors, and Achilles spends part of his life impersonating a woman and then dies young.

Nevermind the fact that Thetis helps Achilles attain immortal fame by lobbying Zeus on his behalf–the only part of the Achilles story that’s actually portrayed in the Iliad.

Apparently Odysseus’ mother Antikleia exists solely to make her son feel bad:

Anticleia, falls, unlike Thetis, in the martyr camp. In one of his lesser-known episodes, Odysseus ventures to the land of the dead to consult an inconveniently deceased prophet. While there, he runs into a great many famous people, including … Anticleia!

…it turns out that in his long absence his mother has died — from grief, missing him: “It was my longing for you, my shining Odysseus … that tore away my life that had been sweet.” A thousand guilt-inducing-mother jokes leap to mind: “No, no, Mr. Big Shot, you go out and have your war, fight your giants, you’re very important: I’ll just stay home alone and die!”

It’s hilarious and perfect, especially because immediately after comes the heartbreak: Odysseus, “desperate to hold her,” tries to embrace his mother three times — and each time her phantasmal form “fluttered through my fingers … dissolving like a dream.” He pretty much hurries home to his wife after that.

Goodness, that *is* hilarious. Apparently it’s not important that Odysseus’ encounter with his mother reaffirms that he even has a wife and home to go back to.

You can read the whole thing here.

read the article here

watch the video here