“The Cluster” While working on my Arion article “Unmasking the Maxim” I became convinced that Greeks of the sixth century BCE (and to some extent later as well) relied on a cluster of modes of speech and thought that included maxims, riddles, proverbs and others, such as definitions (horoi), blessings (and curses). These, I suspect, had a central role in Greek thought before the development of expository prose and its counterpart “discursive reasoning.” I want to examine each of these patterns of speech and their interactions.
Greeks From the Shadows I keep encountering Greeks overlooked in many standard works. I have already written about Anyte and several other women poets, and Aristonice and Phemonoe the prophetesses in “Women Poets and the Origins of the Hexameter,” and some often-forgotten male maxim coiners. But I am drafting brief essays on figures such as Acron of Acragas the physician, Cleobouline and Gnaetha the riddlers, and Menecrates, a.k.a. Zeus, to name just a few. Their individual stories add a dimension to conventional wisdom about the Greeks, but perhaps there’s more to it than that. We’ll see. Whatever Happened To Hybris? Hybris once had a central place in the interpretation of Greek culture, but of late has been relegated to a more peripheral role. Is it time for a comeback? April 2021