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Work in Progress

“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.
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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