Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Nemo asked for this thread, and it was a good suggestion.

Even without Casaubon's work having been finished, there are still a huge number of resources out there, both on the Internet and in book form. I suggest, therefore, that people not just mention any particular resource, but also say a few words about what kind of resource it is (collection of myths, commentary on myths, derivative work involving myths, which would include many of the Greek dramas, etc.) For book references, a link to the Goodreads page might also be helpful as there are good reviews of most books.

I have mentioned in several posts Elizabeth Vandiver's course for the Teaching Company, Classical Mythology.

It's a 24 lecture course (30 minutes per lecture) which starts with several lectures on the nature of myth, and then works its way through the major myths of Greek and Roman mythology. I find her an excellent lecturer, very well informed, well organized, and interesting.

Unfortunately the course is not on sale right now, and I can never recommend buying TC courses for full price because every course goes on sale at least once a year at a substantial discount, but it may be possible to borrow it on interlibrary loan. My interlibrary search turned up a number of copies on OCLC First Search.

Nemo was also interested in knowing what translation people are reading. I am reading Ian Johnston's translation, which is available on Kindle and Audible as well as in paperback. Here is the Kindle link: http://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-b...
Note that if you have Amazon Prime you can borrow this Kindle book free.

I was mostly interested in the audio because it is produced by Naxos Audiobooks, who also did an excellent production of Dante's Commedia. It is indeed a joy to listen to. Here's the Audible link: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?...
You can also get it from Naxos and probably from your public library.

And I was the one who didn't want to read Ovid again!

Laurele wrote: "And I was the one who didn't want to read Ovid again! "

I've been wondering about that. :) I thought perhaps you didn't like it for some reason.

For translations, I've got Mandelbaum's Metamorphoses, the Loeb classical library's Ovid and one from Audible narrated by Charlton Griffin (because I'm used to listening to him narrating the Greco-Roman classics) translated by Horace Gregory.

Shakespeare & Ovid: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/...
English literature & Ovid: http://books.google.nl/books/about/Th...

A recommendation from Charles Martin, translator for a Norton edition of Ovid:

"William S. Anderson’s two-volume commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been my constant companion in this venture, a treasure for any reader of the poem."

Martin, Charles (2009-01-31). Metamorphoses: A New Translation. Norton. Kindle Edition.

William S. Anderson

There are some fun reviews of Metamorphoses on Goodreads. I just read one by [P]. David Lentz makes almost a testimony to the work.

The Metamorphoses of Ovid by Michael Simpson

A translation I had not noticed before. Goodreads reader max, who reports having read Ovid several times in the original Latin, speaks highly of it. Is anyone in this discussion using that translation?

A review by a Latin literary professor is here, with some comments on the issues of translation:
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-09...

Nemo asked what we are reading. My Kindle version is the Charles Martin translation for Norton with introductory notes by Bernard Knox. I also have two paperbacks, one translated by Allen Mandelbaum and the other by Frank Justus Miller. The later prose translation is a Barnes and Noble Classic with a solid introduction by Robert Squillace (New York University).

If anybody wants to try out their Latin, or see how what the passages are that the translators are translating, here's the Latin Metamorphoses.

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid.html

This is a special link for Lily, though of course it's for everybody else, too. (If you wonder why Lily, that must be because you weren't in our Dante discussions where she was so superb in ferreting out illustrations for us.)

Caution: it may take a while to load if you have a slow connection. Sorry so much of it is in Latin, but at least the captions are in English.

http://www.latein-pagina.de/ovid/ovid...

I have found several potentially useful online editions, which I find helpful to search for passages I want and to cut and paste text instead of having to type stuff in.

This is a non-verse modern translation which has the benefit of being extensively hyperlinked to a Mythological Index.

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PI...

Here is an older translation, which I find quite lyrical, though not quite as clear as the Kline translation.

http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.html

The Ovid Collection at U.Va hosts a collection of Latin texts, translations in different languages, images and manuscripts (including the sites Everyman referred to above).

http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/

Everyman wrote: "This is a special link for Lily, though of course it's for everybody else, too. (If you wonder why Lily, that must be because you weren't in our Dante discussions where she was so superb in ferret..."

Thank you! Quite a collection. (Upgraded a new bios, then downloaded and looked at this. Now, some sleep.)

Everyman wrote: "I have mentioned in several posts Elizabeth Vandiver's course for the Teaching Company, Classical Mythology.

It's a 24 lecture course (30 minutes per lecture) which starts with several lectures ..."

The Teaching Company is having their summer sale until Sunday and every course is on sale including Classic Mythology.

If you are looking for an unabridged audiobook matched with a text, the audible.com audible book version narrated by Charlton Griffin is the Horace Gregory translation. Whispersync for voice is not available for them yet but Griffin's narration is worth it.

Amazon.com Kindle book
Ovid. The Metamorphoses. Trans. Horace Gregory. New York: Signet Classic, 2009. AZW file.

Audible.com audiobook
Ovid. The Metamorphoses. Perf. Charlton Griffin. Rec 2006 Audio Connoisseur 2006. MP3.

I had never heard of the Teaching Company before.

If anybody here uses iTunes U, there are a few courses on Classical mythology (including Uni of Missouri and La Trobe Uni, Australia) and other materials relevant to Ovid. I haven't checked them out, so no guarantees of quality, though I have worked through a La Trobe course before on iTunes U and found it to be well-structured and informative.

Patrice wrote: "I found a teaching company cd on my shelf that is just fabulous. It's called "Greece and Rome: An Integrated Approach". It's discusses exactly what I was curious about, how Greece and Rome are i..."

I have that one, but haven't gotten to it yet. Still working through "History of the Ancient World," which deals not only with the traditional Greece and Rome, but Iran/Iraq, Ebypt, India, China, and even the early Americas and Polynesia. After that, I was planning to go over to Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre, but maybe I'll elevate Greece and Rome higher in the pile (which has several other courses in it, too; I'm as bad about overbuying TC courses as I am about overbuying books. Sigh.)

My favorite TTC set is The Science of Language with Prof. John McWhorter.
I am more interested in people's comments on the translations than on the mythology proper, fun though it is! I find the Mythnet site useful, and if you haven't read any of the Golden Bough, well....it's available on Bartley.com
There is also a nice set of classical paintings on themes from Ovid over at ancienthistory.About.com

Mark wrote: "I am more interested in people's comments on the translations than on the mythology proper, fun though it is!..."

I like Mandelbaum for the beauty of the language, Frank Justus Miller's prose makes the stories easy to read (Barnes and Noble Classics), I find it interesting that Martin was chosen for a Norton Edition and that the introduction is by Bernard Knox. I'm glad it is available in a Kindle Edition, and I am reading there much of the time. But, I find the language not as subtle and oft feeling rougher-edged than Mandelbaum. I am in absolutely no position to comment on affinity to the original Latin, although I don't see the same amount of diversity in content that I remember with The Aeneid. Somewhere I read recently that Latin is harder to translate than Greek, but haven't verified that elsewhere.

I can't read Greek at all, but manage to stumble through the Latin with a parallel text...the Miller, but there is no reason one should be harder to translate. It's usually the dilemma of maintaining the style or the meaning that is the problem!

Mark wrote: "... there is no reason one should be harder to translate...."

Well, maybe there is. There are a lot more Latin texts available, so there are many more examples of less common words to help get the nuances of those words. There are some words in Greek, I understand, that only appear in a few texts, so it can be harder to discern exactly what the original authors meant by them.

"'Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi' is a Latin phrase, literally meaning 'What is legitimate for Jove (Jupiter), is not legitimate for oxen.' The phrase was created by Terence, a playwright of the Roman Republic, in reference to the myth wherein Jupiter took the form of a bull to seduce Europa, in the form 'Aliis si licet, tibi non licet.' The rhymed version of the phrase probably was created in the Middle Ages.

"The phrase is often translated as 'Gods may do what cattle may not.' It indicates the existence of a double standard (justifiable or otherwise), and essentially means 'what is permitted to one person or group, is not permitted to everyone.' It is also used as the maxim for victor's justice, where a State that wins a war tries and punishes the vanquished, while avoiding such procedures with their own personnel."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_lic...

Publius Terentius Afer (195/185–159 BC), i.e., Terence. Wiki.

Stumbled across the above this morning while looking for something else -- I get confused between the stories of Io and of Europa.

I came to an assumption in message 25 of Book III as follows: So, there is a hierarchy of gods, right!? I may have suspected this on some level, but I'm not certain. (I haven't read the spoiler because I like the thrill of discovery).

Assuming there is a hierarchy of gods (within the context of mythology, of course), and assuming that Ovid has compiled many myths into one poem, was the hierarchy created within Ovid's poem, or are there other books that indicate that others of his time, or before, said there was a hierarchy?

Elizabeth wrote: "I came to an assumption in message 25 of Book III as follows: So, there is a hierarchy of gods, right!? ..."

Well, it is certainly valid to talk about a hierarchy of Olympic gods, Titans, nature gods, naiads, dryads, nymphs and other supernatural creatures, although I don't know off-hand a text that lays those relationships out clearly. Oft times, genealogy seems more relevant, entangled as that may be. Vanessa James has done a nice foldout called The Genealogy of Greek Mythology.

The Genealogy of Greek Mythology: An Illustrated Family Tree of Greek Myth from the First Gods to the Founders of Rome by Vanessa James

Just spent some fun time exploring this site:

http://www.thatsgreece.com/info/greek...

It is organized with Deities (Horae, Hyades, Moirae, Naiads, Oceanids, Plieades,...), Gods, Heroes, and Myths.

(The 7-minute infomercial for Greece in the upper right corner was interesting in its own right.)

Lily, thank you so much. I put the genealogy book on my to read list and looked at the "that'sgreece" site. I like the infomercial - I'm ready to travel to Greece!

Another modern name to know when exploring myths, perhaps less familiar to American readers than Edith Hamilton, Joseph Campbell, or Sir James George Frazer, is Roberto Calasso, the (handsome) Italian author who has written extensively of mythology.

Perhaps best known is his The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, one of my f2f book club reads a number of years ago. But my bookshelves include at least two others of his, one of which in particular I pull and enjoy from time to time: Literature And The Gods. Classico is not particularly light reading, at least in translation, but enjoyable, perhaps best in small doses with time to reflect on what has been read.

Elizabeth wrote: "I came to an assumption in message 25 of Book III as follows: So, there is a hierarchy of gods, right!? I may have suspected this on some level, but I'm not certain. (I haven't read the spoiler be..."

Yes, there is, but it's not as clear as a modern organization chart. Zeus (Jove) is clearly the top dog. Then there are the Olympians, those gods who live on Mount Olympus, who are the most important gods and goddesses; if there is any sort of formal hierarchy among them I'm not aware of it. Then there are a whole host of other divinities.

Ovid did not invent this; the hierarchy was well established (or as well established as it was; the Greeks presumably had a lot better sense of it than I do) long before Ovid.

Patrice wrote: "I just checked out some dates. What I found was surprising. One source said that the Metamorphoses was finished in 8 AD, the same year as his exile. All of the dates are only "probable" but I wo..."

Patrice, I read somewhere just this week that Metamorphoses was finished before Ovid's exile and that the writer did not believe that his exile was connected with the book. I wish I could find my source, but I can't at the moment, but I'll check around to see if I can find it. Anyway, I would think that the poem took so long to write that even if it was finished the same year as his exile, the book would not have influenced by his exile.

Patrice -- Some of Ovid's earlier works may well have been even more offensive to a conservative emperor. What I have seen gibes with Wendel's conclusions, although I may have seen the dual 8AD date as well.

I generally start with Wikipedia:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamor....

GradeSaver can also be useful for basic info:
- http://www.gradesaver.com/metamorphoses/

But you'll probably have more fun with Larry Brown:
- http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/f...

Patrice wrote: "the book is about the transformative power of love ..."

Sure, love gets things moving here. But what kind of love is Ovid talking about? Is it the same thing Augustine had in mind? Or is Ovid just writing a book we (and Augustine, it seems) will not forget?

Lily wrote: "Patrice -- Some of Ovid's earlier works may well have been even more offensive to a conservative emperor. What I have seen gibes with Wendel's conclusions, although I may have seen the dual 8AD dat..."

I guess it depends on what you mean by conservative. I was doing a little research on the exile question, and it does indeed appear to be a mystery. But one of the theories is that Ovid knew, and perhaps wrote a poem about an allegation that Augustus engaged in an incestuous relationship with his daughter Julia. Given Ovid's interest in all things amatory, it seems a plausible theory, and more than adequate reason for his exile. But apparently there is no proof and other theories are equally plausible.

Patrice wrote: "Augustine starts out with Eros and then turns it into "Agopao"? Is that the right word? The love of/from God.."

Yes, that is the New Testament use of the word. Otherwise it usually means something like "brotherly love" or affection, as opposed to eros/desire. Augustine knew a bit of both, as you note. But he wrote in Latin, so I'm not sure what terms he used, or if they correspond exactly to the Greek. It would be fun to read the Confessions again sometime!

Patrice wrote: "https://sites.google.com/site/uteuryd..."

Larger image: http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages...



Description from MMOA: http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/...

Patrice -- thanks for the collection of images on Eurydice and Orpheus. I particularly like this one by Rodin. It reminds me of Michelangelo's "Slaves." In all cases, I believe the statues are considered "unfinished." But, with the "Slaves," the symbolism of not being able to quite escape the marble has always seemed like part of the art. The same seems applicable here.

This Rodin is currently on display at the Met. Time to put a visit on the calendar.

The description page above includes links to sculptures by Rodin on Cupid/Love and Psyche, as well as additional views of this work.

Thomas wrote: "...It would be fun to read the Confessions again sometime! ..."

I was thinking the same this week, but for me the entirety would not be again -- have only dabbled, or just a bit more.

Patrice wrote: "My prof told us that he was exiled because he had had an affair with a senator's wife..."

It is rather fascinating -- and sad, exile must have been hard -- that a man who preserved so many tales about not crossing the vanity of the gods found himself at odds with his emperor.

Do others see parallels between the story of Eurydice and Orpheus and the one of Persephone and Ceres? It has always seemed to me that they both speak to the difficulty of returning from the beyond. Even with the help of the gods, the seven seeds of pomegranate hold Persephone to the Underworld. Here, it is a glance backwards before Eurydice has truly re-entered.

Somehow these stories speak to the grief and the ways we recover or succumb thereto -- not perhaps in the direct ways of Kübler-Ross's five stages, but in more spiritual or mystical ways -- as in an intensive care ward or watching a child grow after losing a spouse.

Patrice -- I sense you have mixed feelings about including images among these posts? (I understand your comment about Bernini's "Daphne and Apollo" almost transcending the literary myth itself -- but I love that work so much, I don't mind. It makes a wonderful memory tool.)

I have been struggling a bit with what would have value as we go through Metamorphoses. I haven't the knowledge or the time to find what I would consider definitive or especially fine examples for the various myths. The variety and number of those available is so deep that doing something like I tried with Dante doesn't seem feasible -- following several artists who immersed themselves in the literature and being able to compare and contrast their visions and interpretations across the various cantos, hopefully thereby expanding the range for ourselves.

Links are one way to take people to options, but it is hard to assess whether to follow them without some clues. Also, I personally happen to enjoy some visual material amidst our discussion -- I also enjoy books with pictures, both old fashioned ones and ones like those produced by DK. :-)

Eman has been encouraging us to share the places we find the stories of Ovid used. May we all find ways to carry that out that work for most of us.

Patrice wrote: "Lily I just deleted a long reply. I'll try again later. In the meantime I hope you enjoy Stephanie Bythe. Not sure I buy her as a man but with a voice like that I don't much care!"

Here is Anthony Tommasini's glowing review in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/art...

I'm too late I guess, but Eros and agape are in a way deeply differed, though some Catholic saints manifested that Eros as ecstasy, as with other mystics from other traditions. But going to St. Augustine, he in his youth was very lusty, but as tradition in Christianity tells, agape is the supreme selfless love. I find in the Greeks many wonderful things and elaborations, but not in the moral ethical sense; too much frenzy and wildness, lust, rape, incest and other things I don't agree, and the thing is that they don't seem to have a code of ethics morals. I know philosophers put forth the notion of balance, and they were quite civilized compared to the barbarians, I might be too Victorian but its plain anarchy, as St. Augustine manifested the gods imitated man, rather than man imitating God.

Patrice wrote: "www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjec..."

But I'm confused. Why is she the one looking back? And why are they, if the foreground figures are as I assume Orpheus and Eurydice, walking together instead of she following him as it appears from Ovid that she is?

Or is this the moment they are leaving, not the moment he turns back?

And maybe a quibble, but did they have violins with bows in Greek times?

Patrice wrote: "https://sites.google.com/site/uteuryd..."

Sorry I forgot to say thanks for giving us all these good sites before I criticized one!

Thomas wrote: "It would be fun to read the Confessions again sometime! ..."

It's on our bookshelf, so it may pop up as a potential selection sometime. Or, as a moderator, you could nominate it.

Lily wrote: "Do others see parallels between the story of Eurydice and Orpheus and the one of Persephone and Ceres? It has always seemed to me that they both speak to the difficulty of returning from the beyon..."

Yes! It's so true, such a deep longing into the underworld the unconscious for our subject/object of love, a deep tragedy that goes on and on, meeting/summer, separation/winter, all in a haze and daze of melancholy, fear, a sort of intoxicated feeling, of grief of fleeting joy of our mortal lot, even in these Grecoroman immortals, archetypes that teach such a deep, dark fortune...

Patrice wrote: "I realize now how much work it is to find these things and post them and I am grateful to you for making such an effort...."

Thank you, Patrice. I was lucky on Dante; I had two-three really good sources and then was able to add a few more as we went along.

As you can perhaps tell, I'm going to experiment a bit and try a few things for awhile. Let me encourage others to give feedback on what works, what doesn't.

Lily wrote: " Let me encourage others to give feedback on what works, what doesn't. "

So far, over on the sightings thread, it's working perfectly. Great finds!

Everyman wrote: "I have mentioned in several posts Elizabeth Vandiver's course for the Teaching Company, Classical Mythology.

It's a 24 lecture course (30 minutes per lecture) which starts with several lectures ..."

Everyman: In a post in another thread you suggested that I buy the above course when it was on sale. Well, I bought it and Classical Mythology II as a set a couple of weeks ago and am enjoying the lectures.

My notes on the first lecture, say that myths are "traditional stories that a culture tells itself about itself". Ms. Vandiver elaborates by saying that traditional stories that a culture tells itself are viewed as truth, and those same stories, when viewed from outside the culture are viewed as myths.

This distinction has caused me to try to look at the myths in Ovid's poem in two ways: as the Greeks and Romans would interpret them, and how we would interpret the myths. It makes a challenging subject even more challenging, but very interesting. Thanks for your suggestion.

Elizabeth wrote: "Everyman wrote: "I have mentioned in several posts Elizabeth Vandiver's course for the Teaching Company, Classical Mythology.

It's a 24 lecture course (30 minutes per lecture) which starts with ..."

I'm delighted that you're enjoying the courses. I wasn't aware that there is a Classical Mythology II course, so I'll go and check it out right away. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.