A recent archaeological find on Mount Lykaion in central Greece has caused quite a buzz.  The remains of a young man, missing the top portion of his skull, laid on an east-west axis in an ash altar suggests that rarity of rarities in Greece: evidence of a human sacrifice.

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A few years ago, I don't recall exactly when or where, I encountered a powerful idea that's stayed with me.  It concerns Homer's Odyssey, and its hero, Odysseus ( Read more... )

The big news this week is that a group of Greek archaeologists and astrometrologists compared meticulous astronomical observations with a careful reading of Homer to calculate Patroclus's death as occurring at noon on June 6, 1218 B.C.  You can read the full paper hereHomer describes a solar eclipse taking place during the battle for Patroclus's ( Read more... )

Homer's Iliad opens not with fighting, but with Chryses, priest of Apollo, entering the Greek camp at Troy to beg Agamemnon for the release of his daughter, Chryseis.  The girl, captured by Achilles in a raid, has since become Agamemnon's concubine.  Chryses offers a generous ransom which Agamemnon refuses out of hand.  Worse, the son of Atreus ( Read more... )

Let's celebrate the new year as the Mycenaeans would have, with drink and storytelling.


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The Egyptians depicted feasts on their tomb walls, giving us a rather detailed look into what the typical Egyptian feast would have involved. Unfortunately, no such pictorial evidence has survived for the Mycenaean world. Recreating a Mycenaean feast means piecing together archaeological remains and textual clues from Homer; the latter is a bit ( Read more... )

Menelaus, king of Sparta, and husband of Helen, is often portrayed as a gooseberry.  He's considered a fool for leaving Helen alone with Paris, not to mention he ends up as the biggest cuckold in Aegean because of it.  Moreover, he's a second-rate warrior, though certainly not lacking in courage.

To give the king of Sparta his due, he's actually one ( Read more... )

While browsing through Yahoo!Images and YouTube, I stumbled across an intriguing short film which seems to be the introduction to an unfinished project.   The soundtrack is a reconstruction of what Homer would have sounded like 2,800 years ago, and the images are a combination of real footage of Mycenae, some great miniature work, and actors in ( Read more... )

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