Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies
22 October 1942
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1942, Professor Gregory Nagy has been the Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, since 2000. The center was founded in 1962 "to re-discover the humanism of the Hellenic Greeks". The center provides opportunities for students to learn about ancient Greek culture at two archaeological sites in Greece, Kenchreai, the port of the great ancient city of Corinth on the Aegean Sea and the Mycenaen site of Midea near the ancient city of Argos. The center also offers free discussion series that tackle such topics as Athenian law, the Homeric Odyssey and the cultivation of justice and Homer's poetic justic.
Professor Nagy also teaches half-time at the Harvard campus in Cambridge as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature. He joined the faculty of Harvard in 1966 after receiving his degree there in Classical Philology. He has served in a number of distinguished positions including curator of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature and as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Submitted by Bija Knowles on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 10:15
A Little-known Fact
A little-known fact about the emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus is that he shares his name with a common word for public latrines in Italian. Not only were the antique communal latrines, such as those at Ostia Antica – see photo – referred to as 'vespasiani', but modern-day urinals in Italy, including the portable plastic versions often seen outside stadiums, also go by that name.
Submitted by Sean Williams on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 12:30
Today the name ‘Venus’ conjures images of the little planet you can see in the clear night’s sky. You might even get the vision of a Botticelli-hewn beauty breezing in atop a seashell, or any other renaissance renderings – Titian, Velasquez et al. Yet the ancient Roman goddess was once much more than a mere picture of prettiness. An incarnation of earlier eastern and Hellenic deities, Venus was reprised in so many roles that during her heyday she would’ve been visiting the heavens’ psychiatrist for hourly sessions. Yet it was during the tenure of Julius Caesar that this theologically schizophrenic image met her own renaissance; the subject of a huge number of temples, statues and cults. Caesar even believed she was his natural ancestor, and built part of his famous Roman Forum in her honour. So who was Venus, where did she come from – and how did she spark one of the most feverish cults in ancient Rome?
Jody Joy, one of the museum's staff, will talk for 45 minutes on the items of religious significance from the Iron Age housed by the British Museum. No booking necessary.
The photo shows the temple to Aphrodisias, where these statues and numerous other representations of the goddess, were found. Built near a marble quarry, the city of Aphrodisias was well supplied with material for sculpture and this proximity examples the wealth of carvings that survives from the region. The sculptures demnstrate the way that the Anatolian cult adapted to survive the Hellenistic and Roman invasions. Aping classical sculptural styles, they incorporate more naturalism than would previously have been seen in such representations.
This statue demonstrates the distinctive appearance of the members of the cult of Isis, which spread through the Roman empire after the conquest of Egypt in 31 BC. It was traditional for members of this cult to wear their hair in long locks covering their ears until puberty, when the hair was shaved off and presented to the goddess as part of a coming of age rite. Images of Isis's son, Horus, also display this sort of hairstyle. The Iseum, or temple to Isis, which stood near where the Santa Maria sopra Minerva chuch in Rome now stands, was the largest and grandest outside Egypt.
