TFBT: ““It's Human-True, it Hits me Right” Cafe

Gregory Nagy wrote on the magic of song and story telling in reference to Odyssey xii 184–191; 

 “The Sirens, as false Muses, tempt the hero by offering to sing for him an endless variety of songs about Troy in particular and about everything else in general….” 

_{δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽ ἰών, πολύαιν᾽ Ὀδυσεῦ, μέγα κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν,}

_{(185) νῆα κατάστησον, ἵνα νωιτέρην ὄπ ἀκούσῃς.}

_{οὐ γάρ πώ τις τῇδε παρήλασε νηὶ μελαίνῃ,}

_{πρίν γ᾽ ἡμέων μελίγηρυν ἀπὸ στομάτων ὄπ᾽ ἀκοῦσαι,}

_{ἀλλ᾽ ὅ γε τερψάμενος νεῖται καὶ πλείονα εἰδώς.}

_{ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάνθ᾽ ὅσ᾽ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ}

_{(190) Ἀργεῖοι Τρῶές τε θεῶν ἰότητι μόγησαν,}

_{ἴδμεν δ᾽, ὅσσα γένηται ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ.}

₁₈₄ ‘Come here, Odysseus, famed for your many riddling words [ainoi], you great glory to the Achaean name, [185] stop your ship so that you may hear our two voices. ₁₈₆ No man has ever yet sailed past us with his dark ship ₁₈₇ without staying to hear the sweet sound of the voices that come from our mouths, ₁₈₈ and he who listens will not only experience great pleasure before he goes back home [neesthai] but will also be far more knowledgeable than before, ₁₈₉ for we know everything that happened at Troy, that expansive place, [190] —all the sufferings caused by the gods for the Argives [= Achaeans] and Trojans ₁₉₁ and we know everything on earth, that nurturer of so many mortals—everything that happens.’ [i]

“The sheer pleasure of listening to the songs of the Sirens threatens not only the homecoming of Odysseus, who is tempted to linger and never stop listening to the endless stories about Troy, but also the ongoing song about that homecoming, that is, the Odyssey itself.”[ii]

So, what is your favorite story from Ancient Greece?  What tale, whether mythical or historical tempts you to “linger and never stop listening”?


(Maya, another mock-up of potential blogpost for the Kosmos Society Cafe

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[i] (Odyssey xii 184–191, translated by Samuel Butler, Revised by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power)

[ii] .”   (BA Preface §17n; EH §50).  (Homer and Greek Myth, Gregory Nagy [The printed version is published in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (ed. R. D. Woodard; Cambridge University Press 2007) 52–82. See also the companion piece, “Lyric and Greek Myth,” pages 19–51) https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/2486