Helen is not the subject but the test case. She is the figure around which questions of causation, perception, agency, and the reliability of language organize. The movement runs from Homer, where she is a condition, through Euripides and Gorgias, to Thucydides where she disappears entirely and the mechanism persists. The distance between the laterContinue reading “Pandora and Helen”
Tag Archives: Hector
Achilles
Achilles was the man who would cause his father to outlive him. Everything else follows from that. Thetis knew first. Her son faced what the Greeks called a dilemma. A long life without a name, or a short life the singers would not let die. Both draw blood.[1] She had been bound to that. WrestledContinue reading “Achilles”
KAIROS AND THE GEOMETRY OF TIMING
Book Five of the Iliad contains the most outrageous act of combat in all of Greek myth: a mortal wounds a god. Homer opens the Iliad with the anger of Achilles and his retreat from the field of battle. His mother, Thetis, bargains with Zeus, and the war is no longer a simple contest ofContinue reading “KAIROS AND THE GEOMETRY OF TIMING”