Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus; and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four.
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.
In Greek mythology, Phoenix was the son of king Amyntor, and a king of the Dolopians. Phoenix, on the urgings of his mother had sex with his father's concubine. Amyntor, discovering this, called upon the Erinyes to curse him with childlessness. In later accounts of the story, Phoenix was falsely accused by Amyntor's concubine, and blinded by his father, but Chiron restored his sight. Phoenix fled to Peleus, the king of Phthia, and Achilles' father, where Peleus made Phoenix a king of the Dolopians, and gave him the young Achilles to raise.
Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. Heaney was and is still recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry in Ireland during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".
Calchas is an Argive mantis, or "seer," dated to the Age of Legend, which is an aspect of Greek mythology. Some myths are patently fictional, but others, such as the main characters of the Iliad, are widely believed to have had some basis in fact. Calchas appears in the opening scenes of the Iliad, which is believed to have been based on a war conducted by the Achaeans against the powerful city of Troy in the Late Bronze Age.
In Greek mythology, Helenus was a son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy, and the twin brother of the prophetess Cassandra. He was also called Scamandrios. According to legend, Cassandra, having been given the power of prophecy by Apollo, taught it to her brother. Like Cassandra, he was always right, but unlike her, others believed him.
Neoptolemus, also called Pyrrhus, was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia, and brother of Oneiros in Greek mythology, and also the mythical progenitor of the ruling dynasty of the Molossians of ancient Epirus.
In Greek mythology and history, there were at least eight men named Medon.
Philoctetes, or Philocthetes, according to Greek mythology, was the son of Poeas, king of Meliboea in Thessaly, and Demonassa. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and a participant in the Trojan War.
Laodamas refers to five different people in Greek mythology.
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities and Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has also served as president of the Poetry Society (UK) and Poetry Editor at The New Yorker.
The Little Iliad is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the Trojan cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of the Little Iliad comes chronologically after that of the Aethiopis, and is followed by that of the Iliou persis. The Little Iliad was variously attributed by ancient writers to Lesches of Pyrrha, Cinaethon of Sparta, Diodorus of Erythrae, Thestorides of Phocaea, or Homer himself. The poem comprised four books of verse in dactylic hexameter, the heroic meter.
Philoctetes is a play by Sophocles. The play was written during the Peloponnesian War. It is one of the seven extant tragedies by Sophocles. It was first performed at the City Dionysia in 409 BC, where it won first prize. The story takes place during the Trojan War. It describes the attempt by Neoptolemus and Odysseus to bring the disabled Philoctetes, the master archer, back to Troy from the island of Lemnos.
The Posthomerica is an epic poem by Quintus of Smyrna, probably written in the latter half of the 4th century AD, and telling the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium.
The Returns from Troy are the stories of how the Greek leaders returned after their victory in the Trojan War. Many Achaean heroes did not return to their homes, but died or founded colonies outside the Greek mainland. The most famous returns are those of Odysseus, whose wanderings are narrated in the Odyssey, and Agamemnon, whose murder at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra was portrayed in Greek tragedy.
Station Island is the sixth collection of original poetry written by the Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. It is dedicated to the Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel. The collection was first published in the UK and Ireland in 1984 by Faber & Faber and was then published in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1985. Seamus Heaney has been recorded reading this collection on the Seamus Heaney Collected Poems album.
Philoctetes is a play by the Athenian poet Aeschylus. It was probably first produced during the 470s BCE. It is now lost except for a few fragments. Most of what we know of the plot is from the writings of 1st century orator Dio Chrysostom, who compared the Philoctetes plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.
Philoctetes is a tragedy by the Athenian poet Euripides. It was probably first produced in 431 BCE at the Dionysia in a tetralogy that included the extant Medea and was awarded third prize. It is now lost except for a few fragments. Much of what we know of the plot is from the writings of Dio Chrysostom, who compared the Philoctetes plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles and also paraphrased the beginning of Euripides' play.
In Greek mythology, Eurypylus ("Broadgate") was the son of Telephus, king of Mysia. He was a great warrior, who led a Mysian contingent that fought alongside the Trojans against the Greeks in the Trojan War. He killed Machaon, and was himself killed by Achilles' son Neoptolemus.
