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Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar who is the author of the textbook Classical Myth. Trained at Berkeley and Harvard, he is a specialist in Homer and in the history of writing.[ citation needed ] Powell is currently the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. [1]
Powell's study Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet advances the controversial thesis that a single man invented the Greek alphabet expressly in order to record the poems of Homer. [2] His Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) rejects the standard theories of the origins of both Sumerian cuneiform and the Phoenician alphabet as deriving from pictograms. [3] and attempts to create a scientific terminology and taxonomy for the study of writing.
Powell has also translated a number of works, including the Iliad , [4] the Odyssey , the Aeneid and the poems of Hesiod. His Greek Poems to the Gods includes translation and commentary on Greek hymns from Homer to Proclus.
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Ares is the Greek god of war and courage. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. The Greeks were generally ambivalent towards him. He embodies the physical valor necessary for success in war but can also personify sheer brutality and bloodlust, in contrast to his sister, the armored Athena, whose martial functions include military strategy and generalship. An association with Ares endows places, objects, and other deities with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality.
Homer was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.
In Greek mythology, the Nereids or Nereides are sea nymphs, the 50 daughters of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanid Doris, sisters to their brother Nerites. They often accompany Poseidon, the god of the sea, and can be friendly and helpful to sailors.
In Greek mythology, Styx was a goddess and river of the Underworld. Her parents were the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, and she was the wife of the Titan Pallas, and the mother of Zelus, Nike, Kratos, and Bia. She sided with Zeus in his war against the Titans, and because of this, to honor her, Zeus decreed that the solemn oaths of the gods be sworn by the water of Styx.
In Greek mythology, Oceanus was a Titan son of Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys, and the father of the river gods and the Oceanids, as well as being the great river which encircled the entire world.
In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes are giant one-eyed creatures. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished. In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who made for Zeus his weapon the thunderbolt. In Homer's Odyssey, they are an uncivilized group of shepherds, the brethren of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus. Cyclopes were also famous as the builders of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns.
In Greek mythology, Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans. Tartarus is the place where, according to Plato's Gorgias, souls are judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment. In Hesiod's Theogony, Tartarus is described as one of the earliest beings to exist, alongside Chaos, Gaia (Earth) and Eros (Love).
In Greek mythology, Phorcys or Phorcus is a primordial sea god, generally cited as the son of Pontus and Gaia (Earth). Classical scholar Karl Kerenyi conflated Phorcys with the similar sea gods Nereus and Proteus. His wife was Ceto, and he is most notable in myth for fathering by Ceto a host of monstrous children. In extant Hellenistic-Roman mosaics, Phorcys was depicted as a fish-tailed merman with crab-claw legs and red, spiky skin.
In Greek mythology, dreams were sometimes personified as Oneiros or Oneiroi. In the Iliad of Homer, Zeus sends an Oneiros to appear to Agamemnon in a dream, while in Hesiod's Theogony, the Oneiroi are the sons of Nyx (Night), and brothers of Hypnos (Sleep).
In Greek mythology, Hyperion was one of the twelve Titan children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). With his sister, the Titaness Theia, Hyperion fathered Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn).
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the twelve Olympians are the major deities of the Greek pantheon, commonly considered to be Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus. They were called Olympians because, according to tradition, they resided on Mount Olympus.
The Pleiades, were the seven sister-nymphs, companions of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Together with their sisters, the Hyades, they were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers of the infant Dionysus. The Pleiades were thought to have been translated to the night sky as a cluster of stars, the Pleiades, and were associated with rain.
In Greek mythology, Calliope is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses".
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and a written form influenced by Attic. It was later named Epic Greek because it was used as the language of epic poetry, typically in dactylic hexameter, by poets such as Hesiod and Theognis of Megara. Compositions in Epic Greek may date from as late as the 5th century CE, and it only fell out of use by the end of classical antiquity.
In Greek mythology, Paean, Paeëon or Paieon (Παιήων), or Paeon or Paion (Παιών) was the physician of the gods.
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of the Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (Sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants; as well as of Pontus (Sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.
In Greek mythology, Uranus, sometimes written Ouranos, is the personification of the sky and one of the Greek primordial deities. According to Hesiod, Uranus was the son and husband of Gaia (Earth), with whom he fathered the first generation of Titans. However, no cult addressed directly to Uranus survived into Classical times, and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky, and Styx might be joined, however, in solemn invocation in Homeric epic. Uranus is associated with the Roman god Caelus.
Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the ancient Greek religion's view of the origin and nature of the world; the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures; and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of myth-making itself.
In Greek mythology, the Hecatoncheires, Hekatoncheires, or Hundred-Handers, also called the Centimanes were three monstrous giants, of enormous size and strength, each with fifty heads and one hundred arms. They were individually named Cottus, Briareus and Gyges. In the standard tradition they were the offspring of Uranus (Sky) and of Gaia (Earth), and helped Zeus and the Olympians to overthrow the Titans in the Titanomachy.
In epic poetry, athletics are used as literary tools to accentuate the themes of the epic, to advance the plot of the epic, and to provide a general historical context to the epic. Epic poetry emphasizes the cultural values and traditions of the time in long narratives about heroes and gods. The word "athletic" is derived from the Greek word athlos, which means a contest for a prize. Athletics appear in some of the most famous examples of Greek and Roman epic poetry including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid.