Thursday, October 14, 2010

A new theme & Odysseus and the Palladium


Odysseus, from the Antikythera shipwreck, the piece has been, although badly damaged by the water, dated to c. 100 BC. It was perhaps part of a group in which also Diomedes could be found.

Well, the blog has hit 20.000 visitors and it's time for a new theme. I've decided that I'm going back to the one I had around Christmas last year, i.e. combining a quote from a classical author with a picture.


"[...]there is Odysseus, a wheedling rascal, but bold enough indeed, [500] and of all men he has wrought most outrage on this country [i.e. Troy]. For he came by night to Athena's shrine and stole her image and took it to the Argive ships; next he came inside our battlements, clad as a vagrant in a beggar's garb, and loudly did he curse [505] the Argives, sent as a spy to Ilium; and then went out again, when he had slain the sentinels and warders at the gate. He is always to be found lurking in ambush about the altar of Thymbrean Apollo near the city. In him we have a troubling pest to wrestle with."

Euripides - Rhesus line 499-510
Translation by E. P. Coleridge 1891

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