Kiwi Hellenist

The Sistine Chapel ceiling at the Vatican has paintings of seven ancient Hebrew prophets, but also of five Sibyls — non-Christian prophetic figures.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

There are already tons of reviews of The Odyssey (2026) out there, including many by classical scholars.

The Phaiakes deliver Odysseus to his home island, Ithake, leaving him asleep on the shore.

Odysseus’ wanderings are the most famous sequence in Homer’s Odyssey.

A catalogue of onscreen versions of the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is coming out soon, a feature film starring Matt Damon, and directed and written by Christopher Nolan.

Eric Cline’s book The Trojan War: a very short introduction (Oxford, 2013) argues that the classical Greek myth of the Trojan War is based on a historical conflict.

Eric Cline’s The Trojan War: a very short introduction (Oxford, 2013) is an appealing book, charmingly written, but inaccurate and misleading in many essential respects.

A catalogue of citations of scripture in the canonical Christian gospels, by way of a note to myself.

Video review/fact-check of the IBM short film ‘Eratosthenes’ (1961).

Ever wondered where the weekday names come from?

Hesiod has races of gold, silver, bronze, heroes, and iron.

Stoicism, the ancient school of philosophy, had some excellent ideas.

The earth has orbited around the sun since 1609.

In the Odyssey, the following kind of thing is absolutely normal.

The new Percy Jackson and the Olympians series has begun to come out — three episodes, at the time of writing.

There’s something almost magical about how papyrologists and editors take tiny scraps of ancient papyrus and turn them into coherent texts.

Puns may be the lowest form of humour these days, but in early Greek literature, they’re more like word magic. ... τὸν δορίγαμβρον ἀμφινεικῆ θ’ Ἑλέναν; ἐπεὶ πρεπόντως ἑλέναυς ἕλανδρος ἑλέπτολις.

There’s no good evidence that kamilos — supposedly meaning ‘rope’ — was ever even a real word in ancient Greek.

It isn’t often that I get to combine my interests as a choral singer and a classicist.

You’d imagine the answer would be Achilleus, right?

Every now and then an article about Homer pops up in my alerts and I’ll see if it’s worth sharing.

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