Slatkin's influential book explores the superficially minor role of Thetis in the Iliad, showing how our awareness of alternative myths brings a far greater understanding of Thetis's place in the Epic's thematic structure. This edition also includes six additional essays, which cover a broad range of topics in the study of the Greek Epic.

We have long recognized in the Iliad the hallmarks of the oral, traditional poet who chooses among alternative arrangements of formulaic elements. In The Power of Thetis, Laura M. Slatkin makes us aware of another compositional resource, just as crucial to our understanding of the meaning of Homeric epic. Slatkin shows how, through the selection and combination of mythic motifs, Homer interprets mythological traditions and locates his characters within them by allusion or oblique reference. The figure of Thetis, the mother of Achilles, provides an especially revealing example of the way in which such mythological resonance contributes a wider context and meaning to the epic's central themes. Slatkin teaches us to listen for what is unspoken as well as spoken in the poetry of Homer, and thereby confronts us with the larger questions of the function of epic and its boundaries as a genre.

In 1991, Laura Slatkin published The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad, in which she argued that Homer knowingly situated the storyworld of the Iliad against the backdrop of an older world of mythos by which the events in the Iliad are explained and given traction. Slatkin’s focus was on Achilles’ mother, Thetis: an ostensibly marginal and powerless goddess, Thetis nevertheless drives the plot of the Iliad, being allusively credited with the power to uphold or challenge the rule of Zeus. Now, almost thirty years after Slatkin’s publication, this timely volume re-examines depictions and receptions of this ambiguous goddess, in works ranging from archaic Greek poetry to twenty-first century cinema. Twenty authors build upon Slatkin’s readings to explore Thetis and multiple roles she played in Western literature, art, material culture, religion, and myth. Ever the shapeshifter, Thetis has been and continues to be reconceptualised: supporter or opponent of Zeus’ regime, model bride or unwilling victim of Peleus’ rape, good mother or child-murderess, figure of comedy or monstrous witch. Hers is an enduring power of transformation, resonating within art and literature.

Translated into English for the first time, The Archeologist is a landmark of Greek national literature, and an important document in the history of archeology and classicism. Published for the bicentennial year of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. A Penguin Classic The year 2021 marks the bicentennial of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. This historical milestone provides the impetus for a new period of intensified reflection on the past, present, and future of Greece, especially in light of recent financial and humanitarian challenges the country has found itself facing: the debt crisis that began in the last days of 2009 and the migration crisis five years later. These crises had already stirred renewed and often animated debate about Greek national identity, especially in relation to Europe, and the legacy of classical antiquity remains central to how that relationship is imagined. Where does Greece fit into the modern world and what role, if any, should its celebrated and idealized antiquity play in the country's national identity? More than a century ago, Karkavitsas's The Archeologist (1904) helped to articulate and frame these kinds of questions. The work is an allegory of Greek nationalism that is stylized as a folktale about Aristodemus and Dimitrakis Eumorphopoulos, two brothers and descendants of the illustrious Eumorphopoulos line. For centuries, the family had been persecuted by the Khan family, but when the Khan dynasty starts to topple, the Eumorphopoulos family resolves to regain their ancestral lands and restore their line's ancient glory. Yet the two brothers disagree about the best path forward into the future. Aristodemus insists, to the point of mania, that they must look only to the ancient past—to the family's ancient language, texts, religion, and monuments; Dimitrakis, on the other hand, exuberantly embraces the present. The Archeologist, however, attempts to map and dramatize the tensions that were violently brewing in the Balkans at the turn of the twentieth century and which, within a decade of the work's publication, would contribute to the outbreak of World War I. Also included in this edition are a selection of "sea tales," which Karkavitsas heard from sailors during his extensive time aboard ships in the Mediterranean. Considered as indigenous to Greek literature, the four sea stories represent some of the best known of the Tales from the Prow. "The Gorgon," one of Karkavitsas's shortest sea stories, is also one of the most famous.

"Spectacular and constantly surprising." -Ken Burns Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of Western civilization. As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, New York Times bestselling author Caroline Alexander has taken apart a narrative we think we know and put it back together in a way that lets us see its true power. In the process, she reveals the intended theme of Homer's masterwork-the tragic lessons of war and its enduring devastation.

Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Awards, Classics section Homer’s Odyssey is the first great travel narrative in Western culture. A compelling tale about the consequences of war, and about redemption, transformation, and the search for home, the Odyssey continues to be studied in universities and schools, and to be read and referred to by ordinary readers. Reading Homer’s Odyssey offers a book-by-book commentary on the epic’s themes that informs the non-specialist and engages the seasoned reader in new perspectives. Among the themes discussed are hospitality, survival, wealth, reputation and immortality, the Olympian gods, self-reliance and community, civility, behavior, etiquette and technology, ease, inactivity and stagnation, Penelope’s relationship with Odysseus, Telemachus’ journey, Odysseus’ rejection of Calypso’s offer of immortality, Odysseus’ lies, Homer’s use of the House of Atreus and other myths, the cinematic qualities of the epic’s structure, women’s role in the epic, and the Odyssey’s true ending. Footnotes clarify and elaborate upon myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Odyssey, in addition to the bibliographies that accompany each book’s commentary. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.