David Albertson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Conventional stereotypes about romance portray it as a passionate, irrational game. Ancient philosophers, on the other hand, viewed love as something dangerous − but also enlightening.
Menelaus holding the body of Patroclus – Diana Mantuana (1535-1587).
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Reading Wilson’s Iliad, one senses something of the chant of Homer’s verse, even through the written word.
‘Monkey: Journey To The West,’ a nine-act opera adaptation performed at the Chatelet Theater in France.
Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/French Select via Getty Image
There is a long tradition in China of associating monkeys with the mind – symbolism that has helped the novel’s most memorable character, the Monkey King, find universal resonance.
A painting from the ancient Egyptian tomb of Niankhkhum and Khnumhotep, royal servants whom some scholars have interpreted to be lovers.
kairoinfo4u/Flickr
Tina Chronopoulos, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Writing about same-sex relationships and gender beyond a strict male-female binary was more common in ancient Greece and Rome than students assume, a scholar writes.
A 1946 nuclear weapon test by the US military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia.
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In the 1957 worldwide bestseller, Australia is – briefly – the last habitable place on earth, following a nuclear world war. One character asks, as they wait to die: ‘Why did all this happen to us?’
‘Rhetoric’ has a bad rap – but some of the original rhetoricians’ techniques can actually help foster productive conversations.
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Ryan Leack, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Ancient Greek philosophers despised the Sophists’ rhetoric because it searched for relative truth, not absolutes. But learning how to do that thoughtfully can help constructive debates.
An ancient Greek relief depicting a baby with its mother and grandmother.
David Lees/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Ancient Greece and Rome may have handed down the image of rosy-cheeked Cupids, but their myths about him explore the messier – sometimes scarier – sides of love.
Laurel was an ancient symbol of medicine, the arts and the end of war.
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Just in time for this year’s Nobel Prize announcements, here’s how the symbolism of a plant associated with the god Apollo lives on in modern-day laureates.
High school students have studied many of the same books for generations. Is it time for a change?
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Andrew Newman, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
An English professor takes a critical look at why today’s students are assigned the same books that were assigned decades ago – and why American school curricula are so difficult to change.
The possibilities of ‘more human than human’ artificial intelligence and the dangers of playing God and are not new – they’re the subjects of one of the world’s first science-fiction novels.
This brainy feminist romp of a novel, loved by Rachel Cusk and Maria Semple, is often compared to Brideshead Revisited. But Carol Lefevre says it’s more like a sexy, sweary version of Nancy Mitford in 1960s London.
The bodies in Lizzo’s video aren’t chiseled like the Greek statues seen in museums.
YouTube/Lizzo Music
The classical tradition has long excluded anyone who wasn’t white. But a succession of Black female artists have attempted to broaden these ossified boundaries.
Fragments of Sappho? The 2014 discovery was of five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second.
('Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,'1864, by Simeon Solomon)
Ancient Greek philosophers including Plato likened civic leaders to doctors, creating a healthy society through balance and moderation. Those ideas feed into what we expect from leaders today.
Pericles Funeral Oration on the Greek 50 Drachmai 1955 Banknote.
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Thucydides’ description of the plague that struck Athens in 430 BC is one of the great passages of Greek literature. It focusses on the social response, both of those who died and those who survived.