Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Christos C. Tsagalis joins me in the Lesche to discuss the Doloneia, i.e., Iliad 10, which is the topic of both Christos' monograph The Homeric Doloneia: Evolution and Shaping of Iliad 10 (Oxford 2024) and his chapter in Jonathan Ready's recent edited volume, the Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad (Oxford 2024).
The Doloneia/Iliad 10 is traditionally divided into two sections: the Nyktegersia (the 'night watch' or nocturnal council scene, lines 1-179) and the spy-mission itself. 
Bibliography
Danek, Georg. (1988) Studien zur Dolonie. Vienna.
Dué, Casey and Mary Ebbott (2010. Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: a Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary. Hellenic Studies 39. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University Press.
Also mentioned
Homeric scholarship by Gregory Nagy and his pupils
The Parry-Lord Hypothesis (of oral composition)
About our guest
Christos C. Tsagalis is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Ordinal Member of the Academia Europaea, Corresponding Member of the Cypriot Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts, Member of the Governing Board of the Center for the Greek Language in Thessaloniki. He is the Co-Editor of the Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (Brill), the series of monographs Key Perspectives on Classical Research (Walter de Gruyter), Assistant Editor of the series Trends in Classics Supplementary Volumes (Walter de Gruyter), and Member of the scientific board of the series of classical commentaries Aris and Philips. Ηe specializes in Early Greek Epic Poetry. 

________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
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Rosa Andújar joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book, Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025).
Tragedies mentioned
Aeschylus
Agamemnon (chorus fragmentation)
Seven Against Thebes (use of semi-choruses)
Suppliant Women ("choral swarm" with multiple groups)
Sophocles
Oedipus Rex (actor-chorus interaction)
Euripides
Phaethon ( "augmentation" and secondary choruses)
Trojan Women (chorus entering in fragmented small groups)
Hippolytus ( subsidiary chorus appears before the main chorus)
Orestes (unusual choral divisions)
Suppliant Women (exceptional choral activity)
Other ancient texts
Aristotle, Poetics (mentioned for lack of interest in the chorus)
Aristophanes, Birds (for having a 'differentiated' chorus)
Plutarch, On Listening (de Audiendo) 45e-f (Euripides training a chorus; a chorus member bursts out laughing)
Antiphon 6 (On the Chorus Boy: I don't mention it by name, but this is the speech regarding the death of a choreute by performance enhancing drugs)
Modern works
Azoulay, Vincent and Paulin Ismard. 2020. Athènes 403: une histoire chorale. Paris / 2025. Athenes 403 BC: A Democracy in Crisis, trans. Lorna Coing. Cambridge.
Carlson, Marvin. 2003. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor.
Diggle, James. 1970. Euripides: Phaethon. Cambridge.
duBois, Page. 2022. Democratic Swarms: Ancient Comedy and the Politics of the People. Chicago. 
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (on choral powerlessness/inertness)
Halliwell, Stephen. 1998. Aristotle's Poetics. Bristol/Chicago.
Jackson, Lucy. 2019. The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE. Cambridge.
Sansone, David. 2016. "The Size of the Tragic Chorus," Phoenix 70: 233-54.
Uhlig, Anna. 2019. Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus. 2019.
About our guest
Rosa Andújar is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She has published widely on Greek drama in its fifth-century Athenian context as well as on its modern global reception, particularly across the Americas. She is the author of Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025) and the editor of The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro (Methuen Drama, 2020), which won the 2020 London Hellenic Prize. 
________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form

Michael Satlow joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity, which will be published on February 3 by Princeton University Press. 
Resources
"Lived Religion Project" at the University of Erfurt's Max Weber Institute 
If you're new to Late Antiquity, the foundational work is Peter Brown's 1971 The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750. It's been reissued in various editions, including a 2024 illustrated one from Thames & Hudson (relatively affordable!).
I mention Philogelos joke 203 in the episode introduction. 
About our guest
Michael Satlow is Professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies at Brown University. A historian of religion in antiquity, his work explores how Jews, Christians, and others experienced the sacred in everyday life. His new book, An Enchanted World, draws on inscriptions and material culture to reveal a shared religious landscape in Late Antiquity, one filled with gods, angels, demons, and divine presence. 
________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form

Piero Boitani joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2025). 
Ancient texts
Hebrew Bible, Genesis
Plato: Timaeus, Phaedrus, Symposium, Apology
Aristotle: Nicomachaean Ethics
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation (de Opificio mundi: treatise on the Genesis creation narrative)
New Testament: Acts of the Apostles
Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime
Calcidius, Latin translation of much of Timaeus (4th century CE)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, mystical treatises (c. 500 CE)
Later sites of reception & influence
In Literature and Philosophy
Johannes Scotus Eriugena (John "the Scot"), translation of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (9th century)
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Divine Names (1260s)
Dante, Paradiso (early 1300s)
Marsilio Ficino's work on Plato and Timaeus (15th century)
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), scientific treatises
Alfred North Whitehad, Process and Reality (1929)
Ezra Pound, Cantos (1915-1959)
In Visual Art and Architecture
Raphael, "School of Athens" (1509-11, Apostolic Palace, Vatican) and Chigi Chapel (1510s, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome)
Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel (1508-1512)
Botticelli, "Birth of Venus" (mid-1480s)
Crypt of San Magno in Anagni (11th century)
Sculptures of Chartres Cathedral (12th century)
About our guest
Piero Boitani is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Rome “Sapienza.” A Fellow of the British Academy, the Medieval Academy of America, the Accademia dei Lincei, and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, in 2016 he received the Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature. He is chairman of the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla and general editor of its series of Greek and Latin Writers. 
His most recent books include Il grande racconto dei classici (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2024); «Reconnaître est un Dieu». L’anagnorisis dans la littérature occidentale (Paris, Garnier, 2025); Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2025). A new book, The Five Elements-I cinque elementi, with a preface by Stephen Greenblatt, will be published by Mondadori, in the Lo Specchio series, in February 2026.
________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form

Inger Kuin joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic (Basic Books 2025). 
Ancient sources
Aristotle, Politics 1.3-7 (on 'natural' slavery)
Diogenes Laertius, 2.6, Life of Diogenes
Plutarch, Life of Alexander 14 (on the 'get out of my sun' episode)
Xenophon, Anabasis 5-6 (on Sinope, Diogenes' birthplace)
Other Diogenes testimonia from a variety of sources
For an accessible English-language collection of testimonia for Diogenes, see Robert Dobbin's The Cynic Philosophers, from Diogenes to Julian (Penguin Classics, 2012).
About our guest
Inger Kuin is a researcher, writer, and teacher focused on the intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome. She is Associate Professor of Classics General Faculty at the University of Virginia. Originally from The Netherlands, she splits her time between Charlottesville (VA) and Rotterdam, and publishes both in English and in Dutch.
________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form