I shall argue for two complementary theses: firstly that ‘Homer’ was not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name, and secondly that for a century or more after the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey there was little interest in the identity or the person of their author or authors. This interest only arose in the last decades of the sixth century; but once it did, ‘Homer’ very quickly became an object of admiration, criticism, and (...) biographical construction. (shrink)

In his magisterial work Persephone, Zuntz drew a basic distinction between two sets of Orphic gold leaves—those known from the elaborate tumuli at Thurii, which he called Group A, and a more widely scattered series, Group B, then represented by two longer texts from Petelia in southern Italy and Pharsalus in Thessaly, and, in a shortened form, by a series of six short texts from the environs of Eleutherna in Crete. Three further finds have reinforced Zuntz's distinctions: first, a tablet (...) from Hipponium, the colony of Epizephyrian Locri in southern Italy, published by Foti and Pugliese Carratelli, then a lamella said to be from Thessaly but now in Malibu and published by Breslin, and finally a tablet said to be from Entella in Sicily and recently in Geneva, which was published in a bad transcription by Frel and much clarified by Riedweg. The first and third belong to Zuntz's Group B, while the second is close to his Group C. Pugliese Carratelli has published an exceptionally fine set of photographs of all the texts except those from Petelia and Entella. My restudy of the leaf from Petelia has led to some improved readings. Not even a drawing exists of the Entellan leaf, which no scholar except its first editor has ever seen. This fact prompted a reviewer of this article to wonder about its authenticity. In the absence of the object itself, such doubts can only be allayed if its text consistently contributes to improving our understanding of the archetype from which it is derived. One of the aims of this article is to show that it does indeed do so. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar los testimonios materiales en contexto etrusco de una deidad femenina tocada con la piel de cabra e identificada con la Juno Sospita latina. Ante todo, se examinarán las escenas narrativas o con un carácter más complejo para tratar de desentrañar el contexto mítico en el que se inserta esta divinidad. Su iconografía destaca por una relación estrecha con Heracles/hercle en representaciones en las que prima el enfrentamiento con el héroe. A través del (...) análisis comparativo de los distintos testimonios disponibles, es posible vislumbrar la existencia de un relato o leyenda que vincula a estos personajes, pero cuya intención es subrayar la reconciliación entre ambos. Esta finalidad cuenta con paralelos en otras imágenes protagonizadas por la diosa Uni/juno y el héroe en ambiente etrusco, como es el caso de las escenas de amamantamiento. (shrink)