A central convention of Greek mythological narratives called katabasis, the hero’s journey to the underworld or land of the dead.
Marcella Cheng/The Conversation NY-BD-CC
Journeys to the Underworld – Greek myth, film and American anxiety
The Conversation36.9 MB(download)
Our new podcast, Essays On Air, features the most beautiful writing from Australian researchers. Today, classics expert Paul Salmond explores how modern cinema directors borrow from Greek legends.
The Greeks defend their ships from the Trojans in Alfred Churchill’s Story of the Iliad, 1911.
Wikimedia
A central idea in the Iliad - a poetic work focused on the war for Troy - is the inevitability of death. The poem held a special place in antiquity, and has resonated in the millennia since.
Nero: had a reputation as an arsonist even in antiquity.
Wikimedia Commons
The image of a crazed and capricious Emperor Nero is immortalised in popular culture: from fiddling while Rome burns to having a sexual relationship with his mother. The historical evidence, however, is rather different.
Carl Rahl’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1852).
Wikimedia
The tale of a married woman who joins her lover in Paris, The Beauties and Furies is a modernist classic. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, the action is concentrated in one city, but dreams are nightmarish in this city of night, not light.
The north-south divide of the education system.
bibiphoto/Shutterstock
If you happen to grow up in the south of England, you are more likely to actually study A-levels, and will probably end up with better results than if you go to school and study in the north.
The Athenian politician Cleon was one of the earliest demagogues. An effective, if vulgar speaker, he made extravagant promises and delivered extravagant accusations.
Donald Trump and Adam Smith.
Gage Skidmore via Flickr/Wikimedia Commons
American democracy is in thrall to an aggressive demagogue – and Adam Smith and friends saw it coming more than 200 years ago.
William Etty’s Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed. The painting illustrates Herodotus’s version of the tale of Gyges.
Wikimedia Commons
Herodotus’ Histories has it all: tales of war, eyewitness travel writing, notes on flora and fauna and accounts of fantastic creatures such as winged snakes. His stories share a common humanity that speaks to us, 2500 years on.
Berlin recently agreed to curb the number of migrants it welcomed after a backlash against Angela Merkel’s suspension of EU rules limiting numbers. It followed previous scenes of crowds welcoming new arrivals…
Olivia Newton-John has a lot to answer for. Even now, after 35 years has passed, it is hard to forgive her for her role in Xanadu, a film consistently voted as the worst film of 1980. This is quite an…
