Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Foreword vii
4. Acknowledgments xi
5. Introduction 1
6. Part I. The Hellenization of Indo-European Poetics
7. 1. Homer and Comparative Mythology 7
8. 2. Formula and Meter: The Oral Poetics of Homer 18
9. 3. Hesiod and the Poetics of Pan-Hellenism 36
10. Part II. The Hellenization of Indo-European Myth and Ritual
11. 4. Patroklos, Concepts of Afterlife, and the Indic Triple Fire 85
12. 5. The Death of Sarpedon and the Question of Homeric Uniqueness 122
13. 6. The King and the Hearth: Six Studies of Sacral Vocabulary Relating to the Fireplace 143
14. 7. Thunder and the Birth of Humankind 181
15. 8. Sêma and Nóēsis: The Hero's Tomb and the "Reading" of Symbols in Homer and Hesiod 202
16. 9. Phaethon, Sappho's Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas: "Reading" the Symbols of Greek Lyric 223
17. 10. On the Death of Actaeon 263
18. PART III. The Hellenization of Indo-European Social Ideology
19. 11. Poetry and the Ideology of the Polis: The Symbolism of Apportioning Meat 269
20. 12. Mythical Foundations of Greek Society and the Concept of the City-State 276
21. 13. Unattainable Wishes: The Restricted Range of an Idiom in Epic Diction 294
22. Bibliography 303
23. General Index 329
24. Index of Scholars 360