Following the recommendation upon registering, I wish to introduce myself.
I am Don Braxton, a professor of the anthropology of religion in the United States. I am about to retire after 36 years of teaching. From ages 13 to 22, I was taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. I’ve had very few opportunities to exercise these language competencies in my professional life even though they were among the most enjoyable parts of my past. Now in my pending retirement, I’m taking them up again.
I’ve been looking for a local group of amateurs who would like to form a kind of coffee shop salon to study classics for fun. It’s proven quite difficult to find folks. I plan to use these forums to help me break out of my isolation, but if any readers are in the Pittsburgh, USA, region, give me a shout-out.
I look forward to finding my way around the forums and learning from you.
It is nice to meet you here. If you are interested in doing an online Latin reading group please DM me here on Textkit and I can see if we can set something up. I was doing a weekly online Latin prose reading group with others in the US and if you are interested we can try to organise something.
it is always a pleasure to have someone who had the good old classic education to give his two cents. And to have an expert in Religious Anthropology alone might be a joy when it comes to discussing the Bacchae and the other religious Greek plays. There is a whole cultural dimension to the Greeks that is missing from the average reader’s background knowledge that is sorely missing. I hope you enjoy your experience here and that we may profit from it a bit also.
Thank you for reaching out. While I am not a specialist in ancient Greek religion, I am reasonably informed. I heartily agree with your statement that it is a dimension of the Greek world not often enough discussed. But then we look to the Greeks for their rationalism and the distance from a supernaturalism it made possible.
But Greek religious practices were complex and fascinating on many different levels.
Your example of the Dionysia is a good one.
I’ve been a little obsessed recently with the use of curses written on lead and deposited in the earth of graves. Do you know the phenomenon?
Best to you and thanks for the email! Maybe I’ll about my obsession in one of the discussion boards to see what people say.
What can I say? I am beyond honored. I guess have a less substantial background in everything Classical than you. What I know from Ancient Greek religion came from reading literary criticism and from skimming bits of Werner Jaeger and of general entry-level histories of Greece. If there is anything I could contribute I would be very much glad to do so. I don’t have any sort of an institutional classics training ( e. g. Classics degree, Classical high school). All that I know was acheived by mere curiosity, irregular study and the obssessive desire to hear the Ancients speak. I have been fascinated with the Roman-Greek world since middle school and that is the great grounding upon which all I know is based. Now that I am 26 and have gone through International Relations college and was assigned barely a single classical text throughout the whole of it ( Thucydides, Polybius counting as additional readings), I am hoping I am back on track to go forward with my interests ( Classics and Theology being on the shortlist). I don’t intend to say that I am expert on “History of Religions”, but I what I know of it came from my cursory reading New Testament and Old Testament Introductions and that sort of thing. I have never read Gunkel or Eliade, but I have listened to Dumézil a bit. I would love to talk to an specialist like yourself. I know even less of other religions and practices. i don’t know what your focus is, but I am eager to hear. Thanks for your kind words. Greetings from Brazil. EDIT: ate up a few words