Fama and Fake News

Dido is the queen of Carthage, and when first husband, Sychaeus, dies, she makes a vow never to love again. At the start of Book 4 of the Aeneid, however, Dido breaks her promise by falling in love with and marrying Aeneas. When the people of Carthage find out about this, the story sends them…

Reading Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

I came across The Penelopiad at a used book store in Cambridge. Before this, I had no idea what to expect with any sort of Odyssey-based books. I was set to take Classics 553, “How to find Home(r)” in the winter, in which I would be reading the Odyssey. I had…

“The Secret History”: A Review

The ‘fatal flaw’ survives only in classical literature, in the epic tales of antiquity– or so John Richard Papen presumes. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History probes the boundaries of this popular homeric trope. Our insipid narrator, Richard, reveals his fatal flaw in the…