Modern fiction
Reading Andrea Marcolongo’s The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek in certain ways lives up to its English title in providing an epic experience (the Italian original’s simpler 9 ragioni… emphasises the more light-heartedly catchy, yet didactic underpinnings of the text, rather than its epic claims, significance or proportions). As Marcolongo reminds us...
The rescue
Greek gods grow up as rapidly as spring flowers. Within a few days of his birth, Apollo went to Mount Parnassos, the lair of the monstrous serpent Python – Hera’s accomplice in the pursuit of Leto – and wounded him with an arrow. Python crept into the sanctuary of Gaia (Mother Earth) at Delphi, but...
