have no grief at all;
life exists only for a short while,
and time demands its toll."
-The Epitaph of Seikilos
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| Truthfully it took a LOT of restraint to not mention the Atlantis legend with the Thera explosion. Also that it's not real. (source: box cover for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - what SHOULD have been Indy 4) |
Ready to start our journey with the Greeks? Good! But don't get too excited yet, there's very few Greeks in this episode! Why? Because they haven't arrived in Greece yet silly. We're traveling to the earliest days in Hellas, stopping off at Crete for a while before learning a bit about their traditional earliest days. Plus music performed by Michael Levy!
The Epitaph of Seikilos, written to honor this man's wife is the oldest complete song we know of. And just because it's over 2000 years old doesn't make it any less beautiful, because that's what it is. Beautiful. And the translated poem up top? A bit more eloquent then just shouting YOLO all the time doncha think?
MP3 Download
Music Credit
Michael Levy - Epitaph of Seikilos (Ancient Greek Music Arranged for Solo Lyre in the Just Intonation of Antiquity)
Michael is performing LIVE in England at two incredible locations!
Saturday, May, 18th 2013
Roman Baths by Torchlight - 6pm - 9pm
The Roman Baths, Abbey Church Yard Bath Somerset BA1 1LZ Uni + 44(0)1225 477785
Price: £12.75
From the website:
"For the second year, as part of the UK "Museums at Night" festival, I will once more be giving a detailed talk about my lyre music & be performing my recreations of the lost music of ancient Rome in the wonderfully evocative setting of the Roman Baths at Bath Spa
Monday, June, 17th 2013
Life & Death in Pompeii & Herculaneum - 6:15pm - 9pm
The British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG Uni +44 020 7323 8299
Price: £12.50
From the website:
"As part of an evening event based on the exhibition "Life & Death in Pompeii & Herculaneum" I will be performing on my lyre, my evocation of the lost music of ancient Rome, in the Great Court of the British Museum between 6:15 to 9pm..."
If you can, check it out! Go and take pictures and tell me how it went!
Resources
Seikilos Epitaph rubbing with old musical notation
The Facebook page has photo albums of lots of various Minoan and Mycenaean art!
Enigma of the Phaistos Disc
The Tawagalawa Letter
Earlier human evidence on Crete? (by like, 100,000 years)
Luckily those names for the earliest Mycenaean rulers such as Pelops, Oedipus etc are familiar to myself (by the way the sphinx is part female, part lion contrary to The Sphinx in Egypt which is male). Oedipus solved a riddle that had been put forward by the sphinx in order to save the city. Most of these stories were written by the classical tragedians of Aeschylus, Sophicles and Euripides that I have either covered in the case of Aeschylus or are covering in the case of the other two. You will get to them once you start to cover Classical Greece in the 5th century BC.
ReplyDeleteI am nearly finished with regards to The Peloponnesian War and should hopefully enter the 4th century BC by next weekend.
Keep up the good work.