Students Attend Brilliant Lecture By Professor Denis Feeney

A group of Kingswood Classicists, Poetry Club and A Level English students attended a brilliant lecture at King Edward’s last week.

The talks on ‘The Gods in Epic’ was delivered by Professor Denis Feeney, a scholar with several degrees and PhDs, whose knowledge was equalled by his engaging delivery and beautiful renditions of passages of Greek and Latin.

We had a real insight into the role the Gods play in The Iliad and The Aeneid.

Professor Feeney explained how the whole story of The Iliad was a build up to the moment where King Priam asks his enemy Achilles to give him back the body of his son, Hector, and says the words ‘I have done what no other man has ever done, I have kissed the hand of the man who killed my son’.  Even Zeus, the King of the Gods himself, was unable to save his own son Sarpedon from Death.

The picture is of the famous krater made in around 750 B.C. by Euphronios. Sleep and Death are taking away Sarpedon’s body. Notice how Sarpedon’s name is broken up by the foot of Death, symbolising what has happened to him.