Four Irish Persephones

By Virginie Trachsler The young Persephone is gathering flowers in a meadow when her uncle Hades, god of the underworld, rises through a crack in the earth and abducts her on his golden chariot. Her mother Ceres wanders the earth…

The Classical Tradition in Modern American Fiction

By Tessa Roynon In recent weeks, the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. has been much in the public eye. Whether stormed by President Trump’s supporters on 6th January, or as the “hallowed ground” that formed the backdrop to President Biden’s…

On translation and exegesis in the Zoroastrian religious tradition

The oldest layers of the surviving Zoroastrian texts are in Avestan language and commonly dated to the middle of the second millennium BCE. Exact dates and circumstances of composition, however, remain uncertain, so that little is known about the socio-political context from which these texts emerged. After two millennia of oral transmission, the texts were finally committed to writing, at a time when the language must have no longer been in active use.