Emily Anhalt presents, “Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths”

Join the Stonington Historical Society at the R.W. Woolworth Library at 40 Palmer Street on Sunday, September 24 at 5 pm as Emily Katz Anhalt explores how ancient history offers insights into today’s contentious times. Her newest publication, Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, was recently released on August 22 by Yale University Press. The professor of ancient Greek and Latin at Sarah Lawrence College reveals how three masterworks of classical Greek literature – Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Ajax, and Euripides’ Hecuba – can help us end the glorification or tolerance of violence and recognize violent revenge as a marker of ruinous, irrational thinking.

What are some of the lessons that ancient Greek myths provide?

• Develop the farsightedness and other means to control our own rage;
• Resist temptations to glorify violent rage and those who would indulge in it;
• Recognize that compassion, rational thought, and debate best promote our own interests.

“Greek myths help to arm us against the tyrants we might serve and the tyrants we might become,’’ says Anhalt.

Anhalt teaches Classical Languages and Literature at Sarah Lawrence College. A graduate of Dartmouth College, she received her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Yale University and has also taught Greek mythology, Classical languages, literature, and history at Yale and at Trinity College. The author of Solon the Singer: Politics and Poetics, Anhalt lives in Guilford, CT.

The Stonington Historical Society, Inc., founded in 1895, seeks to preserve, interpret and celebrate the history of Stonington. It presents programs and exhibits and maintains three sites open to the public: the Old Lighthouse Museum; the Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House, a National Historic Landmark and the home of the discoverer of Antarctica; and the Richard W. Woolworth Library, a research archive of local history. For more information on these sites and the Society’s programs, exhibits, and collections, visit our website,stoningtonhistory.org, or call 860-535-8445.

Anhalt poster