Why ‘Eidolon’?

Two days from now, Eidolon will be a year old. During our anniversary event, our writers will explore many facets of Helen and her Eidolon. But there’s one I want to discuss here in particular: this journal.

I’ve been asked many times in the last year why we chose the name Eidolon. I’ve always loved Euripides’ Helen and been fascinated by the idea that only a phantom/eidolon of Helen went to Troy instead of the genuine article. It adds another element to the already-extensive discussion of how responsible Helen is for the Trojan War: if her beauty caused the war, then is an empty copy of her just as meaningful as the original?

We chose the name Eidolon to convey the idea that, like the gods in Euripides’ Helen, we were intentionally crafting a phantom image (of sorts) of traditional, peer-reviewed scholarship. Unlike traditional journals, it wouldn’t have to follow the same established rules. As long as the quality of the writing was high enough, then we could have a great deal of latitude to do what we wanted — just as Helen’s eidolon, provided it was as beautiful as she was, didn’t have to follow the rules either.

But I’m no longer quite sure that the eidolon had as much freedom as I previously thought. It wasn’t really an empty image at all: I now believe that it had a certain amount of reality to it. Perhaps even more than the original Helen. After all, most of us think of her as ‘Helen of Troy’, and the eidolon has a better claim to that name than the original Helen did.

Similarly, Eidolon itself has taken on increasing substance and become a solid, significant entity in its own right, just as Helen’s eidolon did. Here are some of the things we’ve done to improve the journal since its launch:
-Increased the publishing schedule to two essays per week
-Expanded the editorial team to include a Managing Editor, Tara Mulder, and an Assistant Editor, Yung In Chae
-Added book, theater, and movie reviews, along with an advice column
-Reorganized the front page with categories to make it easier to navigate
-Created a Tumblr for a less formal social media presence

Did Helen’s eidolon age in the ten years of the Trojan War? I have no idea. But our journal is growing and maturing, and that’s been an exciting process to see. Already I can announce a few major changes coming in our second year of existence:
-We’re delighted to welcome Michael Fontaine, Helen Morales, and Dan-el Padilla Peralta as Eidolon’s newly formed Editorial Board. The board will provide guidance to the journal’s editors and ensure that the journal stays up to the quality standards of Classics as a discipline.
-We have some exciting new initiatives planned to encourage humorous writing about the ancient world and to get graduate students more involved with public writing.
-Also, all good things must come to an end, and unfortunately at the end of the summer Tara Mulder will be leaving the editorial team to focus on her new job at Vassar. She’ll be Managing Editor for a few more months before transitioning to the Editorial Board. Sometime this summer we’ll run a search for someone to fill her shoes.

Thank you for reading. Just as Helen’s eidolon exists to be perceived, we’re nothing without all of you.

The articles from our collaborative ‘Helen and her Eidolon’ event with Classical Inquiries will be added here as they are published.
Philip Walsh, The Importance of Being Helen
Hilary Ilkay, Mixing Memory and Desire: Helen’s Eidolon in Sappho 16
Chas LiBretto, Helen’s Phantom Menace
Greg Morrison, “Some Simple Answer”: H.D.’s Helen in Egypt
Gregory Nagy, Helen of Sparta and her Very Own Eidolon
Donna Zuckerberg, The Breasts That Launched A Thousand Ships
Mark Buchan, Beauty and Ugliness, Impasse and Utopia
Glynnis Fawkes and John Franklin, The Stormy Seas of Cyprus

In addition to the articles associated with the anniversary event, Eidolon published six articles this month:
Carl Anderson, the winner of our high school essay contest, and Steven Mao, the runner-up, argued for why Classics is important to study in the 21st century in On the Importance of Classics and Confidence Starts in Latin Class
Hilary Ilkay reviewed Philip Freeman’s Searching for Sappho in ‘Come, divine lyre, speak to me’
Joe Goodkin explained why he has chosen to become a traveling singer of the Odyssey in On Being a Modern Bard
Tom Geue described the unlikely joy of biographical scholarship in Sincerely Yours: Highet, Juvenal, I
A. Everett Beek explored why the experience of rape for victims in movies and in Ovid differs so much from real life and how we can close that gap in Ovid’s Afterlife

Donna Zuckerberg is the editor-in-chief of Eidolon. She received her PhD in Classics from Princeton in 2014 and teaches for Stanford Continuing Studies and the Paideia Institute. Her first book, Classics Beyond the Manosphere, is under contract with Harvard University Press. Read more of her work here.