Literature and Arts c-14
Yüklə 2,12 Mb.
|
dikê, pl. dikai ‘judgment (short-range); justice (long-range)’; dikaios ‘just’ vs. hubris ‘outrage’. Metaphors of dikê: (1) straight line and (2) thriving cultivation = cultivated field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.; hubris is the opposite, that is, (1) crooked line and (2) failing cultivation = desert or overgrowth. dikê, with its two primary metaphors of (1) the straight line and (2) the thriving cultivation, is basic to the concept of the cult hero. A perfect example of dikê comes from Odyssey xix: “Lady;” answered Odysseus, “who on the face of the whole earth can dare to chide with you? Your fame [kleos] reaches the firmament of heaven itself; you are like some blameless king, who upholds righteousness [= good dikê], as the monarch over a great and valiant nation: the earth yields its wheat and barley, the trees are loaded with fruit, the ewes bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds with fish by reason of his virtues, and his people do good deeds under him.” This epic image of the just king as an exponent of dikê, standing in his blooming garden, corresponds to the religious image of the hero in hero-cult, “planted” in the local “mother earth” as a talisman of fertility and prosperity for the community that worships him or her. It corresponds also to this image from Odyssey xi: “As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall be prosperous [olbioi]. All that I have said will come true.” Here we see the mystical word olbios, which means ‘prosperous’ on the surface but also ‘blessed’ underneath the surface. The deeper meaning has to do with the hero’s achieving an afterlife, rendering him ‘blessed’, while his corpse renders the local population ‘prosperous’. There is a built-in metonymy in the reciprocal relationship linking the ‘blessed’ heroes and the ‘prosperous’ population that worships them. Cult heroes are agents of dikê, which they uphold negatively by punishing the unrighteous (with sterility and other forms of misfortune) orpositively by rewarding the righteous (with fertility and other forms of fortune). In Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, the emphasis is on the negative: I will skewer him with my swift sword and lay him dead. The fury [Erinys] that has no fill of slaughter shall, for her third and crowning drink, drink unmixed blood! But in the Eumenides, the emphasis (at the end) is on the positive (it is expressed not in terms of hero cult per se but in terms of the cult of the positivized Erinyes): I advise my citizens not to support and respect anarchy or tyrannical oppression, and not to drive all fear out of the city. For who among mortal men, if he fears nothing, behaves with dikê? If you with dikê fear reverence, you will have a defense for your land and the salvation [sôtêriâ] of your polis, such as none of mankind has, either among the Scythians or in Pelops’ realm. I establish this tribunal, and it will be untouched by desire for profit [kerdos], worthy of reverence, quick to anger, a guard of the land, awake on behalf of those who sleep. I have given you advice [par-ainesis], my citizens, at length about the future; but now you must rise, take a ballot, and make a decision [diagnôsis] about the case [dikê] under the sacred obligation of your oath. The word has been spoken. Note the long-range “teleology” of heroic dikê in Aeschylus’ Eumenides: Be persuaded by me not to bear the decision with heavy grief.For you are not defeated; the trial [dikê] resulted in an equal vote, which is in truth [alêtheia] no blight on your timê, since clear testimony from Zeus was available, and the one who spoke the oracle gave evidence proving that Orestes should not suffer harm, despite his actions. Do not be angry, do not hurl your heavy rage on this land, do not make the land fruitless, letting loose your heart’s poison with its fierce sharpness that eats away the seeds. For I do promise you with all dikê that you shall have sanctuaries and sacred hollows in this land of dikê, where you will sit on bright thrones at your hearths, worshipped with timê by the citizens here… ekhthros ‘enemy [within the community], non-philos’ The distinction between friends and enemies is a very important theme in archaic Greek poetry, especially the wisdom poetry of Hesiod and Theognis. In classical Greek tragedy the ability to recognize (or the failure to recognize) an enemy is also an important tension. In the Libation Bearers, the chorus sings of the treachery of Clytemnestra, who should have been most philos to Agamemnon: But she who devised this abhorrent deed against her husband, whose children she bore, a burden under her girdle, a burden once philos, but now an enemy [ekhthros], as it seems: what do you think of her? Had she been born a seasnake or a viper, I think her very touch without her bite would have caused anyone else to rot, if boldness and phrenes without dikê could do so. What name shall I give it, however tactful I may be? A trap for a wild beast? Or a shroud for a corpse in his bier, wrapped around his feet? No, rather it is a net: you might call it a hunting net, or robes to entangle a man’s feet. This would be the kind of thing a highwayman might posses, who deceives strangers [xenoi] and earns his living by robbery, and with this cunning snare he might kill many men and warm his own phrên greatly. May such a woman not live with me in my house! In Sophocles’ Antigone a critical distinction is determined by the polis between Antigone’s two brothers. Polyneices is determined to be an enemy and is denied burial, while Eteocles is considered philos and given due funeral honors. epos, pl. epea ‘utterance, poetic utterance’ This is the Greek word from which we get “epic.” Greek epos (epic, as the Greeks themselves called it) is made up of countless epea, or poetic utterances, like “swift-footed Achilles” or “Sing, O goddess, the anger [mênis] of Achilles son of Peleus.” The basic unit of Homeric epos is the dactylic hexameter. The basic rhythm of this unit is - u u - u u - u u - u u - u u - -. - = long syllable, u = short syllable.
Strife is a prominent theme in archaic Greek literature. This is the word used of the strife between Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad scroll 1 (lines 6 and 8). In fact it was the goddess of eris personified who set in motion the Trojan War; at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Achilles’ parents, she started a rivalry between the goddesses Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera that led to the so-called ‘Judgement of Paris,’ a beauty contest for which the Trojan Paris was asked to decide the winner. Eris is often pictured on the battlefield in the Iliad and she is said to be the sister of Ares, the god of war. Other important instances of eris in Greek literature are that of Hesiod and his brother Perseus in Hesiod’s Works and Days and the strife between Oedipus’ sons Polyneices and Eteocles (cf. Oedipus at Colonus 421ff.). esthlos ‘genuine, good, noble’; synonym of agathos See the entry for agathos. genos ‘stock (“breeding”); generating [of something or someone]; generation’ The term genos encompasses many English words, including people or race (e.g. the genos of Athenians), offspring (the genos of Zeus), gender (genos of women), lineage (Achilles is born of the genos of the Aiakids). Our English term geneaology is derived from it. Genealogy was a very important concept for the ancient Greek song culture and constituted its own genre of poetry and later prose writing. (Compare Hesiod’s Theogony, which is a genealogy of the Greek gods). Ancient Greeks were very interested in tracing their lineage back to the gods and heroes whom they worshipped. hêrôs, pl. hêrôes ‘hero’ This is the Greek term for a religious figure whose primary characteristic is that he or she was once mortal and died, but acquired powers after death for the community within which the corpse of the hero was buried. Below is a sketch of the nuts and bolts of Greek hero cult. Relevant facts about ancient Greek hero cults A. Here is an essential fact about ancient Greek religion (for a working definition of this general term, see item B): not only were the gods worshipped. Heroes too were worshipped. The worship of heroes was very much like ancestor worship. (Compare similar customs in other traditional societies, including the Japanese.) A1. Besides the word worship, we may use the word cult. As in the expression hero cult. Other relevant concepts: cultivate [as in “cultivating” a field / garden / grove / orchard / vineyard / etc.] and culture [as in the opposition of “cultural” vs. “natural,” that is, “artificial” vs. “natural”]. A2. It is a historical fact that the ancient Greeks worshipped heroes throughout the period covered by the texts that we read in the “Heroes” course, starting already with the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey (the oral traditions that culminated in these epics were beginning to crystallize around the eighth century BCE) and ending with the Heroikos of Philostratus (around 200 CE). A3. Even if we had no epic (Homeric Iliad and Odyssey) or drama (tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) surviving from the ancient Greek world, we would still be fairly well informed, on the basis of non-poetic evidence (prosaic references, inscriptions, archaeological remains of cult sites, etc.) about the historical existence of hero cults in the period extending from (roughly) the eighth century BCE through the third century CE and even beyond. A4. The 1979 book The Best of the Achaeans (new ed. 1999) was the first book in Classical scholarship to argue, as a central thesis, that the non-poetic evidence about the religious practice of hero-cults can be systematically connected with the existing poetry and with what that poetry says - directly or indirectly - about this religious practice. The book was meant to demonstrate that such non-poetic evidence enhances our appreciation of the poetry, especially the epic traditions of Homer (and the dramatic traditions of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides). Another central thesis of the book was that the poetry itself provides additional new evidence about the practice of hero cults. B. For a working definition of ancient Greek “religion,” I suggest simply: the interaction of ritual and myth. A working definition of ritual and myth,: B1. Ritual. In small-scale societies, what you do in sacred space is marked activity, any kind of marked activity, most obviously worship (cult) and sacrifice, but also including: hunting, athletics, regulated sexual relations, even warfare. B1a. Specially difficult for us to understand: sacrifice (killing animals, cooking by fire, and distribution in community) and warfare. Sacrifice is a ritualized admission of human guilt about the human capacity to kill other humans, as in warfare. This formulation was developed by Walter Burkert in a book about the anthropological background of sacrifice: Homo necans (as opposed to Homo sapiens). B1b. Working definition of “sacred space”: whatever is set aside by society for communication with the world beyond our everyday world. It is marked space vs. unmarked space. “Sacred” is the best way to describe “marked” in the smallest-scale societies. I try to stay away from words like divine, even supernatural. B2. Myth. In small-scale societies, what you say in sacred space is marked speech, any kind of marked speech, most obviously worship (cult) and prayer, but also including: oaths, wagers, promises; these are typical speech-acts. In ancient Greece, there were other kinds of speech-acts that we ordinarily would not think of as speech-acts: laments, insults, praise, instruction; in other words, anything formal that is on record, as it were; to say on the record as opposed to off the record; marked vs. unmarked; marked speech is automatically witnessed by the gods or whatever is out there beyond the everyday world, in the sacred world. Myth explains the way things are. In some song cultures, it has maximum truth-value. B2a. An illustration of the power of the speech-act... “The phrase is a holy being. You see, these songs, when they were turned over to the Earth People, were to be used in a certain way. If you leave out those words, then the holy beings feel slighted. They know you are singing, they are aware of it. But if you omit those words, then they feel it and they are displeased. Then, even though you are singing, whatever you are doing ... has no effect.” - from an interview with a Navajo shaman. B3. One of the most fundamental facts about ancient Greek religion is that it tends to be local and localized. For myth to be delocalized, as it tends to be in Homeric poetry (also in most archaic and classical poetry), it has to be separated from ritual. B4. Everything that you have read so far about ritual and myth involves heroes as well as gods in ancient Greek religion. C. Fifteen basic facts about hero cults. #1. Hero cult was a fundamentally local practice, confined to a specific locale. There were literally thousands of hero-cults throughout the locales of the ancient Greek-speaking world. Every locale had its own set of local heroes. (For example, in the “demes” or local districts that constitute the urban / rural complex of Athens, each “deme” has a variety of local cult heroes.) Some of these heroes are well known to us through epic (every hero - major or minor - mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey was potentially a local hero) and tragedy, while others are never mentioned in any poetry known to us. The local hero of hero cult could be male or female, adult or child. #2. Ordinarily, the hero cult was based on the presence of the sôma ‘body’ (corpse) of the hero in the “mother earth” of the given locale. (Occasionally, the presence was limited to only a part of the body - like the head.) Whatever we may think scientifically about the identity of the given corpse in any given case, the locals understood that body (or body-part) to belong to the hero. The practice of venerating bodies or body-parts (or, metonymically, various objects associated with the bodies) continued beyond ancient Greece; an aspect of continuity is the Christian practice of venerating the relics of saints. #3. The sôma of the dead hero was considered to be a talisman of fertility and prosperity to the community that worshipped the hero. The fertility was viewed in terms of plant life (especially the harvests from the fields, gardens, groves, orchards, vineyards, and so on), animal life (both domesticated and hunted animals), and human life (literally, sexuality and the producing / nurturing of children). #4. The “marker” of the sôma was the sêma, which ordinarily took the physical shape of a ‘tomb’. #5. The “marking” of the sôma could also be a sign or signal or token or picture; the word for such a “marking” was also sêma. #6. The “marking” would be a sacred secret in some situations. The local details of ritual and myth surrounding a given hero cult were held to be sacred in any case; as such, they tended to be considered secret as well. Or, at least, some of the sacred details were screened by the locals as secrets that must not be divulged to outsiders. The “outsiders” were not only the non-locals: they were also those of the locals who had not yet been initiated - the word for which is muô - into the secrets - the word for which is mustêria ‘mysteries’. In Latin, the word for ‘uninitiated’ is profanus ‘profane’ (= ‘standing in front of [= not inside] the sacred space’). #7. When locals sacrificed to a hero, they would kill a sacrificial animal (victim) and then divide its meat among the participants in the sacrifice, keeping the choice cut of meat, called geras, as an offering to the hero. To give heroes their proper geras was to give them their proper timê ‘honor’. For more on timê, see also below. #8. Another aspect of sacrificing to the hero was the ritual pouring of liquids, that is, libations; besides such liquids as water, wine, oil, milk, emulsified honey, and so on, the actual blood of the sacrificial victim could also count for the pouring of certain special kinds of libations. For example, the pouring of blood into the earth in order to make physical contact with the corpse of a hero below (sometimes a tube was connected to the mouth of the corpse) was thought to activate the consciousness of the hero, so that the hero could then give advice (= give a diagnôsis) from down below concerning questions of fertility and prosperity. The hero was sometimes given the euphemistic name of ‘healer’ (Iatros, Iasôn = Jason, etc.). #9. When worshippers sacrificed to a hero, the perspective was directed toward the earth (khthôn); when they sacrificed to a god, the perspective was directed toward the sky (ouranos), except for a special category of gods called “chthonic” (khthonioi), who likewise required the downward perspective. Note the Heroikos of Philostratus: at the beginning, we see how the Phoenician has his gaze fixed upward toward the sky, while the vineyard-keeper has his gaze fixed downward toward the earth under his feet. #10. When one sacrifices to a hero or a god, the generic term is thuô. When one sacrifices to a hero, the specific term is en-agizô. When one sacrifices to a god, there is no specific term, unless the god is “chthonic” (in which case, en-agizô is the appropriate term). The word en-agizô means literally ‘I take part in the pollution’. In poetry, thuô ‘sacrifice’ is equivalent to the process of giving timê ‘honor’ to a given hero or god. A classic example of timê in the context of hero cult is Homeric Hymn to Demeter 261; see Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans p. 118. #11. The most common sacrificial animal to be killed and cooked in the cult of a male hero was a ram. #12. In any sacrifice to a hero, the process was usually visualized as happening beneath earth-level (the sacrifice is directed toward a depression in the earth, as into a pit or bothros). In any sacrifice to a god (with the exception, again, of the chthonic gods), the sacrifice was visualized as happening above earth-level (the sacrifice is directed toward an elevation from the earth, as on an altar or bômos). A classic example is the ritual involving the sacrifice of a black ram at the Pit of Pelops during the night before the Olympics begin and the boiling of mutton at the Altar of Zeus on the next day; see Nagy, Pindar’s Homer pp. 123-124 on the testimony of Philostratus, On Gymnastics 5-6. #13. The sacred space assigned the hero in hero-cult could be coextensive with the sacred space assigned to the god who was considered the hero’s divine antagonist. A classic example is the location of the body of the hero Pyrrhos in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi; see Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans ch.7 (“The Death of Pyrrhos”). #14. The hero was considered dead in terms of the place where the hero’s corpse was situated; at the same time, the hero was considered immortalized in terms of the paradise-like place that awaited all heroes after death. Such a paradise-like place, which was considered eschatological, must be contrasted with Hades, which was considered transitional. The name and even the visualization of this otherworldly place varied from hero cult to hero cult. Some of these names are: Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, the White Island, and so on. Many of these names were applied also to the actual place of the hero cult. For an extended discussion, see Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans ch.10 (“Poetic Visions of Immortality for the Hero”). #15. Heroes were thought to be capable of coming back to life (anabiônai) not only eschatologically, in their timeless paradise-like abodes, but also sporadically in the present time of their worshippers. Such sporadic “live” appearances were considered to be epiphanies. At the moment of worship, the sacred precinct of the cult hero could become notionally identical to the paradise-like abode of immortalization from which he or she returns to his worshippers. Metonymically, the sacred precinct of the cult hero needed to be a place of cultivation, such as a cultivated field / garden / grove / orchard / vineyard / etc.
‘season, seasonality; time; timeliness’ The ancient Greek word for natural time, natural life, natural life-cycle, was hôra. [See also the other definitions: ‘season, seasonality; time; timeliness’. ] The English word hour is derived from Greek hôra.
Related to these two words hôra and Hêra is hêrôs (singular) / hêrôes (plural), meaning ‘hero’. The precise moment when everything comes together for the hero is the moment of death. The hero is “on time” at the hôra or ‘time’ of death.
Quick recap of the narrative of Herakles (based mainly on the retelling of Diodorus of Sicily 4.8-39 [we will not otherwise be reading this 1st-century author in our course]). The supreme god and king of gods, Zeus, impregnates a mortal woman. The wife of Zeus, Hera, is jealous; she decides to intervene in the life of the hero who is about to be born, Herakles. If this hero had been born on time, on schedule, in time, he would have been the supreme king of his time. But Hera makes sure that Herakles is born not on time, not in time. Herakles’ inferior cousin, Eurystheus, is born ahead of him and thus is fated to become king instead of Herakles. During all of Herakles’ lifetime, Eurystheus persecutes him directly; Hera persecutes him indirectly. The superior hero has to spend his entire lifespan obeying the orders of the inferior king. The orders add up to the Labors of Herakles (in the Classical version, there are twelve: the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Hind of Ceryneia, the Erymanthian Boar, the Stymphalian Birds, the Augean Stables, the Horses of Diomedes, the Cretan Bull, the Amazon’s Girdle, the Cattle of Geryon, the Apples of the Hesperides, and the Hound of Hades). Herakles’ heroic exploits in performing these Labors (and many others) are the contents of the heroic song, kleos, that is sung about him. Thus Herakles owes his kleos to Hera. Hence his name: ‘he who has the kleos of Hera’. The goddess of being on time makes sure that the hero should start off his lifespan by being not on time and that he should go through life by trying to catch up and never quite managing to do so until the very end. Herakles gets all caught up only at the final moment of his life, at the moment of death. At the final moment of Herakles’ heroic lifespan, he experiences the most painful death imaginable, climaxed by burning to death. This form of death is an ultimate test of the nervous system, by ancient Greek heroic standards. Here is how it happens. Fatally poisoned by the semen of a dying Centaur (his ex-wife Deianeira gave it to him in a phial as a “wedding present” on the occasion of the hero’s re-marriage to the girl Iole: the ex-wife had mistakenly thought it was a love-drug that could win back the love of her ex-husband). Burning up on the inside with the excruciatingly painful poison that is consuming his body, Herakles climbs up on top of his funeral pyre, on the peak of Mount Oita, ready to be burned up on the outside. He yearns to be put out of his misery. He calls on his best friend Philoktetes to light his pyre. At that precise moment of agonizing death, a flaming thunderbolt from his father Zeus strikes him. He goes up in flames, in a spectacular explosion of fire (the technical Greek term is ecpyrosis). In the aftermath, his friends find no physical trace of him, not even bones. At that same moment, Herakles regains consciousness and finds himself on the top of Mount Olympus, in the company of the gods. He has awakened to find himself immortalized. He is then adopted by the theoi ‘gods’ on Mount Olympus as one of their own (the technical Greek term is apotheosis). Hera now changes identities: from Herakles’ stepmother to Herakles’ mother. I translate from Diodorus of Sicily 4.39: “Hera got into her bed and drew Herakles close to her body. She let him fall through her garments to the ground, re-enacting [= making mimesis of] the genuine birth.” Characteristics of a hero, from the standpoint of ancient Greek hero cults): A) unseasonal B) extreme, positively (for example, “best” in whatever category) or negatively; in the negative sense, it is easy to see how this is a function of #A. Compare the Celtic notion of warp spasm in Old Irish sagas C) antagonistic toward the god who seems to be most like the hero; antagonism does not rule out an element of attraction (compare our notion of “fatal attraction”), which is played out in a variety of ways.
B) His unseasonality makes it possible for him to perform his extraordinary Labors. He also commits some deeds that are morally questionable (to say the least): for example, he destroys the city of Iole and kills her brothers in order to capture her as his bride--even though he is already married to Deianeira (Diodorus of Sicily 4.37.5). [It is essential to keep in mind that whenever heroes commit deeds that violate moral codes, such deeds are definitely not condoned by the heroic narrative.] C) He is antagonistic with Hera throughout his lifespan, but he becomes reconciled with her through death, becoming her “son.” As the hero’s name makes clear, he owes his heroic identity to his kleos and, ultimately, to Hera. Yüklə 2,12 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|