Literature and Arts c-14
mêtis ‘artifice, strategem, cunning intelligence’ This heroic quality is the mental counterpart to physical strength. The hero best known for his mêtis
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mêtis ‘artifice, strategem, cunning intelligence’ This heroic quality is the mental counterpart to physical strength. The hero best known for his mêtis is Odysseus. For a comparison of Achilles as representing biê (see entry under biâ) and Odysseus as his counterpart with mêtis, see Best of the Achaeans, chapter 3, paragraphs 5-7. On the Trojan side, Hektor is called “equal to Zeus in mêtis” (Iliad 7.47, 11.200), an epithet which reveals that his divine antagonist is Athena, the goddess best-known for her cunning intelligence and in the Hesiodic tradition called the daughter of Zeus and Mêtis personified (see Hesiod’s Theogony 886-900). moira, plural moirai ‘plot of land; portion; lot in life, fate, destiny’ The idea behind moira is one of proper apportionment. moira is a cut of sacrificial meat, cut along the articulations of the body, so that each cut could be put together into a reconstituted corpus. Different people are dealt different slices of life. A hero’s overall allotment in life can be envisioned as the portion or cut of meat he receives at a sacrifice. Personfied and in the plural, the Moirai are the goddesses in charge of such apportionment, sometimes called the “Fates.” mûthos ‘special speech; special utterance; myth’ Don’t let the meaning of “myth” fool you into thinking that a mûthos is a fictional story. Quite the opposite--labeling a story or a statement as a mûthos menas that it is “on the record.” For example, when Electra and Orestes are invoking their dead father in their scheme of revenge, Electra describes what she has suffered from her mother and Aegisthus and calls her statement a mûthos (Libation-Bearers 444-452): My father was murdered just as you say. But all the while I was kept sequestered, 445 deprived of tîmê, accounted a worthless thing. Kenneled in my room as if I were a vicious cur, I gave free vent to my streaming tears, which came more readily than laughter, as in my concealment I poured out my lament in plentiful weeping. 450 Hear my tale [mûthos] and inscribe it on your phrenes. nemesis the process whereby everyone gets what he or she deserves Unlike our English menaing of the word nemesis, the Greek concept is one of a reaction to a shameful deed. It encompasses the reaction and the punsihment, social or cosmic, that the action motivates. Bernard Williams defines nemesis in the Homeric poems this way: “The reaction in Homer to someone who has done something that shame should have prevented is nemesis, a reaction that can be understood, according to the context, as ranging from shock, contempt, and malice to righteous rage and indignation. It should not be thought that nemesis and its related words are ambiguous. It is defined as a reaction, and what it psychologically consists of properly depends on what particular violation of aidôs it is a reaction to. ... When Achilles is described as aidoios nemesêtos, it means that he is, as we well know, touchy about violations of honour, violations that other people’s sense of aidôs should prevent them from making: he has a strong sense of aidôs himself, and it should protect him from slights.” (Shame and Necessity [Berkeley, 1993], p. 80) A vase painting (Berlin inv. 30036; http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/image?lookup=1992.07.0633) depcits a personified Nemesis pointing an accusatory finger toward Helen and Aphrodite as Paris comes to take Helen away. Within the Iliad Helen is the only one to say that nemesis exists for her actions in coming to Troy with Paris, but in other traditions and versions, such as the one depicted here, the nemesis that results from her actions is made more plain. nomos, plural nomoi, local custom; customary law; law The idea of nomos is what is customarily done by a society. For example, important rituals such as proper burial are frequently referred to as nomoi. The word then comes to mean ‘law’ as a codification of approved practices. Sopholes’ play Antigone challenges the definition of nomos when Antigone claims that she is following the ‘unwritten’ laws of the gods rather than the laws of the city and of Creon as its ruler when she buries her brother Polyneikes in defiance of Creon’s ban against his burial. That is, she is following older ‘custom’ (nomos), and not the newly issued ‘decree’ (also nomos). Creon confronts Antigone after she has performed burial rites for her brother by asking her whether she knew about the law (nomos) forbidding his burial (Antigone 446-459): Creon: You, however, tell me—not at length, but briefly—did you know that an edict had forbidden this? Antigone: I knew it. How could I not? It was public. Creon: And even so you dared overstep that law [nomos]? Antigone: Yes, since it was not Zeus that published that edict for me, and since not of that kind are the laws [nomoi] which Dikê, who dwells with the gods below, established among men. Nor did I think that your decrees were of such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing statutes [nomima, from nomos] given us by the gods. For their life is not of today or yesterday, but for all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth. Not for fear of any man’s pride was I about to owe a penalty [dikê] to the gods for breaking these. What happens when the nomoi of human institutions conflict with one another is a central question posed in this tragedy.
See also noos.
In the Iliad Achilles is confronted with a choice between kleos (see entry) and a safe nostos, or homecoming (Iliad 9.413). In the context of the Odyssey, however, Odysseus’ nostos is his kleos. Look closely at the moment of nostos for Odysseus when the Phaiacians bring him to Ithaca (Odyssey 13.79-95): Thereon, when they began rowing out to sea, Odysseus fell into a deep, sweet, and almost deathlike slumber. The ship bounded forward on her way as a four-in-hand chariot flies over the course when the horses feel the whip. Her prow curved as it were the neck of a stallion, and a great wave of dark seething water boiled in her wake. She held steadily on her course, and even a falcon, swiftest of all birds, could not have kept pace with her. Thus, then, she cut her way through the water, carrying one who was as cunning as the gods, but who was now sleeping peacefully, forgetful of all that he had suffered both on the field of battle and by the waves of the weary sea. When the bright star that heralds the approach of dawn began to show. the ship drew near to land. The surface meaning of Odyssey can be described as a safe return from war, a safe return from the sea; the underlying meaning of Odyssey: safe return from death. The process of nostos can be a mode of immortalization. This will play out in the Odyssey, but not directly, only on the level of metaphor. The word nostos is derived from the Indo-European root *nes- ‘return to light and life’; from Indo-European languages other than Greek, we see that this root occurs in myths having to do with Morning Star / Evening Star. The morning star “that heralds the approach of dawn” which shines as Odysseus comes back to Ithaca indicates that Odysseus is returning from the dead as well as from his journey. Compare the longing for home (the English word nostalgia is derived from nostos and algea ‘pains’) oikos house, abode, resting place of cult hero; family line. verb oikeô have an abode The unmarked meaning of oikos is either a house (the physical structure) or a household, those who live in the house. In hero cult, however, the special meaning is the place where a hero’s body is buried, from which he exerts his powers after death. In the Oedipus at Colonus, it is an oikos at Colonus that Oedipus is seeking. See lines 607-641 when Oedipus asks for an abode, promising that after his death he will help prevent thenian land from the Thebans and Theseus says that he will grant him this, establishing a relationship of kharis (see entry). olbios ‘blessed, blissful; fortunate’; olbos ‘bliss’ (pictured as material security) The mystical word olbios 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. In the Homeric tradition, references to hero cults tend to be implicit, not explicit. That is because the religious practice of hero-cult is fundamentally a local phenomenon while the Homeric tradition is non-local or “pan-Hellenic” (that is, common to a majority of Greek speaking locales). Homeric references to olbioi people whose local earth is in contact with the dead hero imply hero-cult without really revealing the mysteries of the hero cult. For the hero, initiation into the state of being olbios is a matter of telos, that is, a coming-full-circle. For the hero, telos is death. (Compare the last word of Christ in Christian traditions: tetelestai, which means ‘the telos has arrived’ (this expression is usually translated as ‘it is consummated’). Then the hero becomes seasonal. For the worshipper of the hero, induction into the mysteries of the hero is a matter of telos, that is, an initiation. For the worshipper, telos is a re-enactment of death. In the following passage from Herodotus scroll I, the mystic meaning of olbios, the key to which is telos, is illustrated by way of two narratives. In the first narrative, notice the word play through the name of the hero Tellos (conveying the idea of telos). “Athenian xenos, we have heard much about your wisdom [sophia] and your wanderings, that you have gone all over the world philosophizing, so now I desire to ask you who is the most olbios man you have seen.” Croesus asked this question expecting the answer to be himself, but Solon, instead of flattering him, told it as it was and said, “O King, it is Tellos the Athenian.” Croesus marveled at what he had said and replied sharply, “In what way do you judge [krinô] Tellos to be the most olbios?” Solon said, “Tellos was from a prosperous polis and his children were good and noble [agathoi]. He saw them all have children of their own, and all of these survived. His life was well off by our standards, and his death was most distinguished: when the Athenians were fighting their neighbors in Eleusis, he came to help, routed the enemy, and died most beautifully. The Athenians buried him at public expense on the spot where he fell and gave him much timê.” When Solon had provoked him by saying that the affairs of Tellos were so olbios, Croesus asked who he thought was next, fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Kleobis and Biton.” They were Argive in genos, they had enough to live on, and on top of this they had great bodily strength. Both were prize-winning athletes [athlophoroi], and this story is told about them: There was a festival of Hera in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the sacred precinct by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time [hôra], so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time [hôra]. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling 45 stadia until they arrived at the sacred precinct. When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to the best fulfillment [ariston telos], and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having such children. She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for humanity to her children Kleobis and Biton, who had given great timê to the goddess. After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and they never got up again; they remained in the pose that they had assumed in reaching their telos. The Argives made and dedicated at Delphi statues of them, since they were aristoi.” Note the suggestive use of the word telos throughout this passage. It concerns initiation. Telos is defined as ‘coming full circle, rounding out, fulfillment, completion, ending, end; successfully passing through an ordeal; ritual, rite’ The “moral” of Solon’s whole narrative is this: “So count no man olbios before he dies.” On the surface, this seems to mean: “you are only happy when you die - since life is so full of suffering; you might as well be put out of your misery.” Underneath the surface, this means: “you are blessed as a cult hero only after you are dead; then you can bless your worshippers, not before.” Oedipus the King tries to bless his “worshippers” at the beginning of the Oedipus Tyrannus. It does not work. paskhô suffer, experience, be treated [badly or well]; pathos suffering, experience In a song culture such as that of ancient Greece, suffering and experience is conveyed through song, which creates that experience anew for the audience. When the world of heroes was performed on stage in tragedy, this sharing of pathos is an integral part of the audience’s experience as well. Pathos indicates simultaneously the ‘suffering’ of the hero and the ‘emotional experience’ of the audience in watching the performance of that suffering. Note that linguistically pathos is the passive of drâma--it is the recepetion of what the actors are doing! penthos grief, public expression of grief by way of lamentation or keening See also akhos. As with akhos, penthos describes both the feeling of grief and its expession through song. A song of lamentation can incorporate both singing and crying, and the weeping, although it may include being choked up with tears flowing and nose running, is considered part of the form of the song.
Being philos is a necessary condition of understanding an ainos (see entry). When Phoenix tells the story of Meleager in Iliad 9, he introduces it as a story that he can tell among them because they are all philoi. The story itself is about degrees of being philos, in which the hero Meleager is beseeched by several people, including the elders of his city, the priests, his father, his mother and sisters, and his nearest-and-dearest friends. The only one who could convince Meleager to return to fighting, though, was the one who was most philos to him, his wife Kleopatra. For more on the ‘ascending scale of affection’ in this story see Best of the Achaeans chapter 6, paragraphs 13-18. Usually the most philos person is oneself, but in narrative this can take the shape of an alter ego (see therapôn) , as with Achilles and Patroklos in the Iliad.
The polis was the basic social and political (a word derived from polis) organization unit of ancient Greek society. A polis included an urban center, part of which may be fortified, and the surrounding countryside. Citizens of the polis could live either in the urban center or out in the countryside on farms and in smaller settlements. The importance of the polis as a social organization is particularly evident in Athenian tragedy, which explores questions of the human condition within a polis-like community. This is true even though the subject matter of tragedy comes from a pre-polis song tradition. For example, in Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia, the problem of the intrafamilial murders in the family of Agamemnon is settled only within the institutions of the Athenian polis. ponos ‘ordeal, labor, pain’ See also agôn, athlos. Ponos refers to the ordeals or struggles that a hero undergoes, similarly to athlos, but the emphasis in this word is the physical strain or suffering involved. A hero’s struggles and pain, especially at the moment of death, are the focus of re-enactment rituals such as athletic contests and tragic drama. The hero Herakles is especially connected to the concept of ponos since his famous “Labors” are in fact ponoi, as we see in the Euripidean tragedy Herakles as the Chorus sings about the ordeals he has undergone. The ode gives a compressed retelling of the Labors, and begins by calling them ponoi (Herakles 353-358): But I sing of the one who went below the earth Whether I call him the son of Zeus Or child of Amphitryon I wish to sing a crown of his toils through eulogy, the striving for excellence [aretê] of his labors [ponoi] are a glory to the dead.
Comparing words that are cognate with pontos in other Indo-European languages, (such as the Indic cognate which means ‘path’ and the Latin pons which means ‘bridge’), Émile Benveniste found that the basic meaning of the word is ‘crossing’, with an underlying meaning of a dangerous crossing. For more on this sense of danger as relates especially to the Hellespont (Hellespontos) and the tomb of Achilles which overlooks it, see The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore, 1979) chapter 20, paragraphs 21-28. psukhê, plural psukhai, synonym of thûmos (or menos) at the moment of death; essence of life while one is alive; conveyor of identity while one is dead Having one’s psukhê joined with one’s body is the definition of being alive. After death it is the psukhê which is located in Hades. As we see in Odyssey 11, it is the disembodied conveyor of identity--Odysseus can recognize the dead by seeing their psukhai, but (except for Teiresias), they need the sacrificial blood to be “activated” so that they can communicate with the living Odysseus. Notice also that the psukhê of the dead Patroklos can speak to Achilles in his dreams, as in Iliad 23.62-67: Here a very deep slumber took hold upon him and eased the burden of his sorrows, for his limbs were weary with chasing Hektor round windy Ilion. Presently the sad spirit [psukhê] of Patroklos drew near him, like what he had been in stature, voice, and the light of his beaming eyes, clad, too, as he had been clad in life. Compare this description of the psukhê of Patroklos to the artist’s depiction of it on the Boston Hydria, where it does not seem to be of the same statue, although it is wearing his clothes! (Hint: the psukhê is the small figure above the white-mound tomb of Patroklos--notice that he is still dressed as a warrior.) In Plato’s Phaedo, the nature of the psukhê and what happens to it after death is a central question that Socrates discusses with his friends right before his own death. sêma, plural sêmata, sign, symbol, tomb; sêmainô (verb) indicate, use a sêma A sêma is a visual sign or symbol. Like the verbal ainos, the visual sêma needs to be decoded to be understood correctly. An example of a sêma within poetry is the elaborate Shield of Achilles described in Iliad 18--all of the scenes depicted on the Shield have a specific meaning for the man who carries the shield, Achilles. Thsi device is also used in the tragedy Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus, in which the shields of the seven leaders attacking Thebes are described. In this play Eteocles, the king of Thebes, gives an interpretation of the sêma on the shields of his opponents, but it is up to us to decide whether his interpretation of these symbols is correct. The tomb of a hero is an epecially meaningful symbol, and ‘tomb’ is one of the meanings of sêma. Consider what Hektor says when he challenges the Achaeans to send their best man for a duel (Iliad 7.81-91): In like manner, if Apollo grant me glory and I slay your champion, I will strip him of his armor and take it to the city of Ilion, where I will hang it in the temple of Apollo, but I will give up his body, that the Achaeans may bury him at their ships, and the build him a tomb [sêma] by the wide waters of the Hellespont. Then will one say hereafter as he sails his ship over the sea [pontos], ‘This is the marker [sêma] of one who died long since a champion who was slain by mighty Hektor.’ Thus will one say, and my fame [kleos] shall not perish. The tomb will be a way of remembering this duel--notice, however, that Hektor believes the tomb of the dead man will be a sign of his own victory and thus in memory of himself, not the dead man! In Iliad 23, funeral games are held for Patroklos. The main event is the chariot race. Nestor gives advice to his son Antilokhos, who is competing in the race. He points out that Achilles has designated a certain place as the turning point--that is, as the point where the chariots make a left-hand 180-degree turn and come back to the starting line as the finishing line. Nestor says (Iliad 326-343): I will give you this certain sign [sêma], which cannot escape your notice. There is a stump of a dead tree-oak or pine as it may be&emdashsome six feet above the ground, and not yet rotted away by rain; it stands at the fork of the road; it has two white stones set one on each side, and there is a clear course all round it. It may have been a tomb [sêma] of someone long since dead, or it may have been used as a turning-post in days gone by; now, however, it has been fixed on by Achilles as the mark round which the chariots shall turn; hug it as close as you can, but as you stand in your chariot lean over a little to the left; urge on your right-hand horse with voice and lash, and give him a loose rein, but let the left-hand horse keep so close in, that the nave of your wheel shall almost graze the post; but mind the stone, or you will wound your horses and break your chariot in pieces, which would be sport for others but confusion for yourself. Like the possibility mentioned by Nestor, in an athletic contest set up to honor heroes, the very tomb of the hero (shaped in a mound) could in fact be the turning post. Yüklə 2,12 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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