DOCSLIB.ORG

UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles the Aesthetics of Equality

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles the Aesthetics of Equality UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Aesthetics of Equality in Early Greek Poetry A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics by Ben Radcliffe 2019 © Copyright by Ben Radcliffe 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Aesthetics of Equality in Early Greek Poetry by Ben Radcliffe Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Alex C. Purves, Chair This dissertation asks how Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis envision egalitarian alternatives to the conditions of social stratification that prevail in the fictional worlds of early Greek poetry. I track moments when characters relegated to the lower ranks of their societies—beggars, plebian rabble-rousers, and masses of common soldiers—stage challenges to the social and narrative primacy of the texts’ protagonists, who invariably belong to the aristocratic or propertied classes. Even though these challenges fail on a narrative level, their rich aesthetic content invites readers to reflect on how each text’s poetic priorities could be subverted, reinforced, or transformed in a flattened social landscape. I draw on the work of contemporary philosophers and political theorists to model how egalitarian subjectivity—ways of organizing and belonging together—can surface in diverse venues, including forms of collective militancy, ii ethical self-fashioning, and aesthetic expression. By locating a space of political contestation in sensory experience, this approach supplements the forms of deliberative politics that are more familiar to Classical Studies scholarship. It thereby offers a novel way of giving voice to the minor characters who pose a challenge from below to the fundamental social premises of early Greek poetry. iii The dissertation of Ben Radcliffe is approved. Kathryn Anne Morgan Giulia Sissa James I Porter Alex C. Purves, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 iv For my parents v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Vita viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The Aesthetics of Violence in the Iliad 54 Chapter 2. Comrades and Candor in the Odyssey 111 Chapter 3. Utopian Poverty in Works and Days 171 Chapter 4. Song, Beauty, and the Logic of Reaction in the Theognidea 223 Bibliography 262 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The members of my dissertation committee, Kathryn Morgan, Giulia Sissa, and James Porter, offered invaluable criticisms and suggestions that shaped this project from the beginning. I would like to express my gratitude to them and to my committee chair and advisor, Alex Purves, for her generosity as a mentor, her inspiring ability as a reader, and for reminding me, at crucial moments in the writing process, how scholarship can matter. For formative seminars, ideas, and guidance, I am grateful to the faculty of the UCLA Department of Classics, especially Bob Gurval, Francesca Martelli, Mario Telò, Brent Vine, David Blank, and Amy Richlin. Thanks as well to Bryant Kirkland and Adriana Vazquez for encouragement and professional advice in the last two years. This dissertation was shaped by many of my fellow graduate students in the Department of Classics. For their friendship and comradery, thanks especially to Jasmine Akiyama-Kim, Andre Matlock, Elliott Piros, John Tennant, Ashleigh Fata, Zachary Borst, Ana Guay, and Irene Han. I am indebted to each of them for their commitment to unorthodox research and for blending Classics with urgent issues in contemporary politics and philosophy. The UCLA Graduate Division provided me with a Dissertation Year Fellowship that was indispensable for finishing this project. My love and gratitude to my parents, to my brother, and to Derek and LiHe, for their encouragement and their curiosity. And to Elliott: for walking with me through forests and mountains. vii VITA Ben Radcliffe attended Stanford University from 2009 to 2013, where he graduated with a B.A. in Classics, ΦΒΚ, with distinction and honors, and a minor in Linguistics. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, from 2013-2019, earning an MA in Classics in 2015; he expects to receive a PhD in 2019. He has presented papers at the Society for Classical Studies and the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. viii πάντα τὰ ἐν ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ἐκείνου τε ὀρέγεται τοῦ ὃ ἔστιν ἴσον, καὶ αὐτοῦ ἐνδεέστερά ἐστιν everything in sensory experience reaches out for that pure equality—and falls short of it (Plato, Phaedo 75b) Introduction Songs and festive dances resound from the royal palace on Ithaca at the start of Odyssey 23. A bard strums his lyre and inspires men and women to strike the floor with their echoing feet; neighbors listening to the noise suppose that it means a wedding. Penelope, it seems, has finally acceded to her suitors’ demands and chosen one of them to replace her long-absent husband: ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκε δόμων ἔκτοσθεν ἀκούων· ἦ μάλα δή τις ἔγημε πολυμνήστην βασίλειαν· σχετλίη, οὐδ’ ἔτλη πόσιος οὗ κουριδίοιο εἴρυσθαι μέγα δῶμα διαμπερές, εἷος ἵκοιτο. ὣς ἄρα τις εἴπεσκε, τὰ δ’ οὐκ ἴσαν ὡς ἐτέτυκτο. (147-51) Someone listening outside of the palace would say, “someone has married the many-suitored queen —a wretched woman! She wasn’t patient enough to keep the great house of her wedded husband until his return.” They would say this, but they didn’t know what had really happened. The wedding, of course, is a ruse.1 The festivities have been staged by Odysseus to forestall the discovery of what he has actually committed in the confines of his great house—the massacre 1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. On the false wedding, see Segal 1996: 219 (regarding the irony of the performance and its tensions with the values of heroic kleos); Newton 1987: 16-17 (on parallels with dancing among the Phaeacians); Seaford 1994: 80 (on the relation of the wedding to the endings of the Odyssey 1 of Penelope’s suitors and their supporters. Odysseus’ blood-soaked partisans wash themselves and take to dancing in halls that were moments before heaped with corpses. The macabre device keeps the Ithacan public in ignorance just long enough for Odysseus to reunite with his wife and father and gather his supporters for the inevitable struggle with the kin of the murdered suitors. By confirming Odysseus, once again, as a master of dissimulation, the sounds of the decoy wedding feed into the text’s broader fascination with disguises, illusions, phantasms, and the deceptive power of aesthetic impressions. But it is striking that the narrator gives the anonymous persons listening outside (τις…δόμων ἔκτοσθεν ἀκούων) an opportunity not merely to be deceived but to evaluate the sounds critically and construct a narrative around them. The listeners are ignorant about what really happened but surprisingly perceptive about what could have happened: at the end of Book 21, Penelope did (apparently) decide that Odysseus had perished;2 she did resolve to marry one of her suitors that very night; and if not for the fantastical intervention of her husband, the sounds of song and dance might very well have signaled the end of her equivocal status as the wife of a missing king. What the listeners discern and the poem’s compositional history). Peradotto captures the paradox of the anonymous listener’s judgment: “faithful Penelope’s name is in public disgrace, subject of a tale till then merely possible, now actual, but false” (1990: 157). Lynn-George (1988: 22-23) discusses how the false wedding resonates with the funerals that it has deferred and with the imminent reunion of Penelope and Odysseus. 2 It is notoriously unclear whether Penelope recognizes the beggar as Odysseus, but she is never explicitly said to recognize him. See Vlahos 2007; Scodel 2002a; Winkler 1990: 155-60; Murnaghan 1987: 128-35, 1986; Emlyn- Jones 1984; Russo 1982; and Scodel 2001: 323 n. 27 for further references. 2 in the noise of merriment is not simply a false appearance but the semblance of the plot as it might have been.3 This moment of dramatic irony turns out to be more complicated than it first seems. It invites us, as an audience, to grapple with how the plot impacts figures at the margins of the story-world who do not share our degree of epistemic and emotional involvement in the text. The anonymous listeners—Odysseus intends the performance for “passersby or neighbors” (23.136)—dream up a storyline that turns out to be far happier for Ithaca than the savage reality that has been instituted by Odysseus’ violence. The massacre of the suitors is a social and demographic cataclysm that wipes out a whole generation of the island’s youth, “the foundation of the city” (as Odysseus readily admits, 23.121), and sets in motion a further cycle of factional violence.4 Even before this bloody denouement, the restoration of Odysseus to the chieftaincy of Ithaca—the telos of the Odyssey—was always an ambivalent issue for the Ithacan populace (the dēmos, broadly construed5). It is an outcome that individual figures piously hope for, but as a collectivity the Ithacans fail to offer material support for Telemachus and Penelope, and on his return to the island in Book 13, Odysseus does not seek the support of the dēmos against the suitors. 3 Regarding the broader thematic functions of Odysseus’ disguises and dissimulations, Murnaghan 1987 remarks that “any account of disguise implies the plausibility, or even the probability, of the vision of reality that disguise falsely projects” (129-30). This observation could be applied to the falsely projected reality that the anonymous listeners discern at Od. 23.147-51. 4 I refer to the final conflict between Odysseus and the relatives of the suitors in Book 24, which would have resulted in the wholesale slaughter of the latter if not for the intervention of Zeus and Athena, who mandate a peaceful settlement.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Provided by the Internet Classics Archive. See Bottom for Copyright
    Provided by The Internet Classics Archive. See bottom for copyright. Available online at http://classics.mit.edu//Homer/iliad.html The Iliad By Homer Translated by Samuel Butler ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOK I Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant's wreath and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs. "Sons of Atreus," he cried, "and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to reach your homes in safety; but free my daughter, and accept a ransom for her, in reverence to Apollo, son of Jove." On this the rest of the Achaeans with one voice were for respecting the priest and taking the ransom that he offered; but not so Agamemnon, who spoke fiercely to him and sent him roughly away.
    [Show full text]
  • A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Development of the Notion of Kalos Kagathos from Homer to Aristotle
    The University of Notre Dame Australia ResearchOnline@ND Theses 2006 A philosophical inquiry into the development of the notion of kalos kagathos from Homer to Aristotle Geoffrey Coad University of Notre Dame Australia Follow this and additional works at: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses Part of the Philosophy Commons COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Copyright Regulations 1969 WARNING The material in this communication may be subject to copyright under the Act. Any further copying or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act. Do not remove this notice. Publication Details Coad, G. (2006). A philosophical inquiry into the development of the notion of kalos kagathos from Homer to Aristotle (Master of Philosophy (MPhil)). University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/13 This dissertation/thesis is brought to you by ResearchOnline@ND. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of ResearchOnline@ND. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOTION OF KALOS KAGATHOS FROM HOMER TO ARISTOTLE Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Master of Philosophy Geoffrey John Coad School of Philosophy and Theology University of Notre Dame, Australia December 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv Declaration v Acknowledgements vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: The Fish Hook and Some Other Examples 6 The Sun – The Source of Beauty 7 Some Instances of Lack of Beauty: Adolf Hitler and Sharp Practices in Court 9 The Kitchen Knife and the Samurai Sword 10 CHAPTER 2: Homer 17 An Historical Analysis of the Phrase Kalos Kagathos 17 Herman Wankel 17 Felix Bourriott 18 Walter Donlan 19 An Analysis of the Terms Agathos, Arete and Other Related Terms of Value in Homer 19 Homer’s Purpose in Writing the Iliad 22 Alasdair MacIntyre 23 E.
    [Show full text]
  • Senecan Tragedy and Virgil's Aeneid: Repetition and Reversal
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 Senecan Tragedy and Virgil's Aeneid: Repetition and Reversal Timothy Hanford Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/427 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] SENECAN TRAGEDY AND VIRGIL’S AENEID: REPETITION AND REVERSAL by TIMOTHY HANFORD A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 ©2014 TIMOTHY HANFORD All Rights Reserved ii This dissertation has been read and accepted by the Graduate Faculty in Classics in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Ronnie Ancona ________________ _______________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Dee L. Clayman ________________ _______________________________ Date Executive Officer James Ker Joel Lidov Craig Williams Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract SENECAN TRAGEDY AND VIRGIL’S AENEID: REPETITION AND REVERSAL by Timothy Hanford Advisor: Professor Ronnie Ancona This dissertation explores the relationship between Senecan tragedy and Virgil’s Aeneid, both on close linguistic as well as larger thematic levels. Senecan tragic characters and choruses often echo the language of Virgil’s epic in provocative ways; these constitute a contrastive reworking of the original Virgilian contents and context, one that has not to date been fully considered by scholars.
    [Show full text]
  • MONEY and the EARLY GREEK MIND: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy
    This page intentionally left blank MONEY AND THE EARLY GREEK MIND How were the Greeks of the sixth century bc able to invent philosophy and tragedy? In this book Richard Seaford argues that a large part of the answer can be found in another momentous development, the invention and rapid spread of coinage, which produced the first ever thoroughly monetised society. By transforming social relations, monetisation contributed to the ideas of the universe as an impersonal system (presocratic philosophy) and of the individual alienated from his own kin and from the gods (in tragedy). Seaford argues that an important precondition for this monetisation was the Greek practice of animal sacrifice, as represented in Homeric epic, which describes a premonetary world on the point of producing money. This book combines social history, economic anthropology, numismatics and the close reading of literary, inscriptional, and philosophical texts. Questioning the origins and shaping force of Greek philosophy, this is a major book with wide appeal. richard seaford is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Exeter. He is the author of commentaries on Euripides’ Cyclops (1984) and Bacchae (1996) and of Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (1994). MONEY AND THE EARLY GREEK MIND Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy RICHARD SEAFORD cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521832281 © Richard Seaford 2004 This publication is in copyright.
    [Show full text]
  • Dares Phrygius' De Excidio Trojae Historia: Philological Commentary and Translation
    Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Dares Phrygius' De Excidio Trojae Historia: Philological Commentary and Translation Jonathan Cornil Scriptie voorgedragen tot het bekomen van de graad van Master in de Taal- en letterkunde (Latijn – Engels) 2011-2012 Promotor: Prof. Dr. W. Verbaal ii Table of Contents Table of Contents iii Foreword v Introduction vii Chapter I. De Excidio Trojae Historia: Philological and Historical Comments 1 A. Dares and His Historia: Shrouded in Mystery 2 1. Who Was ‘Dares the Phrygian’? 2 2. The Role of Cornelius Nepos 6 3. Time of Origin and Literary Environment 9 4. Analysing the Formal Characteristics 11 B. Dares as an Example of ‘Rewriting’ 15 1. Homeric Criticism and the Trojan Legacy in the Middle Ages 15 2. Dares’ Problematic Connection with Dictys Cretensis 20 3. Comments on the ‘Lost Greek Original’ 27 4. Conclusion 31 Chapter II. Translations 33 A. Translating Dares: Frustra Laborat, Qui Omnibus Placere Studet 34 1. Investigating DETH’s Style 34 2. My Own Translations: a Brief Comparison 39 3. A Concise Analysis of R.M. Frazer’s Translation 42 B. Translation I 50 C. Translation II 73 D. Notes 94 Bibliography 95 Appendix: the Latin DETH 99 iii iv Foreword About two years ago, I happened to be researching Cornelius Nepos’ biography of Miltiades as part of an assignment for a class devoted to the study of translating Greek and Latin texts. After heaping together everything I could find about him in the library, I came to the conclusion that I still needed more information. So I decided to embrace my identity as a loyal member of the ‘Internet generation’ and began my virtual journey through the World Wide Web in search of articles on Nepos.
    [Show full text]
  • Days Without End —Mortality and Immortality of Life Cycle— Kumi Ohno
    （83） Days Without End —Mortality and Immortality of Life Cycle— Kumi Ohno Introduction Eugene O’Neill’s Days Without End (herein referred to as “Days” ) was premiered on December 27th, 1933 at Plymouth Theatre in Boston. The play consists of four acts and six scenes. The author tried to excavate the “crisis awareness” against an intrinsic nature of mankind through this play. In Dynamo which was written in 1929, O’Neill introduced four gods: “Puritan god”, “electricity god”, “Dynamo” and “the real god representing the eternal life”. In the story, however, Ruben, the main character, who seeks the salvation from these gods, is unable to find the true answer and commits suicide. In Days, the main character barely but successfully finds out the religious significance of the purpose of life and continues to have hope and the will to live, which is quite different from other O’Neill’s plays. This play was written in 1930s during the great economic depres sion and the anxiety of the people described in Dynamo is inherited by this play, although the subject is dug from the different aspect. However, as seen from the author’s efforts of rewriting the script several times, his attempts to reach the final conclusion was not successful for many years. The play was finally published after rewriting eight times during the period between 1931–1934.1 Days is considered to be the worst play of Eugene O’Neill. Ah, Wilderness!, which was highly acclaimed by the critics and which ran 289 performances, was written almost in the same 1 Doris V.
    [Show full text]
  • Homer's Odyssey in the Hands of Its Allegorists: Many Paths to Explain the Cosmos
    Safari Grey Homer’s Odyssey in the Hands of its Allegorists: Many Paths to Explain the Cosmos Summary The allegorical exegetic tradition was arguably the most popular form of literary criticism in antiquity. Amongst the ancient allegorists we encounter a variety of names and philo- sophic backgrounds spanning from Pherecydes of Syros to Proclus the Successor. Many of these writers believed that Homer’s epics revealed philosophical doctrines through the means of hyponoia or ‘undermeanings’.Within this tradition was a focus on cosmological, cosmogonical and theological matters which attracted a variety of commentators despite their philosophical backgrounds. It is the intention of this paper to draw attention to two writers: Heraclitus, and Porphyry of Tyre. This paper also intends to demonstrate that the tradition of cosmic allegorical exegesis is still practiced in modern scholarship. Keywords: Homer; literary criticism; allegory; Heraclitus; Porphyry; cosmology; metaphor Die allegorische exegetische Tradition war wohl die populärste Form der Literaturkritik in der Antike. Unter den antiken Allegorien begegnen wir einer Vielzahl von Namen und phi- losophischen Hintergründen, die von Pherecydes von Syros bis zu Proclus der Nachfolger reichen. Viele dieser Autoren glaubten, Homers Epen enthüllten philosophische Lehren durch Hyponoie oder ,Unterschätzung‘. In dieser Tradition lag der Fokus auf kosmologi- schen, kosmogonischen und theologischen Fragen, die trotz ihrer philosophischen Hinter- gründe eine Vielzahl von Kommentatoren anzogen.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking Athenian Democracy.Pdf
    Rethinking Athenian Democracy A dissertation presented by Daniela Louise Cammack to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts January 2013 © 2013 Daniela Cammack All rights reserved. Professor Richard Tuck Daniela Cammack Abstract Conventional accounts of classical Athenian democracy represent the assembly as the primary democratic institution in the Athenian political system. This looks reasonable in the light of modern democracy, which has typically developed through the democratization of legislative assemblies. Yet it conflicts with the evidence at our disposal. Our ancient sources suggest that the most significant and distinctively democratic institution in Athens was the courts, where decisions were made by large panels of randomly selected ordinary citizens with no possibility of appeal. This dissertation reinterprets Athenian democracy as “dikastic democracy” (from the Greek dikastēs, “judge”), defined as a mode of government in which ordinary citizens rule principally through their control of the administration of justice. It begins by casting doubt on two major planks in the modern interpretation of Athenian democracy: first, that it rested on a conception of the “wisdom of the multitude” akin to that advanced by epistemic democrats today, and second that it was “deliberative,” meaning that mass discussion of political matters played a defining role. The first plank rests largely on an argument made by Aristotle in support of mass political participation, which I show has been comprehensively misunderstood. The second rests on the interpretation of the verb “bouleuomai” as indicating speech, but I suggest that it meant internal reflection in both the courts and the assembly.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Heroes of the Dance Floor': the Missing Exemplary Male Dancer In
    ‘Heroes of the Dance Floor’: The Missing Exemplary Male Dancer in Ancient Sources ‘Why, after the reign of the dancing Sun King, was dance no longer an appropriate occupation for men?’ This is the question with which Ann Daly opened an influential intervention in the feminist debate on dance. She argued, with the support of revealing quotations from the Romantic dance critic Theophile Gautier, that in the Romantic era dance became 'less a moral paradigm and more a spectacle'; the ballerina became a reified object for scrutiny, she says, by the male gaze: Because the connotative passivity of such overt display was anathema to the virile, strong, action-oriented control of the masculine ideology, dance came to be identified as "effeminate"… She argues that men’s effective prohibition from engaging in this self-display during high Romanticism indicates, furthermore, 'an attempt to maintain the male's virile image-his dominance-untainted by the "feminine." ' 1 In a nutshell, ever since Louis XIV, dance has been seen as fundamentally effeminate; since we live under patriarchy, in which the female body is the principle bearer for society of erotic signification, the perceived effeminacy of dance inevitably results in it becoming conceptually sexualised and vulnerable to charges of moral depravity and aesthetic decline. These connotations add up to what we understand by ‘decadence’ in the widest sense of that term, incorporating also a sense of a lapsarian fall from Edenic innocence.2 To dance was and still is to run the risk of relinquishing autonomous control over the 1 meaning created by one's own body, and thus to relinquish all that is signified by masculinity in culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Illinois Classical Studies
    Heraclitus and the Moon: The New Fragments in P.Oxy. 3710 WALTER BURKERT The editio maior of Heraclitus by Miroslav Marcovich' will remain a model and a thesaurus of scholarship for a long time, especially since there is little hope that the amount of evidence preserved in ancient literature will substantially increase. Still, two remarkable additions have come to light from papyri in recent years, the quotation of B 94 = 52 M. and B 3 = 57 M. in the Derveni papyrus,^ which takes the attestation of these texts with one stroke back to the 5th century B.C., and especially the totally new and surprising texts contained in the learned commentary on Book 20 of the Odyssey which was published in 1986 as Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3710 by Michael W. Haslam, with rich and thoughtful notes.^ It was Martin West who called attention to these fragments in 1987;^* they appeared too late to be included in the new editions of Heraclitus by Diano, Conche and Robinson.^ Immediately after West, Mouraviev proposed an alternative reading and interpretation.^ It may still appear that the precious new sayings of Heraclitus are either obscure or trivial or both. Another approach to achieve a better understanding may well be tried. The commentary on the Odyssey preserved in Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3710 is astonishingly rich in quotations. The passage concerned is Odyssey 20. 156, with the mention of a "festival" which turns out to be a festival of Heraclitus. Greek Text with a Short Commentary by M. Marcovich, editio maior (Merida 1967; rev. ItaUan ed.. Horence 1978). K.
    [Show full text]
  • A Stranger in a Strange Land: Medea in Roman Republican Tragedy1 Robert Cowan
    CHAPTER 3 A Stranger in a Strange Land: Medea in Roman Republican Tragedy1 Robert Cowan The first performance of a Roman version of a Greek tragedy in 240 BC was a momentous event. It was not the beginning of Roman appropriation of Greek culture- Rome had had contact and complex interaction with Greek communities in Magna Graecia and elsewhere from earliest times - but it was an important landmark in the relationship between Greece and Rome. 2 When a tragedy by Livius Andronicus was performed to celebrate victory over Carthage in the First Punic War, a central cultural practice of an alien culture was adopted, adapted, appropriated and transformed to serve as a central cultural practice of Rome. It is significant that the first tragedy celebrated a victory (albeit over Carthage), since the appropriation of Greek tragedy was an act of cultural conquest, as Roman actors marched into and occupied the stage of Attic drama. Yet the event was more complex than that description suggests. In Horace's phrase, captured Greece captured its savage master.3 The writing ofRoman tragedy in the Greek style was simultaneously an act of self-confident literary invasion and of cultural submission to the thrall of a more established theatrical tradition. In terms of literary history, this complex interrelationship marks the beginning of Latin literature, in conjunction with Livius's Latin, Saturnian version of the Odyssey. In terms of culture, the flourishing of Roman drama coincided with the massive expansion of Roman territory and the accompanying challenge to its sense of identity. Dramas were performed at public festivals, /rrdi scaenici, organized by state officials, the aediles, and sponsored by influential elites.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction: Medea in Greece and Rome
    INTRODUCTION: MEDEA IN GREECE AND ROME A J. Boyle maiusque mari Medea malum. Seneca Medea 362 And Medea, evil greater than the sea. Few mythic narratives of the ancient world are more famous than the story of the Colchian princess/sorceress who betrayed her father and family for love of a foreign adventurer and who, when abandoned for another woman, killed in revenge both her rival and her children. Many critics have observed the com­ plexities and contradictions of the Medea figure—naive princess, knowing witch, faithless and devoted daughter, frightened exile, marginalised alien, dis­ placed traitor to family and state, helper-màiden, abandoned wife, vengeful lover, caring and filicidal mother, loving and fratricidal sister, oriental 'other', barbarian saviour of Greece, rejuvenator of the bodies of animals and men, killer of kings and princesses, destroyer and restorer of kingdoms, poisonous stepmother, paradigm of beauty and horror, demi-goddess, subhuman monster, priestess of Hecate and granddaughter of the sun, bride of dead Achilles and ancestor of the Medes, rider of a serpent-drawn chariot in the sky—complex­ ities reflected in her story's fragmented and fragmenting history. That history has been much examined, but, though there are distinguished recent exceptions, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the specifically 'Roman' Medea—the Medea of the Republican tragedians, of Cicero, Varro Atacinus, Ovid, the younger Seneca, Valerius Flaccus, Hosidius Geta and Dracontius, and, beyond the literary field, the Medea of Roman painting and Roman sculp­ ture. Hence the present volume of Ramus, which aims to draw attention to the complex and fascinating use and abuse of this transcultural heroine in the Ro­ man intellectual and visual world.
    [Show full text]