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In Plato's Dialogues

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In Plato's Dialogues chapter seven THE PRAGMATICS OF “MYTH” IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES: THE STORY OF PROMETHEUS IN THE PROTAGORAS* Claude Calame Apart from a plot that has been paired with a few proper names belonging to a tradition, there is nothing more unstable, nothing more variable than a Greek myth; and there is nothing more varied than the use that has been made of tales which, by their reference to a time when mortal heroes were still near to the gods, ofer a strong pragmatic dimension; a strong poetic dimension, must one hasten to add, insofar as it is true that the heroic tale does not exist outside the poetic form which addresses it to a given audi- ence and political community, and which assures its symbolic and social e cacy.1 1. The Mythological Freedom of the Homeric Poems From the Iliad on, in the vast domain of the unfolding of heroic ction that is epic poetry, plots involving heroes not participating in the Trojan War are used to a persuasive end. Such is the case, for example, of the well- known use of the story of Meleager made by old Phoenix in an attempt to convince Achilles to return to the centre of the battle eld of Troy. In his muthos, which is understood as an argumentative discourse, the hero inserts as a conclusion the high deed (ergon) of the Aetolians in the defence of the city of Calydon when the Couretes tried to conquer it—a heroic action of time gone by (palai) and not of recent events (neon), the protagonist of which is Meleager, son of the king of Aetolian Calydon. All takes place as if the sage Phoenix were applying to the ctional time of the heroes the same distinction as would later be adopted by the rst historiographers, * Translated by John MacCormick. Many thanks to Maria Vamvouri Rufy; her reading of a rst version of the present study was very useful to me as was also stimulating my reading of her own paper (to be published). 1 In dialogue with others, I have had several occasions to defend such a thesis, notably in Calame (1996), 12–50 and (2000), 11–69. See also Buxton (1994), 18–52. 128 claude calame Herodotus and then Thucydides: then it is the Trojan War itself which becomes a palaion or an archaion, while the Persian Wars belong to the order of the recent past (neon) or of the ‘new’ (kainon)2. This heroic age corresponds to the time of the ancestors (hoi proteroi, etc.), just as Phoenix likewise places the ght over the Boar of Calydon among the ‘glorious acts of the warrior heroes’ (kleaandrônhêrôôn), men of old (prosthen). This is to say that Phoenix, in the logic of epic narration, refers to the same sort of past as that which encompassed, for the rst Greek historiographers, the ancient history which is represented by the reign of Minos or the Trojan War. And this within a narrative enunciation which is founded upon memory (memnêmai), just as for Thucydides the saga of the Atridae rests upon ‘memory’ (mnêmê)3—or, as we would say, on oral tradition! Reduced to a mythographical summary, we know the story: In her rage against Oeneus who neglected to sacri ce to her, Artemis incites the boar of Calydon, which ravages Oeneus’ vineyards. Meleager kills the beast, and the Aetolians and the Couretes quarrel over its remains. Faced with the curses of his mother, whose brother he has killed, Meleager leaves the combat out of spite, in order to rest at the side of his wife, the beautiful Cleopatra. Rejecting the gifts which the elders successively ofer him to persuade him to take up the ght again, Meleager nally cedes only to the supplications of his wife, threatened by the Couretes who have now penetrated within the walls of the city of Calydon. Taken up by Phoenix as he tries to convince Achilles in his turn to return to the battle eld, the tale founds and illustrates a double argument for the hero’s bene t: he should return to battle, not only to assure the safety of the endangered Achaeans, but also in order that he may accept the presents ofered by his peers to maintain his honour. Achilles refuses the ofer: to the honours done him by men he prefers the glory reserved for him by his Zeus-accomplished destiny.4 The version of the Meleager story that is put in the mouth of Phoenix difers from other poetic versions on three essential points. The Iliadic ver- sion omits Meleager’s mother’s attempt to ful l her curse by burning the brand attached to the destiny of her son; moreover, it is silent concerning the succeeding death of Meleager by the will of Apollo; nally, by introduc- 2 I have attempted a semantic analysis of these terms in a 2006 study. 3 Thucydides I, 9, 1–3, where this epic memory is then associated with the name of Homer. On the epic memory of the protagonists in the Iliad, cf. Nagy (1996), 138–144 and 151– 152, with reference to Martin (1987), 77–88, which also ofers a good analysis of the pragmatic sense of muthos (12–18 and 22–32) as a ‘discourse from authority’. 4 Homer, Iliad, IX, 513–605, and then 606–619. On the ‘prize of honour,’ cf. Scheid- Tissinier (1994), 196–203..
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