Introduction. Metaphors of Illegitimacy On a billboard advertisement for a DNA paternity testing service, the selling line is “because you want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt.” [1] Doubt over the child’s parentage casts a metaphorical shadow, one that may be imagined to cover the child himself or herself. The image exploits anxieties about proving paternity that remain even in… Read more
Foreword Building on the foundations of scholarship within the disciplines of philology, philosophy, history, and archaeology, this series concerns not just the archaic and classical periods of Greek traditions but the whole continuum—along with all the discontinuities—from the second millennium B.C.E. to the present. The aim is to enhance perspectives by applying various disciplines to problems that have in the past been treated as the exclusive concern… Read more
Acknowledgments For my parents, for all they made possible, and for Mark, for living through it with me. This book began as a doctoral dissertation for the Ph.D. in Classical Philology at Harvard University. I most gratefully acknowledge the help and encouragement of my readers for that dissertation: Gloria Ferrari Pinney, who gave me a new eye for metaphor and whose work continues to… Read more
Introduction. Metaphors of Illegitimacy On a billboard advertisement for a DNA paternity testing service, the selling line is “because you want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt.” [1] Doubt over the child’s parentage casts a metaphorical shadow, one that may be imagined to cover the child himself or herself. The image exploits anxieties about proving paternity that remain even in… Read more
Chapter 1. Where the Girls Are: Parthenioi and Skotioi Marriage and legitimacy are inseparably linked in ancient Greek thought. Not only is the legitimacy of children determined by the marital status of their parents, but marriage is defined in terms of legitimate children. [1] The often quoted line from Menander’s Perikeiromene Ταύτην γνησίων παίδων ἐπ’ ἀρότῳ σοι δίδωμι ‘I give you this… Read more
Chapter 2. Teucer, the Bastard Archer Teucer is well known as a nothos in classical Greek literature, and he appears in a number of narratives, including the Iliad, Sophocles’ Ajax, and Euripides’ Helen. As a result of his frequent appearance in the ancient sources, there are multiple metaphorical associations connected to Teucer as a nothos. His case is also particular in that he is defined above all… Read more
Chapter 3. Images of Fertility and Sterility Teucer’s emerging role in Euripides’ Helen (examined in the last chapter) as the founder of New Salamis on Cyprus is an example of the way in which narratives can provide a legitimization process within themselves. Teucer, rejected by his father, leaves behind a place and a life in which he is illegitimate. As the founder of a city, however, he… Read more
Abbreviations BA – The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry = N 1979 BA2 – 2nd ed. 1999 EH – “The Epic Hero” = N 2005a GM – Greek Mythology and Poetics = N 1990b HC – Homer the Classic = N 2008a/2009a HPC – Homer the Preclassic = N 2009b/2010a HQ – Homeric Questions… Read more
Acknowledgments There are several people without whom this volume would have been significantly delayed or might not have come to press at all. On behalf of the contributors, I would like to express our collective appreciation for their assistance. First and foremost among these is James George, a fellow traveler with this book who in the end was not able to be a part of its… Read more
Contributors Adam H. Becker is Assistant Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at New York University. He is author of Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). His other publications include articles on Syriac Christianity as well as Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity. Averil Cameron was Professor of Late Antique… Read more
