Preface For most philologists working on ancient Greek poetry, the Parian Marble is not usually a final destination, but a series of stopovers. Indeed, a chronological list is hardly the kind of thing that one reads from beginning to end. Hence, the common tendency to approach the inscription as a repository of information and to mine it for specific dates of people and events. Only the few… Read more
List of Abbreviations BNJ = I. Worthington, ed., Brill’s New Jacoby: The Fragments of the Greek Historians I–III (Jacoby Online), http://www.brill.com/publications/online-resources/jacoby-online. BNP = H. Cancik, M. Landfester, H. Schneider, Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, (New Pauly Online), http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/brill-s-new-pauly. CIG = Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin, 1825–1877). CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin,… Read more
Chapter 1. The Parian Marble 1. Introduction The Parian Marble is a monumental inscription written in Attic Greek on a stele that was originally over two meters tall, [1] dating from some time after 264/3 BCE. [2] It has reached us in two sections, ninety-three and thirty-three lines long. There is a gap of nineteen years… Read more
10. From Philology to Theater: The Construction of Meaning in Sophocles’ Antigone* The problem facing the contemporary translator of a Greek tragedy may be found in its historical dimension. I try to put myself in the playwright’s shoes: he wrote at a certain moment in time, he took a position within a certain tradition that prevailed at that time, so as to express… Read more
11. Accursed from Birth* Enigma and enigmatization The plot of Oedipus Tyrannus is the story of an unveiling, a “tragic analysis,” as Schiller calls it, [1] but the dénouement discloses that the play’s story has a prehistory in the form of a “myth”: the myth of the Labdacid family. Now, the dramatic unfolding contains gaps. Why… Read more
12. Two Phases of Recognition in Sophocles’ Electra* Preamble Electra hates her mother, Clytemnestra, and she does not hesitate to tell her so. Their confrontation will represent the play’s major contest (agōn), a merciless struggle between the two women, up to the point when the dramatic action sets Orestes’ plan in motion and at the same time brings about Electra’s downfall. She… Read more
13. Reading the Cosmogonies* There is not just one cosmogony, there are many, a whole typology of cosmogonies; every philosopher could have his own: a typical form could be taken up again and knowingly modified. It was a major step forward when, instead of constructing a fictitious continuity or evolution, I was able to differentiate, according to the doxography, between closed, unique worlds,… Read more
14. Empedocles: A Single Project, Two Theologies* Recent discussions, in part linked to the publication of the Strasbourg papyrus in 1999, [1] encourage a reconsideration of the relation between Empedocles’ two poems, On Nature, or The Origins, and The Purifications. [2] My own position on the issue had not yet been resolved when… Read more
15. The Parmenidean Cosmology of Parmenides* Cosmology has been treated as a poor relation. Here we shall study it for itself, according to its own logic—which is not exclusive to cosmology—without bringing in the question of the relation it necessarily maintains with the successive interpretations of ἔστι (“is”) in fragment 8. [1] The status that has been assigned… Read more
16. Expressing Differences* If hermeneutics is critical, it must be historical; its task is to reconstitute a project in its own time. Precision remains forever inscribed in the letter of the text. Distinctive expression has the power to endure. This is the property of written works, and also oral works, works “written” orally before writing, and composed as if they were going to… Read more
