[Final draft of an essay by the same title published by Oxford University Press in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture, edited by Clemente Marconi, 2015, 621-636.] §1. Anthropology has had an important role in studies of Greek and Roman art, albeit a role marked by such discontinuity and eclecticism that it does not lend itself to be described as a set of principles. What is… Read more
Leonard Muellner’s goal is to restore the Greek word for the anger of Achilles, menis, to its social, mythical, and poetic contexts. His point of departure is the anthropology of emotions. He believes that notions of anger vary between cultures and that the particular meaning of a word such as menis needs to emerge from a close study of Greek epic. Menis means more than an individual’s emotional response. On… Read more
Bibliography Alexiou, Margaret. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge. Ameis, Carl, and Carl Hentze. 1906, repr. 1965. Iias für den Schuldebrauch. II Bd. 4 Hft. Gesang XXII-XXIV. Leipzig. Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ. Austin, Norman. 1966. The Function of Digressions in the Iliad. Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 7:295-312. Benveniste, Emile. 1935, repr. 1948. Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen. Paris. Read more
Appendix. The Etymology of Mênis After the in-depth contextual analysis of mênis provided above, it should be possible to resolve some of the lingering questions about its etymology. In this appendix, I propose to (1) point out the existence of a word ultimately related to mênis that is attested in the oldest surviving texts from ancient Iran, the Avestan Gāthās , and from ancient India, the hymns of the Rig… Read more
5. The Mênis of Achilles and Its Iliadic Teleology This book began with an assumption that terms for emotions such as anger have meanings and resonance that are specific to their culture, so that it could be informative to reconstruct the sense of an epic word such as mênis within its own poetic context. By now it is clear that this highly specialized social term denoting the cosmic sanction against… Read more
4. The Mênis of Achilles and the First Book of the Iliad It is possible to foresee a sequel to the Theogony from within my metonymic analysis of its myth. [1] The stage has been set for another myth whose central theme is the mênis of Zeus. Neither the word mênis nor the proper use of the term are conceivable until the Theogony is complete,… Read more
3. The Narrative Sequence of the Hesiodic Theogony The purpose of this chapter is to articulate the relationship between the Hesiodic Theogony and mênis, the starting point of the Homeric Iliad. The existence of a global relationship between these poetic traditions has already been postulated by Laura Slatkin, who has described its essential content. [1] Formal criteria also give us reasons to suspect the existence… Read more
2. Mênis and the Social Order An irrevocable cosmic sanction that prohibits some from taking their superiors for equals and others from taking their equals for inferiors—this abstracted definition implies a rigid hierarchical structure and a predictable punitive response to violations of it that belie the richness and flexibility of Greek epic. There are indeed examples of such rigidity. For instance, there is no uncertainty whatever about maltreating the body… Read more
1. Mênis and Cosmic Status in the Hierarchy of Peers A good place to begin reconstructing the meaning of mênis is not the beginning of the epic, which may be all too familiar for the perspective I wish to attain, but an extended passage from the middle of it. At the beginning of book 15 Zeus awakes from his seduction by Hera and finds the Trojans being routed by the… Read more
Introduction: Approaching Anger The subject of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles, not Achilles himself. But what is this anger of his? It is a fair question, since few terms are more complex than those for strong emotions like anger. In fact, the study of emotional terms in modern American English makes it clear that as children acquiring a language we also acquire an elaborate, internally consistent, and widely… Read more
