Chapter 2. Being Born Impure in the City of Cadmus and Oedipus [*] Human vanity is a limitlessly entertaining subject, and if I have chosen to ask myself, “how can one be autochthonous?” it is because the pride of being rooted or of believing oneself to be of cleansed blood is a sickness as laughable as chicken pox. Its consequences, however, can… Read more
4. The King of Sacrifice From its outset, the Iliad connects Agamemnon’s power to sacrifice. Sacrifice serves simultaneously as a display of his status-based hierarchy over the Akhaian army and, contextualized in the Panakhaian society at Troy, as a show of timê ‘honor’ toward the gods. It is this principle of timê that guides the actions of Iliad I: Agamemnon slights Akhilleus’ timê when he publicly asserts… Read more
Bibliography Adkins, A. W. H. 1960. “Honour and Punishment in the Homeric Poems.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 7:23–32. ———. 1969. “EUXOMAI, EUXWLH, and EUXOS in Homer.” Classical Quarterly 19:20–33. ———. 1972. “Homeric Gods and the Values of Homeric Society.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 92:1–19. ———. 1997. “Homeric Ethics.” In Morris and… Read more
Foreword It is difficult to find words to describe the intellectual challenge offered by the invitation from the Classics Department of Harvard University in Fall 2000 to present the four Carl Newell Jackson lectures to an audience which managed to combine critical attention with a welcoming acceptance for the non-traditional positions I have always defended. The suggestions made at these opportunities for learned exchange, punctuated by convivial… Read more
Translator’s Preface This translation, undertaken with the support of the Fondation Chuard Schmid at the Université de Lausanne and the Center for Hellenic Studies, is intended in part to address our ambivalence about translation. Translation nearly always represents compromise in our various fields of study. Academics, especially those specialized in some specific language area, naturally prefer the original of any work, in its original language. Everyone accepts… Read more
I. Spatio-temporal Poetics of the Past in Ancient Greece “Memory is the present of the past.” Saint Augustine, Confessions 11.20,26 The transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century has helped history to experience a real renewal, both as a determining influence on our social life and as an academic discipline. Historians can no longer consider it enough merely to denigrate the… Read more
II. The Succession of Ages and Poetic Pragmatics of Justice: Hesiod’s Narrative of the Five Human Species What has not been said or written about the “myth of the races?” Inserting Hesiod’s didactic Works poem into a specific time and space, this narrative in Homeric diction is the best example of a text which periodically inspires and focuses interpretive controversy among philologists sorely in need of a… Read more
III. Creation of Gender and Heroic Identity between Legend and Cult: The Political Creation Of Theseus By Bacchylides Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes,” or “a primary way of signifying relationships of power.” [1] Quoting definitions taken out of their contexts could hardly be said to show intellectual rigor or academic collegiality. But… Read more
IV. Regimes of Historicity and Oracular Logic: How To Re-Found A Colonial City? 1. Cyclical and philosophical temporalities It is a common opinion that Greek concepts of time are deeply marked by the image of the circle, that they refer to a fundamentally cyclical temporality. Historians of “Greek thought,” while applying this traditional idea for themselves, also introduced a whole series of nuances concerning its development. Read more
V. Ritual and Initiatory Itineraries toward the Afterlife: Time, Space, and Pragmatics in the Gold Lamellae Western postmodernism, moving now toward hyper- or meta-modernism, has been characterized both by the desire for immediate profit and by the development of means of communication and multi-media. These two phenomena are brought together by the omnipresence of advertising in all the new technical means of communication, an advertising designed to… Read more
