Abstract
Classical Greek literature presents a variety of speaking animals. These are not, of course, the actual voices of animals but human projections. In a culture that aligns verbal mastery with social standing, verbal animals present a conundrum that speaks to an anxiety about human communication. I argue that the earliest examples of speaking animals, in Homer, Hesiod and Archilochus, show a fundamental connection with Golden Age tales. Later authors, such as Plutarch and Lucian, look back on such cases from a perspective that does not easily accept notions of divine causation that would permit such fanciful modes of communication. I argue that Plutarch uses a talking pig to challenge philosophical categories, and that Lucian transforms a sham-philosopher of a talking-cock to undermine the very pretense of philosophical virtue.
Highlights
Aristotle (Politics, 1.2) and Cicero (De inventione, 1.4) both maintained that language forms one of the critical distinctions between humans and beasts (Fögen 2003, 2007)
The heroes who account of the five ages, in which the Golden Age fades to Silver, Bronze before an age of heroes became the subject of Homeric poetry inhabit a story world that precedes our current degraded intervenes, and we find ourselves in the sad age of Iron (Works and Days, 109–201)
I have argued that many speaking animals in Greek literature emerge from a utopian system of thinking that idealizes a pristine Golden Age past in contrast to a degraded present, and I conclude by pushing this idea in three ways
Summary
Aristotle (Politics, 1.2) and Cicero (De inventione, 1.4) both maintained that language forms one of the critical distinctions between humans and beasts (Fögen 2003, 2007). Begin that speaking animals from ancient begin with two archaic case-studies: a horse, wh fabular fox, whose voice provides an ethical example for human conflict. A horse, who speaks prophetic hexameters, and a fabular fox, whose voice provides animals are fully animal and their voices derive from an earlier world order that is no longeran ethical example f vides an ethical example for human. Animal their voices anno earlier world order that is no longer directly accessible These animal voices have another-w differently from the limited and fallible language of humans, thereby setting up a contrast between oices have another-worldly authority, and their speech works differently from. The gimmick of a talking animal may have lost its attractions era, since these animals speak not from an animals speak from another but not as overtly humanized provide era,not since these animals speak from another worldvoices but satirical asthat overtly humanized voices that provide voices thatworld provide philosophical (pig) and (rooster) commentary on philosophical their contemporary (pig) and satirical (rooster) c ig) and satirical commentary on their contemporary world and earlier
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