Homeric Hero Research Articles

Memnon in the Middle Ages: The Reception of a Homeric Hero

AbstractMemnon, the mythic king of Ethiopia killed by Achilles during the Trojan War, had a double or fused identity in classical antiquity: both Asian and African for Greek and Roman writers because of his parentage and because of the geographical indeterminacy of ‘Aithiopia’ and of ‘India’, but definitely black-skinned for Roman writers. How was this figure received in medieval texts and images? This paper tracks Memnon through three textual genres from the twelfth to the fifteenth century – commentaries on Ovid, catalogues of famous men, histories of the Trojan War – and charts the ways in which his classical identity was overlaid and transformed by pro-Trojan sentiment, chivalric heroization and Christian sacrificial thinking.

Ut pictura poesis: визуальная риторика в гомеровской полемике начала XVIII в.

During 1714–1716, a stormy, if short-lived, polemic broke out in France over Homer and his place in the literary canon. Its participants debated how his works should be assessed and how they should be translated, verbatim or freely. Homer’s opponents, led by Houdar de La Motte, pointed to the immorality of Homeric heroes, their stubbornness and cruelty; they also dwelled on the compositional flaws of his poems, showing their incompatibility with modern aesthetic standards. For their part supporters of the ancient poet, led by Madame Dacier, insisted on the historical and cultural distance which separated the works of Homer from modernity, and argued that they could not be evaluated according to the standards of another era. In this exchange of opinions, both sides used the same topoi and figures of speech because they were engaged in public controversy and therefore competed in rhetoric. The article considers one such topos, which equates Homer with an artist — a sculptor or a painter — and treats his writings as sculptures or paintings. This equation represents an interesting twist on the traditional saying ‘ut pictura poesis’, and is used by both parties, but for different purposes and with varying rhetorical effectiveness.

About the Heroic Image in the Epic «David of Sasun»

The article is devoted to the heroic image in the national epic «David of Sasun», which is an ancient Armenian heroic epic, as well as the pinnacle of Armenian classical folk literature. The subject of the study is the heroic image of four generations of Sasun. The purpose of this study is to study the typological features of the heroes of Sasun, to explain their origin and the transformation of characters due to territorial features. The article shows that to a large extent they are similar to the images of early ancient Homer's heroes with primitive colors, noble origin and mighty power. They are distinguished by amazing strength, great kindness and bravery, an acute sense of justice and compassion, a high degree of patriotism, strong sense of collectivism and valuable civilian consciousness. In general, being a kind of symbol, the image of the Sasun’s heroes reflects the deep desire of the Armenian people, who have suffered from foreign aggression for a long time, for world peace, national independence and a strong national defender. But at the same time, the author identifies those features that distinguish them from the heroes of other epics in the article. The fact is that over time, being passed from mouth to mouth, they "localized" on the territory of the Armenian Highlands and acquired the qualities inherent in this people with fundamentally different thinking, activities and ideas about bravery, about war. The article shows the similarities and differences between the heroes of the Armenian and Greek epics, the distinctive characteristics of the behavior and character of the heroes of the Armenian epic. The major research methods are text analysis and comparative study.

“The Meanings of Journey in Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction”

Abstract Almost unanimously considered nowadays as one of the greatest Latin American writers of the contemporary era, the Chilean Roberto Bolaño put into question, in his well-known novel The Savage Detectives (1998), the structure and meanings of journey. Seen not only as the characters’ capacity to move from one place to another, each journey described within this book acquires symbolic meanings, being in turn an intricate process of initiation or a personal quest of the protagonists. Nevertheless, journey, as seen in Bolaño’s fiction, also implies sometimes the idea of exile, a very specific exile within literature, the Chilean writer’s characters representing contemporary expressions of the great Homeric heroes or absolutely original embodiments of Joyce’s Ulysses himself.

Visualization of Teaching and Upbringing of Achilles in Greece VI-V Centuries B.C.

In addition to information about the glorious exploits of Achilles during the Trojan War, the tradition has preserved numerous sources telling about peculiarities of his growing up. Educational programs, which were developed for the young Achilles by his mentors Chiron and Phoenix, form the basis for the formation of the Homeric hero, not alien to the ancient Greek pedagogy of the VI-V century B.C. Plots about the peculiarities of training and education of Achilles, present on ceramics from the VI-V centuries B.C. are considered to be visual markers of the history of ancient Greek education. Achilles is an idealized image of the hero, which captures the features of the pedagogical tradition of Homeric time. The two mentors of Achilles make it possible to trace the phenomenon of educational continuity in the ancient pedagogical tradition.

Un Agamennone isocrateo nell’Heroikos di Filostrato. Per una proposta interpretativa dei capitoli 29-31

In chapters 29-31 of the Philostratus’s Heroikos Agamemnon assumes a particularly positive characterization, different from the main tradition that refers to the Homeric poems. In the following pages I will propose to identify in the Panathenaicus of Isocrates a parallel motif and a possible source for the particular characterization of the king of the Achaeans. Indeed, Isocrates’ speech can be compared to the Heroikos for three reasons: in addition to the unusual praise of the Homeric hero, both authors refer to the importance of enslaving Troy and defeating the barbarians. These arguments allow us to identify a parallel in a precise point of the Panathenaicus of Isocrates: the excursus on Agamemnon in chapters 72-84.

Journey with nostos or without it. Many faces of the Homeric hero, Odysseus

Odysseus or in Latin, Ulysses, is kind of literary character who, by his special qualities and his adventures, gives writers many possibilities of variation in reworking the myth. The demand of the audience as well as the authors’ desire for originality provide the main motive of the myth to be presented in a new way. Thanks to it, every writer, who undertakes a piece of work, tries to produce a new portrait of the well-known mythical hero. The source of variation in the myth can also be the natural tendency of authors to assimilate the old material to contemporary fashions and customs1. Problems of morality must have also arisen in the development of the myth over the centuries. Another cause of change in the traditional material lies in the writer’s technical inventions. All of these factors are interesting enough to the present author in presenting the many faces of the Homeric hero, Odysseus, which have changed over the course of time.

Limb-Loosening and the Care of History: Tracing a Motif in Vergil

Limb-Loosening and the Care of History: Tracing a Motif in Vergil GEORGE SAAD the counter-voice of eros in epic While the Homeric world clearly underlies Vergil’s Aeneid, this Roman appropriation of Greek epic is not without complications. Vergil, taking the whole of history as his theme, develops a world subject to cosmic forces beyond the might and craft of Homeric heroes. To overcome enemies is no mean feat, but how is the world itself overcome? How does the hero move history? Prior to writing the Aeneid, Vergil had already found this world-conquering power in amor and labor improbus,1 which conquer all things. Love and unrelenting toil always step beyond their limits. Unlike Achilles, they rage on after the bodies are buried. Always unsatisfied, they cut deeper than the superficial, personal manipulations of sword and stratagem. These forces reach beyond the satisfaction of any finite objective, encompassing and reshaping the entire world. As Vergil is more than an epic poet, the Aeneid transcends the presuppositions of Homeric epic. Against the wider horizon of world history, the epic form becomes the contingent expression of an outmoded worldview, one now seen from outside itself and suspended in comparison with other possible alternatives. And so, though Vergil sings of arms and the man, it is not at all clear that he means to exult the armed man. The ambiguity of Vergil’s commitments has been expressed in Adam Parry’s reading of Vergil as counterposing “two voices” in the Aeneid, 2 a main voice of Roman triumph and a counter -voice questioning the Roman imperial project. This counter -voice ties Vergil to genres outside of epic, genres with their arion 28.2 fall 2020 44 limb-loosening and the care of history own often opposing views of the human condition. Sappho offers one such critique of epic from the erotic perspective of lyric when she asks if any military pageantry could really be more beautiful than the object of her desire (Sappho LP 16). Though the sentiment comes from Greek lyric, it perfectly applies to the crisis of value-commitments Aeneas faces across his journey, most obviously (but not exclusively) in abandoning Dido for Roman glory. The conflicting voices Parry found within the Aeneid are thus analogous to the contrast between epic and lyric, between a view of the world as violence redeemed by public renown and a view of the world as love contained within personal intimacy. Even in Vergil’s most quintessentially epic moments, the deaths of great heroes, an echo of the lyrical voice is present. A formula repeated at the beginning and end of the epic—solvuntur frigore membra—describes the introductory surrender of Aeneas during the storm (Aen 1.92) as well as the concluding death of Turnus at Aeneas’ own hands (Aen 12.951). The hero and his rival both fall with their “limbs slack in a chill,”3 one in desperate supplication, the other in death. What exactly does this mean? Do the limbs seize up in a kind of terror, stiffening in rigor mortis as frigore would suggest? Or is the stress on the solvuntur, as the limbs loosen with a free sensuality evocative of lyrical eroticism? On the most basic physical level, solvere describes the body as somehow coming apart and losing its unified form, yet in these uses it also suggests the opposite, a rigid stiffening of the body. There is clearly more than a physical account intended in each of these expressions. Some deeper semantic sense unites the physical descriptions. Vergil is not entirely innovating with this expression, as Homer uses a similar phrase to describe the deaths of Patroclus and Hector (Il. 16.856–57; 22.68). I aim to demonstrate how this epic formula draws upon a literary tradition which supplies the wider semantic sense necessary to contextualize these passages in Vergil. The epic poets are relying upon a George Saad 45 long-standing motif to describe the loosening of boundaries between individual and world in a moment of bittersweet release. While this motif arises throughout Greek literature, it is especially characteristic of lyric. The loosening of the limbs becomes especially conspicuous in Vergil because this...

La quête des κειµήλια dans l’épopée homérique

Abstract The term κειµήλιον is usually translated as treasure or heirloom. It would designate treasured precious objects conveying the memory and history of their past owners. In the Homeric poems, the κειµήλια are signs of the wealth and status of those who own them. They are described as many and beautiful, stored in the treasures of palaces. They are given as valued gifts to new or old friends and as ransoms. Κειµήλια do not, moreover, form a definite category of specific types of objects. Their value becomes clear in the hierarchy of prizes awarded in contests. Heroes look after them and travel to collect them. The uses of the κειµήλια and of the various terms used according to circumstances to connote memory (µνήµατα), gift giving (δῶρα), or possession and profit (κτήµατα/ κτέανα) allow reconsidering the category of the κειµήλια as well as the behaviour of the Homeric heroes.

Troy, Carthage and the Victorians: The Drama of Classical Ruins in the Nineteenth-Century Imagination by Rachel Bryant Davies

Reviewed by: Troy, Carthage and the Victorians: The Drama of Classical Ruins in the Nineteenth-Century Imagination by Rachel Bryant Davies David Mayer TROY, CARTHAGE AND THE VICTORIANS: THE DRAMA OF CLASSICAL RUINS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY IMAGINATION. By Rachel Bryant Davies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; pp. 402. Rachel Bryant Davies's Troy, Carthage and the Victorians is best recognized as a significant work of British cultural history. Davies has set herself the task of illuminating how the milieux and characters described in Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid percolated into varying levels of British understandings of the ancient world—both before and after Heinrich Schliemann identified the site of Troy in 1873. Her timeline extends from 1715 to 1912, from Alexander Pope's translation of the first volume of the Iliad to the publication of Mary Macgregor's The Story of Rome for Boys and Girls. Davies accomplishes her mission by concurrently interrogating, first, the debate as to whether historic Troy ever existed or whether it was the stuff of myth and poetic imagination; and, second, given this uncertainty, whether public money should be spent funding excavations. In pursuit of these concerns, she cites early maps which explicitly follow Homer's topography and discusses how these first attempts to locate Troy fed into scientific speculations about the new protocols of archaeology. She also explores how these concerns manifested in journalism and a range of publications—some reaching highbrow, formally educated readers, some leveled at middle-class and working-class readers—and in later chapters considers how painters and sculptors incorporated Troy and Carthage in their works. At the base of her cultural model is the British popular theatre. Here, she chronicles the diffusion and awareness of Troy and Carthage as they were depicted in numerous burlesque dramas. These stage pieces, set in the ancient classical world, were performed at venues ranging from the Surrey Theatre and Astley's Amphitheatre on the Thames' Southbank to the Olympic, Lyceum, Adelphi, and Strand theatres. These burlesques, intended to mock and parody dramas at the West End's "legitimate" playhouses, often travestied the behaviour and genders of Homeric heroes and deities, and often set transgressive lyrics to well-known airs and melodies from recent operas. An inevitable response to these parodies came from irate critics who questioned the education and class of the dramatic authors whom they repeatedly found grossly deficient in knowledge of Homer and Virgil. Indignant journalist-critics then went on to question the social classes of the audiences these dramas attracted. While some more understanding critics applauded the burlesques, other critics were overtly snobbish in their attacks upon dramatists and audiences. In response to the more hostile of these journalists, Davies is able to note the increase in educated or partly educated middle classes in the theatres—spectators who to some extent knew of the Iliad and for whom knowledge of the ancient world was too serious to ridicule. Yet to view onstage what was ordinarily revered suddenly turned into a matter of fun and mockery briefly condoned shocked relief and laughter. Davies understands that although these parodies mocked and to some degree temporarily diminished the original works, parodies also recovered and preserved and updated their subjects. This is a path marked by classicists Maria Wyke and Fiona Macintosh, by British historian Jeffrey Richards and, dare I say it, myself. All have found the British stage a means of integrating the ancient classical world within the Victorian topocosm. However, much of this earlier work focuses on the biblical world and on the Roman Empire. Davies is unique in concentrating on Troy and Carthage and, [End Page 400] although these cities had already been referenced in tragedy, such as Ambrose Philips's The Distress'd Mother, and opera in Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate's Dido and Aeneas, she is also unique in choosing burlesque dramas as the lens through which to view the diffusion of Homeric and Virgilian narratives. The material available for such a study is not uniformly available or necessarily reliable as evidence of how productions were staged. Burlesques written before the Theatres Act of 1843 were licensed by local magistrates rather than the Lord Chamberlain...

Homer, the Teacher

From earliest times, Homer was regarded as an authority in education, and in shaping social and political life. For Homer in Iliad and Odyssey describes the dominant values, moral virtues of the Greek culture via its heroes. In fact, this narration has opened the way for him to be regarded as the first teacher of the Greeks. His most famous students are Achilles and Telemachus. He talks about Achilles’ education in Iliad, Telemachus’ in Odyssey through his teachers. But the education of these two heroes is both similar and different in some ways. From the moment Achilles was born, he knows the values of the class he belongs to, who he is. On the contrary, Telemachus as a child without a father does not know who he is. Yet, their education which is centered around not only words but also deeds, makes these two heroes know what to say and what to do. In the end, they gain the honor of becoming a Homeric hero. So the aim of this paper is to elaborate both different and similar educations of these heroes.

Presenze omeriche e oraziane negli Elegiarum libri quattuor di Jan Kochanowski. L’Iliade e i Carmina oraziani nell’elegia 3.7

Contrary to what critics have stated, the Polish poet Jan Kochanowski appears to be more interested in a direct imitation of the Homeric poems than an imitation of Latin poets such as Propertius or Ovid, who tried to “re‑write” Homer in their poems. This article discusses the connection between Kochanowski’s elegy 3.7 and Homer’s Iliad. It also shows how the imitation of Homer serves a specific purpose: by quoting Horace, Kochanowski reflects upon the ability poetry has to eternize its dedicatees. The Homeric heroes are still known thanks to Homer’s poems; Ossolinski, the dedicatee of the elegy, will be known forever thanks to Kochanowski’s verses.

Christian Martyr as Homeric Hero: A Literary Allusion in Perpetua's Passio

This article argues that the scenes in Perpetua's Passio in which her father begs her to recant her Christianity contain allusions to scenes in the Iliad in which Hector's family begs him to preserve his life by fleeing the battlefield. Hector's choice to die gloriously despite the pain that such a death will cause his loved ones serves as an exemplum for Perpetua's prioritization of her calling as a martyr over her duty to her family. The emphasis placed on the emotional cost of Perpetua's choice is unique in early martyr narratives and may reflect Perpetua's singular status as a Roman matrona who narrates her own martyrdom.

The Clinical Odyssey: Odysseus's Apologoi and Narrative Therapy

The Clinical Odyssey:Odysseus's Apologoi and Narrative Therapy Joel P. Christensen When Alkinoos elicits Odysseus's narrative of his trials at the end of Odyssey 8, he asks for a tale of the Trojan War, a fate "the gods fashioned, a ruin they allotted to men to become a song for us and later generations" (8.577–80).1 The attitude implicit in the tale he requests countermands Zeus's opening lament in the epic that men blame the gods for their fate but are themselves responsible for suffering worse than they deserve thanks to their own recklessness (atasthalia).2 Odysseus echoes Alkinoos in promising to tell "the many pains which the Ouranian gods have given me" (κήδε᾿ ἐπεί μοι πολλὰ δόσαν θεοὶ Οὐρανίωνες, 9.15). But the story he tells navigates in surprising ways between the sentiments [End Page 1] of his host and Zeus, developing a complicated picture of his own agency and responsibility. In a recent publication (2014), William H. Race compares Odysseus's period on Skheria to a therapeutic rehabilitation.3 From a modern therapeutic perspective, this illuminates both the type of therapy Odysseus undergoes and the therapeutic power of the Odyssey for its audiences. In this paper, I expand upon Race's suggestion to show that Odysseus's narrative shares many features with the modern counseling approach called Narrative Therapy. The lessons and frameworks of Narrative Therapy help us to appreciate the therapeutic function of the Apologoi—Odysseus's stories of his journey in Books 9–11—and to understand the emphasis on agency and responsibility they share with the epic as a whole. After briefly surveying how this interpretation relates to scholarship on Homeric psychology, I will explain how some basic features of Narrative Therapy apply to the Odyssey and then analyze articulations of agency in Odysseus's tale in Book 9. HOMERIC PSYCHOLOGY, COGNITIVE SCIENCE, AND STORYTELLING My overall argument is that the psychological function of Odysseus's own narrative may be conceptualized usefully from the perspective of the practice of Narrative Therapy as articulated by David Epston and Michael White. This therapeutic exercise conceives of individual human identities as produced through and among different types of personal and cultural narratives; the stories that people tell about themselves constrain their ability to act. As such, the therapeutic intervention this approach offers involves and requires the retelling of tales. In short, I suggest that Odysseus's retelling of his own tales in Books 9–12 reflects an understanding of the cognitive function of narrative and of the impetus for Odysseus to tell a particular type of story before he can complete his journey home. In order to make this argument, I would first like to comment briefly on what it means to talk about psychology in Homer and the cognitive status of narrative, before laying out some key features of Narrative Therapy. [End Page 2] Considerations of Homeric psychology have traditionally emphasized theoretical questions, such as whether or not Homeric heroes make real decisions, the lexical range of expressions of emotions and thought, and the cultural implications of these kinds of studies.4 We often assume implicitly that there is a correlation between the worldviews expressed in the poems and those of their (putative) audiences (see Russo and Simon 1968 and Russo 2012). As early as Freud and Jung, psychoanalysts noted the paradigmatic nature of cultural narratives as extensions and expressions of human psychology.5 Recent studies in brain science, moreover, show not only that our brains are wired to empathize with fictional characters, but also that the experience of narrative can "re-wire" our brains to inform the way we respond to future experiences.6 Mark Turner writes persuasively on how narrative sequencing is fundamental to human thought (e.g., 1996.4–6), and Andy Clark demonstrates how narrative patterns aid in the "predictive processing" that is characteristic of human intelligence and planning for the future (2015.14–16).7 In addition to the communal aspect of language—with which narrative is inextricably linked—the power of narrative is also social: narrative depends on and is activated by engagement with other people.8 Such engagement influences and directs the shapes [End Page 3] and functions of human brains.9...

Public Eye and Private Place: Intimacy and Metatheatre in Pericles and The Tempest

Public Eye and Private Place:Intimacy and Metatheatre in Pericles and The Tempest Bridget Escolme Lysimachus: … O, you have heard something of my power and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. But I protest to thee, pretty one, my authority shall not see thee, or else look friendly upon thee. Come, bring me to some private place: come, come. Pericles 4.5.93–97 In this speech from Pericles, Lysimachus demands that Marina stops what he is determined to read as playing hard to get, and submit to his sexual desire for her. The line "my authority shall not see thee, or else look friendly on thee" has been glossed by editors as either an implicit or an overt threat.1 But his "authority" here is given an odd intentionality, suggesting that Lysimachus is already distancing himself from the acts he will soon be made ashamed to have thought of performing. This reading holds Lysimachus's public authority in tension with the private place to which he demands Marina take him: he requires that Marina submit not to his authority as a public figure but to his demands as a private customer of the brothel where she is being held captive. Marina next reminds him that his identity cannot be divided between public and private in this way, by recalling the quality intrinsic both to the successful performance of his public persona and to his self-respect: his honor. She thus persuades him to honor her speech with gold instead of buying her body with it. In this moment, Pericles's audience is asked to imagine a "private place" in which sexual acts will be performed, and conceptualize a private persona that can hide away from public exposure. In turning Lysimachus from considering his "authority" to what should be inherent in that authority, [End Page 111] his honor, Marina fascinatingly foregrounds the construction of his elite male subjectivity—Lysimachus's "honour" is either born or self-made: Marina: If you were born to honour, show it now; If put upon you, make the judgement good That thought you worthy of it. (4.5.99–101) In effect, she exposes him both to self-examination and to the audience's critique, where before she has been the object of his gaze, and there follows a potentially comical exchange in which he seems to want both to stay with Marina and to leave the stage, the site of his exposure: he twice gives Marina gold for her virtue rather than for sex, then hurriedly tries to exit but is headed off by the "damned doorkeeper" (128), the brothel worker Bolt. My reading here is close to Julia Reinhard Lupton's, who glosses Lysimachus's insistence that Marina "bring me to some private place" thus: "lead me away from the terrible visibility opened up by your speech; grant me refuge from the self you have led me to publish". Later, argues Lupton, Lysimachus "actively courts [Marina,] the very woman who has made him reveal the horror of his own frailty" (77); in this context, Lupton cites Hannah Arendt, who writes that courage begins with "leaving one's private place and showing who one is, disclosing and exposing one's self" (Arendt 186, Lupton 77). I want to quote at further length from this passage in Arendt's The Human Condition, as it speaks to this article's concern with gender, power and metatheatre. Arendt is discussing the Homeric hero when she writes the following, but her words can be productively applied not only to Lysimachus's sense of exposure but to the female figures in Shakespeare's "Late Plays" that I discuss here: The connotation of courage, which we now feel to be an indispensable quality of the hero, is in fact already present in a willingness to act and speak at all, to insert one's self into the world and begin a story of one's own. And this courage is not necessarily or even primarily related to a willingness to suffer the consequences; courage and even boldness are already present in leaving one's private hiding place and showing who one is, in disclosing and exposing one's self...

Mourning is eternal—and proceeds from Iron age: Homer’s pathos of Achilles and Hector

Homeric heroes know the consequences of combat, of their own possible death and an enemy’s, with the impact of either upon persons nearest and dearest. A malicious taunt reminds a foeman of what his death will mean to old parents, to young wife, and to other relatives. A warrior’s own premonition of falling in battle before a superior fighter and/or by Fate or deadly intervention of a hostile god may add his child or children to those who will miss and mourn him. The Iliad-poet anticipates the painful aftermath of demigod Achilles’ coming death for his irregular family, which includes a divine mother who will mourn him forever. “Homer” dramatizes the pain of mortal Hector’s death, first expected then effected, for a family many of whom we have met, from aged parents to infant son. Hector’s slaying, linked by Fate to that of Achilles, is the key event. It leads to a sublime reconciliation between Achilles, his killer, and Priam, his devastated father. Hector’s mother, however, and his loving wife—mother of his defenseless son—cannot be reconciled with his loss and with their dreaded and certain harsh future.

Achilles: A Homeric hero enamoured with the absolute.

This article explores through a psychoanalytical lens the character of Achilles in Homer's Iliad, the matrix behind the Western conception of heroism. The contribution reveals the psychological link binding the words and acts of the most valiant of warriors in Antiquity, which is situated in myth and termed "the Eros of the absolute." The paroxystic ideality underlying the aforementioned myth, which is rooted in the anthropological need to believe, is at the origin of Achilles' legendary μῆνις, that is, the flood of rage triggered by contests for supremacy, aggravated by the loss of his war comrade, aroused by the drama of aging and death, and then transfigured through song and memory. The main claim of the author is that Iliad, despite its seeming lack of attention to interiority, is launched by the archetypal emotion of wrath and owes its appeal to its hero's embrace of heroic idealism in an excessive, radical and absolute way that results in a captivating narcissism and sadomasochistic antithesis of ideality. This argument leads to the conclusion that Homer is the Father of the "primitive horde" of affects.

Exile in the Flow of Time

In its contents as well as discursive strategy, Plato’s Republic occasions a few reflections on the phenomenon of memory. The essay situates the philosophical discourse, along with that of divination and poetry, in the context of the practices of memory and, more broadly, within the sphere of Mnemosune. The figure of the philosopher retains traces of archaic humanity, most notably of the Homeric hero. At the same time, in the Platonic Socrates we discern a transfiguration of heroic heritage, in the direction of a thorough ethical recalibration emphasizing the awareness of mortality, the art of finite life (βίος), and the visionary celebration of life (ζωή) in its excessive and indestructible movement. In this way, at the very heart of the Republic we may heed the cipher and resonance of Dionysus.

Presencia del héroe homérico en el Vaso François

Con base en la teoría de la identidad cultural en el arte o teoría del arte como sistema cultural presento un análisis mítico-literario de las múltiples escenas pictóricas plasmadas en el complejo y controvertido Vaso François, las cuales relaciono temáticamente entre sí. A partir de allí, sugiero que deben estudiarse como un “todo” y en relación con la forma de la pieza en que se plasmaron y no como mitos aislados, postura encaminada a argumentar que el vaso en cuestión tiene una unidad iconográfica y formal, pensada de antemano, cuyo paradigma o hilo conductor es el héroe homérico y sus tópicos más significativos.

Genealogies and Politics: Phocus on the Road

Summary:On usually refers to all the figures named „Phocus“ as one and the same Phocus, the alleged eponymous hero of the Phocians, and wonder why he has so many „Doppelgänger“: one or more Homeric heroes, a son of Aecus, a son of Ornytion, and so on. This paper assumes instead that there are many different heroes whose names are Phocus, and wonders to what extent and why were they linked. Indeed the contradictory stories about Phocus represent an interesting case of the permeability of the heroes' genealogies and of the traditional narratives about them in archaic and classical Greece. A survey of the sources shows that all the figures named „Phocus“ were more than once linked together to express specific needs. These needs reflect different aims and historical events which are ascribable mainly to the archaic and classical periods. Moreover, they are concerned with Phocis as well as with Corinth, Aegina, Locris, Thebes and Thessaly. By reconstructing wherever possible the chronological context of the different layers and overlaps and by linking them to the several traditions concerning heroes named Phocus, it is possible to construct a map which describes some of the relationships, some geopolitical landscapes and, to a certain extent, even some geopolitical lines working in Central Greece and beyond from the archaic to the Roman period.