This is a major study of conceptions of selfhood and personality in Homer and Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. The focus is on the norms of personality in Greek psychology and ethics. Gill argues that the key to understanding Greek thought of this type is to counteract the subjective and individualistic aspects of our own thinking about the person. He defines an "objective-participant" conception of personality, symbolized by the idea of the person as an interlocutor in a series (...) of psychological and ethical dialogues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in DialogueDavid M. JohnsonChristopher Gill. Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. vii 1 510 pp. Cloth, $85.Gill’s book is a wide-ranging attempt to improve our understanding of Greek poetic and philosophical thinking about the self and its role in ethics. His thesis is that the (...) Greeks had an “objective-participant” model of personality which is different in important ways from the various “subjective” and/or “individualist” models which have often formed the basis of modern interpretations. While the subjective understanding of the person privileges a unitary first-person perspective in a Cartesian way, Gill argues that the Greeks—as do some modern thinkers—speak of an interplay between parts that is best studied from the outside. The individualist strand of thought makes individual autonomy a keystone of morality in a way indebted to Kant; Gill argues that the more communal mode of ethics advocated recently by Williams and MacIntyre is closer to the Greek ideal. Gill is surely right that Cartesian and Kantian assumptions have had a distorting effect on some readings of Greek texts, and he has made important progress by presenting a different framework based on modern work touching on Greek thought about ethics and the self.After an introduction spelling out his objective-participant framework Gill devotes his first chapter to Homeric decision-making and a critique of the interpretations of Snell and Adkins. It is a mistake, he argues, to make self-consciousness the criterion for a full-blown concept of the self or for what counts as moral decision making. Homeric deliberations are closer in form to Aristotle’s thinking about decision making and the modern action theory which has reasons (whether conscious or not) replace the will as the basis for action. Nor are the Homeric heroes rightly criticized for allowing shame and their status to be considerations in their decision making; as Williams has argued, internalized shame can be a rather effective ethical motivator, and as both he and MacIntyre have argued, there is much to be said for allowing one’s place in society to inform one’s decision making. Gill’s argument here does not seem particularly novel, as his frequent citation of Williams and MacIntyre makes clear, but he does apply it thoroughly to four important Iliadic monologues in a way which clarifies these ideas and confirms their relevance for Homer.The second chapter provides an analysis of why we feel sympathy for the problematic heroes of Greek epic and tragedy, particularly Achilles and Medea, despite their controversial deeds. Here Gill rejects the views of Bradley and Butcher, who argued that it was the power of the character’s self-conscious personality that won us over, and the structuralist view of Redfield, who made [End Page 119] Achilles a mediator between the need to protect society and the desire for personal glory. Gill interestingly—and originally, as far as I know—argues that it is rather the hero’s acting out of an ethically exemplary gesture, based on implied or explicit second-order reasoning about the best sort of human life, that gains our interest and sympathy. For Gill it is important that the hero’s ethical position fall within the communal framework of his or her society: Achilles’ refusal to return to the fight is his way of showing how Agamemnon has undermined the code of heroic reciprocity; Medea’s murder of her children is, even more paradoxically, her means of showing Jason the importance of the bonds of philia.Taking Achilles as our example, Gill rejects the view of Parry and Whitman that Achilles’ heroism is deeply subjective. Gill argues that Achilles, in his great speech of book 9, is not rejecting the heroic code itself but only Agamemnon’s perversion of it. While this reading makes good sense of much of Achilles’ speech in Iliad 9, it is difficult to square with the end of the speech, in which Agamemnon seems to have faded from view, leaving Achilles to question the heroic code itself. This is not to say that Achilles puts... (shrink)

It is well known that in early Greek epic old age was something that could be scraped off a man, and it is the purpose of this note to explore the image and to suggest a possible origin. The idea is first attested in a counterfactual conditional sentence in Phoenix's speech atIl.9.445–6: ‘nor even if [a god] himself were to undertake to render me young and flourishing after scraping off old age …’ (οὐδ' εἴ κέν μοι ὑποσταίη αὐτός (...) | γῆρας ἀποξύσας θήσειν νέον ἡβώοντα …); in a description of Medea's magical rejuvenation of Aeson in theNostoi(fr. 7.2 Bernabé = 6.2 Davies, γῆρας ἀποξύσας); and in the account of Eos' botched attempt to make Tithonus immortal in theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite(223–4):οὐδ' ἐνόησε μετὰ ϕρεσὶ πότνια Ἠώςἥβην αἰτῆσαι, ξῦσαί τ' ἄπο γῆρας ὀλοιόν.Nor did lady Dawn think in her mind to ask for youth and to scrape off ruinous old age.This language also occurs in Late Antiquity, and Andrew Faulkner in his commentary on theHymn(ad loc.) cites Greg. Nanz.Carm.1.2.2.483 (PG37.616) in the fourth centurya.d.and the much later Cometas,Anth. Pal.15.37.2. So far as the imagery implicit in these passages is concerned, S. D. Olson writes, ‘old age is imagined as a scurf or patina that can be scoured off a person’. Faulkner, however, prefers a more precise reference: ‘Griffin … relates it to the idea of old age as a skin that can be shed, as that of a snake’, and he helpfully cites Theodoros Prodromos,Carmina historica24.18, ἀπόξυσαι τὸ γῆρας ὥσπερ ὄϕις (‘to scrape off old age like a snake’). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Anger of Achilles: Mēnis in Greek EpicJenny Strauss ClayLeonard Muellner. The Anger of Achilles: Mēnis in Greek Epic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. ix + 219 pp. Cloth, $39.95.At the beginning of Greek literature, and hence the whole classical tradition, stands an enigmatic word: mēnis. Usually translated as "wrath" or "anger," mēnis constitutes the subject of the Iliad, but its precise meaning and (...) implications remain elusive. Muellner's long–awaited study offers a wide–ranging and provocative examination not only of the word itself but of its context and the underlying conceptual universe it presupposes. Observing that words for emotions are not universal and hence must be examined from within a specific cultural milieu, Muellner acknowledges the impasse to which previous semantic and lexicographical studies have led, and he proposes a fresh approach to the study of mēnis within the context of Lord's notions of epic composition by theme. The meaning of mēnis cannot be grasped by focusing narrowly on the individual word, but can only be discovered by examining the thematic complex in which it appears—and even sometimes where it does not appear. Like Nagy and some other scholars, Muellner substantially extends the notion of theme from Lord's "repeated passage with a fair amount of verbal repetition" to a cluster of motifs. (The extension of the "strict" Parryist definition of the formula to the so–called structural formula offers a parallel; at one point Muellner even speaks of "deep structure.") But the thematic complex, whose components may never be exactly the same in its multiple appearances, implies the presence of a unified underlying concept. Muellner's goal is to go "beyond a desire to 'redefine' mēnis" and instead to rebuild "the poetic function of the mēnis theme in the epic tradition" (133).In the first two chapters he examines the instances of mēnis in Homer, including the Homeric Hymns, but excluding occurrences in the first book of the Iliad and references to the mēnis of Achilles.Mēnis scenes do not contain easily recognizable formulas or formulaic sequences, as for instance in arming scenes or even in larger thematic patterns like "the hero returns." The remarkable variety of contexts in which mēnis appears renders the attempt to discover a common denominator elusive, especially since Muellner begins his investigation obliquely, with a scene in which the word mēnis does not even occur. In the course of his investigation, he offers a series of definitions of the compositional theme of mēnis: it involves "a cosmic sanction... a social force whose activation brings drastic consequences on the whole community," and it "is incurred by the breaking of basic religious or social tabus" that lead to the indiscriminate punishment of the whole community or social group (8). Even more abstract is his [End Page 631] statement that mēnis is "the irrevocable cosmic sanction that prohibits some characters from taking their superiors for equals and others for taking their equals for inferiors" (31).The fundamental rules which govern behavior and whose violation provokes mēnis are the themistes that regulate interaction vertically between hierarchical groups (gods and men) and horizontally between, say, members of the same social group. An easily recognizable category of actions that unleash mēnis occurs when human beings try to act like gods either on the battlefield or by sleeping with goddesses. Likewise the themistes involving hospitality, ransom, supplication, or the treatment of beggars are founded on fundamental notions of status, exchange, and reciprocity, all sanctioned by Zeus. As Muellner summarizes: "when a person dies, or a hero surpasses himself, or a god ignores the rank of another god, or a goddess sleeps with a mortal, or a king rejects an offer of exchange, the value of a person and the continuity of the world is at stake because the hierarchy of persons based on the themistes of exchange is being breached" (51). Yet not all such violations elicit mēnis or indiscriminate punishment. Sometimes nothing happens: for instance, not all rejected supplications provoke mēnis. Leaving the dead unburied is clearly tabu, but Muellner's attempt... (shrink)

Although the influence of Homer on Western literature has long commanded critical attention, little has been written on how various generations of readers have found menaing in his texts. These seven essays explore the ways in which the Illiad and the Odyssey have been read from the time of Homer through the Renaissance. By asking what questions early readers expected the texts to answer and looking at how these expectations changed over time, the authors clarify the position of the Illiad (...) and the Odyssey in the intellectual world of antiqueity while offering historical insight into the nature of reading. The collection surveys the entire field of preserved ancient interpretations of Homer, beginning with the fictional audiences portrayed within the poems themselves, proceedings to readings by Aristotle, the Stoics, and Aristarchus and Crates, and culminating in the spritiualized allegorical reading current among Platonists of the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. The influence of these ancient interpretations is then examined in Byzantium and in the Latin West during the Renaissance. Contributors to this volume are Robert Browning, Anthony Grafton, Robert Lamberton, A.A. Long, James Porter, Nicholas Richardson, and Charles Segal. Robert Lamberton is Assistant Professor of Classics and John J. Keaney is Professor of Classics, both at Princeton University. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Abstract:This article examines the citation context of fragments from the Epic Cycle in scholia in order to re-assess its ancient reception. In contrast to negative comments like Callimachus', literary criticism in practice demonstrates that the Cycle held great authority among readers and critics. In the Homeric scholia, commentators vigorously debated whether Cyclical epics should aid in the interpretation of Homer. In the scholia to Pindar and Euripides, the Cycle was used to explicate and even to emend the text. For (...) Hellenistic poets like Lycophron, critics' presentation of the Cycle in scholia offered a generative model for continuing the Trojan War myth in dialogue with Homer. (shrink)

The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 20, Issue 3, Page 411-416, SEPTEMBER 2014.

The last chapter of Politian's first Miscellanea dealt with the amica silentia lunae through which the Greeks sailed back to Troy . He argued that the phrase should not be taken literally, as a statement that Troy fell at the new moon, but in an extended sense, as a poetic indication that the moon had not yet risen when the Greeks set sail. This reading had one merit: it explained how Virgil's moon could be silent while the Greeks were en (...) route but shine during the battle for the city . Yet Politian's effort to identify the phase of the moon described by Virgil was anything but clear: Non igitur aut sera fuerit aut pernox luna, tum nec lunae quidem omnino coitus, sed tempus arbitror potius quamdiu illa non luceret. Accordingly, though his arguments were sometimes repeated by commentators and teachers, they won little assent from scholars who occupied themselves seriously with the passage. In his Adversaria Turnebus took silentia lunae as referring ‘ad noctis taciturnitatem…non ad interlunium’. In the first chapter of his De rebus per epistolam quaesitis Giano Parrasio sharply criticised the fuzziness of Politian's explanation: ‘Ambages istae sunt, ambages’. More important, he quoted a line from the Little Iliad: νξ μν ην μέσση, λαμπρ δ' πέτελλε σελήνη. This he rendered ‘Nox erat intempesta, nitebat et aurea coelo Luna’, and inferred from it that the moon had been up when Troy fell. In his Virgilius collation scriptorum Graecorum illustratus, finally, Fulvio Orsini published a scholium on Euripides' Hecuba, one which quoted both the line from the Little Iliad and an analysis of it by the Peripatetic Callisthenes. He too took the line as refuting Politian. (shrink)

Studies of early mythography have stressed the dependent relationship between the so-called logographers and epic archaic poetry. Better knowledge of archaic and classical mythography in recent years has provided more accurate details of the context of the production and purposes of the fragmentary works by Hecataeus, Acusilaus, Pherecydes and Hellanicus. Each of them has his own agenda and programme, which have to be explained within their context and not, from a purely historic-literary perspective, as an appendix, a continuation or (...) an exegesis of the epic tradition. This article argues that conditions of preservation, and means of transmission, of fragmentary mythographers have shaped the way we approach them. In other words, the process of reception of epic poetry through the exegetic and grammarian tradition distorts our view and leads the modern reader to see mythography as being dependent on Homer or Hesiod. (shrink)