This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag ordnet Herodots Erzählung von der fürstlichen Belohnung des Atheners Alkmeon durch den Lyderkönig Kroisos in die allgemeine Debatte über die Konstitution der griechischen Eliten in archaischer Zeit ein. Dabei steht die Frage nach den materiellen Ressourcen im Vordergrund, die als Basis des distinktiven exklusiven Lebensstils Gegenstand einer intensiven Konkurrenz zwischen den Aristokraten waren. Dieser Wettbewerb produzierte notwendig Gewinner und Verlierer. Sozialer Aufstieg bzw. Abstieg führten zu einer erheblichen Instabilität der Zusammensetzung der Gruppe an der Spitze der gesellschaftlichen (...) Pyramide. (shrink)

This is the text of II. 18.603–6, the final scene on the Shield of Achilles, as presented unanimously by our manuscript tradition, five Vulgate papyri from the first to the sixth century A.D., our scholia, and in a quotation in Dionysius of Halicarnassus.1 As is well-known, a much discussed and contentious textual problem raised by Wolf2 is lurking behind it. It is prompted by a passage in Athenaeus providing an additional line after which mentions an and his Discussions of the (...) controversial Iliad passage have concentrated on the authenticity of the information given by Athenaeus.3 This focus, I suggest, has been unduly narrow, and has led either to a neglect of other pieces of evidence or to a wrong assessment of their importance. I therefore propose to tackle the problem with a different strategy. Let us erase from our memories the very existence of Athenaeus' information for a while, and reconsider the passage in question accordingly. (shrink)

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)

This article presents a detailed study of an early section of the actual works and days of Hesiod's Works and Days. The treatment consistently eschews obsolete assumptions about this poem, in particular that it reduces to a didactic presentation to the early Greek farmer. A key principle of the method followed is to pay closer attention to the text's relation to epic forms than has been typical among the poem's commentators. The result is to find that a certain literary figure (...) gradually develops in the section discussed. Namely, the plowing nominally covered there stands for the section's portion on the human condition, a condition implicitly compared with that associated with traditional epic. The figure evokes a well-rounded person, aware of the divine and of the world's uncertainties, with a long-term sense of purpose involving good organization of one's life, as opposed to someone engaged in helter-skelter pursuit of transitory activities, perhaps war specifically. With this identification of virtual protagonist established by the end of the section, the ground is prepared for any further development of the figure as that entity's undertakings or adventures in the remainder of the poem. (shrink)

Plato’s theory of virtue in the Laws could be striking for someone who is more familiar with Aristotle’s ethics for conceptual complementarity between the two positions (contrary emotions, the ordering element of reason, virtue as a mean which lies between two forms of vice, typically linked to excessive actions, etc.). Plato’s theory, however, still differs from that of Aristotle in two crutial points. First, the source of emotional dynamism is, according to Plato, supraindividual as far as the psyche is a (...) cosmological principle. Only if it comes to be formed and ordered, it separates from the universal cosmic context and make up the emotional nature of an individual soul. But the soul is not, and this is the second point of difference, ordered by some external element (training or education, organized by a rational agent). Plato counts on a pre-arranged order of emotions at a particular ontological topos of the individual soul into which reason eventually descends. Emotions, on their part, seem to include a nexus between formable and forming that is chronologically and methodocally prior to that between the biological substratum and its rational organization, as assumed by Aristotle. (shrink)