Neste artigo, investigo o significado do ato de suplicação – uma importante instituição social e religiosa na civilização grega – e busco identificar o momento preciso em que, no vocabulário homérico, o verbo gounoûmai (literalmente: “tocar os joelhos de alguém”) adquire um valor abstrato (“suplicar, rogar”, sem idéia de contato físico com os joelhos).

At Sophist 253d-e the Eleatic Visitor offers a notoriously obscure description of the fields of one-and-many that the dialectician “adequately discerns.” Against the readings of Stenzel, Cornford, Sayre, and Gomez-Lobo, I propose an interpretation of that passage that takes into account the trilogy of Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman as its context. The key steps are to respond to the irony of Socrates’ refutations at the end of the Theaetetus by reinterpreting the last two senses of logos as directed to forms and to recognize (...) their correlation with the two different modes of diairesis practiced by the Eleatic Visitor. These steps position us to recognize in the Visitor’s remarks at Sophist 253d-e a schematic description of the two kinds of eidetic field that the two modes of diairesis trace. (shrink)

Much has been written on the genesis of the pseudo-hesiodic Shield of Heracles — so much, that true progress is difficult to discern among the welter of theories. But some has been made, although the conclusions that have been reached must be regarded as likely hypotheses rather than proven facts. In this article I propose to proceed from some of these conclusions, ensuring that they are as firmly grounded as possible, to an assessment of how this poem's version of the (...) combat of Heracles and Cycnus relates to the likely circumstances and occasion of its original performance. This will involve considering the legend's variants , and a new look at the first half of the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo. (shrink)

To Professor E. R. Dodds, through his edition of Euripides'Bacchaeand again inThe Greeks and the Irrational, we owe an awareness of new possibilities in our understanding of Greek literature and of the world that produced it. No small part of that awareness was due to Professor Dodds' masterly and tactful use of comparative ethnographic material to throw light on the relation between literature and social institutions in ancient Greece. It is in the hope that something of my own debt to (...) him may be conveyed that this paper is offered here, equally in gratitude, admiration and affection.The working out of the anger of Achilles in theIliadbegins with a great scene of divine supplication in which Thetis prevails upon Zeus to change the course of things before Troy in order to restore honour to Achilles; it ends with another, human act in which Priam supplicates Achilles to abandon his vengeful treatment of the dead body of Hector and restore it for a ransom. The first half of theOdysseyhinges about another supplication scene of crucial significance, Odysseus' supplication of Arete and Alkinoos on Scherie. Aeschylus and Euripides both wrote plays called simplySuppliants, and two cases of a breach of the rights of suppliants, the cases of the coup of Kylon and that of Pausanias, the one dating from the mid-sixth century, the other from around 470 B.C. or soon after, played a dominant role in the diplomatic propaganda of the Spartans and Athenians on the eve of the Peloponnesian War. (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 …’ ; in a description of Medea's magical rejuvenation (...) of Aeson in theNostoi; and in the account of Eos' botched attempt to make Tithonus immortal in theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite: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 cites Greg. Nanz.Carm.1.2.2.483 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. (shrink)

This article undertakes a dual task. The first is to argue that the various positions of major Marxist thinkers on revolution may be gathered under the common framework of kairós, understood as a resolutely temporal term relating to the critical time, the opportune moment that appears unexpectedly and must be seized. The second task is to question the nature of kairós in terms of its biblical, class and economic residues. An investigation of the use of the term in classical Greece (...) reveals that it refers to both time and place, designating primarily what is in the right time and correct place. Given the class identifications of the Greek writers who deal with kairós and their subtle defences of their propertied, ruling class status, the term becomes problematic in light of these associations that trail behind it. In response, I seek to develop the political implications of the true opposite of kairós, namely ákairos, what is ill-timed and in the wrong place. (shrink)

This study provides an integrated analysis of ϑυμός. A psychosomatic concept, found in Greek epics and medicine, θυμός designates courage as a “vital force around the chest”. Later, its meaning has been specified in two fields: 1) ϑυμός, thymós, the irascible soul, parallel to the concupiscible soul and opposite to the rational one, according to Plato’s tripartition; 2) ϑύμος, thymus, a cardiac gland of the vascular system. Today, the idea that θυμός, courage, and ϑύμος, cardiac gland, could have a common (...) semantic root – θύειν “to sacrifice by blowing and burning” – seems almost impossible. Our aim is to reconstitute the concept of ϑυμός, demonstrating how it has been reduced to a polarisation rational/irrational, and marginalised. We will examine the notion of ϑυμός in Greek tradition and describe one of its widespread manifestations, tattooing, both as a painful solicitation of interiority and for how the tattooed pictures reflect the personality of their wearers. (shrink)