The Gods and Typhon.—The story of how the gods took bestial shape to hide from the fury of Typhon is several times told in Hellenistic and Latin authors. There seems no room for doubt that it is an aetiological myth, intended to explain the cult of beasts in Egypt, and also, in one or two versions, the sacredness of fish in Syria. That in one form, that given by Antoninus Liberalis, it goes back to Nikandros is reasonably certain. (...) The doubtful point, to my mind, is whether it can be traced much further, and, in particular, whether it was known to Pindar, as is commonly assumed. The authority for supposing that he knew and referred to it is a single passage of Porphyry, de abstinentia III. 16 . It runs: Πίνδαρος δ ν προσοδίοις παντας τος θεος ποίησεν τε ύπ Τυνος διώκοντα οủκ νθρώποις όμοιωθέντας λλ τοις λοις ζοις έρασθέντα δ Πασιάης Δία γενέσθαι μν ταρον νν δ ετν και κύκνον. (shrink)

Early in the Phaedrus, Socrates tells his interlocutor that he does not have time to formulate naturalistic reinterpretations of old stories, because he is not yet able, according to the Delphic inscription, to know myself. Indeed, it appears laughable to me for one who is still ignorant of this to examine alien things. … [So] I examine not them but myself: whether I happen to be some wild animal more multiply twisted and filled with desire than Typhon, or a (...) gentler, simpler animal having by nature a share in a divine fate. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville's early work *Typhon* reveals how his *Fable of the Bees* can be understood not only as an extended commentary of an Aesopic fable but also as a form of mythic writing. The appeal to the mythic in discourse provides him with the opportunity to give both a genetic account of the development of language and social practices and a functional account of the the socializing impact of myths (including classical ones). The artificial distinction between treating Mandeville's writings (...) as exclusively philosophy or literature is overcome by means of his identification of the mythic origin of meaning and rationality. (shrink)

At the beginning of the "Phaedrus", Socrates distinguishes between two kinds of people: those who are more complex, violent and hybristic than the monster Typhon, and those who are simpler, calmer and tamer (230a). I argue that there are also two distinct types of Eros (Love) that correlate to Socrates’s two kinds of people. In the first case, lovers cannot attain recollection because their souls are disordered in the absence of self-knowledge. For the latter, the self-knowledge of self-disciplined lovers (...) renders them capable of recollecting the Forms by ordering their souls naturally. (shrink)

The end of the hope for a magic-socialist solution to the French crisis leads into the age of torment. This is an unexpected effect of the French socialists' coming to power. The international crisis which the socialist alternative previously conjured away magically takes on its full scope. Previous political certainties — those of the “first” and those of the “second” Left — are swept up in this typhon and cast about in a new space in which they have lost (...) their anchor. In its typical partisan style, the political Left is seeking a new identity without being really willing to shake off the scars of the past. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RANSOM'S GOD WITHOUT THUNDER: REMYTHOLOGIZING VIOLENCE AND POETICIZING THE SACRED Gary M. Ciuba Kent State University From tree-lined Vanderbilt University of 1930 Nashville, the modernist poet and critic John Crowe Ransom longed to hear in his imagination the God who thundered fiercely in ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel. The God of sacrifice who in Homer's Iliad, "his thunder striking terror," received libations from the warring armies (230). The God (...) of jealousy who in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound "drove the sleepless thunderbolt, / plunged the fire spurting shaft/ down" on Typhon for defying heaven with his violence (46). The God of vengeance who in Ovid's Metamorphoses sent "blinding / Thunder [to shake] Olympus, and Pelim / Thrust down by heaven's bolt crashed over Ossa" when the giants piled mountain upon mountain to reach Jove's throne (35). The God ofviolence who in Psalm 78:48 delivered the cattle ofthe obstinate Egyptians "to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts" or who in 1 Samuel 7:10 "thundered with great thunder" to smite the Philistines. In God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy Ransom attacked the modern heresy that deprived the deity ofsuch awful might and summoned Americans to live under a new myth of sacred violence. IfRansom listened with the ears ofthe Methodist faith in which he had been raised, he might have heard how the god of old was muted at the university where he studied and later taught. Ten years before Ransom was born, Methodist-sponsored Vanderbilt had eliminated the lectureship of naturalist Alexander Winched because hisPre-Adamites had challenged the Creation story in Genesis. But in 1914, when Ransom returned to his alma Gary M. Ciuba41 mater to begin more than two decades of teaching there, the Methodists ended their affiliation with Vanderbilt because of a dispute about church governance of the university (Bailey 9-10, 31-4). When the Scopes Trial caused a furor in 1925, Ransom was invited by Vanderbilt to condemn the Fundamentalists to the southeast in Dayton. He refused-not because he sided with the anti-Darwinists but because he believed that the tyranny of science was threateningthe poetic foundation ofreligion (Quinlan 40, n. 3). Ransom's thunderless plight was virtually imagined by H.L. Mencken, one of the most stinging critics of the creationists, when in 1922 he penned a tongue-in-cheek lament forthe passing ofthe ancient deities. "Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time when Jupiter was the king ofthe gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus," Mencken mock-elegized in "Memorial Service." "But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today?" (95). God Without Thunder provides the answer to Mencken's archly lugubrious question: it is John Crowe Ransom. Grieving the demise ofthe deity ofyore, Ransom's treatise on the religious imagination heralds a one-man revival of Jupiter Tonans. Ransom believes that the god ofantiquity has been muffled bythe spirit of scientific abstraction that reigns notjust in Tennessee but across all of America.7 Hetraces this modern cult ofthe mind beyond the current efforts ofreligion to seek a rapprochement with biology and physics; beyond the science-driven Prometheus of Shelley, the rationalism of the Protestant Reformation, and the inquiry of Copernicus; beyond the errors of early Christianity, to a kind of primal sin. Humans have used their intelligence first to set themselves above nature, then to order the world according to their ways, and finally to exploit all ofcreation for their use. Demystified by science, thunder has become not the mighty weapon ofthe ancient God who tolerated no rivals but only the noise of heated and expanding air. Ransom views science as having such ultimacy that it exercises a mimetic function: it provides Girardian models for desire. "Science directs us to amuse ourselves, between desires," Ransom writes, "by simulating 7 Louis Rubin reads Ransom's "Armageddon" as a poetic companion piece to God Without Thunder, for it tells how divine wrath has been compromised amid the suavities of the modern world At the apocalyptic battle of the poem's title, a militant... (shrink)

"Par dizaines, des expressions issues de la mythologie grecque se sont inscrites dans le langage courant : une "pomme de discorde", un "dédale de rues", prendre le "taureau par les cornes", toucher le "pactole", "tomber de Charybde en Scylla", suivre un "fil d'Ariane", "jouer les Cassandre", etc. Mille références endormies aux Sirènes, à Typhon, Océan, Triton, Python, Sibylle, Stentor, Mentor, Laïus, Argus, OEdipe et à tant d'autres personnages mythiques habitent encore incognito nos conversations de tous les jours. Je vous (...) propose de les réveiller en racontant les histoires magnifiques qui en sont l'origine. Mais il y a plus. Les grands mythes ne se limitent pas à des "contes et légendes". Ils proposent des leçons de vie et de sagesse d'une profondeur abyssale. La mythologie représente ainsi une tentative grandiose pour apporter des réponses à l'antique question métaphysique de "la vie bonne pour les mortels". Son étude, passionnante en elle-même, constitue pour cette raison une excellente introduction à la philosophie." Luc Ferry. (shrink)

This book examines the origins of the evil creator idea chiefly in light of early Christian biblical interpretation. It is divided into two parts. In Part I, the focus is on Gnostic Christian interpretation. First, ancient Egyptian assimilation of the Jewish god to the evil deity Seth-Typhon is studied to understand its reapplication by alternative (Sethian, "Ophite" and "gnostic") Christians to the Judeo-catholic creator. Second, an alternative Christian reception of John 8:44 (understood to refer to the devil's father) is (...) shown to implicate the Judeo-catholic creator in murdering Christ. Part II focuses on Marcionite Christian biblical interpretations. It begins with Marcionite interpretations of the creator's character in the Old Testament (chap 3), analyzes the reception of 2 Corinthians 4:4 (in which "the god of this world" blinds people, chap 4), examines Christ's so-called destruction of the Law (Eph 2:15) and the Lawgiver (chaps 5-6), and shows how Christ finally succumbs to the curse of the Law (Gal 3:13) inflicted by the creator (chap 7). A concluding chapter sums up the findings and shows how still today readers of the Bible conclude that the creator is evil. (shrink)

When Socrates says, for the only time in the Socratic literature, that he strives to “know himself” (Phdr. 229e), he does not what this “self” is, or how he is to know it. Recent scholarship is split between taking it as one’s concrete personality and as the nature of (human) souls in general. This paper turns for answers to the immediate context of Socrates’ remark about selfknowledge: his long diatribe about myth-rectification. It argues that the latter, a civic task that (...) Socrates’ dismisses as too laborious, nevertheless serves as a model for the more personal former task. Both involve piecemeal acknowledgement and adjustment of one’s commitments for the sake of living successfully. Both require looking simultaneously to general facts about people (or the world) and to particular facts about oneself (or one’s city). Socrates’ hope that he differs from Typhon (230a) means that he hopes he is amenable to rectification. (shrink)

This article argues that Aristophanes'Cloudstreats Socrates as distinctly interested in promoting self-knowledge of the sort related to self-improvement. Section I shows that Aristophanes links the precept γνῶθι σαυτόν with Socrates. Section II outlines the meaning of that precept for Socrates. Section III describes Socrates' conversational method in theCloudsas aimed at therapeutic self-revelation. Section IV identifies the patron Cloud deities of Socrates' school as also concerned to bring people to a therapeutic self-understanding, albeit in a different register from that of Socrates. (...) Section V discusses a sequence of jokes connected to ‘stripping’ that give a concrete image to the search for self-knowledge. Both the action of the Clouds and the tales of cloak-stripping provide models for understanding self-knowledge in a Socratic key. Section VI argues that Socrates' other interest in thephrontistērion, myth-rationalization, is consistent with the promotion of self-knowledge. Section VII supports the claim that Plato'sPhaedrusalludes constantly to theClouds, and because thePhaedruspays careful attention to self-knowledge, Plato must think that theCloudsdoes too. It notes in particular that we can explain the Platonic Socrates' famous self-knowledge-related curiosity about his similarity to Typhon as Plato's allusion to Aristophanes, an allusion made apt by Aristophanes' coordination of Socrates with self-knowledge. Section VIII concludes the paper. (shrink)

In Roman literature, the Argo commonly ranks as the first ship. The Flavian poet Valerius Flaccus seems to place himself in this line of tradition too by constantly stressing the Argo’s pioneer status. Yet it has rightly been noted that nowhere in the Argonautica is the Argo explicitly said to be the first ever ship. Her exceptional role is based rather on her status as the first sea-going ship to sail across the open sea from Europe to Asia, opening the (...) seas to global marine trade. From this perspective, the hitherto inadequately explained mentions of ships in the Phlegyas simile (3,124–132) and the Lemnos episode (2,107–114; 285–305) can also be analysed as only apparent inconsistencies. The interpretive effort required here draws the attention of the reader or audience, which is called upon to compare the earlier ships to the Argo. In this, the poet suggests a pessimistic judgement: a consequence of the opening of the seas was shipping disasters and human tragedies. Also, it did not only lead to the expansion of civilising achievements, but also held the danger that rituals and customs of a periphery which is read as barbaric would penetrate into the cultural space of the Mediterranean world. (shrink)

This paper argues that Lycophron'sAlexandrafollows earlier texts in presenting challenges to Agamemnon's power as metaphorical re-enactments of primordial theogonic conflicts between Zeus and the forces of chaos. TheAlexandrafigures Agamemnon as Zeus and portrays Achilles, Clytemnestra and Cassandra as chthonic monsters opposed to the Olympian order. Employing intertexts with epic and tragedy, the poem highlights these figures’ symbolic antagonism with Agamemnon–Zeus and their connections to each other. It presents a radically resystematized vision of the cosmos that champions the chthonic, the disordered (...) and the feminine over the Olympian, the ordered and the masculine. Cassandra uses this backdrop to reinterpret her own story, inserting herself into the cosmogonic narrative as a resister of Olympian patriarchy who triumphs over masculine domination. (shrink)