“Let the reader not be persuaded as a matter of course that everything the best authors said is perfect. For they slip at times, they give in to their burdens, and they delight in the pleasure of their own abilities. They do not always pay attention; and they often grow tired. Demosthenes seems to doze to Cicero; Homer naps for Horace. Truly, they are great, but they are still mortals and it happens that those who believe that whatever appears in these authors should be laws for speaking often imitate their lesser parts, since this is easier—and they believe they are enough like them if they emulate the faults of great authors.
Still, one must pass judgment on these men with modesty and care to avoid what often happens when people condemn what they do not understand. If it is necessary to err in either part, I would prefer readers to enjoy everything in these authors rather than dismiss much.”
Neque id statim legenti persuasum sit, omnia quae summi auctores dixerint utique esse perfecta. Nam et labuntur aliquando et oneri cedunt et indulgent ingeniorum suorum voluptati, nec semper intendunt animum, nonnumquam fatigantur, cum Ciceroni dormitare interim Demosthenes, Horatio vero etiam Homerus ipse videatur. Summi enim sunt, homines tamen, acciditque iis qui quidquid apud illos reppererunt dicendi legem putant ut deteriora imitentur (id enim est facilius), ac se abunde similes putent si vitia magnorum consequantur. Modesto tamen et circumspecto iudicio de tantis viris pronuntiandum est, ne, quod plerisque accidit, damnent quae non intellegunt. Ac si necesse est in alteram errare partem, omnia eorum legentibus placere quam multa displicere maluerim.
The following account is interesting for the variations in the story of Ariadne and Theseus but also for the strange detail of the ritual where young men imitate a woman in childbirth. Also, the counterfeit letters bit is precious. What would they say?.
Other tales about Ariadne, According to Plutarch (Theseus 20)
“There are many other versions circulated about these matters still and also about Ariadne, none of which agree. For some say that she hanged herself after she was abandoned by Theseus. Others claim that after she was taken to Naxos by sailors she lived with Oinaros a priest of Dionysus and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another.
“A terrible lust for Aiglê the daughter of Panopeus ate at him” [fr. 105]—this is a line Hereas the Megarean claims Peisistratus deleted from the poems of Hesiod, just as again he says that he inserted into the Homeric catalogue of dead “Theseus and Perithoos, famous children of the gods” [Od. 11.631] to please the Athenans. There are some who say that Ariadne gave birth to Oinipiôn and Staphulos with Theseus. One of these is Ion of Khios who has sung about his own city “Oinopiôn, Theseus’ son, founded this city once.” [fr. 4D]
The most reputable of the myths told are those which, as the saying goes, all people have in their mouths. But Paiôn the Amathousian has handed down a particular tale about these events. For he says that Theseus was driven by a storm, to Cyprus and that he had Ariadne with him, who was pregnant and doing quite badly because of the sea and the rough sailing. So he set her out alone and he was carried back into the sea from the land while he was tending to the ship. The native women, then, received Ariadne and they tried to ease her depression because of her loneliness by offering her a counterfeit letter written to her by Theseus and helping her and supporting her during childbirth. They buried her when she died before giving birth.
Paiôn claims that when Theseus returned he was overcome with grief and he left money to the island’s inhabitants, charging them to sacrifice to Ariadne and to have two small statues made for her—one of silver and one of bronze. During the second day of the month of Gorpiaon at the sacrifice, one of the young men lies down and mouns and acts as women do during childbirth. They call the grove in which they claim her tomb is that of Ariadne Aphrodite.
Some of the Naxians claim peculiarly that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes. They claim one was married to Dionysus on Naxos and bore the child Staphulos, and the young one was taken by Theseus and left when he came to Naxos with a nurse named Korkunê—whose tomb they put on display. They claim that Ariadne died there and has honors unequal to those of the earlier one. The first has a festival of singing and play; the second has one where sacrifices are performed with grief and mourning.”
64 “Anaxarkhos, the natural philosopher, when king Alexander said to him “I will hang you” responded: “Threaten others. It is no difference to me whether I rot above or below the earth.”
On the main body, Achilles (naked, on the right) kills Penthesilea (wearing Lycian clothes, on the left) with his spear, while an Amazon comes to the latter’s help.Above them, Sarpedon is being carried (barely visible in the hydria, only the legs) by Hipnos and Thanatos. Protolucana red-figure hydria by the Policoro Painter, ca. 400 BC. From the so-called tomb of the Policoro Painter in Heraclaea. Stored in the Museo Nazionale Archaeologico of Policoro.
“The wise Euripides put in his poetic drama about the Cyclops that he had three eyes, indicating by this that he had three brothers and that they cared for one another and kept a watchful eye on one another’s places in the island, fought together, and avenged one another.
And he also adds that he made the Cyclops drunk and unable to flee, because Odysseus made that very Cyclops “drunk” with a ton of money and gifts so he would not “eat those with him up”, which is not actually to consume them with slaughter.
He also says that Odysseus blinded his one eye with torch fire, really meaning that he stole away the only daughter of Polyphemos’ brother, a maiden named Elpê, with “fire”, which means he seized her on fire with burning lust. This is what it means that he burned Polyphemos in one of his eyes, he really deprived him of his daughter. The very wise Pheidias of Corinth provided this interpretation saying that Euripides explained this poetically because he did not agree with what the wisest Homer said about the wandering of Odysseus.”
“Whether domestic or civic duties occupy you, keep some time of the day for caring for the body. The chief way of caring for the body is exercise and it should always be done before eating. The work should be greater for one who has labored less and digested well and less for one who is tired and has not digested.
Good exercises include reading aloud, drilling, playing ball, running, walking. The last is not the most useful on a level road, since going up or down moves the body with a variety, unless the body is completely weak. It is better to walk out in the open than under a roof. And it is also better, should your head endure it, to walk in the sun instead of the shade. But better still in the shade than under a roof and better a straight than an indirect walk.
The end of exercise, moreover, should come with sweat or some bit of tiring which should still be on this side of fatigue. Sometimes more and sometimes less needs to be done. But one should not follow the model of athletes with their fixed rule and excessive workout.”
Quem interdiu vel domestica vel civilia officia tenuerunt, huic tempus aliquod servandum curationi corporis sui est. Prima autem eius curatio exercitatio est, quae semper antecedere cibum debet, in eo, qui minus laboravit et bene concoxit, amplior; in eo, qui fatigatus est et minus concoxit, remissior.
Commode vero exercent clara lectio, arma, pila, cursus, ambulatio, atque haec non utique plana commodior est, siquidem melius ascensus quoque et descensus cum quadam varietate corpus moveat, nisi tamen id perquam inbecillum est: melior autem est sub divo quam in porticu; melior, si caput patitur, in sole quam in umbra, melior in umbra quam paries aut viridia efficiunt, quam quae tecto subest; melior recta quam flexuosa. Exercitationis autem plerumque finis esse debet sudor aut certe lassitudo, quae citra fatigationem sit, idque ipsum modo minus, modo magis faciendum est. Ac ne his quidem athletarum exemplo vel certa esse lex vel inmodicus labor debet.
Hippocrates, Regimen 2 61
“I will now explore what kind of impact exercises have. For some are natural and some are pretty violent. Natural exercise deals with sight, hearing, voice, and thinking. The power of sight is like this. The soul, when it attends to what can be seen, moves and warms. As it warms it dries because the moisture is extracted. In hearing, when sound strikes, the soul shakes and works and as it exercises, it turns warm and dries.
A person’s soul is moved by however many thoughts it has and it also warms and is dried and it spends its moisture as it works—it can empty the flesh and make a person thin. Whenever people exercise their voice either in speaking, reading or singing, all these things move the soul. When it is moved, it warms and dries and uses up the moisture.”
“My Epigenes, how important for health exercise is—and how it is right to engage in it before good—has been sufficiently explained by much earlier men, the best of the philosophers and doctors. But no one before has sufficiently explained how much exercises with a small ball are better than the others. It is right, for this reason, for me to explain what I know so that you may evaluate it as someone who is of all men most well practiced in these arts and also so that it may be useful for others—should you truly believe that they have been elaborated sufficiently—when you share the work with them.
For I say that the best of all exercises are not only those which thoroughly wear out the body, but can also delight the soul. Men who invented the practice of hunting with dogs figured out how to combine hunting with pleasure, delight, and competitive spirit—they were wise in respect to human nature. The soul may be moved so much in this activity, that many people are freed from disease because of pleasure alone while many others who felt sickness coming on were relieved of the pressure.
There is nothing of the experiences of the body which is so strong that it completely overpowers the soul. Therefore, we should not neglect the movements of the spirit—whatever kind they are—but, instead, we should make a greater consideration of it than of the body because it is that much more powerful. This is certainly a shared quality of all exercises which happen pleasurably, but it is a choice quality of those performed with the small ball, which I will now explain.”
Attic b.-f. lekythos. About 500 B. C. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 260. A bearded man prepares to throw a rather large ball. Three youths mounted pick-a-back are ready to catch it. Between two of them is inscribed κ λευσον, ‘Give the order’, the application of which is not clear.
This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. This post is part of my plan to share new scholarship on Homer. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.
In Homer’s Iliad and the Problem of Force,Charles Stocking (see my earlier post about it), sets out to differentiate various words that are translated as “force” in Homer (e.g. biê, kratos, alkê, menos, sthenos, (w)is, and dynamis) as a corrective engagement with earlier approaches to force/violence and agency in the Homeric poems (especially Simone Weil and Bruno Snell).
In examining kratos, Stocking emphasizes that it “encapsulates a notion of “agonistic alterity,” where the force of kratos requires supremacy over others” (2023, 15). This argument is especially attractive when Stocking provides a reading of Nestor’s response to Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 1, where the elderly king of Pylos claims that Achilles is stronger (karteros), because he has a divine mother, but Agamemnon is better (pherteros) because he rules over many (1.280-281). Following Émile Benveniste, Stocking suggests that kratos is always relational—that is, it is about superiority in relation to others. In this passage, Nestor seems to innovate, creating what Stocking terms a “scale of superiority” to acknowledge Achilles’ genealogical superiority, Agamemnon’s political sovereignty, and his own superlative status (Nestor claims he fought with the kartistoi against the kartistoi). Agamemnon’s political power—which also comes from divine authority—is rendered as superior to Achilles’ birth.
Chapter 1—where Stocking engages with these arguments—makes creative and effective use of speech act theory (about which I will post later). In chapter 2, Stocking turns to kratos and its relationship to democracy, providing an engaged reading of Jacques Derrida’s Rogues, which reflects on the impact of Odysseus’ claim in Iliad 2, that “we can’t all be kings…the rule of many is not good…”. For Stocking (and for many like me, Elmer, Barker, Hammer etc.), this is part of the political debate at the heart of the Iliad. As he puts it “What is the relationship between physical force and power.
Drawing on linguistics and structuralism, Stocking uses Derrida’s notion of “ipsocentric force” to explore how the Iliad’s notion of politics “is inseparable from larger cosmic concerns..” In doing so, chapter 2 offers a close reading of the notion of political force in the Iliad, while also critiquing Derrida’s reading of Homeric kratos as “ipsocentric” (by which he means emerging from or relying on the self, and translating paradoxically into the bedrock formulations of democratic sovereignty). For Stocking—and the larger argument toward which he builds—Homeric discourse is subject to constant debate and cannot thus be reduced so directly.
Deianeira-type lekythos with a depicition of the preparation of a warrior. Ca. 550 BC. Kerameikos Archaeological Museum (Athens). n° T 5B/VII.
I am a fan of any reading of Homer that acknowledges that its internal representation of a topic or debate is essentially dialogic (or dialectic). Homeric poetry is not propaganda—it may bear the imprint of different ideologies, but it emerges out of a plurality of meanings and presents a both a widening and narrowing of meaning. In approaching this oscillation of meaning, Stocking relies on semiotics and emphasizes how ore concepts in Homer represent the shifting and ultimately the breakdown of the relationship between signifier and signified (the word and the concept implied by the word). What I am not sure about, from my reading so far, is what Stocking is positing as the cause of such essential polysemy.
Still, this is more proof of the inviting way in which this book unfolds. I find myself writing a lot in the margins, underlining, objecting, and then reconsidering. One of the things that struck me in the introduction to chapter 2 was the quotation of a scholion to Odysseus’ famous words that glosses them as meaning “there won’t be a democracy”. Stocking suggests that the scholiast’s comments are anachronistic, but this assertion gave me pause.
If we treat the Homeric poems as diachronic objects—by which I mean, narratives that develop over time and absorb the characteristics of different periods and then are treated from different theoretical and aesthetic perspectives as they persist through other periods—then they are always, already anachronistic. But a view of the scholia’s invocations of democracy in general, show a rather consistent range of political responses that would be at home in the 5th century BCE (or earlier, as the Greek city states experimented with different political arrangements).
Below I have pulled out the five times I can find where a scholiast talks about democracy in reference to the Iliad. Note that in the first example, Achilles is called democratic for opposing Agamemnon. In the second, the scholiast notes a difference in expectations based on social status (perhaps seeing democratic rights as those connected to aristocratic position). The third and fifth examples invokes concepts of freedom of speech, emphasizing parrhesia (the right to say what you want) over isêgoria (the right to access to public speech in the assembly).
“Not into war: this [is the statement] of a democratic king and a demagogue.”
Schol. AT ad Hom. Il. 1.226 ex. οὔτε ποτ’ ἐς πόλεμον: τοῦτο δημοκρατικοῦ βασιλέως καὶ δημαγωγικοῦ.
“There’s no way we can all be king”: He means there will not be a democracy. If he were saying this to the more important men, he would be inciting rebellion, by assailing men eager for power in such a chaos”
“This is right, lord, in the assembly” As is the custom in a democracy. This is placed in the agora, since it is the custom to speak with freedom of speech [parrêsia] in the assembly. People report that Seleukos took issue with the “Lord”, here.
“Go, there’s the road, but the rest will remain…” It is bitter for one of them to hear this, but especially sweet for the other to consider it. For Agamemnon wants to hear from the Achaeans that they are willing to accept the danger, as if they are part of a democracy, and not sent to this by force.”
“Now I will tell you this again. We have “now” instead of “not among everyone”. For Hector is not rejecting advice, but instead equal access to speech [isêgoria] for everyone. The affairs of the Greeks are closer to democracy, and there is a great deal of freedom of speech [parrêsia] among the leaders. For instance, Diomedes says to Agamemnon, “I will fight with you foremost when you’re being foolish” and Odysseus says, “Ruinous one, I wish you ruled over a different, more unseemly army and weren’t lord over us!”
“When Menander was asked what the difference was between Sophokles and Euripides he said that Sophokles makes people feel pleasure while Euripides makes his audience feel anger.”
“When he was asked why he made people with noble characters and Euripides made those of base ones, Sophokles answered “Because I make people how they should be and he makes people as they are.”
Things are strange with Servius (=Jacoby Abas 46, f1)
Servius on Virgil, Aeneid 9.262
devicta genitor (sc. Aeneas) quae cepit Arisba]
“Which his father took once Arisba was conquered…”
“(And yet, according to Homer, Arisba sent aid to the Trojans and was overcome by Achilles)…the city is called Arisba after the daughter of Merpos or Macareus who was the first wife of Paris. According to some authors, Abas, who wrote the Troika, related that after the Greeks left Troy, the rule of this city was given to Astyanax. Antenor expelled him once he had allied himself with the states neighboring where Arisba’s location. Aeneas took this badly and took up arms for Astyanax; once the expedition was prosecuted successfully, he returned the kingdom to Astyanax.”
[[atqui secundum Homerum Arisba Troianis misit auxilia et ab Achille subversa est …]] dicta est Arisba ab Meropis vel Macarei filia, quam primum Paris in coniugio habuit. quidam ab Abante, qui Troica scripsit, relatum ferunt, post discessum a Troia Graecorum Astyanacti ibi datum regnum. hunc ab Antenore expulsum sociatis sibi finitimis civitatibus, inter quas et Arisba fuit. Aeneam hoc aegre tulisse et pro Astyanacte arma cepisse, ac prospere gesta re Astyanacti restituisse regnum.
Several details of this are strange. First, the fact that Paris had a first wife, though not strange on the surface, is rarely mentioned. Second, Astyanax’s survival after the fall of Troy is far from typical—the typical tale is his murder at the hands of Odysseus. Less surprising but still worth mentioning is the antagonism between Antenor—who is depicted in some sources as being friendly to Menelaos and Agamemnon—and the surviving heir of the house of Priam. Finally, I find it touching that Aeneas would take a break from all of his own troubles to help his cousin’s star-crossed son.
“Akesandros tells the story in his Concerning Cyrene that when Eurypylos was king in Libya, Cyrene was taken by Apollo because there was a lion plaguing the land. Eurypylos put his kingship up as a prize for anyone who could kill a lion—and Cyrene killed the lion and gained the kingdom. Her children were Autoukhos and Aristaios. Phularkhos says that she came to Libya with a group, and when they went on a hunting expedition, she joined them too.”
This story is really exceptional in Greek myth and history for a couple of reasons. First, here we have a female beast-slayer who follows the classic pattern of killing a monster and gaining a kingdom. Second, while her children are mentioned–following a typical pattern of defining women by their offspring–her mate is not. There are some other sources on this figure.
Nonnos, Dionys. 13.300-301
“Cyrene, another deer-pursuing Artemis,
The lion-slaying nymph bore him, after sex with Phoibos.”
