Gilbert Murray: The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature
“Among the elements that contribute to the higher evolution of human life, it looks as if one might make a broad division: some are progressive, so that each new stage supersedes the last, some are eternal and are never superseded. I will not try to specify the two classes more precisely; one might say roughly that material things are superseded and spiritual things not; or that everything considered as an achievement can be superseded, but considered as so much life, not. Neither classification is exact, but let it pass. Our own generation is perhaps unusually conscious of the element of change. We live, since the opening of the great epoch of scientific invention in the nineteenth century, in a world utterly transformed from any that existed before. Yet we know that behind all changes the main web of fife is permanent. The joy of an Egyptian child of the First Dynasty in a clay doll was every bit as keen as the joy of a child now in a number of vastly better dolls. Her grief was as great when it was taken away. Those are very simple emotions, but I believe the same holds of emotions much more complex. The joy and grief of the artist in his art, of the strong man in his fighting, of the seeker after knowledge or righteousness in his many wanderings; these and things like them, all the great terrors and desires and beauties, belong somewhere to the permanent stuff of which daily life consists; they go with hunger and thirst and love and the facing of death. And these it is that make the permanence of literature. There are many elements in the work of Homer or Aeschylus which are obsolete and even worthless, but there is no surpassing their essential poetry. It is there, a permanent power which we can feel or fail to feel, and if we fail the world is the poorer. And the same is true, though a little less easy to see, of the essential work of the historian or the philosopher.”
“What is the beginning of the change from guardian to tyrant? Isn’t clear when the guardian begins to do that very thing which myth says happened at the shrine of Lykaion Zeus in Arcadia?
Which is? He said.
That once someone tastes a bit of human innards mixed up with the other sacrifices he becomes a wolf by necessity? Haven’t you heard this tale?
I have.
Is it not something the same with a protector of the people? Once he controls a mob that obeys him, he cannot restrain himself from tribal blood, but he prosecutes unjustly, the sorts of things men love to do, and brings a man into court for murder, eliminating the life of a man—and with tongue and unholy mouth that have tasted the murder of his kind, he exiles, kills, and promises the cutting of debts and the redistribution of land. Is it not by necessity that such a man is fated either to be killed by his enemies or to become a tyrant, to turn into a wolf from a man?”
In ancient Greek myth, Lykaon (Lycaon, related to lúkos, “wolf”) was a king of Arcadia. According to Pausanias (8.31-5) , Lykaon sacrificed a newborn child to Zeus. In other sources he offers the infant mixed up with other food to test Zeus’ divinity (although some attribute the deed to his sons, see Apollodorus, 3.8.1). Zeus killed the sons with lightning; Lykaon was transformed into a wolf. Stay tuned for more of this in coming days.
Gilbert Murray, A History of Ancient Greek Literature
“To read and re-read the scanty remains now left to us of the Literature of Ancient Greece, is a pleasant and not a laborious task; nor is that task greatly increased by the inclusion of the ‘Scholia’ or ancient commentaries. But modern scholarship has been prolific in the making of books; and as regards this department of my subject, I must frankly accept the verdict passed by a German critic upon a historian of vastly wider erudition than mine, and confess that I ‘stand helpless before the mass of my material.’ To be more precise, I believe that in the domain of Epic, Lyric, and Tragic Poetry, I am fairly familiar with the researches of recent years ; and I have endeavoured to read the more celebrated books on Prose and Comic Poetry. Periodical literature is notoriously hard to control ; but I hope that comparatively few articles of importance in the last twenty volumes of the Hervies, the Rheinisches Museum, the Philologus, and the English Classical Journals, have escaped my consideration. More than this I have but rarely attempted.
If under these circumstances I have nevertheless sat down to write a History of Greek Literature, and have even ventured to address myself to scholars as well as to the general public, my reason is that, after all, such knowledge of Greek literature as I possess has been of enormous value and interest to me; that for the last ten years at least, hardly a day has passed on which Greek poetry has not occupied a large part of my thoughts, hardly one deep or valuable emotion has come into my life which has not been either caused, or interpreted, or bettered by Greek poetry. This is doubtless part of the ordinary narrowing of the specialist, the one-sided sensitiveness in which he finds at once his sacrifice and his reward; but it is usually, perhaps, the thing that justifies a man in writing.”
Kim Stanley Robinson The Years of Rice and Salt (2003: 758)
“Over time, Bao came to understand that teaching too was a kind of reincarnation, in that years passed and students came and went, new young people all the time, but always the same age, taking the same class; the class under the oak trees, reincarnated. He began to enjoy that aspect of it. He would start the first class by saying, “Look, here we are again.” They never knew what to make of it; same response, every time.
He learned, among other things, that teaching was the most rigorous form of learning. He learned to learn more from his students than they did from him; like so many other things, it was the reverse from what it seemed to be, and colleges existed to bring together groups of young people to teach some chosen few of their elders the things that they knew about life, that the old teachers had been in danger of forgetting.”
Kim Stanley Robinson is great-souled. This book is beyond simple description. Try it.
In the spirit of the week before Halloween, below are the major accounts of Diomedes’ father, Tydeus, who was rejected by Athena after eating brains. The tale has simple symbolism that echoes modern associations with zombies (the dead need to steal life force from the living). The tale is equal parts about the impossibility of immortality and drawing boundaries about proper human behavior.
It is also about eating brains.
Hom. Il. 5.801
“Tydeus was a little man, but a fighter.”
Τυδεύς τοι μικρὸς μὲν ἔην δέμας, ἀλλὰ μαχητής·
Schol. AbT ad Il. 5.126
“They say that when Tydeus was wounded by Melanippos Astakos’ son, he got pretty upset. And Amphiarus, after he killed Melanippus, gave his head to Tydeus. Like a beast, Tydeus ripped it open and slurped up his brains to his fill. Athena happened to be there at that time, bringing some immortal medicine to him from heaven, and she turned back out of disgust. When he saw her, he asked that she favor his son with the divine favor. That’s Pherecydes’ story.”
“That Melanippos was Theban and stood in battle against Tydeus. It seems that Tydeus took his head in rage, smashed it, and gulped up his brains. For this reason, Athena turned back even though she was bringing him a revitalizing drug.”
“of the head-munching Tydeus: the story goes that during the Theban war, Tydeus ate up Melanippus’ head. Thus, Tydeus is called “head-muncher” and his child is Diomedes.”
“Tydeus, from tuthon (“a little”); for he was small for his age group.”
Τυδεύς: Παρὰ τὸ τυτθόν· μικρὸς γὰρ ἦν τῇ ἡλικίᾳ.
Note the variations in the narrative Apollodorus introduces by bringing all the details together: Amphiarus becomes the villain here!
Apollodorus, 3.76-77
“Melanippus, the last of Astacus’ children, wounded Tydeus in the stomach. While he was lying there half-dead, Athena brought him medicine she had begged from Zeus in order to make him immortal. But when Amphiarus perceived this, because he hated Tydues for persuading the Argives to march against Thebes against his own judgment, he cut off Melanippus’ head and gave it to him (Tydeus killed him when he was wounded). He drew out the brains and gobbled them up. When Athena saw him, she was disturbed, and withheld and kept the medicine.”
“We consider eating human flesh to be wrong; but it is a matter of ambivalence among the barbarians. But why should we even speak of ‘barbarians’ when Tydeus is said to have eaten an enemy’s brains and when the Stoics claim it is not strange for someone to eat another’s flesh or his own?”
“Nero and Heliogabalus, Maxentius, and Julianus Apostata, were never so much addicted to magic of old, as some of our modern princes and popes themselves are nowadays. Erricus, King of Sweden, had an enchanted cap, by virtue of which, and some magical murmur or whispering terms, he could command spirits, trouble the air, and make the wind stand which way he would, insomuch that when there was any great wind or storm, the common people were wont to say, the king now had on his conjuring cap. But such examples are infinite. That which they can do, is as much almost as the devil himself, who is still ready to satisfy their desires, to oblige them the more unto him. They can cause tempests, storms, which is familiarly practised by witches in Norway, Iceland, as I have proved. They can make friends enemies, and enemies friends by philters; Turpes amores conciliare, enforce love, tell any man where his friends are, about what employed, though in the most remote places; and if they will, bring their sweethearts to them by night, upon a goat’s back flying in the air. Sigismund Scheretzius, part. 1. cap. 9. de spect. reports confidently, that he conferred with sundry such, that had been so carried many miles, and that he heard witches themselves confess as much; hurt and infect men and beasts, vines, corn, cattle, plants, make women abortive, not to conceive, barren, men and women unapt and unable, married and unmarried, fifty several ways, saith Bodine, lib. 2. c. 2. fly in the air, meet when and where they will, as Cicogna proves, and Lavat. de spec. part. 2. c. 17. steal young children out of their cradles, ministerio daemonum, and put deformed in their rooms, which we call changelings, saith Scheretzius, part. 1. c. 6. make men victorious, fortunate, eloquent; and therefore in those ancient monomachies and combats they were searched of old, they had no magical charms; they can make stick frees, such as shall endure a rapier’s point, musket shot, and never be wounded: of which read more in Boissardus, cap. 6. de Magia, the manner of the adjuration, and by whom ’tis made, where and how to be used in expeditionibus bellicis, praeliis, duellis, &c., with many peculiar instances and examples; they can walk in fiery furnaces, make men feel no pain on the rack, aut alias torturas sentire [or experience other tortures]; they can stanch blood, represent dead men’s shapes, alter and turn themselves and others into several forms, at their pleasures. Agaberta, a famous witch in Lapland, would do as much publicly to all spectators, Modo Pusilla, modo anus, modo procera ut quercus, modo vacca, avis, coluber, &c. Now young, now old, high, low, like a cow, like a bird, a snake, and what not? She could represent to others what forms they most desired to see, show them friends absent, reveal secrets, maxima omnium admiratione, &c. And yet for all this subtlety of theirs, as Lipsius well observes, Physiolog. Stoicor. lib. 1. cap. 17. neither these magicians nor devils themselves can take away gold or letters out of mine or Crassus’ chest, et Clientelis suis largiri, for they are base, poor, contemptible fellows most part; as Bodine notes, they can do nothing in Judicum decreta aut poenas, in regum concilia vel arcana, nihil in rem nummariam aut thesauros, they cannot give money to their clients, alter judges’ decrees, or councils of kings, these minuti Genii cannot do it, altiores Genii hoc sibi adservarunt, the higher powers reserve these things to themselves.”
Cicero calls lots of people monsters (immanis, belva, monstrum) but his favorite beast to burden is Marcus Antonius. Here is a sampling of the monstrous things he says about him.
Philippic 4.1
“Your affair, Romans, is not with a criminal and evil man, but with a twisted, enormous beast who should be overcome now that he has fallen in a trap.
Non est vobis res, Quirites, cum scelerato homine ac nefario, sed cum immani taetraque belua quae, quoniam in foveam incidit, obruatur.
Philippic 7.27
“Beware lest you allow this twisted and pestilential beast who has been constrained by labors.”
taetram et pestiferam beluam ne inclusam et constrictam dimittatis cavete.
Philippic 13. 21
“Who was ever such a barbarian, such a beast, such an animal?”
Quis tam barbarus umquam, tam immanis, tam ferus?
Philippic 13.28
“But who can bear this most twisted beast, or how could they? What exists in Antonius apart from lust, cruelty, immaturity, and arrogance?”
Hanc vero taeterrimam beluam quis ferre potest aut quo modo? Quid est in Antonio praeter libidinem, crudelitatem, petulantiam, audaciam?
Philippic 8.13
“Since you were also accustomed to complain about a person, what do you think you would do about a beast?”
Quin etiam de illo homine queri solebas: quid te facturum de belua putas?
But let’s start it all out with the oldest textual reference to werewolves in the western tradition:
Herodotus, Histories4.105
“The Neuroi are Skythian culturally, but one generation before Darius’ invasion they were driven from their country by snakes. It happens that their land produces many snakes; and even more descended upon them from the deserted regions to the point that they were overwhelmed and left their own country to live with the Boudinoi.
These men may actually be wizards. For the Skythians and even the Greeks who have settled in Skythia report that once each year the Neurian men turn into wolves for a few days and then transform back into themselves again. People who say these things don’t persuade me, but they tell the tale still and swear to it when they do.”
λύκοςγίνεται. This earliest reference to the widespread superstition as to werewolves (cf. Tylor, P. C. i. 308 seq., and Frazer, Paus. iv. 189, for Greek parallels) is interesting, as the evidence is so emphatic. Others (e. g. Müllenhoff iii. 17) see in this story a reference to some festival like the Lupercalia.
“Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes, or ignes fatui; which lead men often in flumina aut praecipitia [to the rivers or the cliffs], saith Bodine, lib. 2. Theat. Naturae, fol. 221. Quos inquit arcere si volunt viatores, clara voce Deum appellare aut pronam facie terram contingente adorare oportet, et hoc amuletum majoribus nostris acceptum ferre debemus, &c., (whom if travellers wish to keep off they must pronounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their faces in contact with the ground, &c.); likewise they counterfeit suns and moons, stars oftentimes, and sit on ship masts: In navigiorum summitatibus visuntur; and are called dioscuri, as Eusebius l. contra Philosophos, c. xlviii. informeth us, out of the authority of Zenophanes; or little clouds, ad motum nescio quem volantes; which never appear, saith Cardan, but they signify some mischief or other to come unto men, though some again will have them to pretend good, and victory to that side they come towards in sea fights, St. Elmo’s fires they commonly call them, and they do likely appear after a sea storm; Radzivilius, the Polonian duke, calls this apparition, Sancti Germani sidus; and saith moreover that he saw the same after in a storm, as he was sailing, 1582, from Alexandria to Rhodes. Our stories are full of such apparitions in all kinds. Some think they keep their residence in that Hecla, a mountain in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Vesuvius, &c. These devils were worshipped heretofore by that superstitious Pyromanteia and the like.”
The Lamia (or, just Lamia to her friends) is one of the figures from Greek myth who seems like a frightening monster but really is a particular distillation of misogyny. She is often called a Greek ‘vampire’ along with Empousa. Unlike the latter, however, Lamia is specifically associated with killing children.
Diodorus Siculus, 20.40
“At the rock’s root there was a very large cave which was roofed with ivy and bryony in which the myths say the queen Lamia, exceptional for her beauty, was born. But, because of the beastliness of her soul, they say that her appearance has become more monstrous in the time since then.
For, when all her children who were born died, she was overwhelmed by her suffering and envied all the women who were luckier with their children. So she ordered that the infants be snatched from their arms and killed immediately. For this reason, even in our lifetime, the story of that women has lingered among children and the mention of her name is most horrifying to them.
But, whenever she was getting drunk, she would allow people to do whatever pleased them without observation. Because she was not closely watching everything at that time, the people in that land imagined that she could not see. This is why the myth developed that she put her eyes into a bottle, using this story a metaphor for the carelessness she enacted in wine, since that deprived her of sight.”
The story of why Lamia killed children gets a little more depressing in the Fragments of the Greek Historians
Duris, BNJ 76 F17 [= Photios s.v. Lamia]
“In the second book of his Libyan History, Duris reports that Lamia was a fine looking woman but after Zeus had sex with her, Hera killed the children she bore because she was envious. As a result she was disfigured by grief and would seize and kill the children of others.”
Elsewhere, the evidence of narratives about Lamia are rather limited. She becomes just another negative, female monster.
Suda, Lambda 85
“Lamia: a monster. The name comes from having a gaping throat, laimia and lamia. Aristophanes: “It has the smell of a seal, the unwashed balls of a Lamia.” For testicles are active—and he is making a fantasy image of Lamia’s balls, since she is female.
“There is a crag rising up over the ground on which the Delphians claim that a woman stood singing oracles, named Hêrophilê but known as Sibyl. There is the earlier Sibyl, the one I have found to be equally as old as the others, whom the Greeks claim is the daughter of Zeus and Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon. She was the first woman to sing oracles and they say that she was named Sibyl by the Libyans. Hêrophilê was younger than here, but she was obviously born before the Trojan War since she predicted Helen in her oracles, that was raised up in Sparta as the destruction for Asia and Europe and that Troy would be taken by the Greeks because of her.”
“Foremost he differed from previous authors in this, by which I mean how he took on a subject that was not a single thread nor one divided in many different and also disconnected parts. And then, because did not include mythical material in his work and he did not use his writing for the deception and bewitchment of many, as every author before him did when they told the stories of certain Lamiai rising up from the earth in groves and glens and of amphibious Naiads rushing out of Tartaros, half-beasts swimming through the seas and then joining together in groups among humans, and producing offspring of mortals and gods, demigods—and other stories which seem extremely unbelievable and untrustworthy to us now.”
Mormô, in the genitive Mormous, declined like Sappho. There is also the form Mormôn, genitive Mormonos. Aristophanes says “I ask you, take this Mormo away from me”. This meant to dispel frightening things. For Mormo is frightening. And again in Aristophanes: “A Mormo for courage”. There is also a mormalukeion which they also call a Lamia. They also frightening things this.
Plutarch, De Curiositate [On Being a Busybody] 516a
“Now, just as in the myth they say that Lamia sleeps at home, putting her eyes set aside in some jar, but when she goes out she puts them back in and peers around, in the same way each of us puts his curiosity, as if fitting in an eye, into meanness towards others. But we often stumble over our own mistakes and faults because of ignorance, since we fail to secure sight or light for them.
For this reason, a busybody is rather useful to his enemies, since he rebukes and emphasizes their faults and shows them what they should guard and correct, even as he overlooks most of his own issues thanks to his obsession with everyone else. This is why Odysseus did not stop to speak with his mother before he inquired from the seer about those things for which he had come to Hades. Once he had made his inquiry, he turned to his own mother and also the other women, asking who Tyro was, who beautiful Khloris was, and why Epikaste had died.”
