“Mopsos and Cultural Exchange between Greeks and Locals in Cilicia,” in U. Dill and Ch. Walde, eds. Antike Mythen. Medien, Transformationen, Konstruktionen (Fritz Graf Festschrift). Berlin-NY: De Gruyter, 2009, 382-96. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Epos, history, metahistory in Aegean Bronze Age studies
Sarah P. Morris, Robert Laffineur (eds), EPOS: reconsidering Greek epic and Aegean Bronze Age archaeology. Proceedings of the 11th International Aegean Conference, University of California at Los Angeles – The J. Paul Getty Villa, 20-23 April 2006 (Aegaeum 28), 2007, 35-48
The question of the authorship of the two Homeric epics - whether there was one Homer, or two - has vexed scholars since the inception of critical literary study. The more bellicose, less inner and mysterious Iliad was by far the more popular poem in antiquity. And although the later Aeneid of Virgil tendentiously fuses together war and nostos (homecoming), it is of arms and a man, not a man of many ways and wiles, that the Roman poet sings. Odysseus is likened, invidiously, to a Canaanite (Phoenician) traveling merchant in his flexibility and adaptability - he, the "rootless cosmopolitan" of his remote age, resonates with the predicament of alienation of modern man and with the psychological depth of the modern literary sensibility, then bellicose, candid, limited Achilles and Aeneas. It is proposed in the article that the Odyssey employs the topos of a man traveling in search of lost members of his family, with a happy resolution, that seems indeed to have been peculiarly popular over many centuries with Phoenicians and Carthaginians. The author suggests indeed that Menaechmus, the name of a character in a play based on this topos with a Punic setting that might even have been performed, in a Northwest Semitic translation in Qart.adast (Newtown, i.e., Carthage) itself, is merely the very common Hebrew name Menachem. And it is noted that the topos recurs, employed in aid of religious propaganda of the Jewish Christians, in the setting of the PseudoClementine Recognitions.
Periplous - A Journey through the Ancient Mediterranean
Periplous - A Journey through the Ancient Mediterranean, 2021
In this book you will find the stories of people who sailed their ships through the ancient Mediterranean. It is about sailors who crossed the wine-dark sea for an exploration, or for a home-coming journey. It is about how they entered into dialogue with anyone they met, and built “thalassocracies”; seaborne empires. My interest for these matters was raised already at early age when I enjoyed sailing my boat over the lake near the house where I grew up. During summer breaks I read my brother’s prose version of the Odyssey and wondered who the sailors and builders of those ships were. How could it be that they were so antagonistic to the gods which they resembled most? What was the role of women, parents, children? How could these 2500-year-old texts contain metaphors that appeal to people up to today? Many years later, I was given the opportunity of making a journey to Ithaca on board of a sailing ship. My wife and two friends, Hennie and Peter, joined me. The travel was inspiring and the story of it is contained in the two parts which are the chapters 1 and 24 of this book. In the years after that, I had some time for reflection and continued reading the stories about ships and the sea that ancient Greek writers have to offer. The recount of myth and history, the pieces of art and the fragments of poetry which make the content of this book, illustrate that even though little is known about the ancient Greek seafarer, with study and inspiration some of it can be brought back to life again. I am deeply grateful to all who joined me on the journey to recall them. After the travelogue of our sailing journey to Ithaca, the book continues with a discussion on the ship of Theseus, as that seems to be the logical point of departure for any story on ancient Greece. It is the story of the “theoretical ship”; the ship that is used to sail the journey that is known as a theōriā; a ‘sacred journey’ that leads to the achievement of a mystical vision. The traveler on board of the ship has a vision both on the ship and on where it is going. One thousand year after the journey of Theseus, the execution of Plato’s Socrates was delayed because this same theoretical ship had to stay in port. The weather was too bad for the ship to leave on her annual trip to Delos and while she was in port no executions were allowed. When his followers doubted that this ship was the same ship as the ideal ship in which Theseus had sailed to Delos—because every nail and piece of timber had been replaced since—Socrates answered: “theoretically it is still the same ship”. After that, the theoretical ship stayed the metaphor for ideas that do not die, and the word “theory” started to develop towards its modern meaning. The question of whether an object is still the same object after all its components have been replaced is known as the Paradox of Theseus. The ancient Greek ship and the sea through which it moves, can be the metaphor and metonym for almost everything that is important in life. The concept of the Essential ship is discussed in the context of the fragments of a beautiful kratēr made by the so-called Dipylon Master. The vase—a grave-marker and one of the high points of the Ge-ometric period—is decorated with scenes of a funerary event; a corpse ’s procession showing the deceased passing silently through the streets of Athens on a bier flanked by mourners. Everything suggests that the deceased was a naucraros: a member of the Athenian maritime nobility. The section below the handles of the vase shows an elegant vessel with a slender hull, a curved keel contour and a large stem with horned stem post. The representation of the ship is embedded in a compartmentalized system of metopes and triglyphs and surrounded by the decorative theme of the meander. The artist decided on dimensions, aspect, and relative placement of the various elements on basis of essence rather than in attempt for realistic representation. Everything that matters is reduced to its essential ingredients, and the decorative theme of the meander is the binding element. Next the Sacred ship, the Crowned ship, the Straight-horned ship and other themes are discussed and demonstrated by examples from ancient art and literature. After that, the book continuous the narrative in a chronological way where such a thing is possible. The described geographical locations reach from India in the east, to the Fortunate Is-lands in the west. The recount of the Greek maritime history starts in 594 BCE. The situation for the aver-age person had become extremely grievous. The poor, along with their wives and children, were in slavery to the rich. All the land was in the hands of a few. The time was there for a savior to arise: a strong man trusted both by the poor and the rich and his name was Solon. In his legendary role of lawmaker and mediator, he became the first “people's champion”. Later Cleisthenes—a member of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid clan—assumed leadership over Athens. He is credited with increasing the power of the Athenian citizens' assem-bly and for reducing the power of the nobility over Athenian politics. He installed isonomic institutions—assuring equal rights for all citizens—and became the founding fa-ther of the Athenian democracy. He changed the four traditional tribes of Solon, which were based on family relations, into ten tribes according to their area of residence. A ship was then named for each of the ten tribes that he created. The political structure of Solon’s 48 wealthy ship-commissioners [naukraría] was replaced by a people’s assembly consisting of 50 demarchs. This recount of history culminates in a description of the Persian Wars; a train of events that ends in September 480 BCE, with a decisive Greek victory at Salamis. The victory of the states that had been threatened by the Persian expansion policy was sealed with an agreement on collective defense, whereby its independent member states agreed to a mutual defense in response to a potential repeated attack by the Per-sians. After that the hero of this story is the Athenian Strategos Kimon (510-450 BCE), a con-servative and aristocratic leader. He is remembered for his sound economical insight, and for his support to the development of the fleet and a mostly direct democracy. He was committed to a good relationship with Sparta. He supported the religious values of Athens by having the southern walls of the Acropolis build and by preparing her for the build of the Parthenon and other religious buildings. He supported the rise of the tal-ented radical democrat Perikles as the new leader of Athens, despite he must have re-membered how the father of Perikles, Xanthippes, had prosecuted his own father, Mil-tiades. After the death of Kimon, the Hellenes would not be military successful any-more, but, incited by the popular demagogues, they would instead fight their former allies. Much of what I describe considers the male species of humanity. To compensate for this, I also included the stories of Kalypsō, Pênelópê, Dido, Sappho, Xanthippe, Elpinice and The Women of Troy. They tell us the part of history and myth that Odysseus and Achilles, Kimon and Perikles, Socrates and Aristotle tend to forget in their strife for reason and argumented dialogue [logos]. No one could tell a story like this by his own. At the end of this book, I therefore acknowledge the debt that I owe to all that inspired and supported me on this journey. None of them should be supposed to agree with my arguments, let alone share responsibility for any of my errors or abundancies. I tried to make due reference when I used or paraphrased text written by others.