Gods in Livery: Apollo and Aphrodite Disguised as Servants in Tragedy (original) (raw)
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Let us recall a phrase of the French satirist Nicolas Boileau: le Grec, né moqueur. The Greeks were natural born mockers and humorists. Even their mythical tradition, the exalted stories of their powerful gods and sublime heroes, could not escape the inborn derisiveness of the Greek spirit. The burlesque of myth is an age-old phenomenon in Greek culture: funny stories about gods and heroes are included already in the Homeric poems, the earliest written monuments of Hellenic literature. One of the most amusing examples is the famous "deception of Zeus" by Hera in Iliad book 14, an episode of domestic comedy, conveyed in a notably light and playful, even frivolous tone. Hera appears in this tale as a crafty intrigante, full of pretended modesty and well-planned coquetry, effectively using her bodily charms in order to seduce Zeus. And Zeus, the lord of the gods, is reduced to the level of a gullible and impetuous Don Juan: in a memorable display of tactlessness, he boasts of his numerous erotic conquests of other females in front of his own wife, but he ultimately proves unable to control his lust for her and falls into the trap of her feminine guile. In other Iliadic scenes, the so-called "theomachies", in which Olympian gods fight each other on the battlefield, the divine figures are regularly turned into caricatures. Their brawls include much slapstick and broad humour -vivid insults, thrashing, boisterous falls and other trademarks of low physical farce. In the Odyssey the most outstanding example is the song of Demodocus about the adulterous amours of Ares and Aphrodite in book 8.
While many ancient Jewish and Christian leaders voiced opposition to Greek and Roman theater, this volume demonstrates that by the time the public performance of classical drama ceased at the end of antiquity the ideals of Jews and Christians had already been shaped by it in profound and lasting ways. Readers are invited to explore how gods and heroes famous from Greek drama animated the imaginations of ancient individuals and communities as they articulated and reinvented their religious visions for a new era. In this study, Friesen intellectual formulations, narrative constructions, and practices of ritual and liturgy. Through a series of interrelated case studies, the book examines how particular plays, through texts and performances, scenes, images, and heroic personae, retained appeal for Jewish and Christian communities across antiquity. The volume takes an interdisciplinary approach involving classical, Jewish, and Christian studies, and brings together these separate avenues of scholarship to produce fresh insights and a reevaluation of theatrical drama in relation to ancient Judaism and Christianity. Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era allows students and scholars of the diverse and evolving religious landscapes of antiquity to gain fresh perspectives on the interplay between the gods and heroes-both human and divine-of Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians as they were staged in drama and depicted in literature.
Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 17 (2023), 1-13, 2023
The imagined universe of the people of Late Antiquity was heavily populated by gods. Even the broader philosophical trends and monotheistic foundation of Judaism and Christianity had failed to entirely diminish their power. How then did Jews and Christians cope with such a backdrop presence of “other gods”? Earlier research suggested that Jewish attitudes, which found their way into early Christian sources as well, fluctuate between accommodation and rejection. Following analysis of Jewish and Christian Late Antique literary traditions dealing with gods, and more specifically, goddesses, this essay aims to demonstrate that such “fluctuation” resulted – in addition to the extreme positions – in a variety of middle of the road strategies. These strategies point to a keen harmonizing impulse to absorb—via domestication—motifs with mythic religious vitality from the broader cultural repository.
When Gods Don’t Appear: Divine Absence and Human Agency in Aristophanes
2009
Surprisingly few gods appear in the eleven surviving comedies of Aristophanes. This article examines what roles the gods do play when they are present. It further argues that humans with divine attributes often appear in lieu of the gods themselves. These humans, together with the handful of gods who are present, fall into the broad functional categories of helpers and opponents of the comic protagonist. The gods' absence is to be attributed to an Aristophanic conception of human agency, namely that humans in comedy, especially when compared to tragedy, have extraordinary control of their lives. A god's presence would be too great a threat to comic inventiveness.
Anthropomorphism, theatre, epiphany: from Herodotus to Hellenistic Historians
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 20, p. 189-209, 2018
*This paper argues that, beginning with the Euripidean deus ex machina, dramatic festivals introduced a new standard into epiphanic rituals and experience. Through the scenic double énonciation, gods are seen by mythical heroes as gods, but by the Athenian spectators as costumed actors and fictive entities. People could scarcely believe these were ‘real’ gods, but would have no doubt been impressed by the scenic machinery. Thus the Homeric theme of a hero’s likeness to the gods developed into the Hellenistic theme of the godlike ruler’s (or actor’s) theatrical success (or deceit). So in the Athenians’ Hymn to Demetrius Poliorcetes, a victorious ruler entering a city is welcomed as a better god than the gods themselves. The simultaneous rise in popularity of paradoxical stories and experiences in the Hellenistic period was grounded not in believing, but in disbelieving – a phenomenon associated with antiquarian interests, the self-publicity of religious sanctuaries, or amazed credulity. People were increasingly drawn to ‘real’ gods, leading to long pilgrimages and extensive financial outlay (in the mysteries) in order to see them. I investigate this phenomenon by focusing upon fragments of the ‘mimetic’ or ‘tragic’ Greek historians that survive from this period.