"Un oracle relatif à l'introduction du culte de Cybèle à Athènes", Kernos 7 (1994), 169-77 (original) (raw)
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« De Thalès à Anaxagore. Les Ioniens à l'école des dieux ». Kernos, 30 (2017), p. 37–65.
Kernos , 2017
À partir d’une anthropologie historique des témoignages sur « l’école ionienne », cet article tente de discuter l’idée, encore dominante dans l’historiographie courante de la philosophie, d’une « naissance de la philosophie » en Ionie au VIe siècle, coïncidant avec un passage du « mythe à la Raison », du « religieux » au « scientifique ». Le savoir-sagesse des « Ioniens », y compris dans ses aspects que nous définirions comme « rationnels », ne peut se pratiquer que dans la dépendance des dieux.
In the broader context of the debate on the nature of the “myth”, I have studied the way the Athenians used their traditional narratives during the renewal of the Pythaïs – an athenian festival worshipping Apollo in Delphi. This study attempts to reconstruct the self-representation that the city gave in the sanctuary of Delphi, through the few literary sources that remain. It turns out that this self-representation was based on the use of different discourses, that we call “mythical”, and that were performed during the rituals. This “mythological” tinkering was not a simple argumentative trick to serve the political propaganda of the city, but a real updating and recreation of traditional stories, that gave them a sacred value. In fact, the hymns in honor of Apollo which were especially composed for the procession during the Pythaïs have created a new attic version of the apollonian “myth” from two former discursive traditions. The “mythological” creation with which the hymns emphasized the link the city wanted to make between the sanctuary of Apollo at Delos and at Delphi went together with a political and cultural propaganda. At the same time that they renewed the Pythaïs, the Athenians restored two others festivals worshipping Apollo –the Pyanepsia and the Thargelia- where more attention was paid to ritual practices which emphasized the cathartic role of Apollo. The “mythological” content of the Pythaïs hymns, as well as some of the ritual practices, suggest that this same cathartic function of the god was central to these three festivals. This helps us understand the status of the narratives we call “mythology”. These narratives in the Pythaïs do not differ by nature from those of the scholars that nourished the mythographers’ books through which the Athenians could renew the festival. They became effectively sacred in being performed in a context of rituals of communication with the sacred world, without being cut off from the rest of the scholarly narratives that could serve to remind the political and cultural power of the city.