Nostalgic glimpses in search of the Three Musketeers of 10 rue Monsieur-le-Prince
2019.05.17 | By Gregory Nagy
§0.In this exercise, which can perhaps best be described as a kind of retrospective, I attempt to recover what are by now no more than glimpses of a lost era in which I too had participated once upon a time in my own past, though mostly on the sidelines. I must admit from the start, however, that I am no longer able to build for that era long gone any relevant model of “periodization”—except by way of a dusty bibliographical detail. Looking backward in time, I have in mind here a book, published in the year 2001 by The New Press in a series of books bearing the overall title of Postwar French Thought, the Senior Editor for which was Ramona Naddaff. The book, which was Volume III of that series, had its own title: Antiquities. The other day, I pulled this book off the shelf and, dusting it off, I started to re-read. My re-reading, as I discovered to my utter delight, brought back to life in full vibrant color the intellectual thrill of tracing the many different discovery procedures of French thinkers whose writings, translated into English, were included in this book documenting their engagement with “antiquities,” especially with the ancient Greek world. Hovering above my introductory paragraph here are pictures of four of those thinkers, who happen to be the focus of what I have to say in what follows. I have chosen photographs that approximate how they looked back when I was first getting to know each one of them personally. But why are there four pictures featured and not three, corresponding to the playful title of this nostalgic exercise? My answer to that question will be part of my whole story here.
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On Herakles as a model for the athlete Milo of Croton
2019.05.10 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. The death of my friend Marcel Detienne on March 21, 2019 has been a very sad loss. Included among the many who mourn this loss are those devoted colleagues of his who follow his lead in pursuing comparative studies that combine the disciplines of classics and anthropology. Marcel had been ailing for some time, and I, as one of those colleagues whom I just described, wrote a small essay, Nagy 2018.10.11, in an attempt to cheer him on. Now that he is dead, I feel the need to cheer myself, conversely, by writing another small essay here. In this essay, as in the previous one, I recall examples of the intellectual legacy left behind by this prodigiously creative thinker. And there are so many examples to recall. I start somewhere, anywhere, by offering some thoughts inspired by an article published by a young Detienne, back in 1960, concerning Herakles as a model hero for the followers of Pythagoras. And I will concentrate on the athlete Milo of Croton, who, as Detienne shows, modeled himself on Herakles as a “Pythagorean hero.”
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Can we think of Centaurs as a species?
2019.05.03 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. Ιn three previous essays posted in Classical Inquiries, 2019.04.26, 2019.04.19 and 2019.03.22, I analyzed myths about Centaurs. Since they were pictured as half-man and half-horse, we could nowadays think of them as monsters. And, in terms of what we see in pre-classical and classical representations of Centaurs, such monsters were exclusively male, exhibiting the shaggy hormonal characteristics of exaggerated human maleness. Accordingly, Centaurs could hardly be viewed as a species of animals—or, let us say, of half-animals. In post-classical representations, however, as noted by Jan Bremmer (2012:26, 29) in the course of his detailed survey of relevant testimonia about such monsters, we start seeing female Centaurs as well. So, maybe Centaurs were eventually perceived as a species after all? Such a perception persists into modernity, culminating almost absurdly in the image of the “Centaurettes” featured in Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940). A closer look at the theriomorphism or beastly form of the Centaurs, however, reveals that even in pre-classical times there existed representations of female monsters who were half-woman and half-horse. My favorite example is a Boeotian incised decoration, dated to the seventh century BCE, picturing Medusa the monstrous Gorgon as half-woman and half-horse. But is this female monster really a Centaur? In formulating an answer to this question, I will need to reassess my understanding of the relationship between myth and ritual in Greek traditions.
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How to be a good Centaur
2019.04.26 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. In today’s popular thinking, it is all too easy to assume that the Centaurs of Greek mythology are bad, one and all. And such an assumption seems justifiable when we consider the myths that I analyzed in two previous essays posted in Classical Inquiries, 2019.04.19 and 2019.03.22. Yes, Centaurs must be bad, since they are misfits who disrupt society. But the whimsical question posed in the title of this essay, “how to be a good Centaur,” challenges the assumption that all Centaurs are bad. I will argue that Centaurs in myth can in fact be good so long as they are not in a group—so long as they are not members of a gang. To be good, a Centaur must be solitary. A prime example is the Centaur named Cheiron, who becomes a mentor of Achilles, initiating the boy hero into adulthood. While the myth about this solitary Centaur is obviously a positive model of initiation, I will argue for something more, something that is far less obvious: there is a complementarity to be found in myths about Centaurs as a gang. Such myths, in anthropological terms, are negative models of initiation, and they actually complement the positive models.
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About a defeat of the Centaurs, and how to imagine such an event in Olympia
2019.04.19 | By Gregory Nagy
§0.This posting, written 2019.04.19, picks up from where I left off in Classical Inquiries 2019.03.22, rewritten 2019.04.17. In the last paragraph of that posting, I focused on a myth that told about a defeat of the Centaurs, beastly hominoids who were half horse, half man. Such a mythological event is pictured in the sculptures of the west pediment of the temple of Zeus in Olympia, created around the middle of the fifth century BCE. And I have a basic question to ask about the picturing of this event: in our own reading, as it were, of the pedimental sculptures, who exactly were the mythological characters who defeated the Centaurs? In other words, how are we to imagine this primal event?
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Fighting for survival
2019.04.12 | By Muriel Rouyer
I am a professor of Political science (teaching two courses at the Harvard Kennedy School, on Global Europe and Green politics and Public Policy in a Global World). Within the space of two days, I discovered the existence of the Tree Corps, founded by Roosevelt during the New Deal in 1934 (see the accompanying pictures) and the Oath of the Ephebes, kindly revealed to me by Gregory Nagy, met by chance on the campus while plotting with Nicolas Prevelakis some exciting green projects. Coincidence or sign of destiny? We’ll see…meanwhile, this encounter has inspired me to compose this little piece, kindly hosted by Classical Inquiries. I hope it conveys the deep concern I have, as a citizen of a warming planet, mother of two, and professor of political science, for the world we live in and leave in share to the newcomers, but also the strong hopes and moral resources found in the example and the philosophy of the Ancient, to address our world’s most pressing issue.
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