Structures of care in the Iliad

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 46, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 1-26

  Lynn George, M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; EMOTION; HISTORY; LITERATURE; MOTIVATION; POSTHUMOUS CARE; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGY;

EMOTIONS; FUNERAL RITES; GREEK WORLD; HISTORY, ANCIENT; MOTIVATION; MYTHOLOGY; POETRY; PSYCHOLOGY;

EID: 33644868301     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/46.1.1     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. P. Chantraine, s.v., in Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos (hereafter LfrgE), comp. Bruno Snell et al. (Göttingen, 1955-)
2. Chantraine also suggests the possible additional sense, 'without burial rites'; F. Mawet, Recherches sur les oppositions fonctionnelles dans le vocabulaire homérique de la douleur (autour de) (Brussels, 1979), on the other hand, argues well that more specialized senses (including 'honneurs rendus aux défunts') are later developments from an initial general sense of ' souci, préoccupation' (see pp. 32, 394)
3. For the development of the sense of = 'Bestattung(sritus)', see E. Reiner, Die rituelle Totenklage der Griechen (Stuttgart, 1938), pp. 2-3. Unless otherwise stated, all citations of Greek texts are from the OCT series, and any emphasis in quotations from secondary literature is mine
4. For an earlier consideration of care and in Book 24 see M. Lynn-George, Epos: Word, Narrative and the Iliad (London, 1988), pp. 244ff
5. Pace J. B. Hainsworth, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1992)
6. N. Richardson, in The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 6 (Cambridge, 1993), definès as one of his major aims to give particular attention to 'the unusual', the 'individuality of Homer's language, as an antidote to excessive concern for its formular quality' (p. xii)
7. A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (Oxford, 1974), vol. 2, p. 439
8. Contrast F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, W. Kaufmann (ed., trans.) (New York, 1968), 15-144, p. 43, 'Thus do the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it - the only satisfactory theodicy!' In relation to Achilles' speech one might compare Aeschylus, Agamemnon 369-70, which W. Burkert somewhat oddly locates as the 'first' occurrence of a problem articulated as follows: 'And yet the reciprocity of charis was missing. Who could still say that the divine cares for man, for the individual man? Here a wound was opened in practical religion which would never close again' (Greek Religion, J. Raffan [trans.] [Cambridge, MA, 1985], p. 311 [cf. n. 40])
9. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), pp. 29, 30
10. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction - Reason in History, J. Hoffmeister (ed.), H. B. Nisbet (trans.) (Cambridge, 1975), p. 66, cf. p. 260
11. A. Pope, 'An Essay on Man', line 294
12. J. Bowker, The Sense of God (Oxford, 1973), pp. 114, 115
13. E. Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, étudiée dans ses rapports avec les autres langues indo-européennes, 3rd edn. (Heidelberg, 1938), p. 618
14. See, e.g. C. H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1958), p. 217
15. Hölderlin, 'Homecoming'
16. On the see, e.g. M. O. Knox, 'Megarons and Megara: Homer and Archaeology', CQ 23 (1973), 1-21, 'it is a place regarded as "outside the house"' (p. 9), and LfrgE s.v.
17. M. Haar, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, W. McNeill (trans.) (Albany, NY, 1993), p. 178
18. E. B. Taylor, Anthropology (Ann Arbor, 1960), p. 249
19. cited by M. D. Sahlins, Tribesmen (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), p. 10
20. hence, 'A little more than kin, and less than kind' in Hamlet (I.ii.65)
21. Gould, 'Hiketeia', JHS 93 (1973), 74-103, p. 93 n. 98, 'since the paradigm case of a relationship involving bonds of mutual obligation is that of kinship'
22. cf. I. Anastassiou, Zum Wortfeld' Trauer' in der Sprache Homers (Diss., Universität Hamburg, 1973), pp. 89ff
23. For the sense of the term, cf. also J. Latacz, Zum Wortfeld 'Freude' in der Sprache Homers (Heidelberg, 1966), pp. 117, 121: jm. erweisen'
24. Contrary to the view cited by J. M. Redfield in his final note in Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago, 1975): 'Yet the two men are one only through their shared relation to a doomed and nihilistic world. All else divides them and breeds hatred, envy, and fear. There is compassion, then, but there is nothing to do' (p. 262, Redfield's emphasis)
25. For the argument from comparative philology for the sense 'Sorge für den Fremdling hegend', see P. Thieme, Der Fremdling im Rgveda: eine Studie über die Bedeutung der Worte ari, arya, aryaman und ārya (Leipzig, 1938), p. 158
26. In its interrelating of these two worlds, the heroic and the everyday, the epic significantly stands apart from the general tendency characterized by Nietzsche: 'The excessive and incredible pathos with which we have valorized the most exceptional acts has as its counterpart the absurd indifference and disdain with which we devalue inconspicuous and everyday actions. We are the fools of rarity and have thus depreciated even our daily bread' (Nachgelassene Fragmente, 1880-81, in Nietzsche Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, G. Colli and M. Montinari [eds.], vol. 5, part 1 [Berlin, 1971], p. 400 [my trans.])
27. 'Leben ist Sorgen', Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles, in Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), vol. 61, p. 109
28. For Heidegger the term Sorge ['care'] 'is used in a purely ontologico-existential manner' (Being and Time, J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson [trans.] [Oxford, 1962], p. 237), which excludes some of the more familiar senses considered here
29. cf. Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, T. Kisiel [trans.] [Bloomington, 1985], p. 292)
30. Many have maintained that the hero knows neither fear nor care, and H. Speier in particular, in Social Order and the Risks of War (New York, 1952), argues that Heidegger's concept of Sorge (which he interprets as anxiety) 'is a poignant description of man insofar as he is not heroic' (p. 122)
31. J. Grimm, 'In' and 'In und bei', Kleinere Schriften, vol. 7 (Berlin, 1884), 247-9 and 249-50 respectively
32. Heidegger, Being and Time (n. 50 above), p. 80
33. A. Walde, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, J. Pokorny (ed.) (Berlin, 1930), vol. 1, pp. 514-16
34. cf. G. Curtius, Principles of Greek Etymology, A. S. Wilkins and E. B. England (trans.) (London, 1886), vol. 1, pp. 77-8
35. on this 'vieille famille' of words see also P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1968-80), s.v
36. Sophocles memorably explores these associations to create a prolonged and powerful 'figura etymologica' (J. C. Kamerbeek, in his commentary on The Antigone [Leiden, 1978], p. 82) in the first stasimon of the Antigone, with (333) echoed at the strophe's end by the cognate (341)
37. A. Parry, Introduction to The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry (Oxford, 1971), p. liii
38. E. Benveniste, Indo European Language and Society, E. Palmer (trans.) (London, 1973), 'med- and the concept of measure' (pp. 399-406). One might well be critical of Benveniste's reconstruction of the 'original meaning' of the root (which reads finally very much like an endorsement of his own etymological procedures); his insistence on a divorce between the senses of ruler and protector is refuted by, e.g. the Greek
39. See M. Lynn-George, 'Aspects of the Epic Vocabulary of Vulnerability', Colby Quarterly 29.3
40. E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, W. Trask (trans.) (Princeton, 1953), p. 15
41. Euripides, Hippolytos 1428-9
42. C. Lévi-Strauss, The Origin of Table Manners, J. and D. Weightman (trans.) (London, 1978), p. 507
43. See, e.g. R. Huntington and P. Metcalf, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 46ff
44. W. H. Auden, 'Song for Hedli Anderson'. The sense of irrevocability in Auden's lines is a bitter response to the incongruity which Dodds outlines succinctly in the comment in his introduction to Euripides, Bacchae, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1960): 'To our "Ought" [Nature's] sufficient reply is the simple "Must"' (p. xlv)
45. J. B. White, When Words Lose their Meanings (Chicago, 1984), p. 54
46. cf. A. W. H. Adkins, 'The Greek Concept of Justice from Homer to Plato', CPh 75 (1980), 256-68, p. 262
47. and 'Values, Goals, and Emotions in the Iliad', CPh 77 (1982), 292-326
48. For a recent consideration of this position see T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York, 1986)
49. M. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, R. Manheim (trans.) (New Haven, 1959), p. 197
50. apparently echoing Hegel, 'all the other impalpable unrealities designed in the interest of an everlasting "ought to be" which never is' (The Phenomenology of Mind, J. B. Baillie [trans.], 2nd edn. [London, 1949], p. 289)
51. The statement can be read, outside the specific context of Kant's argument, with poignant force. B. Williams (Shame and Necessity [Berkeley, 1993], p. 152), has recently asserted, 'But metaphysical freedom is nothing - at any rate, very little'. One might note the added qualification. It is not difficult to imagine that, depending upon the degree and the duration of incarceration, that 'very little', 'almost nothing' might even sustain life
52. Phenomenology of Mind (n. 81 above), 'The Ethical World', p. 470
53. Auden, 'Invocation to Ariel'
54. F. Hölderlin, 'In Lovely Blue ...', R. Sieburth (trans.), in Hymns and Fragments (Princeton, 1984). It should be noted that 'kindness' (Freundlichkeit) is, in his translations of Sophocles, Hölderlin's word for Greek charis