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Sons of the Gods,
Children of Earth
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Sons of the Gods,
Children of Earth
i~Ji~Ii~Ii§Ii~mli~JJi@J~ll~li~lJi~i~Ii~!I@ilJ~
Ideology and Literary Form
in Ancient Greece
Peter W. Rose
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
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Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the
Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book
Program.
All photographs by Hubert Walder.
Copyright © 1995 by Cornell University
First paperback printing 2019
The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by
the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at
cornellpress.cornell.edu.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-8014-2425-0 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-5017-4257-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-5017-3769-5 (pdf)
ISBN 978-1-5017-4258-3 (epub/mobi)
Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the
Library of Congress
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For Susan, Jessica, and Daniel
my favorite comrades
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Contents
Preface
IX
Introduction: Marxism and the Classics
The Problem of Methodology in the Study of the
Classics Today 3
Orthodox Marxism 6
After Orthodoxy: Some Unorthodox Marxists 12
Marxizing Alternatives to Marxism 14
Marx and Utopia: The Quest for Realizable Freedom 17
Consciousness, Class, and Doing History 2 I
Marx and Cultural Production 24
Mediation, Hegemony, and Overdetermination 27
Jameson: The Double Hermeneutic and the Utopian Impulse 33
1. How Conservative Is the Iliad? 43
The Form: Determinism by Rhythm, by Mode of Composition,
by Genre 43
The Traditional Poem and a Traditional Worldview? 46
The World in the Poems and the World of the Poems 52
Ideology in the Poems 58
Formulas: Birth and the Conflict of King against King 64
Type-Scenes: Contradictions over Property and Merit 78
Major Story Patterns 82
The Poet and His Audience 89
2. Ambivalence and Identity in the Odyssey 92
Relation to the Iliad, Hesiod, and History 93
Innovations in the Narrative Structure of the Odyssey 98
The Poet in the Poem I 12
Historicizing the Hero's Identity Abroad and at Home 119
Ambiguity, History, and Utopia 139
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Contents
Vlll
3. Historicizing Pindar: Pythian 10 141
Pindar's Place in the So-Called Lyric Age 142
The Problem of Pindar's Politics 15 1
The Epinician Form 159
Toward a Double Hermeneutic of Pythian 10 165
History and the "Inner Logic of the Poem" 182
4. Aeschylus' Oresteia: Dialectical Inheritance 185
The Politics of the Tragic Form 185
Aeschylean Dialectics 194
Justice and Aeschylus' Presentation of Class 197
Sexual Politics and the Aristocracy 221
Politics in the Libation Bearers 232
The Politics of Aeschylean Religion 236
Patriarchy and Misogyny in the Libation Bearers 242
Democracy in the Eumenides 246
Sexual Politics: Vision and Reality 256
Utopian Vision versus Tragic Reality 260
5. Sophokles' Philoktetes and the Teachings of the Sophists:
A Counteroffensive 266
Sophokles and Aeschylus 266
Aristocratic Terminology and the Role of the Sophists 270
Sophistic Anthropology: Three Stages 273
Sophokles' Response: Transforming Anthropology into Drama 278
The Way Out: The Supersession of the Sophists 319
The Athens of 409 B.C. 327
The Utopian Moment 330
6. Plato's Solution to the Ideological Crisis of
the Greek Aristocracy 331
Ideology and History 332
What Crises? 335
Plato's Response: The Form and Structure of the Republic 341
General Characteristics of Plato's Solutions 348
Plato's Discourse of Phusis 351
Phusis and Didache: The Collapse of an Opposition 365
Conclusion 369
Afterword 370
References 375
Index 407
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Preface
I attempt in the Introduction to set forth my critical goals
and presuppositions. It may be helpful, however, if I indicate briefly
here some of my more mundane operating assumptions.
Although I have extensively revised the parts of the text originally
presented separately, I have retained a certain amount of repetition of
critical issues and even of historical data from chapter to chapter in or
der to make each chapter internally coherent. I have tried to limit this
repetition to those critical concepts and data that seem to me essential
to the argument of the individual chapters.
Except where otherwise noted, all translations of Greek cited in the
text are my own, and it may help the reader if I explain my procedures.
Although I have made no effort to retain the original meter or some
modern approximation, in translating poetry I have been at pains to
retain as much as possible of the content and emphases of the original
line units, occasionally using italics to suggest the force of an emphatic
particle in the Greek or an emphatic initial position in a line or colon.
Nowhere am I more painfully aware of the truth of the old cliche
traduttore traditore than in dealing with the language of Aeschylus, in
which the deliberate exploitation of the inherent ambiguities of lan
guage reaches some sort of ne plus ultra. Although at times I have en
vied the complexity that a text like Goldhill's book-length study of the
Oresteia can achieve by not translating-in many cases not even para
phrasing-Greek that is notoriously difficult even for a trained classi
cist, I feel strongly that the advantage of accessibility to the Greekless
reader is well worth the risks of distortion. The field of classical liter-
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x Preface
ature and thought daily demonstrates its capacity to engage the lively
intelligences of an extraordinary range of intellectuals who happen not
to know Greek but are conscientious in their efforts to benefit from the
works of those who do. I have accordingly transliterated all the Greek
terms I cite, but I have not been completely consistent. In the case of
proper names, I have transliterated all but those that struck me as most
familiar in their Latinate form. Even with these I have usually pre
ferred the more Greek k to in names such as Herakles or Kimon, but
c
here too I have not been completely consistent. On this matter we are
still in a transitional phase in which what looks too Latinate or too gra
tuitously pedantic to one reader looks normal to another. My subjective
criterion has been how I find myself pronouncing the name in my
classes. Thus, though I have taught Lattimore's translation of the Iliad
for many years, I still cannot bring myself to say "Achilleus" rather
than "Achilles"-much less write "Akhilleus."
In transliterating Greek I have indicated long e's and o's but have ig
nored long a's, i's and u's. This practice is arbitrary, but it corresponds
to the Greeks' own use of different symbols only for the long e and long
It has, moreover, the advantage of indicating to the Greekless reader
o.
that such important value terms as time, dike, and arete do not end in a
silent e.
Preliminary efforts that culminated in this text were made possible
by an NEH Fellowship in 1979-80. Subsequent released time from Mi
ami University is also gratefully acknowledged. In the course of so long
a project I have incurred many debts from those who read and offered
comments on various drafts of various chapters. If I omit any names
here through oversight, I beg these persons not to perceive the omis
sions as ingratitude: judith deLuce, Walter Donlan, Michael Gagarin,
Peter Green, Mitchell Greenberg, judith Hallett, Britton Harwood, Al
bert Henrichs, Susan jarratt, Frank Knobloch, W. Thomas MacCary,
Steven A. Nimis, Douglass Parker, Charles Segal, Linda Singer,
Georges Van Den Abeele, Nat Wing, Betsy Wing, R. P. Winnington
Ingram, Froma Zeitlin. If at times I have too sharply differentiated my
views from those of these scholars', I can only hope that this too is not
perceived as ingratitude-only as proof of how far they are from any
share in my own errors.
Quite apart from his kindnesses as a reader, Steven Nimis has been
a guide of saintly patience through the Hell of Gutenberg into the Pur
gatory of Microsoft Word.
A special sense of indebtedness and sadness invades me at the
thought that I shall never know the responses, some doubtlessly scath
ing, of three friends now dead who were in varying degrees also men
tors and with whom I so enjoyed discussing and arguing over the Greek
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Prtiface
Xl
texts that are the subject of this volume: Cedric Whitman, Eric Have
lock, and Adam Parry.
My debt to Fredric Jameson is of a quite different order. Encounter
ing his work in the mid-1970s fundamentally changed my conception
of the relation between my political commitments and my pedagogical
and scholarly activities. Some eight years of attending the summer In
stitutes on Culture and Society, of which Fred was a founder and has
remained a crucial component, have confirmed and developed my
sense that there is a broader audience for the issues raised here than
the "community" of classical scholars who previously tended to define
my horizons of the possible. I feel indebted to all the participants at
these institutes but must single out, in addition to Fred Jameson, Paul
Smith, whose special contributions have been instrumental in organiz
ing some of the best institutes and whose rather different critical con
cerns have repeatedly challenged and informed my own. The
friendship of both has been sustaining.
Though it may seem perverse, I thank all the comrades in various
struggles, local, national, and international, whose exhortations and
inspiration over the years have guaranteed that this book was so long
in coming: from New Haven I recall especially Liz Farrell, Bob Cook,
Karin Cook, Dave Dickson, George Johnson, Liz Henderson, Alice
Mick, Henry Tamarin, and Rick Wolff; from Austin, Julianne Burton,
Martin Wiggington, Bobby Nelson, Cam Cunningham, Chris Cun
ningham, Terri Allbright, and Mike Rush; from Santa Cruz, Gill
Greensight, Mike Rotkin, Candace Falk, and Lowell Finley; from Ox
ford, Ohio, Susan Eacker, Joe Napora, Linda Kimball, and Rick Mom
eyer. I believe that even books such as this one ultimately derive
whatever value they may have from lived experience. All these people
and so many more I cannot name have immeasurably enriched mine.
I also express my deep appreciation for the sustained interest and
patient cajoling of Bernhard Kendler. No small part of his help con
sisted in finding such perceptive, challenging, and helpful readers.
Where I have not followed all their many fine suggestions, it has been
with grave qualms. I am well aware how much they have improved this
text. Whoever you are, many thanks! Finally, many thanks to John
Thomas for intelligent and sensitive copyediting.
Some of the following chapters include material adapted from texts
that have previously appeared in print: Chapter 1, "How Conservative
Is the Iliad?" Pacific Coast Philology 13 (October 1978); Chapter 2, "Class
Ambivalence in the Odyssey," Historia 24/2 (1975); Chapter 3, "The
Myth of Pindar's First Nemean: Sportsmen, Poetry, and Paideia," Har
vard Studies in Classical Philology 78 (1974), and "Towards a Dialectical
Hermeneutic of Pindar's Pythian X," Helios, n.s. 9 (1982); Chapter 5,
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