Victim of the muses : poet as scapegoat, warrior, and hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European myth and history / Todd M. Compton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Compton, Todd, 1952-

Series:

Hellenic studies ; 11.

Hellenic studies ; 11

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, Classical--Biography.

Authors, Classical.

Poets, Greek--Biography.

Poets, Greek.

Poets, Latin--Biography.

Poets, Latin.

Scapegoat.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xv, 432 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Washington, DC : Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University ; Cambridge : Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2006.

Summary:

This book, which has relevance both for literary history and comparative religion, probes the narratives of poets who are exiled, tried or executed for their satire. Aesop, fabulist and riddle warrior, is assimilated to the pharmakos - the wretched human scapegoat who is expelled from the city or killed in response to a crisis - after satirizing the Delphians. Other prominent legendary and historical Greek and Roman poets, such as Archilochus, Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Tyrtaeus, Euripides, Socrates, Naevius, Cicero, Ovid, and Juvenal, are also considered in this context.

In much the same way, Dumezil's Indo-European heroes, Starkathr and Suibhne, are both warrior-poets persecuted by patron deities. This book views the scapegoat as a group's dominant warrior, sent out to confront predators or besieging forces. Both poets and warriors specialize in madness and aggression, are necessary to society, yet dangerous to society.

Contents:

The pharmakos in archaic greece

Aesop : satirist as pharmakos in archaic Greece

Archilochus : sacred obscenity and judgment

Hipponax : creating the pharmakos

Homer : the trial of the rhapsode

Hesiod : consecrate murder

Shadows of Hesiod : divine protection and lonely death

Sappho : the barbed rose

Alcaeus : poetry, politics, exile

Theognis : faceless exile

Tyrtaeus : the lame general

Aeschylus : little ugly one

Euripides : sparagmos of an iconoclast

Aristophanes : satirist versus politician

Socrates : the new Aesop

Victim of the muses : mythical poets

Kissing the leper : the excluded poet in Irish myth

The stakes of the poet : Starkaðr/suibhne

The sacrificed poet : Germanic myths

"Wounded by tooth that drew blood" : the beginnings of satire in Rome

Naevius : dabunt malum metelli Naevio poetae

Cicero maledicus, Cicero exul

Ovid : practicing the studium fatale

Phaedrus : another fabulist

Seneca, Petronius, and Lucan : neronian victims

Juvenal : the burning poet

Transformations of myth : the poet, society, and the sacred.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-414) and index.

ISBN:

067401958X

9780674019584

OCLC:

62307761