I am looking forward to
reading this book. from Claude Calame: Choruses of Young Women in Ancient
Greece (Currently I am reading "The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology." Calame has
a piece in the collection I really enjoyed, "Greek Myth & Greek Religion". )
“Choruses” has a rather jam-packed technical introduction. I
hope to follow up with the text where maybe some of the topics in the
introduction at followed up on. Specifically:
- "Aotis as a very hypothetical goddess of the Dawn sometimes identified with Artemis or with Aphrodite" This is an interesting idea. I read some papers on the Eos/Aphrodite connection ages ago. It adds some insight to their sons(s) Memnon's and Aeneas' adventures at Troy. Upon further research “very hypothetical” is accurate. Apparently the theory that there was proto-IE goddess of the dawn name Hausus or Heusos, hasn’t worked out to anyone’s satisfaction.
- I have never read about a Spartan cult of
Aphrodite-Hera?
- “An old wooden image they call that of Aphrodite Hera. A mother is wont to sacrifice to the goddess when a daughter is married.” (Pausanias 3.13.9)
- 1.1.5 homosexual - Sappho at Lesbos - Alcman’s chorus of young girls. I wonder if Sappho doesn’t have way to much influence on what we think about teenage girls in Ancient Greece?
- What is Marxist criticism? I assume this is some sort of literary criticism
- “Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate.” (Wikipedia)
- "Archaic "literature" is never gratuitous, nor does it have the critical dimension of Alexandrian or modern poetry; it is always subject to the demands of the civic community for which it exists; it has to be understood as a social act." Really? Ever story in the Iliad reflects an associated ritual?
- "But since Spartan history has been so idealized and deformed" What?
- “Ethnological and anthropological research
offers the philologist a very precious instrument to interpret”. But
shouldn't we be careful about this tool for literary criticism and close
readings?
In Chapter 2 Calame
actually talks about choruses and points out that most chorus of young girls represent
Artemis’ troop of Oreads. She also acknowledges,
Apollo’s Muses, the Nereids and the Oceanides the accompanied Persephone. (I got to thinking that some of them were the
naiad daughters of Achelous who were turned into the sirens who accompanied her
in Hades.) A couple of her examples
caught my eye.
“The Corinthians, forbidden to take the suppliants
from the temple by force, tried to wear them down by starvation; but the Samians
lifted the Corinthians' siege by instituting a festival in which choruses of
maidens and ephebes carried sesame cakes and honey to the goddess; the children
from Corcyra hid the food and ate it and were thus saved. This ritual was
performed regularly thereafter.”
“After having danced and sung (παιδιὰν καὶ τέρψιν),
they wanted to honor the goddess with an offering in place of a meal, and they
offered her salt. The following year, the offering was not repeated, and the
young people suffered a visitation of cosmic anger (μῆνις) and an epidemic
(λοιμός) sent by Artemis. Since then, the offering of a meal was regularly made.”
Both these ritual represent
a phenomena I call Once and
for Always. Jenny Strauss-Clay (The
Politics of Olympus, 1989) concludes that the opening scene of the HH to
Apollo “portrays both the first epiphany
of the new god on the threshold of Olympus and his eternally repeated entrance
into this father’s house…as he did the first time and as he will forever.”
Particularly in the salt ceremony above, what men saw as temporary, the gods
saw as eternal. And what a difference
perspective made in this case.
I was trying to think of
other chorus, but most do seem dedicated to Artemis. I found this one;
"Maidens, one Nymph of old in Thebes did Athanaia (Athena) love much, yea beyond all her companions, even the mother of Tiresias, and was never apart from her. But when she drave her steeds …often did the goddess set the Nymph upon her car and there was no dalliance of Nymphs nor sweet ordering of the dance, where Chariclo did not lead. (Callimachus, Hymn 5 Bath of Pallas 56 ff)
"Maidens, one Nymph of old in Thebes did Athanaia (Athena) love much, yea beyond all her companions, even the mother of Tiresias, and was never apart from her. But when she drave her steeds …often did the goddess set the Nymph upon her car and there was no dalliance of Nymphs nor sweet ordering of the dance, where Chariclo did not lead. (Callimachus, Hymn 5 Bath of Pallas 56 ff)
