I.D. Greeks 0005

One might hypothesize a general evolution of “thought” per se, as a vague, ambiguous, ambivalent category of its own standing ‘above’ ‘theology,’ ‘philosophy,’ any kind of political/social unification, systematization of local units touting their own peculiar and particular local laws and traditions into a more inclusive unity recognizing in itself common elements of community. Someone new to Greek mythology is first bewildered and then merely amused by the welter of Olympian gods that seem to have no common theme or purpose whatsoever. Comparatively, then, however one reacts to it, the purported unity of purpose and strategy of discipline in Judaism with its overall historically guiding form of supposed monotheism seems much more impressive whether as threatening to one’s independence or as giving a firm form to one’s life when one cannot provide such oneself. But just as I have indicated there is really a much greater variety of viewpoints with sometimes great gulfs of difference between them in Judaism, Olympian theology actually provides a much more detailed model of how Judaism actually evolved.

First of all, one must be aware there are tremendous extremes in what is so off-handedly described as Greek mythology. We are all aware of the mythical monotheism of Aristotle whereas Richard Bodeus has amply demonstrated that the unmoved mover in Aristotle is much more like a Euclidean theorem positing a point of origin for speculation in physics primarily, only secondarily in metaphysics, and only in tertiary mode in ‘theology.’ One should also take account of what I said about reading Aristotle primarily with what he is knowingly leaving behind rather than what he is supposedly developing toward which, of course, it is totally ridiculous to suppose he knows anything about whatsoever. In that context, the “love” of all things for the unmoved mover cannot be read in a Judaist or Christian or Thomist context but most certainly in the context of the oral poetic traditional ‘physics’ of Empedokles, i. e., as a truly physical attraction. That Aristotle and Plato as well as Socrates expressed agreement with the common mores of proper regard of the gods in general inclusive of verbal support of the laws against sacrilege and atheism is quite true. However, the muted philosophical expression of this is so overwhelmingly obvious many scholars have missed it altogether or dismissed it as mere lip service to common belief. Its proper context, though, is not metaphysics but politics, and that is exactly where they place it. This is very broadly similar to Paul’s compromise of a monotheistic God with the gods of the Greeks demoted to angels and demons. This is the Greek ‘monotheist’ extreme, purely an abstract, even mathematical or even axiomatic expression.

The other extreme is an even more overwhelming plurality and total confusions of gods, the identities of the individual gods, the rites associated with them, and the myths told about them that is found in Pausanias. Merely trying to read his book makes obvious the practical problem of the epic singer going from community to community and presenting a performance that does not outrage the local population. Here is a realistic and pragmatic model for the systematization of ‘theology’ as producing a story that both incorporates in a complementary fashion local traditions fitted by a line of reasoning into a overall unity of belief. This is most obvious in the THEOGONY of ‘Hesiod.’ He literally brings the gods of Mount helicon to Mount Olympus and joins the gods together.

Gregory Nagy presents a fascinating model of dialectical intertwining and political compromise of the authorities of the two most powerful gods under Zeus from an evolutionary standpoint: the older Hermes and the newer Apollo. The public popularity of Apollo over Hermes seems to make him far more opulent. However, it is Hermes that becomes the main “compulsion” to actual Greek thought.

In Homeric diction, the traditional phraseology can reflect rhythmical patterns older than the current norms of the hexameter. Then, too, in the case at hand, the adjective polutropos ‘many turns’ is functioning in place of the generic epithet diiphilos ‘dear to Zeus’, ready-made for the slot uu_uu between B2 and C2. The formulaic nature of this adjective polutropos ‘of many turns’ is made apparent in the HOMERIC HYMN TO HERMES, where we see its placement in exactly the same slot u_uu between B2 and C2 of verses 13 and 439. In both these verses, it serves as the epithet of Hermes, god of mediation between all the opposites of the universe. As mediator between light and dark, life and death, wakefulness and sleep, heaven and earth, and so on, Hermes is polutropos ‘of many turns.’ The application of this traditional Hermetic characterization to Odysseus in line I of Book I in the ODYSSEY, by virtue of it very prominence, sets an overall tone for the multiple (self-)characterizations of Odysseus that will follow in this epic. The second and only other application, in x 330 of the ODYSSEY, revels just as much in particular as the forst application had in general. The immediate context becomes clear when we reexamine the verse in combination with the verse that follows:

You must be Odysseus polutropos [of many turns] about whose

Future coming he used to talk to mr always—the one with the golden rod, the Argeiphontes.

The subject is Hermes, and the speaker is the beautiful witch Circe, whose wiles have just been overcome by Odysseus with the help of Hermes. She actually identifies Odysseus on the basis of knowledge from and of Hermes. Here again, then, we see traditional theme motivating formula, which in turn motivates meter or—if we want to become more specific—the presence of a colon juncture at C2 in verses I 1 and x 330 of the ODYSSEY. Such a minute metrical detail is but a trivial consequence in the overall hierarchy of the traditional epic tradition. As Gerald Else has said of the Greek bards, “their language and their narrative technique has a structure, is a structure, which gives more than firmness to their work. The qualities which Matthew Arnold attributed to ‘Homer’ are in the main a function of the technique.”