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Chapter 3 - In the Beginning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2020

Simon Goldhill
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

First words, we know, matter. The Iliad’s mênin, ‘wrath’, the Odyssey’s andra, ‘man’, set the thematic focus of the narrative to come, the central question of each epic. What is more, the Odyssey’s silence in its opening sentence about the name of its hero and its periphrastic concealment and revelation of its subject is itself programmatic, in its form, for its hero’s performative strategies of deception as well as the narrative’s engagement with the ethics of identity.1 Homer’s beginnings are echoed and transformed throughout Greek writing. Sophocles’ Antigone – tragedy is a machine for rewriting Homer for the fifth-century polis – opens with Ô koinon, ‘O shared’: and the play goes on obsessively to dramatize not just the conflicting claims of commonality in the city and family, but also the dangerous power of the appeals to such commonality.2 Euripides memorably starts his Medea, eith’ ôphelon mê, ‘If only not’, and the play never escapes the lure of the counterfactual narrative, the wishing things were otherwise.

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Preposterous Poetics
The Politics and Aesthetics of Form in Late Antiquity
, pp. 71 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • In the Beginning
  • Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Preposterous Poetics
  • Online publication: 27 August 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108860024.004
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  • In the Beginning
  • Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Preposterous Poetics
  • Online publication: 27 August 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108860024.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • In the Beginning
  • Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Preposterous Poetics
  • Online publication: 27 August 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108860024.004
Available formats
×