Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Orientations: the Theogony
- 2 Orientations: the Works and Days
- 3 Overtures
- 4 The origins and nature of mankind
- 5 The two Prometheuses
- 6 Perspectives on gods and men
- 7 Hybrids
- Conclusion: Hesiod and Calchas at Aulis
- Bibliography
- Indexes
7 - Hybrids
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Orientations: the Theogony
- 2 Orientations: the Works and Days
- 3 Overtures
- 4 The origins and nature of mankind
- 5 The two Prometheuses
- 6 Perspectives on gods and men
- 7 Hybrids
- Conclusion: Hesiod and Calchas at Aulis
- Bibliography
- Indexes
Summary
πολλὰ μὲν ἀμφιπρόσωπα καὶ ἀμφίστερνα φύεσθαι, βουγενῆ ἀνδρόπρωιρα, τὰ δʾἔπαλιν ἐξανατέλλειν ἀνδροφυῆ βούκρανα, μεμειγ μένα τῆι ἀπʾ ἀνγρῶν τῆι δὲ γυναικοφυῆ σκιεροῖς ἠσκημένα γυίοις.
Many creatures came forth with double faces and double chests, Cows with human heads, and others on the contrary developed Human form with ox-heads, hybrids,
Furnished with shadowy members, some from males, others with female natures.
Empedocles, fr. 61 DKThe divine and the human constitute the poles of Hesiod's cosmos. The Theogony presents the gods as a product of a genealogical evolution and successive individuation that ultimately achieves a stable telos under the tutelage of Zeus. While taking into account the evolution of mankind to its present state, the Works and Days emphasizes the hic et nunc of the human condition. With violent battles, revolutions, and brutal wiles behind them, the gods’ unchanging present stands in sharp contrast to the everincreasing human subjection to the circles of time. The order of the cosmos emerges both in its coming-to-be and in its achieved form as a system of classification, of categories and hierarchies. Hesiod offers us an insight into the character of that system by his presentation of two types of hybrids who violate those boundaries: the monsters and the heroes. Moreover, these two categories of mixed beings represent two different cosmogonic moments: the monsters arise early in the cosmogonic process and represent a kind of wild efflorescence whose continuation might imperil the final stability of the cosmos. The heroes, on the other hand, come into being at a later stage, after Zeus accedes to the kingship over the gods and after the Promethean settlement separating gods and men.
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- Hesiod's Cosmos , pp. 150 - 174Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003