Journal articles and book chapters by Matthew P.J. Dillon
Dillon. Festive crowds welcome the god with the piping of the flute 1 'Festive crowds welcome the... more Dillon. Festive crowds welcome the god with the piping of the flute 1 'Festive crowds welcome the god with the piping of the flute, competing with the courageous strength of their limbs.'
Cassandra was a virgin prophetess who, unlike the other prophets (virgin or otherwise) of ancient... more Cassandra was a virgin prophetess who, unlike the other prophets (virgin or otherwise) of ancient Greece, was destined never to be believed or to have her prophecies given credence. Cassandra's role was very much a gendered one, as in ancient Greece, inspired prophecy, in which a prophet gave an oral answer to a question being asked or spontaneously provided advice, was the province of women, while the art of interpreting divine signs was the sphere of men. Cassandra received her gift of prophecy from the god Apollo in return for promised favours. But while the women followers -maenads -of Bacchus were manic, victims of the mania of possession sent by this god, in what sense was Cassandra's prophetic ability maenadic or manic? Why was it that to predict the future women became 'possessed' by a god and spoke direct oral prophecies, while men never spoke the words of a god directly, but learned divination as an art (techne) and had to interpret signs sent by the gods but were never in direct communication with them 1 Ancient sources for Kassandra's prophetic abilities: Aeschylus Agamemnon
‘XENOPHON SACRIFICED ON ACCOUNT OF AN EXPEDITION’ (XENOPHON ANABASIS 6.5.2): DIVINATION AND THE SPHAGIA BEFORE ANCIENT GREEK BATTLES, 2008
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 129.180.1.217 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 08:10:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 'WOE FOR ADONIS' -BUT IN SPRING, NOT SUMMER Pretty Adonis is dying, Kytherea [Aphrodite]. What are we to do? Beat your breasts, girls, and rip your clothes1.
The chorus in Sophocles' Antigone sings of human dominion over the earth and all its creatures, a... more The chorus in Sophocles' Antigone sings of human dominion over the earth and all its creatures, and of how humans have subjugated the earth to their needs. 2 Only amongst some philosophers was there an awareness that the earth and its biosphere was an organic whole, of which humans were merely one part, and that the world was not necessarily created merely for their benefit. 3 That humans were thought of as masters of the environment rather than as existing in a symbiotic relationship with it is clear from Aristotle. 4 The views of Empedokles and Pythagoras attest to a feeling of identification with the nonhuman world, in contrast to the anthropocentricism of the Politics. The Pythagoreans believed in reincarnation: the soul might just as readily take up habitation in a tree as in an animal. To chop down a tree was akin to murder. 5 Empedokles' belief in a cycle of existence including all animate life is attested by the statement, "For already I have been born as a boy and a girl and a bush and a bird and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea". 6 These, however, were surely the views of a minority.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 129.180.
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Journal articles and book chapters by Matthew P.J. Dillon