The paper examines the surviving references to the setting of the rapes in New Comedy. It argues that the fact that rapes are commonly set in the course of nocturnal festival activities should not be seen merely as a convenient plot device. By using Menander's Epitrepontes as a case study, the paper suggests that there is a close relationship between the character of the festivals where rapes are set and a major theme in the plays themselves: namely, the maturation of (...) the young protagonists and their transition into adulthood. The paper also offers a reassessment of the evidence we have for the Tauropolia—the Attic festival where the rape is set in the Epitrepontes. (shrink)

L’histoire étudiée est celle, bien connue, de l’enlèvement de Korê, jeune fille arrachée avec violence à sa mère Déméter par son futur mari Hadès, roi des Enfers. Ce récit a traversé les siècles dans des versions successives, de la Grèce archaïque à la romanité tardive. Dans cet article, l’objectif est d’identifier dans les discours et les images en quoi ils mettent en scène une prise de corps brutale et un arrachement au monde sécurisé de l’enfance. La méthodologie croise une perspective (...) littéraire et une approche d’anthropologie historique qui permet de montrer comment, tout au long de l’Antiquité, le passage vers l’inconnu de la relation sexuelle est à la fois euphémisé ou conté et contourné par la métaphore, légitimant l’ordre du monde, dominé par la puissance masculine sur les femmes et par celle des dieux sur les humains. (shrink)

en La présente étude entreprend de réévaluer la figure de la déesse Perséphone telle qu’elle apparaît dans une partie du corpus des lamelles funéraires en or. Il s’agit de montrer que l’importance régionale de la Perséphone de Locres a contribué à la représentation de la déesses dans les lamelles destinées à être utilisées en Grande Grèce. Des représentations mythiques et cultuelles sur les tablettes en terre cuite (pinakes) dédiées à cette déesse révèlent non seulement une « reine chtonienne », mais (...) aussi une divinité concernée par les sphères du mariage et de la naissance. Ces compétences entrent en résonance avec les notions de transition et de renaissance attestées dans les textes des lamelles d’or. Grâce à son importance régionale, la Perséphone de Locres fonctionnait comme une figure familière, capable d’ancrer dans le terreau existant des croyances locales l’expérience nouvelle et individuelle de l’initiation exprimée sur les lamelles. (shrink)

With the notable exceptions of Jan Bazˇant and Paul Harvey, most scholars subscribe to the idea that the representational scenes on Greek vases fall into one of two main categories: either myth or "genre," whose frame of reference is everyday life. This article challenges this distinction and makes a plea for its abandonment.

This article analyses the remains of the seventh-century epic known as the "Kypria" from literary as well as iconographical perspectives. The literary study of the "Kypria" includes a provisional reconstruction followed by a defense of the poem against many critics, beginning with Aristotle, who have found it tediously linear and unsophisticated. The "Kypria" apparently made artful use of catalogues, flashbacks, digressions, and predictions as traditional sources of epic poikilia. The second part of this study examines several instances in which the (...) "Kypria" influenced representational art of Archaic Greece. Study of the iconographical tradition often yields details which may be retrojected into the poem, albeit with varying degrees of certitude. The influence of the "Kypria" on the iconography of Greek art, especially pronounced considering the greater overall prestige of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is explained on the basis of the themes and purposes of the cyclic poem. First, the "Kypria" was so often translated into the visual medium because of the high number of potentially interesting subjects which it offered to artists. Second, Proklos commented that the poems of the epic cycle were later preserved less for their literary quality than for the concatenation of epic events which they preserved. In choosing to transfer this poetic tradition to their own media, archaic artists simultaneously evoked the powerful causality of the poem and, more importantly, alluded to the larger story of the Trojan War. (shrink)

The conflict between Prometheus and Zeus has long dominated critical discussion of the play and diverted attention from the only mortal to appear onstage. Prometheus is widely applauded as humanity's saviour and Zeus condemned as an oppressive tyrant, but the fate of the maiden Io is largely discounted. Her encounter with Prometheus, however, is the longest and most complex episode in the play, and it provides a very different perspective on events. The elaborate forecast of her journeys delivered by Prometheus (...) deploys the ‘discourse of barbarism’ to picture a primitive world ravaged by savage violence and hostile monsters. The lands through which Io is to travel are devoid of the civil and religious institutions of the classical Greek polis and oikos. Yet the episode also foretells how this barbaric world will evolve under the aegis of Zeus. Argive Io, as ‘wife’ of Zeus, will found a ‘new family’ of mortals who will introduce and champion the norms of Greek civic culture in his and her name alike. Prophecy, allusion and foreshadowing thus reveal the Zeus of this play to be not the harsh and destructive despot imagined by most today, but the benevolent source and ultimate arbiter of justice for both gods and humanity. (shrink)