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Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Transformation of the Classical Heritage) PDF

381 Pages·1992·91.69 MB·English
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Preview Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Transformation of the Classical Heritage)

ROBERT LAMBERTON / ^ ) ^ > Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition T H I THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE Peter Brown, General Editor I Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity by Sabine G. MacCormack II Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher-Bishop by Jay Bregman III Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity by Kenneth G. Holum IV John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century by Robert L. Wilken V Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man by Patricia Cox Copyrighted material VI Pachomius: The Making of a Community In Fourth-Century Lgypt by Philip Rousseau VII Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries by A. P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein VU1 Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul by Raymond Van Oam IX Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition by Robert Lamberton X Procopius and the Sixth Century by Averil Cameron XI Guardians of the Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity by R. A. Raster Copyrighted material HOMER THE THEOLOGIAN Copyrighted material The Title Page of Chapman's Odyssey (1614?) Copyrighted material ROBERT LAMBERTON HOMER THE THEOLOGIAN Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London Copyrighted material This book is a prim-on-demand volume. It is manufac- tured using loner in place ol ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England First Paperback Printing 1989 © 1986 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lamberton, Robert. Homer the theologian. (Transformation of the classical heritage; 9) Bibliography: p. Includes index. Homer—Religion and ethics. ?.. Homer—Allegory and symbolism. 3. Religion in literature. 4. Allegory. 5. Neoplatonism. 6. Epic poetry--History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. PA4037.L32 1986 883'. 01 85-1184 ISBN 0-520-06622-7 (alk. paper) Printed in the Lnitcd Stales of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (K 1997) [Permanence of Paper). @ Copyrighted material CONTENTS PR Κ F AC fi Vil ACKNOWI.KOGMENTS ΧΪΪί LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS XV I THE DIVINE HOMER AND THE BACKGROUND OF NEOPLATONIC ALLEGORY ι A. Homer's Pretensions ι B. Interpretation, Allegory, and the Critics of Homer ID C. Homer as Theologos 22 D. The Pythagoreans 31 Π MIDDLE PLATONISM AND THE INTERACTION OF INTERPRETIVE TRADITIONS 44 A. Philo of Alexandria 44 B. Numenius 54 C. Clement and Origcn 78 III PLOTINIAN NEOPLATONISM 83 A. Plotinus 83 B. Porphyry 108 C. Julian and Sallustius 134 IV THE INTERACTION OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION AND DELIBERATE ALLEGORY 144 Copyrighted material VI CONTENTS V PROCLUS 162 A. introduction 162 Β. Language as a System of Meaning 164 C. Myths or Texts? (74 D. The Major Exegesis of Homer in the Commentary on the Republic 180 E. The Meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey 197 VI THE TRANSMISSION OF THE NEOPLATONISTS' H O M E R TO THE LATIN MIDDLE AGES 233 A. The Paths of Transmission 233 B. The Arabic Tradition 236 C. The Greek East 241 D. The Latin Tradition 249 E. The Late Middle Ages and Dante 282 AFTERWORD PRECONCEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING: THE ALLEGOR1STS IN MODERN PERSPECTIVE 298 AP P E N D I X I A n Interpreta t ion of the M o d e s t Chariclea from the Lips of Philip the Philosopher. 306 APP E N D I X 2 Proclus's Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, 1.341.25343.15. 312 A P P E N D I X 3 A Sampling of Proclus's Use of Homer. 315 APPENDIX 4 The History of the Allegory of the Cave of the Nymphs. 319 WORKS C I T E D : A N C I E N T AND MEDIEVAL AUTHORS 325 M O D E R N AUTHORS 330 A N C I E N T AND MEDIEVAL PASSAGES CITED 341 INDEX OF GREEK TEKM5 3 5 3 GENERAL INDEX 3 5 5 Copyrighted material PREFACE The Homeric poems provide our eaïliest direct insights into the religious thought of the Greeks, and, with few interruptions, the presence of Homer in the Greek religious imagination, pagan and Christian, re- mained continuous until the decline of the Byzantine church in the late Middle Ages. Indeed, when we find Nikolaos Mesa rites, a metropolitan of Ephesus early in the thirteenth century, describing a striding image of St. Paul in a mosaic at Constantinople with a phrase borrowed from a description of a Homeric hero (θέα µοι τούτον µακρά βιβώντα) and bor- rowing from the Homeric chimaera the qualities to describe the teach- 1 ings of the Apostles (τούτων ai δίδαχαί πνέονσι µένος πνρός), it is clear that for the Creeks not only the myths but the very diction of Homer never ceased to be a part of that highly charged realm of imaginative ex- perience that is the province both of poets and of religious thinkers. Nevertheless, the relationship of the Homeric poems to the various conceptions of divinity successively articulated in the Greek tradition between the sixth century B.C. and the Christian Middle Ages was never a comfortable one. It is surely one of the great and characteristic ironies of Greek intellectual history that, at the source of the tradition and at the dawn of Greek literacy, we find in full bloom a tradition of oral poetry apparently so utterly secularized, irreverent, and disillusioned that the gods could be used for comic relief. As has often been noted, Homer has a gTeat deal in common with his Ionian compatriots of the sixth century, whose rationalism was to pave the way for the effective demythologizing of Greek metaphysical thought in the fifth and fourth. i. G. J. M. Bartclink, "Homerismen in Nikolaos Mesarites' Beschreibung der Copyrighted material

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