#jean-pierre vernant

[majestativa]

You deliriously dance the bacchanal of Hades.

— Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Medusa Reader, transl by Thomas Curley & Froma I. Zeitlin, (2013)

[thesorcerersapprentice]

✦ A L T A L U N A & C U C U F A T E ✦ Research

"When Oppian describes the cunning of the fishing frog squatting in the mud, motionless and invisible, he compares it to the fox: ‘The scheming fox (agkulómetis kerdō) devises a similar trick; as soon as it spots a flock of wild birds it lies down on its side, stretches out its agile limbs, closes its eyelids and shuts its mouth. To see it you would think that it was enjoying a deep sleep or even that it was really dead, so well does it hold its breath as it lies stretched out there, all the while turning over treacherous plots (aióla bouleúousa) in its mind. No sooner do the birds notice it than they swoop down on it in a flock and, as if in mockery, tear at its coat with their claws, but as soon as they are within reach of its teeth the fox reveals its cunning (dólos) and seizes them unexpectedly. The fox is a trap; when the right moment comes the dead creature becomes more alive than the living. [….] If the metis of the fox is immediately detectable in its skill at playing dead, it is dazzlingly apparent in this sudden reversal. In effect, the fox holds the secret of reversal which is the last word in craftiness." - Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, pp. 35-36

[obsessioncollector]

What is this being that tragedy describes as a deinos, an incomprehensible and baffling monster, both an agent and one acted upon, guilty and innocent, lucid and blind, whose industrious mind can dominate the whole of nature yet who is incapable of governing himself?

Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd

[citrineandrosmarin]

Athena Hippia / Khalinitis [Excerpt]

Book: Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant

"Of all the places where an 'equine' Athena is worshiped together with the Poseidon who presides over horses, Corinth is perhaps if not the most important at any rate the most interesting."

"The Athena 'of the bit' [Chalinitis] first appears in a society dominated by the Bacciades, a land-owning aristocracy similar to the knights, the hippeis and the hippobotai who are attested in various other Greek cities at this time. The cult addressed to her is set up within a social group of 'knights', 'horsemen' for whom the beast of Poseidon is at one and the same time and instrument of war, an economic asset, a sign of social prestige and a symbol of political power."

"In the sphere of technology over which, as Chalinitis, she presides, Athena's method of operation can be […] contrasted to the type of invention peculiar to Hephaestus. The fact is that the bit […] is a masterpiece produced by a blacksmith and, as such, Hephaestus could well claim it for his own metis. And yet Pindar's myth is quite specific on this point: the bit which Athena gives Bellerophon is not regarded as a product of metallurgy […] It is thought of as a technical object which makes it possible to control a beast of unpredictable reactions. The clue to the mode of operation peculiar to Athena lies in the mythical representation of this instrument: she is the deity who presents to man, in the form of an instrument, a power both technical and magical to wield over the creature of Poseidon."

"[Athena] is a power orientated towards 'artifice' both in the sense of cunning and of technical *adroitness, and secondly because her action intervenes from the outside, is of short duration and is applied to a concrete object which does not belong to her; because she always manifests herself 'at the side', whether it be at the side of Bellerophon or at the side of Poseidon Hippios"

*adroitness: cleverness or skill; prowess; expertise; skill

[radiogornjigrad]

Jean-Pierre Vernant: VASELJENA, BOGOVI, LJUDI [GRADAC – ALEF 52]

Naslov knjige Žan-Pjera Vernana Vaseljena, bogovi, ljudi govori da su mitovi sveobuhvatnost života. U njima je sačuvana tajna stvaranja, odnos bogova prema stvaranju, ali i čovekov položaj na ovom i na onom svetu. Put grčkih mitova vodi od pričâ dadilja (kako je to rekao Platon) do tragedija na antičkim pozornicama. Ali, taj se put nastavio do Šekspira, Rasina i Korneja, da bismo ih ponovo sreli…

[dipnotski]

Jacques Le Goff, Jean-Pierre Vernant – Tarih Üzerine Diyalog (2024)

Fransız tarih ekolünün iki dev ismi arasında tarih üzerine ufuk açıcı bir söyleşi. ‘Tarih Üzerine Diyalog’, Fransa’da Fernand Braudel ve Marc Bloch’un kurduğu “Annales” okulunun yetiştirdiği, Fransa tarihinin iki önemli ismi olan Jacques Le Goff ile Jean-Pierre Vernant’ın 2004 yılında Emmanuel Laurentin eşliğinde France Culture radyosu için yaptığı söyleşilerden oluşuyor. Ortaçağ uzmanı Le Goff…

[fragbot]

For archaic thought, the dialectic of presence and absence, same and other, is played out in the otherworldly dimension that the eidōlon, by being a double, contains, in the miracle of something invisible that can be glimpsed for just an instant.

- from "The Birth of Images," Jean-Pierre Vernant; transl. Froma Zeitlin

[mitskissecondborndaughter]

quitting college to focus on listening to music and also thrifting clothes

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Les Origines de la pensée grecque- The Origins of Greek Thought

Jean-Pierre Vernant - Les Origines de la Pensée Grecque, Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) 1962, republished several times since then. 

" L'ambition [de cet essai] n'était pas de clore le débat par une étude exhaustive mais de le relancer... j'ai tenté de retracer les grandes lignes d'une évolution qui, de la royauté mycénienne à la cité démocratique, et marqué le déclin du mythe et l'avènement de savoirs rationnels. " En quoi consiste le miracle grec ? Quelles sont les innovations ayant marqué ce que nous appelons la pensée grecque et pourquoi se sont-elles produites dans ce monde grec ? Le mérite de Jean-Pierre Vernant est de réaliser une synthèse personnelle et accessible sur un sujet controversé où s'affrontent de nombreux hellénistes. Publié en 1962 dans la collection Mythes et religions, dirigée par Georges Dumézil, l'auteur a lui-même, à l'occasion d'une réédition parue vingt-cinq ans plus tard, réactualisé dans une longue préface certaines de ses interprétations (from the edition of 2013).

Jean-Pierre Vernant's concise, brilliant essay on the origins of Greek thought relates the cultural achievement of the ancient Greeks to their physical and social environment and shows that what they believed in was inseparable from the way they lived. The emergence of rational thought, Vernant claims, is closely linked to the advent of the open-air politics that characterized life in the Greek polis. Vernant points out that when the focus of Mycenaean society gave way to the agora, the change had profound social and cultural implications. "Social experience could become the object of pragmatic thought for the Greeks," he writes, "because in the city-state it lent itself to public debate. The decline of myth dates from the day the first sages brought human order under discussion and sought to define it.... Thus evolved a strictly political thought, separate from religion, with its own vocabulary, concepts, principles, and theoretical aims."

Jean-Pierre Vernant The Origins of Greek Thought, Cornell University Press, 1984

Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914-2007), known with the pseudonym Colonel Berthier as commander of units of the French resistance during WWII, was a French historian and anthropologist specialized in ancient Greece.

[chthonic-cassandra]

hello friend! i have been trawling through your goodreads shelves as i so frequently do, but i have a specific request for recs that i think you might have some answers for and thought i'd go to the source: do you have any book recs for nonfiction about ancient religion?

I do indeed and am glad you asked! I only feel really qualified to recommend books on Ancient Greek religion specifically, but on that topic I have quite a lot:

More general/foundational

foundational to the field at the turn of the century and very important context for the framing of subsequent conversations about Ancient Greek religion is Jane Ellen Harrison. You may want to read more modern things first/instead, but her Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion is sort of where it all begins

Karl Kerenyi is also quite an important voice in the field, and though there are places where his scholarship is notably dubious I think there are things to be gained from his work. Probably try The Religion of the Greeks and Romans

Sarah Iles Johnson has done a bunch of accessible, solidly useful scholarship on ancient religion more broadly, and I think might actually be a realistically good place to start, though her work doesn't feel as intellectually exciting to me personally as a number of other things on this list. Her edited essay collection straightforwardly titled Ancient Religions may give you a lot of what you're looking for.

Yulia Ustinova is another contemporary scholar who has done a bunch of really solidly useful but not stunningly intellectually innovative work in this field. Divine Mania does some useful multidisciplinary stuff.

Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony - this is really a book about mythology and not religious practice, but I mostly just want people to read it.

Marcel Detienne & Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks - I had mixed feelings on this, but it's quite important in the field and probably the Detienne & Vernant mostly concretely focused on religious practice

More specific and fun

Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece - my younger self was so very excited about the release of this book. It's not the most substantive work, but it has a special place in my heart

Barbara Goff, Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece

Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity - this is a history of sexuality book rather than a history of religion proper, but of course it's a lot about religion and also I had roughly a dozen revelations about things while reading it

there should be some Nicole Loraux on this list but I'm not sure which. Maybe Born from the Earth: Myth and Politics in Athens, which is useful particularly on the way the political and the religious were entwined, though you in particular I think should read The Experiences of Tiresias

Bonnie MacLachan, The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry - this isn't really so relevant to your question and is only useful after doing some exploration of the lyric poets first, but I love it and really can't help but recommend it

Georgia Petridou, Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture - same as above; this is more a literary study, but I just personally loved it

Andrej Petrovic & Ivana Petrovic, Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion

Alan Sommerstein & Isabelle Torrance, Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece

Kathy Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity - I think you in particular should read this

I have other more specific recommendations on particular deities and religious centers, but those tend to be drier and this list is long enough. I hope you enjoy this exploration!

[majestativa]

What is this sinister power of enragement that finds its rhythm in the flute, “the music of madness”? The tragic poet supplies the answer: “It is the Gorgon, daughter of Night, and her vipers with their hundred clamorous [iachemasin] heads; it is Lyssa of the petrifying gaze.”

— Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Medusa Reader, transl by Thomas Curley & Froma I. Zeitlin, (2013)

[obsessioncollector]

The sudden rise of the tragic genre at the end of the sixth century, at the very moment when law is beginning to elaborate the concept of responsibility by differentiating, albeit still in a clumsy and hesitant manner, the “intentional” from the “excusable” crime, marks, an important turning point in the history of the inner man. Within the framework of the city, man begins to try himself out as an agent who is more or less autonomous in relation to the religious powers that dominate the universe, more or less master of his own actions and more or less in control of his political and personal destiny. This still hesitant and uncertain experimentation in what was to become, in the psychological history of the Western world, the category of the will is portrayed in tragedy as an anxious questioning concerning the relationship of man to his actions: To what extent is man really the source of his actions?

Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd

[citrineandrosmarin]

🦉Athena Masterpost: Domains🦉

🐍 Masterpost Link 🐍

Last updated: Date of Publishing

Athena, Goddess of…

Metis

As a concept, metis could be translated and understood as meaning “practical wisdom”, “cunning”, “prudence”, “craftiness’ or “skill,” but it is often simply translated into “wisdom.” To many, this word conjures up the image of an old sage, a scholar surrounded by books and full of knowledge. But this was not how metis was conceptualized in ancient Greek culture.

Metis is “a complex but very coherent body of mental attributes and intellectual behaviour which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years." It is an intelligence which is often associated with trickery and deception, adaptability, improvisation, shifting movement, shape-changing, quick thinking and seizing the opportunities at the right moment (kairos). Metis is more focused on getting practical results and success within an activity, not theoretical knowledge, and could be applied to many areas of life: "It may involve multiple skills useful in life, the mastery of the artisan in his craft, magic tricks, the use of philtres and herbs, the cunning strategems of war, frauds, deceits, resourcefulness of every kind."

Metis is also not limited to humans, but also applied to animals, such as foxes, fish and octopuses - animals with ‘cunning tricks’ (dolos) and deceptions that allow them to catch their prey or evade their predators. "The world of duplicity is also a world of vigilance: both the fishing frog squatting in the mud and the octopus plastered to its rock are on the alert; they keep a look out, are on the watch for the moment to act. Every animal with metis is a living eye which never closes or even blinks."

This was the kind of cunning we would associate today with the trickster archetype, not the book-loving sage. Athena was not the only deity to have metis (for example, Zeus is another major one) but this concept is a core part of who she is and influences her other associations and her connections with other deities.

Sources:

“Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society” - Marcel Detienne, Jean-Pierre Vernant

“Athena” - Susan Deacy

🐍Excerpts from “Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society”

Skill: Related to metis in that it’s very practical, with some intuitive sense but also dependent on experience and practice. This can be applied to many areas of life, though in Athena’s case it was often in relation to war, crafts, sailing and invention.

Crafts: Mainly associated with weaving, Athena was also worshiped in the festival of bronze smiths and artisans, Khalkeia. This aspect is very closely related to skill - as the word for both is ‘tekhne’ (τέχνη). This word is also one related to metis and associated words.

Invention: Athena is known as an inventor, with particular inventions being the bridle, plough and aulos. This aspect is also related to metis, craft and skill.

War: Although typically associated with the skills of war, and strategy, Athena was also associated with war in the same way that Ares was - she was ‘dreadful’ Athene “concerned with works of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle.” (Homeric Hymn 11 to Athena)

🐍On the comparison of Athena and Ares

🐍Iliad - Athena dons the Aegis

Civilization, Politics & Justice: Athena in cult was often paired with Zeus, and these two presided over a number of civic institutions, for example the boule (a council that ran the daily affairs of the city) was watched over by Athena Boulaia and Zeus Boulaios. Athena was closely tied to the Athenian state and in myth was also heavily involved in the first criminal trial - that of Orestes.

Hero Mentorship: Athena was often involved in guiding, aiding and mentoring heroes such as Diomedes, Odysseus, Telemakhus, Herakles, Bellerophon and Perseus.

🐍Athena and Herakles Wedding Imagery

Education and Knowledge [SPG]: Athena’s modern associations with education and intelligence come from how she was adapted in post classical times as an allegorical symbol for church-approved virtues of wisdom and justice. The Renaissance furthered this connection, as she became a symbol of the arts, education, science, human excellence, and liberty.

Information Technology [UPG]: My personal UPG, based in part on Athena's associations with invention, civilization and knowledge, and in part on my own understanding of her character and my relationship and practice with her.

[athenaeum-of-the-herald]

Hello! I'm new at Hellenism Polytheist (I hope I wrote that right), english is not my first languague and it's really hard for me to translate everytime. So, I just wanted to ask if you knew some resource in brazilian portuguese? If you don't, it's okay! Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a great day!

Khaire!

Currently I'm trying to expand the Hermes Library with more languages and translations so I'm sorry I don't have more information on them yet. However I did just add 3 new books to the library for Portuguese speaking worshippers:

Arquétipos da Religião Grega de Karl Kerényi

Mito e religião na grécia antiga de Jean-Pierre Vernant; tradução Joana Angélica D'Avila Melo

Religião grega na época clássica e arcaica de Walter Burkert; Manuel José Simões Loureiro

I'll do my very best to add more as soon as possible and other languages as well! Safe travels! ♡

[mask131]

Greek monster myths (1)

Various mini-articles loosely translated from the French « Dictionary of Feminine Myths », under the direction of Pierre Brunel. (You could also translate the title as “Dictionary of Female Myths” – the idea being all the myths centered around women)

Article 1: Gorgô

[Note: this mini-article is distinct from the mini-article about “Gorgons”]

The appearance of Gorgô, at the end of the eleventh chant of the Odyssey, is meant to cause fright – not just to Odysseus himself who is just done with invoking the dead, but also to the audience hearing this rhapsody (the Phaeacians listening to Odysseus’ tale), and to the very listener of the Homeric poem. Gorgô forms the dominant peak of this “evocation of the dead” (nekuia), she is the “chlôron déos”, the “green fear”. Odysseus’ mother, Anticleia, just disappeared back again nto the Hades – the hero wishes to summon other shades, such as those of Theseus and of his former companion Pirithous, “but before them, here is that with hellish cries the uncountable tribes of the dead gathered”. And Odysseus adds: “I felt myself becoming green with fear at the thought that, from the depths of the Hades, the noble Persephone might sent us the head of Gorgô, this terrible monster…” (633-635). It is barely an apparition, it is the possibility of an appearance, but it is enough to terrorize the living.

Jean-Pierre Vernant, in his work “La Mort dans les yeux” (Death in the eyes), establishes the link which ties together Gorgô and Medusa. Because Gorgô is more than a singular unification of the three Gorgons: she is a superlative form of Medusa, she is what happens when her petrifying gaze survives beyond death. By studying the depictions of Gorgô in ancient statues, Vernant establishes two fundamental traits: the faciality, and the monstrosity. He explains that “interferences” take place “between the human and the bestial, associated and mixed in diverse ways”. Maybe Gorgô is, as Vernant suggests, “the dark face, the sinister reverse of the Great Goddess, of which Artemis will most notably be the heir”. But Gorgô is also placed in the function of watchful guardian of the world of the dead, a world forbidden to the living. The mask of Gorgô expresses the radical alterity of Death and the dead.

Article 2: The Graeae

Daughters of Keto and Phorkys (they are thus also called “The Phorcydes”), sisters of the Gorgons, these divinities of shadows, which were born as elderly women and doomed to share one eye and one tooth for all three, appear exclusively in the tale of Perseus and Medusa.

The most ancient mention of the Graeae comes from Hesiod’s Theogony, which only counts two of them and names them Pemphredo and Enyo (Enyo was also the name of a goddess of war within Homer’s Iliad). The third of the sisters appears within a fragment of the Athenian logographer Pherecyde: Deino (“The Dreadful”), later called Persis by Hyginus (in his “Preface to fables”). Other authors, like Ovid, prefer to stick with two Graeae. Hesiod makes a quite flattering portrait of them: he makes them elegant goddesses with a “beautiful face”, even though they were “white-haired (understand “having white hair due to old age”) since birth”. And while their very name means “old women”, the Antique iconography actually follows the Hesiodic model: the depictions of the sisters as disfigured by the effects of time are quite rare… At most the artists will just put a few wrinkles. These mysterious hybrids between youth and old age, virginal seduction and sinister ugliness, finds an echo within a few lines from Aeschylus “Prometheus bound”: “Three ancient maidens, with swan bodies, that share a single eye and a single tooth, and who never receive a look from the shinng sun or the crescent of the night.” Aeschylus had an entire tragedy written about them (Phorcydes) which was unfortunately lost – but Aristotle wrote about it in his “Poetics” and implies that the play insisted on their monstrous aspect, placing them within the legendary area known as “the gorgonian fields of Kisthene”, and closely associating them with their sisters, of which they form a reversed image. Indeed, the Gorgons have a very powerful eyesight which no mortal being can face, while the Graeae have an extreme form of blindness. This trinity of women, old by nature, can also be understood as the antithesis of the three Charites, the Graces which embodied eternal youth.

The Graeae seems to have only a role within the myth of Perseus. And, outside of a few details, this legend does not change much from Pherecyde to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, passing by Lycophron, Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca, and Hyginus’ Astronomy. In all those versions the Graeae are the jealous keeper of the secret path that leads to the Gorgons, and Perseus must steal their eye in order to obtain the knowledge needed to reach Medusa. However, Pherecyde did change an element: according to him the Graeae do not protect the path leading to the Gorgons, but rather the path leading to the nymphs that hold the magical items Perseus needs to fight Medusa.

Due to their limited presence in Greek mythology, the Graeae have quite a poor cultural posterity. In the 19th century Goethe will remember them: in his “Second Faust”, Mephistopheles appears under the guise of “Phorkyas”, a monster with only one eye and one tooth. In the world of paintings, Edward Burne-Jones, who created a true “Perseus cycle”, had a strong interest for them: he worked for a very long time on a painting of the Graeae. Their face is barely visible, but the cloth that wraps itself around their body is menacing ; they are within an arid desert, under a dark sky heavy with clouds – they perform a sinister dance, in a mockery of the Graces. Perseus comes to steal their eyes, and the grey color that invades all the nuances of the picture symbolizes the unique presence of those strange crones, both disquieting and pitiable.

Article 3: Echidna

Echidna, “the viper”, is according to Hesiod the daughter of Phorkys and Keto, themselves born of Pontos, the Sea, and Gaia, the Earth. Echidna’s sisters are female monsters like her: the Graeae, and the Gorgons. Hesiod describes her as having half of the body of a “fair-cheeked nymph”, while the rest of her body is the one of an enormous, big, cruel, spotted and terrible snake which “lies within the secret depths of the divine earth”. Echidna as such belongs to this large mythological family of snake-women, of which the most famous case in France is the fairy Mélusine. But unlike Mélusine, Echidna can never leave the snake-half of her body, and thus a better French heir would be Marcel Aymé’s depiction of the vouivre with her cohort of vipers.

Theodore de Banville, when he imagines Hesiod scolding him for sanitizing Classical mythology, makes of Echidna the symbol of the archaic mythology: he tells him that he is “making a toy out of the history of the gods” by depicting Love as “a sweet child, free of carnivorous appetites, ignored by the Furies and by bloody Echidna”.

Echidna precisely appears as a being led by an amorous desire within Herodotus’ tales, that he claims to have collected among the Greeks of Pontus Euxinus: as Herakles was sleeping, Echidna steals his horses away. She only agrees to give them back if he sleeps with her. When Herakles leaves her, she tells him that she will bear three sons from their union. He advises them to only keep with her one that would be able to bend a bow just like him, and to force the others to leave. She does that, and this favorite son is supposed to be the one that created the Scythian people. This meeting between Herakles and Echidna might be derived from the famous encounters between Herakles and three of Echidna’s other children: the Nemean Lion, the Hydra of Lerna, and Cerberus.

In Aeschylus, Orestes compares his mother, Clytemnestra, to “a horrible viper”. Sophocles has Creon call Ismene, which he believes to have helped Antigone, “a viper that slid in my house against my will to drink my blood”. These examples show a link between the Ancient metaphorical speech, and the mythological allusions. Indeed, only the context can allow us to determine if these authors meant “viper” as a common name, or as a proper name: as “Viper”, “Echidna”. But it confirms the idea that, in Ancient Greece, Echidna is a monster born of an archaic fear of the women, and embodying their supposed perfidy.

[koisuicides]

its the way he never felt like himself. he discovered the truth of his own nature and everyone around him made sure to reaffirm it. it's the way he considered himself as nothing but trash, how his own "father" chose him yet reminded him constantly that he was the worst creation ever. it's his obsession with proving himself better, superior, using the few "good" genes he has as an advantage. and even if he tried, if he escaped his prison being only a child, if he climbed up the ranks, nothing was enough to gain his own name. liquid was never capable of being himself, but what the scientists wanted him to be; a simple weapon, the flawed clone of the best soldier ever.

that's why I think liquid is a tragic character following jean-pierre vernant's theory/statement; it doesn't matter what he chosen, every decision has a fatal consequence.