Dr. Carman Romano, Visiting Assistant Professor of Greek, Latin and Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr
A Classical Studies Department Colloquium. In-person attendance at 402 Cohen. Coffee and cookies 30 minutes beforehand, 2nd floor lounge.
Abstract
“I show that the poets of the Theogony and of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter play with the emotional conventions of epiphany to mark, respectively, Hesiod and the kings of Eleusis as competent and powerful religious specialists. Hesiod and the hymn’s poet represent these mortals, first, as unemotional in direct confrontation with deities. Such divine entities are usually adept at manipulating mortals’ emotions, and are able to rouse intense feelings, both positive and negative, with their self-revelations to heroic and non-heroic people alike. Hesiod and the kings’ non-reaction to direct contact with the divine is thus striking on its own. Moreover, the poets insist that Demeter and the Muses leave the kings and Hesiod with, respectively, “rites” and a “staff” that are able to rouse feelings in other mortals that are akin to those felt by people during typical epiphanic scenes. Specifically, these feelings are “awe” in the hymn and “wonder” in the Theogony. Hesiod and the kings, then, are not represented as emotionally reactive to epiphany in the way that mortals, especially non-heroic ones, usually are in early epic. Instead, they stoically withstand such an experience and then appropriate the gods’ ability to evoke such feelings. Such representations mark Hesiod and the kings as uniquely competent in negotiating matters divine, and so would have instilled confidence in these religious experts for the mortal audience listening to these poems’ performance.”