2020.07.24 | By Stan Burgess
§0. There have been many recent studies of various aspects of anger
in Greek culture, from Homer through the Hellenistic period, and beyond.
However few have examined the role anger plays in the
Argonautica.
There right away a striking curiosity concerning anger stands out.
Apollonius of Rhodes avoids the most common term of his day for anger,
ὀργή. Through the Classical period and into the Hellenistic, ὀργή became
the predominant word for anger. In fact, it is this word and concept
for anger that Aristotle analyzes and defines in the
Rhetoric.
When the Stoics in the Hellenistic period write about anger, it is ὀργή
that is their primary concern. But not once does it occur in the
Argonautica,
which otherwise is replete with anger. Is this perhaps to avoid
anachronism? The term ὀργή does not occur at all in Homeric epic either.
Since Apollonius’s setting is in the Heroic age, does he avoid the term
to make the
Argonautica seem archaic and epic, and/or to fit the genre, even though he avoids many other epic conventions? To the extent that the
Argonautica
also cloaks concerns of his own Hellenistic culture in epic dress, his
preference for epic anger vocabulary, the nouns μῆνις, χόλος, and κότος,
and their denominative verb forms, invites exploration. The rich
specificity of each of these terms provides Apollonius a way to frame
different levels of social severity inherent in the situations in which
the terms occur. One size doesn’t fit all.
[
Essay continues here…]
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