A rchive Date
[ 19-01-2017 ]
Category
[ Philosophy ]
sub-Categoy
[ Greek ]
|
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaerephon
Chaerephon
470-460 – 403-399 BCE), of the Athenian deme Sphettus, was an Ancient Greek best remembered as a loyal friend and follower of Socrates. He is known only through brief descriptions by classical writers and was "an unusual man by all accounts",[1] though a man of loyal democratic values.
Life:
Chaerephon is mentioned by three writers of his time, all of whom were probably well acquainted with him: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato. Considered together, these sources suggest that Chaerephon was a well-known, alert, energetic, engaging individual, possibly with a distinctive physical appearance and probably a bit of a "character", who moved easily in the social and intellectual circles of the day.
Aristophanes:
Chaerephon appears in three of Aristophanes' comic plays: The Clouds, The Wasps, and The Birds. The Clouds, produced in 423 BCE, portrays Socrates and his assistant Chaerephon as a pair of charlatans operating a pseudo-scientific school in Athens. Chaerephon is represented in The Clouds as pale and malnourished, a "living corpse", and it is sometimes inferred that he must have been a thin, unhealthy looking fellow in real life.[2] In The Wasps Chaerephon, or some visual caricature of him, has a brief, non-speaking role as an impartial witness. In The Birds he is nicknamed "the bat", possibly alluding to nocturnal habits, a bony appearance, or a sudden, excitable nature (as suggested in Plato's works, below).
Xenophon:
In his Memorabilia Xenophon includes Chaerephon in his list of the "true companions" of Socrates. Also in the Socratic inner circle, according to Xenophon, were Crito, Hermogenes, Simmias of Thebes, Cebes of Thebes, Phaedondes, and Chaerephon's younger brother Chaerecrates, although Xenophon acknowledges that there were others. Later in the Memorabilia, Xenophon recounts an exchange between Socrates and Chaerecrates on the occasion of a falling-out between the brothers. Socrates argues persuasively that Chaerecrates should make every effort to achieve a prompt reconciliation with his older brother Chaerephon.
Plato:
In Plato's Apology, an account of the Trial of Socrates in 399 BCE, Socrates calls Chaerephon his longtime friend and the friend of many present. Socrates says that Chaerephon is now deceased but indicates that his brother is in attendance at the trial. Socrates suggests that Chaerephon had a reputation for being impetuous and we learn that it was Chaerephon who journeyed to Delphi to ask the Delphic oracle who was the wisest of men. (The oracle replied that there was none wiser than Socrates.) Socrates also alludes to a period of exile which was endured by Chaerephon and some others present. This is sometimes taken as evidence that Chaerephon, unlike Socrates, was an active supporter of the Athenian Democracy and was persecuted on this account when the democracy was temporarily deposed after the defeat of Athens by Sparta.[3]
Chaerephon appears in two other Platonic dialogues: the Charmides and the Gorgias. At the start of the Charmides, Socrates returns to Athens from the military campaign at Potidaea and is greeted with great enthusiasm by Chaerephon who is described as "a wild man". This campaign concluded in 430 BCE (3 years before Plato's birth and 31 years before Socrates' death), but Plato is probably accurate in depicting the association of Chaerephon and Socrates as already well established. At the start of the Gorgias, Chaerephon and Socrates arrive late at an Athenian gathering for an evening of conversation with Gorgias, a famed Sophist. Socrates good-naturedly blames their lateness on Chaerephon, who chatted too long in the Agora. Chaerephon then says that Gorgias is a friend of his and, with some coaching by Socrates, he serves satisfactorily as Gorgias' initial interlocutor in the early part of the dialogue.
Origins of the Oracle
The 8th century reformulation of the Oracle at Delphi as a shrine to Apollo seems associated with the rise in importance of the city of Corinth and the importance of sites in the Corinthian Gulf.[10]
The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, ca. 580-570 BCE.[11] It describes in detail how Apollo chose his first priests, whom he selected in their "swift ship"; they were "Cretans from Minos' city of Knossos" who were voyaging to sandy Pylos. But Apollo, who had Delphinios as one of his cult epithets,[12] leapt into the ship in the form of a dolphin (delphinos). Dolphin-Apollo revealed himself to the terrified Cretans, and bade them follow him up to the "place where you will have rich offerings". The Cretans "danced in time and followed, singing Ie Paieon, like the paeans of the Cretans in whose breasts the divine Muse has placed "honey-voiced singing".[12] "Paean" seems to have been the name by which Apollo was known in Mycenaean times.
Organization of the Oracle
Personnel
Though little is known of how the priestess was chosen, the Pythia was probably selected, at the death of her predecessor, from amongst a guild of priestesses of the temple. These women were all natives of Delphi and were required to have had a sober life and be of good character.Although some were married, upon assuming their role as the Pythia, the priestesses ceased all family responsibilities, marital relations, and individual identity. In the heyday of the oracle, the Pythia may have been a woman chosen from an influential family, well educated in geography, politics, history, philosophy, and the arts. During later periods, however, uneducated peasant women were chosen for the role, which may explain why the poetic pentameter or hexameter prophecies of the early period, later were made only in prose. The archaeologist John Hale reports:
“the Pythia was (on occasion) a noble of aristocratic family, sometimes a peasant, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes a very lettered and educated woman to whom somebody like the high priest and the philosopher Plutarch would dedicate essays, other times who could not write her own name. So it seems to have been aptitude rather than any ascribed status that made these women eligible to be Pythias and speak for the god.”
The job of a priestess, especially the Pythia, was a respectable career for Greek women. Priestesses enjoyed many liberties and rewards for their societal position, such as freedom from taxation, the right to own property and attend public events, a salary and housing provided by the state, a wide range of duties depending on their affiliation, and often gold crowns.[24]
During the main period of the oracle's popularity, as many as three women served as Pythia, another vestige of the triad, with two taking turns in giving prophecy and another kept in reserve.[25]
Plutarch said[26] that the Pythia's life was shortened through the service of Apollo. The sessions were said to be exhausting. At the end of each period the Pythia would be like a runner after a race or a dancer after an ecstatic dance, which may have had a physical effect on the health of the Pythia.
Several other officials served the oracle in addition to the Pythia.[27] After 200 BCE at any given time there were two priests of Apollo, who were in charge of the entire sanctuary; Plutarch, who served as a priest during the late first century and early second century CE, gives us the most information about the organization of the oracle at that time. Before 200 BCE, while the temple was dedicated to Apollo, there was probably only one priest of Apollo. Priests were chosen from among the main citizens of Delphi, and were appointed for life. In addition to overseeing the oracle, priests would also conduct sacrifices at other festivals of Apollo, and had charge of the Pythian games. Earlier arrangements, before the temple became dedicated to Apollo, are not documented.
The other officials associated with the oracle are less well known. These are the hosioi ("holy ones") and the prophetai (singular prophetes). Prophetes is the origin of the English word "prophet", but a better translation of the Greek word might be "one who speaks on behalf of another person." The prophetai are referred to in literary sources, but their function is unclear; it has been suggested that they interpreted the Pythia's prophecies, or even reformatted her utterances into verse, but it has also been argued that the term prophetes is a generic reference to any cult officials of the sanctuary, including the Pythia.[28] There were five hosioi, whose responsibilities are unknown, but may have been involved in some manner with the operation of the oracle.
..........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia
Pythia:
Commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, beneath the Castalian Spring. The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BCE,[1] although it may have been present in some form in Late Mycenaean times,[2] from 1,400 BCE and was abandoned, and there is evidence that Apollo took over the shrine from an earlier dedication to Gaia.[3] The last recorded response was given during CE 393, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation.
During this period the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon.
The name 'Pythia' derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. The Greeks derived this place name from the verb, pythein (p??e??, "to rot"), which refers to the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after she was slain by Apollo.[4] The usual theory has been that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature.
..........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(mythology)
Python (mythology):
In Greek mythology, Python (Greek: ?????, gen.: ???????) was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in Greek sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent. He presided at the Delphic oracle, which existed in the cult center for his mother, Gaia, "Earth," Pytho being the place name that was substituted for the earlier Krisa.[1] Hellenes considered the site to be the center of the earth, represented by a stone, the omphalos or navel, which Python guarded.
Python became the chthonic enemy of the later Olympian deity Apollo, who slew him and remade his former home and the oracle, the most famous[2] in Classical Greece, as his own. Changes such as these in ancient myths may reflect a profound change in the religious concepts of Hellenic culture. Some were gradual over time and others occurred abruptly following invasion.
There are various versions of Python's birth and death at the hands of Apollo. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, now thought to have been composed in 522 BCE during Classical times,[4] a small detail is provided regarding Apollo's combat with the serpent, in some sections identified as the deadly Drakaina, or her parent.
The version related by Hyginus[5] holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not deliver wherever the sun shone. Thus when Apollo the infant was grown he pursued Python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi; there he dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill it with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod. Robert Graves, who habitually read into primitive myths a retelling of archaic political and social turmoil, saw in this the capturing by Hellenes of a pre-Hellenic shrine. "To placate local opinion at Delphi," he wrote in The Greek Myths, "regular funeral games were instituted in honour of the dead hero Python, and her priestess was retained in office."
The politics are conjectural, but the myth reports that Zeus ordered Apollo to purify himself for the sacrilege and instituted the Pythian Games, over which Apollo was to preside, as penance for his act.
Erwin Rohde wrote that the Python was an earth spirit, who was conquered by Apollo, and buried under the Omphalos, and that it is a case of one god setting up his temple on the grave of another.[6]
The priestess of the oracle at Delphi became known as the Pythia, after the place-name Pytho, which Greeks explained as named after the rotting (p??e??) of the slain serpent's corpse in the strength of Hyperion (day) or Helios (the sun).[7]
Karl Kerenyi points out[8] that the older tales mentioned two dragons, who were perhaps intentionally conflated; the other was a female dragon (drakaina) named Delphyne in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, with whom dwelt a male serpent named Typhon: "The narrators seem to have confused the dragon of Delphi, Python, with Typhon or Typhoeus, the adversary of Zeus". The enemy dragoness "... actually became an Apollonian serpent, and Pythia, the priestess who gave oracles at Delphi, was named after him. Many pictures show the serpent Python living in amity with Apollo and guarding the Omphalos, the sacred navel-stone and mid-point of the earth, which stood in Apollo's temple" (Kerenyi 1951:136).
..........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras:
Anaxagoras, "lord of the assembly"; c. 500 – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese. According to Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, he fled to Lampsacus due to a backlash against his pupil Pericles.
Anaxagoras is famous for introducing the cosmological concept of Nous (mind), as an ordering force. He regarded material substance as an infinite multitude of imperishable primary elements, referring all generation and disappearance to mixture and separation, respectively.
In early manhood (c. 464–461 BC) he went to Athens, which was rapidly becoming the centre of Greek culture. There he is said to have remained for thirty years. Pericles learned to love and admire him, and the poet Euripides derived from him an enthusiasm for science and humanity.
Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry from Ionia to Athens. His observations of the celestial bodies and the fall of meteorites led him to form new theories of the universal order. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a mass of blazing metal, larger than the Peloponnese. He was the first to explain that the moon shines due to reflected light from the sun. He also said that the moon had mountains and believed that it was inhabited. The heavenly bodies, he asserted, were masses of stone torn from the earth and ignited by rapid rotation. He explained that, though both sun and the stars were fiery stones, we do not feel the heat of the stars because of their enormous distance from earth. He thought that the earth is flat and floats supported by 'strong' air under it and disturbances in this air sometimes causes earthquakes.[3] These speculations made him vulnerable in Athens to a charge of impiety. Diogenes Laertius reports the story that he was prosecuted by Cleon for impiety, but Plutarch says that Pericles sent his former tutor, Anaxagoras, to Lampsacus for his own safety after the Athenians began to blame him for the Peloponnesian war.[4]
About 450 BC, according to Laertius, Pericles spoke in defense of Anaxagoras at his trial.[5] Even so, Anaxagoras was forced to retire from Athens to Lampsacus in Troad (c. 434–433 BC). He died there in around the year 428 BC. Citizens of Lampsacus erected an altar to Mind and Truth in his memory, and observed the anniversary of his death for many years.
Anaxagoras wrote a book of philosophy, but only fragments of the first part of this have survived, through preservation in work of Simplicius of Cilicia in the sixth century AD.
Cosmological theory:
All things have existed from the beginning. But originally they existed in infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, endless in number and inextricably combined. All things existed in this mass, but in a confused and indistinguishable form. There were the seeds (spermata) or miniatures of wheat and flesh and gold in the primitive mixture; but these parts, of like nature with their wholes (the homoiomereiai of Aristotle), had to be eliminated from the complex mass before they could receive a definite name and character.
Mind arranged the segregation of like from unlike; panta chremata en omou eita nous elthon auta diekosmese. This peculiar thing, called Mind (Nous), was no less illimitable than the chaotic mass, but, unlike the logos of Heraclitus, it stood pure and independent (mounos ef eoutou), a thing of finer texture, alike in all its manifestations and everywhere the same. This subtle agent, possessed of all knowledge and power, is especially seen ruling in all the forms of life.[citation needed]
Mind causes motion. It rotated the primitive mixture, starting in one corner or point, and gradually extended until it gave distinctness and reality to the aggregates of like parts, working something like a centrifuge, and eventually creating the known cosmos. But even after it had done its best, the original intermixture of things was not wholly overcome. No one thing in the world is ever abruptly separated, as by the blow of an axe, from the rest of things.
It is noteworthy that Socrates (Plato, Phaedo, 98 B) accuses Anaxagoras of failing to differentiate between nous and psyche, while Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book I) objects that his nous is merely a deus ex machina to which he refuses to attribute design and knowledge.
Anaxagoras proceeded to give some account of the stages in the process from original chaos to present arrangements. The division into cold mist and warm ether first broke the spell of confusion. With increasing cold, the former gave rise to water, earth and stones. The seeds of life which continued floating in the air were carried down with the rains and produced vegetation. Animals, including man, sprang from the warm and moist clay. If these things be so, then the evidence of the senses must be held in slight esteem. We seem to see things coming into being and passing from it; but reflection tells us that decease and growth only mean a new aggregation (synkrisis) and disruption (diakrisis). Thus, Anaxagoras distrusted the senses, and gave the preference to the conclusions of reflection. Thus, he maintained that there must be blackness as well as whiteness in snow; how, otherwise, could it be turned into dark water?
Anaxagoras marked a turning-point in the history of philosophy. With him, speculation passes from the colonies of Greece to settle at Athens. By the theory of minute constituents of things, and his emphasis on mechanical processes in the formation of order, he paved the way for the atomic theory.]
Cross-Indexed:
|
|