Becoming a god in Greek thought
View/ Open
Li2022.pdf (1.677Mb)
Date
06/09/2022Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
06/09/2023Author
Li, Mengyang
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis seeks to conceptualise the literary universe in ancient Greek literature as a ‘cosmic
society’ and thereby to examine the defining features of gods and humans and how excellent
human individuals might achieve divine or godlike status. Traditionally, scholarship has
distinguished humans from gods solely by the strict antithesis between immortality and
mortality. I believe that this dominant view can be challenged, or at least modified, by further
reflection on a set of notions and categories that separate and correlate gods and humans. The
thesis aims to apply several social concepts such as honour, status, and community to analyse
scenarios and occasions in which extraordinary humans succeed in becoming, or are
approximated to, a deity. The thesis is divided into two parts and consists of six chapters. Part
I provides a general conceptual framework, which is then applied to the three case studies of
extraordinary figures in the works of Homer, Pindar, and Sophocles that constitute Part II.
The Introduction reviews the mainstream scholarship relating to the Greek gods and their
relationship with mankind and proposes the idea of a cosmic society. Chapter 1 examines
some key texts on the distribution of honour among gods and humans and provides an
interpretation of it as a coherent nexus of ideas and themes about the supreme rule of Zeus,
the establishment and maintenance of the cosmic society, divine–human separation, the
relationship between gods and humans, and divine–human interactions. Chapter 2 formulates
the principal argument of the thesis: divinity, either of a god or a divinised human, is above
all defined by a special honour that is ordained or distributed as a portion by the divine
community under the rule of Zeus. I examine the ways in which a new deity is initiated into
the divine community and compare them with several cases of apotheosis. The textual
investigations lead to the main subject of the thesis, i.e. approximate and transgressive forms
of divinisation. Building on the findings in Part I, the case studies of Part II explore how the
extraordinary statuses of Iliadic warriors, Pindaric laudandi, and Sophoclean protagonists are
defined in relation to their human fellows and especially to the gods in the cosmic society.
These texts are chosen to reflect the diversity of contexts and genres in which extraordinary
persons reach the limit of humanity and become approximate to gods. Chapter 3 focuses on
the aristeia of three distinct Homeric warriors, all of whom are temporarily elevated to divine
status in ways that have different thematic significance. Chapter 4 discusses Pindar’s
Olympian 1–3, composed for two Sicilian tyrants whose extraordinary statuses are defined in
comparison to those of the figures of the central mythic narrative and who enjoy temporary
bliss with eschatological prospects for post-mortem elevation to a divine realm, prospects that
fundamentally depend on the laudandus’ relationship with divine powers. Chapter 5 offers a
detailed reading of the Ajax of Sophocles, in which the eponymous protagonist questions the
traditional values relating to honour and the divine–human relationship in the cosmic society
by rejecting the kind of honour based on his relationships with others and by attempting to
confer on himself a special kind of honour that is independent of external recognition and
divine distribution. These case studies will not only support the main argument of the thesis
but also contribute to an understanding of the ethical and theological content of the poetic
works, as well as their literary fabric.