Becoming a god in Greek thought

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.