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The Black Hunter revisited1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Pierre Vidal-Naquet
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Extract

In Memory of Moses and Mary Finley

Like many of its brothers in ambiguity, ‘the Black Hunter’ has a double birthday. Like the First international, it is a French child educated in England. As ‘Le Chasseur Noir’, this paper was first given in Paris, on 6 February 1967, at the Association pour l'Encouragement des Etudes Grecques, and, a year later (15 February 1968), in Cambridge at the Philological Society. I owe it to the truth to say that in Paris the audience remained mute. In Cambridge, on the contrary, there was a lively discussion, not only among the classicists but also with no less an anthropologist than Edmund Leach, now Sir Edumnd. A few months later the paper was first published in Cambridge, on the initiative of the late Denys Page, in a translation by Janet Lloyd and with a dedication to the late Moses Finley, and a little later in Paris. One may easily note here a structural opposition in the form of a chiasmus: in Cambridge, in the University where eminent classicists – Jane Harrison, Francis MacDonald Cornford – were also anthropologists, it was in a purely philological publication, the Proceedings, that the paper was published. In Paris, where the anthropological tradition of classical studies remained, with Louis Gernet and Henri Jeanmaire, and, more recently, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, outside the University proper, it was in the Annales that the paper was published.

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Research Article
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Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 32 , 1986 , pp. 126 - 144
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Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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33. This is the title of the unpublished dissertation of my former pupil Ariadni Gartziou-Tatti, (E.H.E.S.S., Paris, 1985).

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41. Anderson (n.9) xi.

42. Title of one of my three studies in Tragedy and myth (n.18).

43. Anderson (n.9) 53.

44. Anderson (n.9) 53-4.

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54. On the ‘Scythians’ see also Brown, F. S. and Blake Tyrrell, W. M., ‘Ἐκιλώσαντο: A reading of Herodotus' Amazons’, CJ 80 (1985) 297–302Google Scholar.

55. This is the reason why the storie di caccia analysed by Pellizer, E. (Favole d'identita. Favole di paura (1982))Google Scholar seem to me distinct from my work despite some interesting parallels (40-6).

56. I mentioned this point in ‘Black Hunter’ (n.2) 50-1, relying heavily on Labarbe, J., BAB 1953.358–94Google Scholar.

57. For a recent comment cf. Rhodes, P. J., A commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981) 493–5Google Scholar; Rhodes does not, however, seriously discuss the question of origins.

58. Lycurgus, fr. 25 Sauppe.

59. ‘Recipes’ (n.19 above).

60. Cf. Reinmuth (n.22) 123-38.

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63. So E. Heza (n.46) 228: ‘Dans la cité, il n'y a ni “classes militaires” ni héros, les uns et les autres maitres de la gloire, mais une communauté dont les membres portent les armes, renoncent à tout exploit individuel et n'agissent au combat que sous forme collective.’

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67. Hdt. 7.205; cf. Loraux (n.8) 117.

68. Hdt. 9.21.

69. Thucyd. 6.100.1 (a reference I owe to A. Andrewes).

70. In Syracuse the Athenians had to fight a group of 600 (not 300) λογάδες. Half of them died, which is the traditional function of these elite soldiers (Thucyd. 6.96.3, 97.4).

71. καὶ τῶν ψιλῶν τινας ἐκλεκτὸυς ὡπλισμένους (6.100.1).

72. FGrHist 70 F 149 (in Strabo 10.483), a text commented upon by, among others, Briquel, D., ‘Initiations grecques et idéologie irrdo-européenne’, Annales E.S.C. 37 (1982) 454–69Google Scholar, and Jeanmaire, , Couroi et courètes 450–5Google Scholar.

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74. Thucyd. 5.67.2, Diod, Sic. 12.75 (Oldfather's translation except for the detail). This group of 1000 λογάδες has obviously suceeded in Argos to the archaic group of 300 whom Herodotus describes fighting their Spartan counterpart (1.82; cf. Pausanias 2.38.4-5).

75. For Elis, Thucyd. 2.25.3; for Megara, 5.60.3.

76. Pelopidas 14.18-19.

77. Other than Plutarch, the main sources are Diod. Sic. 12.70, Polyaenus 2.51., Athenaeus 13.602a (from Hieronymus the Peripatetic).

78. s.v. τριακάτιοι. οἱ ἐφήβοι καὶ τὸ σύστημα αὐτῶν.

79. For this distinction cf. SEG ix.72, 34-40.

80. The bulk of the evidence is given by Luni, , Quaderni di archeologia della Libia 8 (1976) 223–84Google Scholar, esp. 236-55. For the officers cf. SEG ix.7 (Schwyzer 234), 14 and 51, ix.9.51, ix.742 (the τριακακάρχαι take the name of ὲφήβαρχοι); Eustathius on Il.8.518 mentions the fact that in Cyrene the ephebes were called the three hundred. I owe my knowledge of these documents to Catherine Dobias-Lalou, whose doctoral dissertation will contain a thorough analysis of this evidence.

81. Cf. Le chasseur noir (n.7) 197-9, Black Hunter (n.7) 145-7 and, most recently, Osborne, R., Demos. The discovery of classical Attika (1985) 154–72Google Scholar.

82. Cf. Winkler, J. J., ‘The ephebe's song; tragôida and polis’, Representations 11 (1985) 27–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; esp. 32-5.

83. P. 63 n.3.

84. ‘Le Philoctète de Sophocle et l'ephébie’, Annales E. S. C. 26 (1971) 623–38Google Scholar ( = Tragedy and myth 175-99).

85. This is a suggestion of Yangos Adreadis who has promised to develop it.

86. Cf. Segal, C., Dionysiac poetics and Euripides' Bacchae (1982) 189–201Google Scholar.

87. Cf. di Benedetto (n.23) 115-36; Winnington-Ingram, R. P., ‘Sophoclea’ BICS 16 (1979) 1-12, pp. 10–11Google Scholar. I shall make a detailed reply to these two papers (among others) in a forthcoming essay.

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89. This book was translated into both Italian and French, and it is the French version with which I am familiar.

90. I am here indebted to M. Casevitz.

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93. On Eurypylus cf. Pausanias 3.26.9, Hyginus, , Fab. 112Google Scholar, Strabo 13.584.

94. Laws 7.796b-c; cf. also Athenaeus 14.631c, Άριστόξενος δέ φησιν ώς οἰ παλαιοί γυμναζόμενοι πρῶτον ἐν τῆι γυμνοπαιδίκηι εἰς τὴν πυρρίχην ἐχώρουν πρὸ τοῦ εἰσιέναι εἰς τὸ θέατρον.

95. On the pyrrhikhe cf. Poursat, J. C., BCH 92 (1968) 550–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and particularly Scarpi, P., Dialoghi di archeologia n.s. 1 (1979) 78–97Google Scholar.

96. He was still a νεανίας at the time of his death at Andr. 1104.

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99. Cf. n.82 above.

100. I must, however, admit that I am proud to be the originator of such a valiant enterprise.

101. HA 7.581a21-7, GA 5.787b32-8a.

102. Aristotle in fact opposes τραγίζειν to the practice of choral song (HA cited in n. 101).

103. Winkler (n. 82) 47-8.

104. ARV 2 1336, frequently reproduced, e.g. Pickard-Cambridge, A., The dramatic festivals of Athens2 (1968) fig. 49Google Scholar, Seaford, R., Euripides: Cyclops (1984) fig. IIIGoogle Scholar.

105. David Lewis informs me that he believes it to be the description of a dithyrambic chorus.

106. This will be demonstrated in a forthcoming paper by F. Lissarrague.

107. In his valuable edition of the Cyclops (n.104) 3.

108. Winkler (n.82) 39.

109. Cyclops (n. 104) 33-6.

110. So Detienne (n.65) 123.

111. Cf., e.g., Mythe et epopée (1968) 63–5Google Scholar, Heur et malheur du guerrier3 (1985) 140, 161–8Google Scholar.

112. Strangely enough, in Mitra-Varuna2 (1948) 48–54Google Scholar Dumézil draws a parallel between Luperci and Flamines as between iuniores and seniores. He takes it for granted that the Luperci belong to the first function, while quoting Valerius Maximus 2.2 who defines them as equestris ordinis iuuentus (49). I wonder if this should not be reassessed. I thank John Scheid for documentation on these topics.

113. Davidson, O. M., ‘The crown-bestower in the Iranian book of Kings’, Papers in honour of Professor Mary Boyle (1985) 61–148Google Scholar, esp. 81-7.

114. For an attempt to link the Greek data, and particularly the analysis of the ‘Black Hunter’, to Indo-European studies cf. Briquel (n.72).