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The return of the Black Hunter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

John Ma
John Ma
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

The ‘Black Hunter’ is an expression proposed by P. Vidal-Naquet, to understand certain phenomena within ancient Greek society: it designated a cunning, youthful figure haunting the borders, which was meaningful in implied opposition to a ‘normal’ adult male citizen living in the civilised world. He represents an attempt to interpret Greek culture through Levi-Straussian structural polarities.

As examples of Black Hunters, Vidal-Naquet pointed to the Spartan kruptos (young Spartiates sent out for a short time to roam the countryside and kill helots) and the Athenian ephebe (young men, about to become adult, sent into military service for two years, between eighteen and twenty). The kruptos and the ephebe belonged to Greek rites of passage, where youths become inverted ‘Black Hunters’ before integrating in the community. Another, very interesting case occurs in late Hellenistic Chaironeia, where a local youth, Damon, threatened with rape by a Roman officer stationed in the city, banded up with coaevals and ambushed the Roman: the youths smeared their faces with soot, drank pure wine and slaughtered their man at dawn during a sacrifice, before running away and plundering the territory (they returned to kill the city magistrates at their evening meal) – all marks of anomie, marginality and extremeness.

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Research Article
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The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 54 , 2008, pp. 188 - 208
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Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2008

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