主   题：‘May your son become agéraos and athánatos’conceptualising mortality in ancient Western culture

             西方古典文化中的死亡概念

主讲人：Dr. Luca Sansone

时   间：2018年5月11日（星期五）下午1:30

地   点：外语楼212会议室

沙龙简介

Received by scholarship as one of the first and defining products of Western literature (cf. Parker 1991 ‘The hymn to Demeter and the Homeric hymns’ Greece & Rome (38.1), 24), the BCE Homeric hymn to Demeter is also regarded as a “shining exemplar for ‘myth and ritual’ approach” (Johnston 2013 ‘Demeter: myths and the polyvalence of festivals’ History of Religions (52.4), 370). True to these words, the hymn offers the very first occurrence of a ritual that aims to make the child hero Demophon age-less (a-géraos) and im-mortal (a-thánatos), thus removing the two ontological marks–aging and death–that define the human condition against that of the gods. In the first part of my talk I will analyse the language used by the hymn and the following literary tradition (A.R. 4.865-881; Apollod. 3.13.6) to describe this ‘ritual of immortality’, with particular attention to the physiology of Demophon’s body and the changes it undergoes. My aim is to explore how ancient Western culture had begun to understand ‘mortality’ and offer a tangible representation of this concept via the mythological language. In the second part of my talk I will explore whether and how  this concept had then moved to other specialised languages, namely that of ancient medicine and philosophy.