"[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is a collection of papers by European classicists and folklorists, mostly French, edited by the eminent scholars Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Three key insights inform everything in the book:
1. In the ancient world, essentially all the meat available for consumption in human settlements was the fruit of sacrificial rites.
2. Cookery and sacrifice were therefore aspects of the same procedure. Sacrifice was the way animals were slaughtered and butchered in preparation for cooking; cooking the meat was part of the sacrificial rite.
3. Participation in the communal feast on the fruits of the sacrifice was the rite of social assimilation. To share the common meal was to declare loyalty to the cult, and to the settlement that it informed. To refuse participation – as with, e.g., vegetarian cults like that of the Pythagoreans – was to refuse membership in the community."
"Other foods were used in certain sacrificial rituals, but they were not as prevalent, nor used in other meals after being employed in temple ritual. In fact some foods might well be understood as conceptually opposed to sacrificial food. Despite the use of cereals in some ritual, bread was arguably the prosaic opposite of sacrificial meat: common rather than prized, bloodless not bloody, vegetable not animal, if not raw then at least often cold. This tension is expressed in the Promethean myth wherein wheat and meat are exchanged (Hesiod, Works and Days, 45-105, Theogony, 535-616)."
According to Hesiod and the Greek account of the four ages, Prometheus' breach of trust with the Gods and his trickery with substitution of the sacrificial portion, switching the fat for mankind and bare bones and smoke for the gods, set the wheel of the ages rolling from golden to silver,, from feasting on par with the gods to agricultural labour from then on.
Sacrificial killing and consumption of meat was a social contract keeping up communal cohesion. But the early Pythagorean sect and vegetarianism was a rebellion away from socializing and closing the gap back to the source - a divine contract. It was an attempt to close the gap between man and gods. The refusal of partaking in meat, was to live like the gods living on smoke, to be light as light - a belief in higher state of order. Vegetarianism was a sign of independence/indifference away from social needs and civilizational bonds. The Hyperboreans supposedly were vegetarians. The early Pythagoreans were one of the oldest anarchists in this sense, against the lower order institution set in by the actions of Prometheus.
In parallel, other schools, oriental influences, and teachings of the Eleusian mysteries of death and rebirth, the idea of sin and pollution and the "Erinyes" or the furies of retribution, gained influence. Xt. as always ready at hand to invert all that's available, created the extreme ascetic notion of the Eucharist and thriving on "bread and water" as opposed to "meat and wine" as a statement against paganism and greek society per se. Christ was the symbol of "end to all sacrifice" - represented by bread, as opposed to greek culture founded on sacrifice represented by meat. Although the asceticism of the Pythagoreans and the Xts. got intertwined, they were not of the same origins initially.
For instance, in the Greek account, the movement is from meat to wheat; vegetarianism as a specialization and refinement of the culture of sacrifice, a break away from the hunter-gatherer social institution. In the Xt. account, the movement is from wheat to meat; "indulgence" in meat was "indulgence" in human culture as opposed to nature and ascetic toiling:
Quote :
"Theophrastus' account of the emergence of sacrifice confirms both sets of associations--of meat and wine with sacrifice, and of grain and water as their polar opposites--in a historicized fashion: as the cereal offerings of an idyllic past had made way, first for more domesticated vegetable foods (fruit and bread) and then for meat, so water libations had gradually been transformed into the pouring of honey, then oil, and finally wine (fr. 12, in Porphyry, De Abst. 2. 20). Just as a domesticated animal, the product of human culture as well as of its own kind, was the necessary food element of sacrifice, the drink appropriate to festivity and worship was also a divine gift mediated through the processes made possible by human culture. It seems that it was not enough for an offering to be 'natural'; it had also (or rather) to be 'cultured'."
Not all vegetarian refusal to eat meat is a 'moral' 'abstinence' based on 'sin' of killing.
Some are simply Spartan, "less is more", esp. at a time when nature and science have managed to maximize the yield of earth to the plenty, one doesn't really need to engage in mindless and unncessary violence to satisfy their belly,, atleast the ones who are not dominated by their tongues and grave appetite.
To this it is argued, they are poor in experience of life's bounty,,, and I say, one doesnt really need to f--- a black-dick to experience the bounties of life. Restraint is not passive slavish shame, but active will of the master like the tautness of a tense bow protracted for subtler and finer joys falling beyond the graspability of the subhuman band-width strecthed between pain and pleasure.
To each her own.
Detienne elaborates how the sacrificial cult (whether of the Greek or Xt. kind) involving responsibility of alloting choicest portions and ranks gradually evolved into complex priestly-structures in charge of sanctionings.
The natural decadence of every and Any higher form is no excuse not to objectively appraise nuances. The Priestly type is not Bad per se, but a certain kind of priestly type and the method(s) and intent of lies it thrived on. N. pointed out in the AC, it is not man, but Nature that separates and ranks men by their degree of spirituality. Philosophers as artist-legislators and visionary-commanders of the future are a specialization differentiating, branching and breaking out from the Priestly type.
Hierarchies are natural expressions of nature, beyond good or evil.
Plus; meat could be justified given the lifestyle of hunters and gatherers and the stamina it required; modern lifestyles are not demanding comparatively. We do not have a high-metabolic lifestyle to compensate with meat intake to burn it off, unless one hits the gym artificially.
The Modern wants to believe his personal preference of chicken, rather than fish, is a total breach with a common ancestry, and evidence that he is free to determine his ow destiny... because he can train himself to like fish. Why he craves fish or chicken he does not explore, for it may lead him back to a genetic disposition that can predict his behaviour, belonging to a species with particular biological requirements, in particular frequencies – he confuses the culinary arts, of combining ingredients into novel exotic dishes, specific to culture and upbringing, with the underlying reason why those ingredients have to be included. He confuses the current combinations for the root cause, and he does so purposefully wanting to believe his tastes, compared to those of another, are arbitrary, due to chance. Modern Nihilists prefer to stay on the superficial image, the surfaces of gastronomic art, and cultural presentation, confusing it for appearances. He thinks that because there are so many cuisines, coming out of so many cultures, and because everyone has their own tastes, this means there is no way to determine a commonality, to find a pattern. He prefers to believe that his tastes were shaped by the circumstances he found himself in, not realizing that his biology determined those, and his particular focus on certain dishes were the consequence of culture and upbringing.
The body craves certain things, and gastronomy, or the art of preparing, mixing, and of presentation is a matter of habituation. Within every cuisine and cultural rituals there are common themes, and the same ingredients the human species needs to survive... not arbitrary at all. The modern confuses image, presentation, for appearance.
The germans have saurkraut, fermented cabbage. The french have slugs, snails, and toads. Some people eat meat from horses or dogs. Where do these "cravings" come from?
In the Medieval era, starvation was more common. During years of bad crops, food would be short. Or a city under siege from a foreign army. The peasants and commoners were left eating whatever they could scrounge and find. It is then no wonder how little cultural intricacies and associations with such (eating fermented cabbage), would develop over time. To the "strange cravings" of today. Cravings not associated with a single life or lifetime, but with repeated lifetimes, repeated interactions of specific peoples and populations, for centuries.
Harken to today,
Winter is associated with the time of scarcity, starvation, and the "low point" of the year. During this time of the year, is it a wonder that people have "cravings" for the cultural delicacy. "Frog soup" for the frenchmen. And Summer is associated with the time of plenty, bounty, fresh harvest of crops. The time for desserts, feasting, and gorging.
The diet, the instinct, the stomach all remember what the mind readily and apparently does not.
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." --Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37194 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Two types of need, the second founded on the first:
1- Need as a product of lack. The organism’s ordering is contradicted by other patterns, other (inter)activities, requiring it to heal the damage done by this (inter)activity, this attrition of existing. 2- Need to purge accumulated energies, due to #1. These are libidinal energies, directed towards growth, or procreativity, or, in higher life forms, directed towards creativity.
Appetites are determined by degree of need, and taste is determined by the particular relationship of organs and their specific needs: which elements, patterns, each organ requires and has to replenish to keep functioning efficiently. Most needs are common, but each organ has specific needs of its own. Which organ dominates and to what degree, and the particular requirements of that organ, in relation to the others, is what establishes taste, keeping in mind the two different types of need.
_________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
"Lactuca serriola, also called prickly lettuce, milk thistle (not to be confused with Silybum marianum, also called milk thistle) compass plant, and scarole, is an annual or biennial plant in the dandelion tribe within the daisy family. It has a slightly fetid odor and is commonly considered a weed of orchards, roadsides and field crops. It is the closest wild relative of cultivated lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.).
Lactuca serriola is known as the compass plant because in the Sun the upper leaves twist round to hold their margins upright.
Lactuca serriola can be eaten as a salad, although it has something of a bitter taste. Young leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. However, its presence in some ancient deposits has been linked more to its soporific properties which might suggest ritual use. The Ancient Greeks also believed its pungent juice to be a remedy against eye ulcers and Pythagoreans called the lettuce eunuch because it caused urination and relaxed sexual desire. The Navajo used the plant as a ceremonial emetic.
In mythology, Aphrodite is said to have laid Adonis in a lettuce bed, leading to the vegetable's association with food for the dead." [Fragiska, M (2005), Wild and Cultivated Vegetables, Herbs and Spices in Greek Antiquity]
The author challenges Sir James Frazer's thesis that the vegetation god Adonis-- whose premature death was mourned by women and whose resurrection marked a joyous occasion--represented the annual cycle of growth and decay in agriculture. Using the analytic tools of structuralism, Detienne shows instead that the festivals of Adonis depict a seductive but impotent and fruitless deity--whose physical ineptitude led to his death in a boar hunt, after which his body was found in a lettuce patch. Contrasting the festivals of Adonis with the solemn ones dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of grain, he reveals the former as a parody and negation of the institution of marriage.
Detienne considers the short-lived gardens that Athenian women planted in mockery for Adonis's festival, and explores the function of such vegetal matter as spices, mint, myrrh, cereal, and wet plants in religious practice and in a wide selection of myths. His inquiry exposes, among many things, attitudes toward sexual activities ranging from "perverse" acts to marital relations."
"In H24H Prof. Nagy talks about how Adonis is not associated with fertility at all:
So, what are the mythological consequences of going to seed? A prime example is a myth that links the thridax or ‘lettuce’ with the hero Adonis, a beautiful mortal boy who became the lover of the goddess Aphrodite herself. References made by ancient authors to this myth have been collected by an author dated to the early third century CE, Athenaeus of Naucratis (2.69b-d), and from these references we can see a central event of the myth: Aphrodite hid Adonis inside a head of lettuce. Since Aphrodite is the goddess of reproduction as well as sex, this action of hers is most counterproductive, since lettuce must be kept from going to seed if it is going to be good little lettuce. Accordingly, the hiding of Adonis inside a head of lettuce results in sterility for Adonis. And the hero Adonis is in fact associated with sterility. The boy may be a great lover, most appreciated by the goddess of sexuality herself, Aphrodite, but he is still sterile. And there is an ancient traditional proverb that stems from this myth:
"more barren [a-karpos] than the Gardens of Adonis"
The rituals surrounding the Gardens of Adonis, as Marcel Detienne has shown, are a negative dramatization of fertility. The so-called Gardens of Adonis (kēpoi Adōnidos) are potted herbs that are planted in the most unseasonal of times, the Dog Days of summer: the plants grow with excessive speed and vigor, only to be scorched to death by the sun’s excessive heat, and this death is then followed by stylized mourning and lamentations for Adonis, protégé of Aphrodite. In opposition to the normal cycle of seasonal agriculture, which lasts for eight months, the abnormal cycle of the unseasonal Gardens of Adonis lasts but eight days (as we see from Plato Phaedrus 276b). Like his suddenly and violently growing plants, Adonis himself dies prohēbēs, ‘before reaching maturity [hēbē]’
"Vernant and Marcel Detienne – has shown how the ancient Greeks used patterns of opposition and mediation to structure their world. Myths describing extremes – whether that’s cannibalism, the rule of women, or promiscuity – are intended to emphasise the need to stick to the middle path. Humanity is situated between the gods and the beasts. Detienne memorably explored how the young god Adonis, gored to death in a bed of lettuce, was not a model of correct sexual behaviour, but an example of how not to do it. In Euripides’ Hippolytos, the central character rejects marriage for a life of virginity: bad idea, which ends in his death. The model for civilized human life comprised monogamy (not promiscuity, not virginity), agriculture, and a cooked rather than a raw diet, and anyone who whose way of life lay outside this was classified as a barbarian or rebel."
"There was the seductive hunter, the youthful Adonis who only hunted animals which fled before him - hares, stags or does. He was associated in Greek art with the panther an animal which was domesticated in ancient Cyrene and used as a hunting Yet Detienne does not stop here. He discovers that the panther was thought to be unique by the ancient Greeks in that it emitted a fragrant, perfume-like smell which helped it to seduce its prey. This animal was the perfect emblem for Adonis himself. Born from Myrrh (a spice plant) and beloved of both Aphrodite and Persephone, he represented too highly-tuned a sexuality to be suitable for marriage.
At the opposite extreme was the figure of Atalanta. In childhood she excelled in running and hunting to the point of throwing her very femininity into doubt. She refused to take a husband and in fact devised a contest to all suitors.
She would give each one a start of a paces and while the man was naked she pursued him armed with a sword. She thus inverted the usual marriage contest which pitted man against man for the hand of the bride. Atalanta turned the contest into a hunt where the suitor was the quarry.
Adonis and Atalanta stood to either side of the sociable compromise of marriage and Detienne isolates this question of marriage as the central speculation of these myths. Adonis met his end gored to death by the tusks of a wild boar. His body was found in a lettuce patch, a plant symbolically opposite to the hot, perfumed ethereal world of spices. The lettuce was associated with moisture, impotence and decomposition. The blood of Adonis was transformed into the anemone or wind rose, an odourless plant with an exceptionally short blooming season.
Atalanta in turn was finally outdistanced by a suitor known as The Black Hunter. Part of the reason for her defeat, according to several versions, was that Aphrodite offered her a gift of apples after the chase had begun. Forced to gather up the fruits as they rolled off the path Atalanta was outrun. Apples of course were bound up with the idea of in Ancient Greek thought (in fact this association of apples, quinces and pomegranates with each other and with marriage has persisted into the folklore of modern Greece, where pomegranates are still thrown at weddings).
In any case, the moment the contest is over, Atalanta and her de facto husband are seized by desire and copulate wildly in the sacred space of a temple. For this they are punished by being turned into lions, predators pap excellence, which were believed to have no sex life. As Detienne concludes, it is 'as if with one sweep of the hands the Greek imagination were exorclslng spectres subverting the dominant model of male-female relations'."
"Normally, the confined women of Athens would have gained access to so many of the herms in the city only with great difficulty.But in this case, an importantwomen's festival-the Adonia-gave them significantly greater freedom of movement. For anywher from one to eight days in late summer, women traveled from house to house where, in temporary roof top "gardens, "they joked, sang, danced, and mourned the death of Adonis before taking to the streets with their small effigies of the dead body. The women brought potted "gardens"of lettuce and other spices to their rooftops where the festivities took place. The wailing was audible throughout the city and into the night. The rooftop chants were followed by a procession through the city where the effigies of Adonis were borne and, finally, "buried"at sea. The gardens were allowed to wither and discarded as part of or after the festival.
Adonis-beautiful, boyish, downy-faced, and reticent-stood in opposition to rapacious, conquering, masculine gods and heroes like Zeus and Theseus, both of whom functioned as foundation figures for Athenian political identity. In the myth of Adonis, the goddess Aphrodite pursues and beds a reluctant male mortal who later dies. Structurally,the myth lies in opposition to the much more common myth of the abduction and rape of females on the part of male gods and heroes, as Marcel Detienne points out. Detienne further interprets the Adonia as a countercultural ritual that parodied and symbolically overturned more formal marriageand agricul- turalrites, such as the Thesmophoria. The Adonia reenacts a story of female license, female power, and female participationin male self-definition.
Adonis was, says Keuls, the model for all subsequent romantic heroes, from Romeo to Rudolph Valentino to Leonardo Di Caprio. According to one form of the myth, the youthful and downy-faced Adonis was fatallywounded during a hunt by a boar whose tusk pierced his groin and mutilated his genitals. He either hid or was hidden by Aphrodite in a bed of lettuce, and/or his corpse was laid out on such a bed. The supposed dissipating effects of lettuce on male potency and its rapid withering in the shallow pots each suggest in different ways the untimely castration and death of Adonis, itself represented by the small statues. Aphrodite mourns his loss, and during the Adonia, the women of Athens did also. In doing so, they celebrated sexual relations and forms of license, potency, and independence distinctly different from the aggressivephallicism of official Athenian ideology and public policy (Keuls 57-62).
Concerning that summer of 415, Plutarch recalls the unfortunate occurrence of the Adonia during Assembly proceedings:
"[J]ust when the fleet was poised and ready to set sail,a number of unfortunate things happened, including the festival of Adonis,which fell at thattime.All over the city the women were preparing statuettes of the god for burial in a waywhich loosely resembled the treatment of human corpses, and were beating their breasts,just as theywouldat a funeral, and chanting dirges." (Alcibiades18 )
In Lysistrata, Aristophanes refers to this same festival,when a male characterre calls sitting at the Assembly with "that accursed Adonis ritual on the roofs" in progress. While Demostratos argued in favor of the Sicilian campaign (arguing, in fact, to formally close the debate), "his wife danced and wailed 'Alas Adonis . . . beat your breast for Adonis,"' interrupting the proceedings and irritating its voting members (388 ). It is unlikely that Aristophanesmade this juxtaposition accidental:Demostratos calls for public debate on the matter to be closed just as his wife breaks into the proceedings from a nearby roof, preventing him from being heard and, in effect, prolonging the discussion. Mourning the victim of deadly violence in a ritual that overturned the ideology of masculine potency, could the women of Athens not have been thinking as well of the masculine ethos of potency that dominated the assem- bly and that sent sons, brothers, and husbands off to fight in foreign wars?
Both Plutarch and Aristophanes reveal the masculine distaste for the "unfortunate" and "accursed" festival and its bad timing.The Adoniawasrunbythewomen of Athens and had no established date for its observance (Winkler 193; Reed 319). It was in this and other ways unlike official state festivals, and existed "on the periph- ery of the official cults and public ceremonies" (Detienne 65). The Adonia was a private affair controlled by the women who celebrated it, including citizen wives, concubines (hetairai, like Aspasia) and prostitutes, slave and free. Some of these women, Demostratos' wife among them, could have timed their celebration of this festival to coincide with and disrupt the Sicilian debate and expedition and, perhaps, to gain the freedom to take more forceful action against it.
The Adonia, then, was one of a very few opportunities for women to socialize, celebrate, and gather under their own control. Keuls calls this festival "the only form of self-expression developed by Athenian women, in response to an emotional need of their own, and not dictated by the voice of male authority"(23-24). While other rituals, such as the official festivals of Demeter (the Thesmophoria), included the wives of Athenian citizens (but not prostitutes) as participants, even sometimes excluding men, they were state-run festivals, controlled by priests and financed by wealthy men to further the interests of, for example, Athenian agriculture and mar- riage. The Adonia was not secret, but it was women-run, included all women, not only wives, and perhaps expressed a bawdy and carnivalesqueinversion of official, masculinist ideology.
If women could use the Adonia to express and clarify their own political interests, then the supine and "castrated"Adonis (the very figure whose miniature effigy they bore) may have taken on rhetorical force as a figuration of masculinity, sexual relations, and political ambitions inverse to the erect phallicism of the public herms.
To the degree that the herms' physiognomy connected aggressive sexual conquest with military conquest, then Adonis may have become a figure of more peaceful and egalitarian relations in the polis as well as in the oikos.Aristophanes (in Lysistrata, and relies on women to ad- Thesmophoriazusae, Ecclesiazusae) heavily protagonists advance his arguments for peace and social reform, even if Adonis does not appear in his In the Ecclesiazusaeo,r the after as men to plays. Assemblywomen, women, dressing pass their own agenda through the Assembly, initiate communitarian reforms that redistribute wealth and privilege equally among all (590-614).
Just as the women of Athens may have exploited the Adonia to interrupt the Assembly, so the youthful beardlessness of Adonis, his near-castration, and his untimely death function physiognomically to signify opposition to the masculinist ag- gression of Athenianpolicy,representedby the erect andbeardedherms.9If someone were to knock a herm over and render it beardless (or symbolically so, by chiseling at the face) and castrated,they would, in effect, make of him an Adonis, whose own early death might argue for the abortion of a dangerous and unnecessary expedition.
In the Phaedrus,Plato calls upon the ephemeral and nonserious qualities of the Ado- nis ritual in order to draw a contrast between what is frivolous and ephemeral and what is serious and lasting. The women's potted gardens of Adonis (raised for the Adonia) root quickly but then wither away and are discarded, while the "sensible husbandman's"farm requires months of labor and produces tangible results. The former, argues Plato, like writing, is pursued for the sake of short-lived amusement (a women's festival) but produces no lasting results, while dialectic, like serious hus- bandry, produces new seeds "in other minds [. ..] capable of continuing the process for ever"(277A). According to this Platonic metaphor, anyone invested in notseeing military expeditions "continuing forever"might find it useful to symbolically con- nect the ephemeral and abortive (the gardens of lettuce, the potency of Adonis) to the ongoing Sicilian debate via the very symbol of both military might and public debate: the herms. And perhaps they could do so through writing.
Both writing and the Adonia, suggests Plato, were ephemeral and womanly, but even Plato would have to concur that war and speechifying remained for most citizens the lasting, serious work of men. If this is the case, then upon what might women write their own political sentiments, especially peaceful or egalitarian ones? If this sentiment that the Adonia activity was, like writing, neither serious nor lasting-was not unique to Plato, then those feminized "writers"who literally inscribed their sentiments on the bodies of the herms during a women's festival that was, though mournful, nevertheless playful and irreverent, may have used this very sentiment against its proponents.That is,the hermokopida might employ the very terms of opprobrium used againstthe Adonia - womanly, written, ephemeral, irreverent (not to mention nocturnal)-to declare their opposition to a manly, sanctioned, but deadly rhetorical and military action by "writing" on the serious face(beard) and phallus of herms, rendering them effeminate and Adonis-like. In doing so, they would re-inscribe the icon of Athens's serious and lasting war lust into a ludic, irreverent, and inevitably impermanent (since defaced statues would soon be repaired or replaced), though serious, bid to abort the mission and work for peace.
Even aside from the Adonia, women's activities provided a powerful locus for countercultural or oppositional rhetoric in the general sense that most forms of cultural capital, social prestige, and political power in Athens were held by men through masculine modes of performance:public speaking, poetry, athletic games, and battle. Women's activities were by definition restricted to private places and nocturnal times where they would be neither seen nor heard by unrelated men. Athenian men spent a great deal of time worrying about the actions and movements of their women, or at least they are reported to have done so, primarily to ensure patrimony and to uphold the name of the family or clan (Gould). In this sense, women's public activity and availabilitywas seen by males to be by definition dangerous, duplicitous, and an implicit threat to the social order, even as it was essential to that order. Any outdoor activities constituted a powerful locus of symbolic disorder (an understanding the women capitalized on in the Adonia) and thus the very existence of women constituted an argument for strict social control.
The place of women as oppositional was frequently portrayed in myth, not only through figures such as Helen and Clytemnestra-whose supposed infidelities contributed to the most famous of tragedies, the Trojanwar and the fall of the house of Atreus, respectively-but also through the figure of Pandora, through whom Hesiod crystallized ancient Greek animosity toward women and their skills at persuasion and deception. Pandora was given golden necklaces by Persuasion, the goddess,to aid her in her treacheries (Works and Days 60-83). According to most measures of cultural capital, social prestige, and political power, positive ideals including eloquence and martial power were defined in terms of masculine traits and practices, negative ideals defined by their opposition to all that was masculine.
If the women of Athens had wanted to express their sentiments in a way that mattered, what outlet did they possess? Speaking publicly, even in courts and in cases that involved them as primarylitigants, was normally not allowed and could be dangerous.The wifeofAlcibiades,Hipparete,"a well-behaved and affectionate wife," had attempted to speak in public when she appeared in court to sue her adulterous husband for divorce. But, continues Plutarch, "when she arrivedin court to see to this business as the law required, Alcibiades came up, grabbed hold of her, and took her back home with him," where she stayed "until her death, which happened a short while later" ("Alcibiades" 8 ). Thucydides nowhere attempts to dissuade us from the view that Alcibiades was the cause of his wife's untimely death.
Besides, Nicias and his followers had alreadypursued the path of peace in the Assembly, with disastrous results. Demostratos (whose wife may have interrupted these very proceedings) had in fact succeeded in closing the debate in favor of a large expedition. Different rhetoric would be needed. It would have to be public, to be seen and taken seriously by a majorityof leading citizens. It would have to be anony- mous andperhapscollaborative,since no single citizen, much less anywoman, could expose himself or herself to public support for a cause that even a famous general had unsuccessfully risked his reputation upon, a cause that had been closed off from further debate.
We cannot name the culprits any more that we can know the true Aspasia, but by asking different questions about means, media, access, and ends, we can yet learn a great deal about transgressive or invalid rhetorical practices in an- cient Greece. We would have to place fairlytight limits on our definition of rhetoric not to consider the herm-chopping an exemplary rhetorical event, and one that can radically challenge our understanding of ancient rhetorical artistry."
"According to Lévi-Strauss, in religious thought, unlike in conceptual thought, meanings are derived from structural relationships, not from concepts themselves. Religious thought operates with particular things, animals, beings and deities that are too concrete to carry an abstract meaning; their meaning is defined by their position in a network of relationships of oppositions and similarities. Therefore, it becomes impossible for Detienne to simply accept Frazer’s essentialist interpretation of Adonis according to which Adonis is to be seen as the “spirit of vegetation”, comparable to other mythical figures of the same essence found in other cultural systems. Such a conclusion would assume that
(1) a mythical figure is a separate entity which possesses a particular essence and has a meaning on its own;
(2) that the essence corresponds to some reality of the natural world which is represented by analogous mythical figures in other cultures; and
(3) that the relationship between the mythical figure and the reality which it represents is a symbolical one, i.e. one of metaphor or analogy.
Detienne, on the other hand, is ready to set Adonis within a framework of botanical symbols, related myths and rituals, social relationships, even astronomical intervals; and thus reveal its position and meaning in the Ancient Greek society.
On the level of the botanical code, the myth of Myrrh and Adonis is a myth about spices: myrrh, being an aromatic tree, and Adonis, being born from the myrrh tree.4 Detienne refers to a great body of evidence concerning the use of spices in Greece and concludes that the basic function of spices is to “bring together beings normally separated from each other:
”In the myth, Myrrh seduces her father and Adonis seduces two goddesses – one from above, Aphrodite, and one from below, Persephone. Ethnographic evidence shows that, in Greece, spices were involved
(1) in religious rituals: they were burnt at festivals and sacrifices; and,
(2) in cosmetics: they were processed into cosmetic products (oils and perfumes) and were used to enhance erotic attraction and desire.
Therefore, it may be said that along the vertical axis, the power of spices is able to bring together and mediate between gods/goddesses6 and humans; and, along the horizontal axis, the power of spices to arouse erotic desire brings together different human beings who are normally separated from each other. The way in which this “bringing-together” takes place along both axes, is seduction, which can further be seen as an antithesis to marriage: Myrrha refuses to marry and thus accept her female virtue, for which she is punished by Aphrodite and condemned to desire to make love with her father. This moment of Myrrha’s rejection of marriage followed by her erotic desire for her own father is a crucial point, which reveals the sociological code of the story. At once, the whole structure of marital relationships and the ideology of the institution of marriage, are revealed: Myrrha refuses an institution that is bound to the divine domain of Aphrodite and thus violates the relationship between humans and gods; her sexual relationship with her father destroys the functional framework of relationships within a family – she becomes her father’s mistress and her mother’s rival. Therefore, the bringing-together by the means of spices and seduction is found in opposition to the institution of marriage. Furthermore, on the level of ritual, the Adonia is considered to be a festival of feminine licence and representation of disorder, which women are capable of creating. Here, we can already spot the importance of the second element of the opposition – marriage – to help us understand the meaning of Adonis.
However, it is not only seduction what the myth of Adonis and Myrrha is about. There is an important internal opposition within the character of Adonis, which again is well distinguishable within the botanical evidence. Two plants define the life history of Adonis: the myrrh tree and the lettuce. Adonis’ life ends in the field of lettuce where he is either killed by a boar, or hidden by Aphrodite. Lettuce is characteristic of being cold and wet; it is bound to die and decay, and is therefore connected with death. It was also regarded by Greeks to be capable of decreasing men’s sexual potency. The meaning of lettuce as derived from its position within the framework of the myth of Adonis, is threefold:
(1) The precocious lover dies in the field of lettuce, his death and impotence coinciding; here, the lettuce stands in opposition to myrrh; impotence to sexual desire; death to life.
(2) Adonis’ death in the lettuce field is an antithesis to the virtue of a man-warrior; he is attracted to the world of women, pleasure, and passion that stands in opposition to the world of men – the world of war and hunting.
(3) As becomes clear from the myth of Mintha explained below, lettuce is a member of the spices–cereals–lettuce triad within which it stands, together with spices, in opposition to cereals. This triad is analogous to Lévi-Strauss’s cooked–raw–rotten triad – cereals standing for the cooked therefore cultural spices standing for the raw; and lettuce standing for the rotten, the uncultural.
Interconnectedness between the botanical code and the sociological code can be clearly shown on the example of the myth of Mintha, or Mint. Mintha is a mistress of Hades and a rival of Persephone (therefore of Demeter, too) whose story has a tragic ending. Again, the botanical features ascribed to the plant of mint can help us understand her position within the context of stories about spices. Mint is said to have power to “incite men to pleasures of love”, its seductive powers lying mainly in the pleasant smell which “sweetens the breath”. However, it is also a plant that cools the body and has chthonic connotations. Moreover, it is used as a contraceptive and is thought to be capable of procuring abortions; the plant bears only atrophied fruits and so it may seem to be “sterile”. Just as in myth Mintha is turned either into a “sweet-smelling” plant or into an “insignificant grass”, so too, the botanical characteristics of mint are of double status: it has characteristics of spices, but also of “wet and cold” grasses; it stimulates desire, but also procures abortion, i.e. prevents possible fruits of the desire. Mints sterility and fruitlessness, referred to in myth as well as in botanical evidence, make her stand in opposition to Demeter, “the goddess of the fruitful earth and protectress of fruits – of the ‘dry fruits’ of the cereals as well as of some of the fruits of trees.” These differences within the status of mint correspond to the difference between myrrh and lettuce: mint is at once above the cereals (as a kind of spice) and below them (as an “insignificant grass”).
In the myth of Mintha, the role of Demeter and Persephone and the role of the institution of marriage as opposed to the relationship based on seduction, are clearly very important. Now, since the double status of mint has been found to correspond to the myrrh–lettuce dyad so precisely, Detienne can assume that correspondingly, Demeter stands in opposition to Adonis and Myrrha, as it does in the opposition to Mintha. It has already been suggested that seduction, as it takes place in the myth of Myrrha, is opposed to marriage. Detienne finds yet another evidence for the opposition between seduction and marriage, which should finally justify and make explicit that this opposition is parallel to the opposition between Adonis and Demeter.
Not only is the seduction present in the ritual and myth of Adonis in opposition to the status of lawful wives of Demeter, it is also in opposition to their status of fertile mothers of legitimate children – this, indeed, is the core double opposition between the two festivals that
is found within the sociological code. As seen in the story of Myrrha, seduction is an ultimate threat to family relationships (relationships between parents, and between parents and children), which fall under Demeter’s instructions. The Thesmophoria provides instruction, or rather; the Thesmophoria is the instruction to ritually overcome the tension caused by apparent proximity of daughter and father simply by establishing closeness of mother and daughter during the festival, while excluding father from it.
After all that has been said, there is yet another level on which further deciphering the opposition between Adonis and Demeter is possible: the astronomical code. The festival of Adonis was celebrated during the hottest days of the year, called the dog-days.21 This is particularly important in regard to the peculiar kind of gardening, which took place during the Adonia – cultivation of Adonis’ gardens. Women sew cereals and vegetables into small broken clay pots, placed them in the heat of the sun, and watered them until the shoots appeared. Being deprived of water and left in the sun, the shoots soon became desiccated. Is this a reminder of the death of the god of vegetation? Detienne presents us with a few proverbs, which suggest that the gardens of Adonis were rather a synonym for something superficial, rootless, immature, sterile, etc. It does not seem that these would attest some kind of magical practice to promote growth of vegetation. “On the contrary”, says Detienne, “the negative character of all these epithets indicates that the gardening of Adonis stood for a negation of the true cultivation of plants and was an inverted form of the growing of cereals as represented, in a religious context, by the principal power responsible for cultivated plants, namely Demeter.” In Plato’s Phaedrus, this opposition is made even clearer: not only is there a difference between paideia – serious agriculture that “educates” the plants, and paidia gardening turned into a game and amusement; there is an important difference between the time periods in which cultivation of plants takes place – eight months in the case of the Thesmophoria, and eight days in the case of the Adonia. This short time that is given to plants to spring up is in opposition to serious farming of Demeter, just like there is an opposition between timing of the gardening (hottest days vs. the sowing season), and between the spaces that are given to the plants to grow in (small pots vs. Mother Earth). According to Detienne, what was happening during the Adonia was a “systematic violation of the rules for correct agriculture.”
The astronomical code reveals to us a framework of opposite astronomical conditions for opposite kinds of farming: farming of Adonis and that of Demeter. However, Detienne attempts to show that there is, again, a double opposition, parallel to the double opposition within the myrrh–cereals–lettuce triad. He is able to decipher it from the central role that a ladder plays in vase painting illustrating the Adonia. The ladder is not just an instrument, used to put the gardens of Adonis on rooftops. In the pictorial terminology of the vases, it is “the symbol of an exceptional linking of the Earth below and the Sun above.” Before we make clear what the double opposition between the Adonia and the Thesmophoria within the astronomical code is, we must first decipher the symbolical role of the ladder.
The dog-days are a period of time when there is an imbalance between the dry and the wet – the sun burning and desiccating everything and making humans, animals and plants suffer. At the same time, however, it creates favourable conditions for harvesting of myrrh and other spices. This can be seen from a group of vase paintings that depict a woman or an
Eros descending the rungs and placing an object into a bowl held by a young woman. Most probably, the objects placed into the bowl are grains of frankincense or loaves made of myrrh. That the paintings really depict some kind of harvesting of spices can be proved
(1) by the relationships between the principal figures in the scene, and,
(2) by the close relationship of Adonis and the spices.
Thus, the ladder is a symbol of “positive coming-together of the Earth Below and the sun Above,” which takes place in the second part of the festival. In the first part, women climb up the ladder and place their gardens in the heat of the sun. This first phase is negative and corresponds to death symbolized earlier by the lettuce; it is a negation of harvesting of cereals. The second, positive phase corresponds to life, and the “all-powerful nature of frankincense and myrrh.” The double opposition that Detienne was able to decipher thanks to the opposition found between the specific astronomical conditions responsible for two kinds of agriculture is thus the following:
(1) There is the opposition between the cultivation of Adonis’ gardens and harvesting of spices, which is parallel to that of myrrh and lettuce in the myth (or to the double status of Mintha).
(2) The second opposition is between the two forms of anti-cultivation – one negative and one positive – and the regular form of agriculture of Demeter.
As we have seen above, the gardens of Adonis are sterile and bear no fruits. The seeds planted in them are desiccated before reaching maturity and are in contrast to the useful and fruit-bearing plants of Demeter. Demeter represents cultivated plants and implies that the cultivation is provided by the means of marriage. Detienne shows how the ritual of marriage operates with symbols of both the “thorny” uncultivated life and the cultivated “life of the milled corn”, and how it mediates between them via symbolical objects of pan, pestle, and sieve, in order to provide a fluent passage from the uncultivated life into the cultivated life. Adonis and his sterile seeds stand in opposition to this cultivated life of “milled corn”; and again, the opposition is double: both his excessive premature sexual potency and his actual sterility bear no fruits.
There is one last opposition within both the astronomical and the sociological code – that between women and men. The heat of the sun during the dog-days does not devastate women, who are of “wet nature”, as it devastates men, who are of “dry nature”. During these days of imbalance, men lack sexual potency whereas women are full off excessive sexual desire. Since Adonis does not belong to the world of men, there is no internal contradiction for Detienne to say that the Adonia is a festival of women while the Thesmophoria is a festival of men."
"Dish" I learned from a Kurd: cut in half small tomatoes and pieces of garlic, add half piece of garlic to each half small tomato. If you don't mind "bad breath" this is truly excellent.
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37194 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Let me get this right...you cut tomatoes add garlic and eat? Brilliant, only a true genius could enjoy the nuanced flavours of such a seemingly simplistic dish. That's quite a recipe. I'm sure with enough prose we can transform this into a metaphysical transvaluation of all gastronomy that will conquer the next century. What if we replace tomato with Dionysus, and garlic with Apollo, and then sell it as an existential recipe to consume power, absorbing it into our being. A Mediterranean insinuation calling us back to ancient Athens - we bagel and potato laktes eaters can bask in the sun, as we consume imaginary Hellenic delicacies and and drink of our fantasy wine.
What if I cut a tomato, add garlic and then salt/pepper and wrap it in lettuce?
There is something repulsive about watching a guy stuff food in his mouth and convey his delight, all of that even in a close-up. There is something intimate about sitting on the same table and sharing a meal. It used to be good manners to try and not eat in public or at least to cover your mouth as you chew and swallow and or keep it to small bites. Definitely not to hold your open mouth into the camera as you shovel the food into it in big chunks.
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37194 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
There is a connection between feeding and fucking. A lot of eroticism, such as kissing, has developed from feeding practices, such as passing chewed food from mother to child, suckling on breasts...biting...etc. The act itself involves a 'hunting' and a 'spearing'...
_________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37194 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Appetites are determined by degree of need; taste is determined by particular, fluctuating organ relationships, with their particular nutritional requirements, viz., kinds of elements each organ requires and has to replenish to keep functioning efficiently, e.g., a dominant, or inefficient, organ requiring more frequent replenishment in comparison to a less efficient and dynamic organ. Keeping in mind the cultural circumstances that cultivate preferences for specific kinds of nutritional combinations, preparations and presentations we can trace individual preferences to organ hierarchies manifesting personality, and to the particular nutritional requirements and the frequency of their required replenishment which manifest particular tastes; tastes which change over time, as the organism matures, and under changing environmental circumstances, determining depletion and availability of energies.
***
An individual may determine his own preferences by habituating his body to particular nutritional combinations, preparations and presentations, modifying its own chemistry, consequently modifying its organ dynamics – influencing personality – in the form of mood, attitude etc. – as well as tastes.
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The preparation of food changes how nutritional elements combine – slightly being altered by the process. An individual may become accustomed with a particular combination and preparation, but the elements it needs remain the same. A preference for one kind of food and not another, is determined by the individual’s organic chemistry, establishing a particular kind of need, gratified most efficiently by specific combinations of nutrients and specific methods of preparation.
_________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37194 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
^ Seafood in particular I would stay away from if you are not sure what it is. I've also heard of a whole chicken in a chicken soup and I mean a whole chicken except for the feathers, but I think that's rather the exception. Better stick to the rice based foods, the vegetables and fruits and straight pork and chicken meat. Fortunately that is the mainstay of their food selection.
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37194 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Live sashimi is a popular dish in all of East Asia(Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore). The still moving carcass of the fish is presented along with the sliced meat to show the freshness of the food. We do it deliberately. Cultureless Amerimutts can cope and seethe. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
— Governor General (@manchuxi) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
It’s also possible in China to get yin-yang fish: a fish whose body is deep fried while it’s head is protected. “Speed is the key — when you prepare the fish, you can’t hurt its internal organs, so when you serve it, it can stay alive for at least half an hour,” [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Americans be like: eww this is gross! While gobbling down some Goyslop. Yeah, fish can twitch for quite a while after they die, even chopped up in pieces. It’s life and nature. Americans are so mentally fragile that they think food grows in supermarkets. Get tough, grow up. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
— Governor General (@manchuxi) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
