Margites
Template:Short description Template:Italic title Script error: No such module "For". The Margites (Template:Langx) is a comic mock-epic ascribed to Homer[1] that is largely lost. From references to the work that survived, it is known that its central character is an exceedingly stupid man named Margites (from ancient Greek Script error: No such module "Lang"., margos, "raving, mad; lustful"), who was so dense he did not know which parent had given birth to him.[2] His name gave rise to the adjective margitomanēs (Script error: No such module "Lang".), "mad as Margites", used by Philodemus.[3]
The work, among a mixed genre of works loosely labelled "Homerica" in antiquity, was commonly attributed to Homer, as by Aristotle (Poetics 13.92)—"His Margites indeed provides an analogy: as are the Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies, so is the Margites to our comedies"—and Harpocration.[4] Basil of Caesarea writes that the work is attributed to Homer but that he is unsure regarding this attribution.[5] However, the massive medieval Greek encyclopaedia called the Suda attributed the Margites to Pigres, a Greek poet of Halicarnassus.
It is written in mixed hexameter and iambic lines, an oddity characteristic also of the Batrachomyomachia (likewise attributed to Pigres), which inserts a pentameter line after each hexameter of the Iliad as a curious literary game.[6]
Margites was famous in the ancient world, but only the following lines survive:[7][8] Template:Quote
Due to the Margites character, the Greeks used the word as an insult to describe foolish and useless people.[4][5] Demosthenes called Alexander the Great Margites in order to insult and degrade him.[4][9][10]
References
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- ↑ Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Margites
- ↑ Stuart Kelly, The Book of Lost Books, New York: Random House, 2005.
- ↑ Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon revised edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.
- ↑ a b c Harpokration, Lexicon of the Ten Orators, § m6
- ↑ a b Advice to Young Men on Greek Literature, Basil of Caesarea, § 8
- ↑ Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquity, New York, 1898.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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- ↑ Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, §160
- ↑ Plutarch, "Life of Demosthenes", §23
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Bibliography
- Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, article on Margites, v. 2, page 949Template:Category handler[<span title="Script error: No such module "string".">usurped]Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters"..
- West, M.L. Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Template:ISBN.