Greek Literature & the Foreign, Academy of Athens, David Konstan

David Konstan (Professor of Classics, New York University):

Making Friends with Foreigners: Xenia in the Homeric Epics Revisited

Xenos is a problematic term. Dictionaries and histories are largely in agreement that the primary sense of the term is “guest-friend,” to use the awkward compound that has become standard in English (cf. Chantraine, Dictionnaire Étymologique; Liddell Scott Jones, Greek-English Dictionary; Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek; Finley, World of Odysseus; Herman Ritualised Friendship). Only later, it is argued, did the sense of “stranger” or “foreigner” develop. What is more, the relationship of guest-friendship or hospitality (xenia) is imagined as having an institutional, contractual, and hereditary character; to quote Moses Finley, whose treatment was seminal: “Guest-friendship was a very serious institution, the alternative to marriage in forging bonds between rulers.... Guest-friend and guest-friendship were far more than sentimental terms of human affection. In the world of Odysseus they were technical names for very concrete relationships, as formal and as evocative of rights and duties as marriage. And they remained so well thereafter.” Or again, Gabriel Herman writes: “a person could die, but the role of xenos could not.”

In my talk, I plan to turn this description on its head. I will argue that in Homer, the term xenos means precisely “stranger,” and that xenia is not a formal bond, does not involve reciprocal obligations, and is not passed on to descendants. I will suggest that a foreigner (xenos) may indeed be treated as a member of one’s own community, and so be regarded as a philos xenos, that is, a “dear foreigner,” an expression in which the notion of stranger is not lost or submerged under the title of “guest” (for which there is no precise term in classical Greek). I will illustrate the process by which a foreigner is afforded such hospitably recognition, which, however, has nothing to do with ritual or formal compact. I hope that this will shed new light on the nature of social relations in the archaic period of Greece.

• Πέμπτη, 20 Ιουνίου 2019 στις 6 μ.μ. – 8 μ.μ.

• pin	Academy of Athens Panepistimiou 28, 106 79 Αθήνα

https://www.facebook.com/events/285861078959085/