Margites
Template:Short description Template:Italic title Template:For The Margites (Template:Langx) is a comic mock-epic ascribed to Homer<ref>Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Margites</ref> 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 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, margos, "raving, mad; lustful"), who was so dense he did not know which parent had given birth to him.<ref>Stuart Kelly, The Book of Lost Books, New York: Random House, 2005.</ref> His name gave rise to the adjective margitomanēs ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}), "mad as Margites", used by Philodemus.<ref>Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon revised edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.</ref>
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.<ref>Harpokration, Lexicon of the Ten Orators, § m6</ref> Basil of Caesarea writes that the work is attributed to Homer but that he is unsure regarding this attribution.<ref>Advice to Young Men on Greek Literature, Basil of Caesarea, § 8</ref> 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.<ref>Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquity, New York, 1898.</ref>
Margites was famous in the ancient world, but only the following lines survive:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:Quote
Due to the Margites character, the Greeks used the word as an insult to describe foolish and useless people.<ref name = "Harpokration"/><ref>Advice to Young Men on Greek Literature, Basil of Caesarea, § 8</ref> Demosthenes called Alexander the Great Margites in order to insult and degrade him.<ref name = "Harpokration">Harpokration, Lexicon of the Ten Orators, § m6</ref><ref>Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, §160</ref><ref name = "Plutach_Demosthenes">Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes, §23</ref>
ReferencesEdit
BibliographyEdit
- Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, article on Margites, Template:Usurped.
- West, M.L. Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Template:ISBN.