Editing Thersites

{{Short description|Mythical Greek soldier in the Trojan War}}
{{For|the gastropod of [[Camaenidae]] family|Thersites (gastropod)}}
{{Trojan War}}
{{Special characters}}

In [[Greek mythology]], '''Thersites''' ({{IPAc-en|θ|ɜːr|ˈ|s|aɪ|t|iː|z}}; [[Ancient Greek]]: Θερσίτης){{refn|group=n|The first attestation of this name in Greek could be the [[Mycenaean Greek|Mycenaean]] [[Linear B]] word {{lang|gmy|𐀵𐀯𐀲}}, ''to-si-ta'', a word found on the [[Pylos|PY]] Cn 719 tablet.<ref>{{cite book|page=192|title=A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oa42E3DP3icC&pg=PA192|editor-first=Egbert J.|editor-last=Bakker|year=2010|publisher= Wiley-Blackwell|isbn= 978-1-4051-5326-3|chapter=Mycenaean Greek|first=Rupert|last=Thompson|series=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World}} At [[Google Books]].</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://minoan.deaditerranean.com/resources/linear-b-sign-groups/to/to-si-ta/|title=to-si-ta|work=Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B|last=Raymoure|first=K.A.|publisher=Deaditerranean|access-date=2014-03-21|archive-date=2013-10-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131013055821/http://minoan.deaditerranean.com/resources/linear-b-sign-groups/to/to-si-ta/|url-status=dead}} {{cite web|title=PY 719 Cn + frr.: 6 + fr. + fr. + fr. + frr. (1)|website=DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo|url=https://www2.hf.uio.no/damos/Index/item/chosen_item_id/4402|publisher=[[University of Oslo]]}}</ref>}} was a soldier of the Greek army during the [[Trojan War]].
[[File:Thersites accosts Achilles.jpg|thumb|Thersites and Achilles, illustration for Shakespeare's 'Troilus & Cressida'.]]

== Family ==
The ''[[Iliad]]'' does not mention his father's name, which may suggest that he should be viewed as a commoner rather than an aristocratic hero. However, a quotation from another lost epic in the Trojan cycle, the ''[[Aethiopis]]'', names his parents as [[Agrius of Calydon]] and [[Dia (mythology)|Dia]], a daughter of King [[Porthaon]].<ref>[[Tzetzes]], ''Chiliades'' 7.888</ref><ref>[[Scholia]] on ''[[Iliad]]'', 2. 212</ref>

== Mythology ==
In some accounts, Thersites, together with his five brothers including [[Melanippus]], overthrew [[Oeneus]] from the throne of [[Calydon]] and gave the kingdom to Agrius, their father and Oeneus's brother. Later on, they were deposed by [[Diomedes]] who reinstated his grandfather Oeneus as king and slew all of Thersites's brothers.<ref>[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]], 1.7.10 & 1.8.5-[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Apollod.+1.8.6&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0022:book=0:chapter=0&highlight=Thersites 6]</ref>

[[Homer]] described him in detail in the ''Iliad'', Book II, even though he plays only a minor role in the story. He is said to be bow-legged and lame, to have shoulders that cave inward, and a head which is covered in tufts of hair and comes to a point. This deformity has even given rise to a [[Thersites#Thersites complex|medical eponym]]. Vulgar, obscene, and somewhat dull-witted, Thersites disrupts the rallying of the Greek army:

<blockquote>He got up in the assembly and attacked [[Agamemnon]] in the words of [[Achilles]] [calling him greedy and a coward] ... [[Odysseus]] then stood up, delivered a sharp rebuke to Thersites, which he coupled with a threat to strip him naked, and then beat him on the back and shoulders with Agamemnon's sceptre; Thersites doubled over, a warm tear fell from his eye, and a bloody welt formed on his back; he sat down in fear, and in pain gazed helplessly as he wiped away his tear; but the rest of the assembly was distressed and laughed .... There must be a figuration of wickedness as self-evident as Thersites—the ugliest man who came to Troy—who says what everyone else is thinking.<ref>''The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy'' by Seth Benardete, 1991, pp. 100–101.</ref></blockquote>

He is not mentioned elsewhere in the ''Iliad'', but it seems that in the lost ''Aethiopis'' Achilles eventually killed him by punching him very hard "for having torn out the eyes of the Amazon [[Penthesilea]] that the hero had just killed in combat."<ref>''Analyses et réflexions sur Gorgias'' by [[Luc Brisson]], p. 152.</ref>

In his Introduction to ''The Anger of Achilles'', [[Robert Graves]] speculates that Homer might have made Thersites a ridiculous figure as a way of dissociating himself from him, because his remarks seem entirely justified. This was a way of letting these remarks, along with Odysseus' brutal act of suppression, remain in the record.

==In later literature==
Thersites is also mentioned in [[Plato]]'s ''[[Gorgias (dialogue)|Gorgias]]'' (525e) as an example of a soul that can be cured in the after-life because of his lack of might;<ref name="gorgias-sokrates">Plato, ''Gorgias'', 525e.</ref> and in ''[[The Republic (Plato)|The Republic]]'' he chooses to be reborn as a nonhuman ape. According to E. R. Dodds, "There he is not so much the typical petty criminal as the typical buffoon; and so [[Lucian]] describes him."<ref>''Gorgias'', ed. by E. R. Dodds, 1959, p. 382.</ref>

The ''[[Alexander Romance]]'' refers to Thersites when [[Alexander the Great]] is claimed to have said that it would be a greater honor to be immortalized in the poetry of [[Homer]], even if only as a minor and detestable character like Thersites, than by the poets of his own day: "I would sooner be a Thersites in Homer than an Agamemnon in your writing".<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1055263506|title=Collected ancient Greek novels|date=2019|others=Bryan P. Reardon|isbn=978-0-520-30559-5|edition=[Third edition]|location=Oakland, California|pages=799|oclc=1055263506}}</ref> Other recensions replace Agamemnon with Achilles in the comparison.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Alexander Romance ("Pseudo-Callisthenes") Book 1, Chapters 42–47|url=http://www.attalus.org/translate/alexander1e.html}}</ref>

''A New Interlude Called Thersites'', an anonymous play from 1537 sometimes attributed to [[Nicholas Udall]], is based on a Latin dialogue by [[Jean Tixier de Ravisi]], a professor of rhetoric at the [[College of Navarre]] and rector of the [[University of Paris]] from 1520–1524, written under the [[pen name]] "J. Ravisius Textor." It is described by [[Karl J. Holzknecht]] as "the earliest example of the braggart soldier (''[[miles gloriosus]]'') on the English stage." While derived from plays of [[Plautus]], elements such as combat with a snail ("an old medieval joke, usually at the expense of the [[Lombards]]") and an episode in which [[Telemachus]] comes to the title character's mother to be cured of worms, are wholly original to this version.<ref>Karl J. Holzknecht. ''Outlines of Tudor and Stuart Plays 1497-1642: 82 Act-by-Act Synopses Plus Dramatis Personae, Sources, Critical Comments''. New York: [[Barnes & Noble]], 1947, 13. (He spells Tixier and "Textier.")</ref>  

Along with many of the major figures of the Trojan War, Thersites was a character in [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Troilus and Cressida]]'' (1602) in which he is described as "a deformed and scurrilous Grecian" and portrayed as a comic servant, in the tradition of the [[Shakespearean fool]], but unusually given to abusive remarks to all he encounters. He begins as [[Ajax the Great|Ajax]]'s slave, telling Ajax, "I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece." Thersites soon leaves Ajax and puts himself into the service of Achilles (portrayed by Shakespeare as a kind of bohemian figure), who appreciates his bitter, caustic humor. Shakespeare mentions Thersites again in his later play ''[[Cymbeline]]'', when [[Guiderius]] says, "Thersites' body is as good as Ajax' / When neither are alive."

[[Laurence Sterne]] writes of Thersites in the last volume of his ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]'', chapter 14, declaring him to be the exemplar of abusive satire, as black as the ink it is written with.

In [[Faust, Part Two|Part Two]] of [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]'s ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]]'' (1832), Act One, during the Masquerade, Thersites appears briefly and criticizes the goings-on. He says, "When some lofty thing is done / I gird at once my harness on. / Up with what's low, what's high eschew, / Call crooked straight, and straight askew".<ref>Trans. Wayne, Philip, copyright 1959 (Penguin Books).</ref> The Herald, who acts as Master of Revels or Lord of Misrule, strikes Thersites with his mace, at which point he metamorphoses into an egg, from which a bat and an adder are hatched.

==As social critic==
The role of Thersites as a social critic has been advanced by several philosophers and literary critics, including [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Edward Said]], [[Thomas Woods (Irish diplomat)|Thomas Woods]] and [[Kenneth Burke]]. In the passage below from ''[[Language as Symbolic Action]]'',<ref>Pages 110–111</ref> Burke cites Hegel's coinage of the term "Thersitism", and he proceeds to describe a version of it as a process by which an author both privileges protest in a literary work but also disguises or disowns it, so as not to distract from the literary form of the work, which must push on toward other effects than the protest ''per se'':
{|
|
:If an audience is likely to feel that it is being crowded into a position, if there is any likelihood that the requirements of dramatic "efficiency" would lead to the blunt ignoring of a possible protest from at least some significant portion of the onlookers, the author must get this objection stated in the work itself. But the objection should be voiced in a way that the same breath disposes of it.
|}
An example of this stratagem is the role of Thersites in the ''Iliad''. For any Greeks who were likely to resent the stupidity of the Trojan War, the text itself provided a spokesman who voiced their resistance. And he was none other than the abominable Thersites, for whom no "right-minded" member of the Greek audience was likely to feel sympathy. As early as Hegel, however, his standard role was beginning to be questioned. Consider, for instance, these remarks in the introduction to Hegel's ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]'':
{|
|
:The Thersites of Homer who abuses the kings is a standing figure for all times. He does not get in every age . . . the blows that he gets in Homer. But his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh. And the undying worm that gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism may also have its sinister side.
|}
Thersites also appears in the writings of [[Karl Marx]],<ref>Marx, quoting Shakespeare and otherwise employing the trope of Thesites: Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung Nos. 87, October 31, 1847 and No. 94, November 25, 1847. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm</ref> and those of later [[Marxist]] literature in Soviet times much in the spirit of Hegel's construal. [[Heiner Müller]] casts Thersites in the role of Shepherd who also shears his sheep reflecting the contradictions broached by Hegel.<ref>e.g. [[Heiner Müller]], Poem, Stories from Homer (Geschichten von Homer), 1949, Werke 1, Shurkamp, 1998, p16.</ref>
{|
|
:... Came the talk in dining, meat and wine, to Thersites
:The reviled, the windbag, Homer stood in the gathering
:Using wisely the great quarrel for the greater prey, spoke:
:See the peoples shepherd who shears his flock and does them in as always does the shepherd,
:showed the soldiers bloody and empty, the bloody, empty hands of soldiers.
:Then asked the pupils: What is it with this Thersites,
:Master? You give him the right words then with your own
:Words you put him in the wrong...
|}

==Thersites complex==
In medicine, the term '''Thersites complex''' refers to patients who have a very minor deformity, yet who are extremely anxious about it. They frequently contact surgeons to correct their "highly perceived" deformity. The doctors tend to ignore the complaint and refer them to psychologists and psychiatrists. Psychotherapy, however is often refused, or ineffective.<ref name="Mühlbauer_2001" >{{cite journal | vauthors = Mühlbauer W, Holm C, Wood DL| title = The Thersites complex in plastic surgical patients | journal = Plast Reconstr Surg  | volume = 107 | issue = 2 | pages = 319–26| date = February 2001 | doi =10.1097/00006534-200102000-00003 |pmid = 11214044 | s2cid = 41763229 }}</ref>

==Notes and references==
;Notes
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;References
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== Further reading ==

* [[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]], ''The Library'' with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0022 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.] [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0021 Greek text available from the same website].
* [[John Tzetzes|Tzetzes, John]], ''Book of Histories,'' Book VII-VIII translated by Vasiliki Dogani from the original Greek of T. Kiessling's edition of 1826. [http://www.theoi.com/Text/TzetzesChiliades7.html Online version at theio.com]

==External links==
* {{commons category-inline}}

{{Characters in the Iliad}}
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[[Category:Achaeans (Homer)]]
[[Category:Mythological Aetolians]]
[[Category:Fictional jesters]]