Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: No other trait of the gods is envied by men as bitterly as their immortality.This abyss between men and gods is one of the main themes of ancient literature and archaic Greek literature is no exception.The gods of archaic literature are γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων ('race of those who always are'), ἀθάνατοι ('immortals') and αἰειγενέται ('ever-living').This paper first examines the opinion of some scholars that the eternal life of the gods is closely related to their godly aliments ambrosia and nectar, 2 and will further try to describe the relationship and weight of this observation with a more widespread archaic conception of gods' immortality.Ambrosia and nectar, unlike many divine items, have no exact parallel in the human world, and can thus be called "mythical items".Although they share a few qualities with the food and drink of men, their nature and functions depend mostly on the creative imagination of the poets who describe them.3 At times they are liquid, at other times solid; they are multi-functional, used as bathing cosmetics, preventers of stench, preservatives of corpses, and granters of immortality, but their main function is to serve as the nutriment of the gods.4 What, according to basic archaic understanding, is the purpose of this divine meal?What end does it serve in the lives of the gods?The first to address this question was Aristotle.In his Metaphysics, discussing the principles of perishable and imperishable things, he writes:The school of Hesiod (οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ Ἡσίοδον) and all the mythologists (ὅσοι θεολόγοι) thought only of what was plausible to themselves, and had no regard to us.For asserting the first principles to be gods and born of gods, they say that the beings which did not 1 An earlier version of this paper was read at the annual conference of the Israel Society for the Promotion of Classical Studies held at Ben-Gurion University in May 2014.I am grateful to Prof. Margalit Finkelberg for her valuable comments on this paper.2 See quotations from West below.Cf.Roscher (1883, 51): 'Ambrosia und Nektar machen die Götter unsterblich'.Levin (1971, 33): 'The gods' eating of ambrosia is a renewal of deathlessness'.Garcia (2007), 161: 'Ambrosia is closely associated with the gods' immortality'.Although Clay (1997), 145; (1982), 115 rejected the idea that in Homer ambrosia and nectar make the gods immortal, she argued that they 'prevent them from aging and exempt them from the natural cycle of growth and decay'.
Source: Scripta Classica Israelica
Author: Amit Baratz
Institution: Tel Aviv University
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407202278