CLAS 2531 Chapter Notes -Lares, Agon, Gedrosia
29 Apr 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Dead men and dead animals are treated alike. Did man come to understand death through the paradox of killing? essential elements of funerary ritual derive from the ritual of hunting and sacrificing. Often a corpse was intentionally torn apart only to be put back together again. When faced with the fact of death, this reflex aggression strikes out into a vacuum and hence returns upon itself. With no enemy near, the hand raised to strike comes down upon one"s own head. Men, of course, often seek some external substitutes as the butt of their rage: hence those funerary sacrifices that are and intend to be merely destructive. Once again, death is mastered when the mourner becomes a killer there is often no clear-cut distinction between merely destructive sacrifice and the sacrifice of the funerary meal. Achilles pouring wine for his dead friend patroklos.
