{"id":191,"date":"2012-12-24T02:48:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T02:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=191"},"modified":"2016-03-30T20:42:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T20:42:19","slug":"stamatia-dova-greek-heroes-in-and-out-of-hades-lanham-md-lexington-books-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/08-1\/c51-book-review\/stamatia-dova-greek-heroes-in-and-out-of-hades-lanham-md-lexington-books-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Stamatia Dova, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
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Beginning from the seminal story at Odyssey 11.467-540, which chronicles Odysseus\u2019 journey to Hades and his encounters with Achilles and Heracles, the table is set for a richly nuanced, methodologically diverse study of the hero in transition to and from the underworld (katabasis). The study then radiates outward to embrace other stories of other mythical heroes and heroines, to challenge previous understandings of these texts and Ancient Greek ideas about death and heroism. The result is a feat of erudition, whose curious juxtapositioning of hero\/heroine and underworld fate\/adventure discloses many innovative insights not only about the texts in question, but about timeless human questions regarding the meanings of life and death. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Dova\u2019s study is launched with the recounting of the Odyssey passage that stages the reunion between Odysseus, the temporary visitor to Hades who enters the dark underworld in the full knowledge that he will return home and resume his life adventures, and Achilles, the self-sacrificing warrior-hero of the Iliad who shows up in the Odyssey in the form of an insubstantial shade, regretting his choice of an early death that promised eternal glory in the memories of men. Odysseus\u2019 meeting with Achilles, informed by his encounter with Heracles, permits Dova to bring into deep conversation the two classic Homeric works, weaving their many thematic threads into a common tapestry that, like Achilles\u2019 shield, depicts the vast landscape of human life and its deeply conflicted values: mortality, self-sacrifice, prophecy, death, heroic character, glory, shame, aretaic reciprocity, and ignoble deception. The reader gets to appreciate that all the bravery and glory in the world are useless after life is said and done; that identity involves a plethora of paradoxes; and that poor life choices and unfinished duels are not resolved in death.<\/span><\/p>\n

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One of the highlights of the book is Dova\u2019s complex recasting of the hero Odysseus from his traditional framing as \u201cthe champion of mortality and the embodiment of resilience and cunning\u201d (36) to the immature warrior, responsible for the sack of Troy, but riddled with personal flaws: he abandoned his young wife, infant son, and aging parents to go to Troy, he was \u201cnot particularly distinguished in warfare,\u201d and he was particularly brave\u2014\u201cnot in a hurry to die on the battlefield, at sea, or even in the underworld\u201d (37). Dova sees the Odysseus of the Iliad as \u201ccurious and inquisitive, risk-taking and gift-loving, reckless, promiscuous, and proud\u201d (37), and in need of much moral education. She reads his many adventures in the Odyssey as providing a number of \u201cemotional stops\u201d along the way home that afford experiences of love and hate, worry, regret, and joy, which permit Odysseus\u2019 character to grow and mature.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Another innovative triumph of Greek Heroes in and out of Hades comes with Dova\u2019s re-examination of the myth of Alcestis, through the dual lenses of Plato\u2019s Symposium and Euripides\u2019 tragic play. The contrasting recountings of the tale permit a comparison of male and female heroic experience that issues in surprising results. Alcestis chooses self-sacrifice to save her husband, without promise of glory or fame, and though the heroine\u2019s self-sacrifice is thwarted in the end by Heracles, her ready willingness to die for love reveals a finer aspect of the death well-chosen than Achilles\u2019 glorious choice, regretted once in Hades. The fact that Alcestis returns from death, yet receives the praise of the lover Phaedrus in his eulogy on love in the Symposium, reveals another, more selfless, aspect of heroic courage.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dova\u2019s Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a rich work that will satisfy many a classical scholar\u2019s palette. It is not for the faint of heart, nor for the beginning scholar, unlearned in the Ancient Greek language. But philosophers and classicists at a distinguished level of preparation are in for a rare treat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In Greek Heroes in and out of Hades<\/em>, Stamatia Dova offers the lover of Greek poetry and philosophy a lavish feast of epic, lyric, and tragic poetic fare.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[594,595,251,596,597,598,113,599],"coauthors":[1203],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c51-book-review","tag-achilles","tag-alcestis","tag-classics","tag-greek","tag-heracles","tag-heroes","tag-homer","tag-odysseus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/302"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1246,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/1246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}