Abstract
Homer’s narrative of the Funeral Games for Patroclus in the Iliad reveals two prominent multivocal symbols that permeate archaic Greek culture: the horse and the tripod. This thesis argues that the horse and the tripod fulfill important functions as symbols for aspects of life as diverse as elite status, divine favor, and military power. As multivocal symbols, the horse and the tripod convey fundamental ancient Greek meanings and manifest in diverse ways in myth and ritual.
A main part of my theoretical apparatus for this thesis comes from Victor Turner. Victor Turner was a symbolic anthropologist who made substantial contributions to research on multivocal symbols and rites of passage, and he developed this research in his ethnographic fieldwork with the Ndembu tribe of South Africa. Thus, Victor Turner establishes the foundational concepts for this thesis. As Turner shows, multivocality is an anthropological concept that refers to symbols that have more than one meaning or interpretation, and rites of passage is a ritual that reflects a transformation from one state to another.
This thesis shows that an analysis of the Funeral Games for Patroclus provides evidence for how the Greeks of archaic Greek culture conceptualized the world around them, and the symbols that generated semantic potency.
Advisor
Foster, Edith
Second Advisor
Frese, Pam
Department
Classical Studies; Sociology and Anthropology
Recommended Citation
Dobransky, Helen, "Divine Interventions and Human Competition: Horses, Prizes, and the Gods in Homer’s Narrative of the Funeral Games for Patroclus" (2024). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 10924.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/10924
Disciplines
Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity | Social and Cultural Anthropology
Keywords
multivocality, tripod, horse, Greek, symbols
Publication Date
2024
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2024 Helen Dobransky