Pothos (mythology)

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Eurynoe, Pothos, Hippodame, Eros , Iaso and an asteria on an Attic red-figure vase by the Kadmos painter , around 400 BC Chr.
Roman copy of a statue of Pothos after Skopas (?)

Pothos ( Greek  Πόθος "desire") is in Greek mythology the personification of the longing for an absent object and to that extent also of mourning.

Pothos is not one of the early daimones and gods of Greek mythology. Homer and Hesiod do not know him. With Homer, the word pothos mostly expresses a horse's desire for its absent owner, in the case of the Automedon, for example, after its death. Whether Pothos in the 7th century BC . Chr sealing poet Archilochus is already intended as a personification - he calls the member redeeming (lysimelés) Pothos "my friend" - remains uncertain. Even with his contemporary Alkman , the limb-releasing pothos is documented in the Astymeloisa- Partheneion, which was only discovered in the 1950s . Only from the 5th century BC It appears more frequently in the 2nd century BC and can be traced back to poetry, philosophy and the fine arts.

In the period between 465 and 460 BC Chr. Listed tragedy The Protector of Aeschylus appears Pothos for the first time as a personification. There he was the son of Aphrodite . The fable poet Babrios also names Aphrodite as mother around 100 AD, but Pothos has become several Pothoi with him . In Alkaios are Iris and Zephyrus the parents of Eros and this tradition following calls nor in the 5th century AD. Chr. Written Nonnos of Panopolis in his Dionysiaka Iris as a mother also of pothos. While Plato made him the son of Eros in the symposium , according to Philo von Byblos, Eros and Pothos were considered to be the sons of Cronus and Astarte by the Phoinists and were consequently brothers.

Regardless of the exact family relationships, Pothos was closely connected with Eros and Himeros , the personification of the desire for love. While Eros and Himeros already appear together in Hesiod's Theogony and appear with the birth of Aphrodite, Pothos only joins them later. In his dialogue Kratylos, Plato explains the relationship between the three by describing them as three states of the thymos , the mood of a person, and says that Pothos is the desire for something absent, Eros and Himeros, in contrast, the desire for something present. The difference between the latter would be that Himeros grows out of man himself, whereas Eros is only triggered by the object of desire and therefore from outside. Among the Stoics , Pothos is, alongside Eros and Aphrodite, one of the powers that rule over πάθη , passion.

In Alexandrian times, from Meleager of Gadara, there was no longer any clear distinction between Eros and Pothos and Pothos can also be used as a name for Eros.

In the myth, Pothos was one of the companions Aphrodite gave to Paris to advertise Helena in addition to Eros, Himeros, Hymenaios and the Charites , but also appearing in other combinations .

In his description of the Temple of Aphrodite in Megara, Pausanias mentions a group of statues from the hand of Skopas : "Eros, Himeros and Pothos come from Skopas, if their actions are as different as their names." One experimentally combines a type of statue that is known in several Roman replicas is, with the Pothos des Skopas, who is one of the most famous sculptors of the 4th century BC. Was.

Pothos often comes across in Greek vase painting , where he is identified by name inscriptions. Mostly there are Dionysian scenes in which he blows the auloi or strikes the tympanum . On a around 400 BC BC made. Attic red-figure vase Kadmos painter , he brings the Eurynoe sandals while Eros of Hippo lady bears fruit, all this in the presence of Iaso and Asteria . Other vase pictures show Pothos as present at the Paris judgment or alone with Helena. It is often depicted winged and has no iconography of its own compared to Eros , so that it is not possible to decide who is represented in further vase pictures without name inscription.

The relationship of the pothos as the personification of the desire of sadness and sweet craving is also of a pothos plant referred to, which were planted as "desire flower" in graves visible.

literature

  • Henning Börm : Pothos . In: Der Neue Pauly Volume 10, Stuttgart 2003, Sp. 233f.
  • Otto Höfer : Pothos . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.2, Leipzig 1909, Col. 2903-2906 ( digitized version ).
  • Walter Pötscher : Pothos (mythology). In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, Sp. 1094.
  • Jan Bazant:  Pothos 1 . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VII, Zurich / Munich 1994, p. 501.
  • Harvey Alan Shapiro: Personifications in Greek art. The representation of abstract concepts, 600-400 BC Akanthus, Zurich 1993, pp. 110-123.
  • Olga Palagia: Skopas of Paros and the "Pothos". In: Demtrius U. Schilardi, Dora Katsonopoulou (eds.): Paria lithos. Parian quarries, marbles and workshops of sculpture. Proceedings of the First International Conference in archeology of Paros and the Cyclades (Paros 1997). Paros and Cyclades Institute of Archeology, Athens 2000, pp. 219-225 ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Pothos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Homer, Iliad 17,439: ἡνιόχοιο πόθῳ .
  2. ^ Archilochus Fragment 118 West .
  3. ↑ Oxyrhynchus Papyrus No. 2387 = Malcolm Davies : Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta . Vol. 1. Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, fragment 3.1.
  4. ↑ Aeschylus, Die Schutzflehenden 1039 ; so also Theodoros Prodromos 9,199.
  5. ↑ Babrios, fabulae 32.2.
  6. ↑ Nonnos, Dionysiaka 47,347.
  7. ^ Plato, Symposium 197 d.
  8. ↑ Philo of Byblos in Eusebius of Caesarea , Praeparatio evangelica 1,10,18.
  9. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 201.
  10. ^ Plato, Kratylos 420.
  11. ^ Pseudo-Plutarch , Placita Philosophorum 1,6 p 880 a.
  12. ↑ For example in Cornutus , De natura deorum 25 p. 143 Osann .
  13. ↑ Lucian of Samosata , Dialogi deorum 20:16; Nonnos, Dionysiaka 33,12 (Charis, Peitho and Pothos); 25,154,159,168; 47,443 (Pothos alone); Euripides , Die Bacchen 414 (Chariten and Pothos); Aristophanes , The Birds 1320 (Sophia, Chariten, Hesychia and Pothos).
  14. ↑ Pausanias 1,43,6. : Σκόπα δὲ Ἔρως καὶ Ἵμερος καὶ Πόθος, εἰ δὴ διάφορά ἐστι κατὰ ταὐτὸ τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ τὰ ἔργια σφίσ.
  15. ↑ Compare with the older literature for example Olga Palagia: Skopas of Paros and the "Pothos". In: Demtrius U. Schilardi, Dora Katsonopoulou (eds.): Paria lithos. Parian quarries, marbles and workshops of sculpture. Proceedings of the First International Conference in archeology of Paros and the Cyclades (Paros 1997). Paros and Cyclades Institute of Archeology, Athens 2000, pp. 219-225.
  16. ↑ Lukian, Amores 3.
  17. ↑ Theophrast , historia plantarum 6,8,3; Athenaios 15,679 c-d; Eustathios commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem 1679: 13 ff .; Pliny , Naturalis historia 21,11,67.