Court of arms (mythology)

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Arms court ( ancient Greek Ὅπλων κρίσις Hóplōn krísis , Latin Armorum iudicium ) is the title of several ancient tragedies and also the name of a certain episode from the Trojan saga in which the Telamonians Aias and Odysseus argue over the weapons of the dead Achilles .

The tragedies go back to a received in fragments tragedy Hoplon krisis of Aeschylus , which Aristotle calls among the pieces that focus on the stories of the Little Iliad support. In addition, the title is not documented in Greek literature. Works with the title armorum iudicium , however, are known by the Roman poets Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius . The title of a corresponding piece has also come down to us from Pacuvius' pupil, Pomponius .

17 fragments of Pacuvius's work have survived, for example from Nonius Marcellus , Festus and above all from Cicero , who considered Pacuvius to be the finest tragedy poet of the Roman Republic . According to Suetonius, his play was performed on the occasion of the funeral ceremony for Gaius Iulius Caesar in order to turn the people against the murderers of Caesar. The armorum iudicium is the only work by Accius that deals with a material common to Pacuvius and that also repeatedly adopts formulations from the older one. The scope of action in Pacuvius and Accius also seems to have been more or less identical. While with Pacuvius, however, the court of arbitration that had to decide the dispute seems to have been occupied by Greeks, with Accius it was Trojans .

Both poets seem to have motivated and shaped their judgment in the gun court differently. The tragedy of Pacuvius, the end of which can only be deduced from the fragments, probably ended with the suicide of Aias. In contrast to the Aias of Sophocles , who is driven insane by what he sees as unjust treatment and who takes his own life out of this confusion, in Pacuvius the judgment passed by an arbitral tribunal alone seems to have justified the suicide. A relationship between the two tragedies and Aeschylus' Hoplon crisis cannot be proven with certainty.

In addition, armorum iudicium generally denotes representations of the dispute between Aias and Odysseus. This is the title of the 107th fable of Hyginus Mythographus armorum iudicium and the corresponding description in Ovid's Metamorphoses is also referred to by researchers as armorum iudicium or hoplon krisis .

literature

  • Petra Schierl: The tragedies of Pacuvius. De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, pp. 131-135.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aristotle, Poetics 1259b 5.
  2. ↑ Fragments from Petra Schierl: The tragedies of Pacuvius. De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, pp. 140-161.
  3. ↑ Cicero, De optimo genere oratorum 2.
  4. ^ Suetonius, Iulius 84.
  5. ↑ Gesine Manuwald : The dispute over the weapons of Achilles. To Accius' Armorum iudicium. In: Gesine Manuwald, Stefan Faller (ed.): Accius and his time. Ergon, Würzburg 2002, pp. 207-227.
  6. ↑ Petra Schierl: The tragedies of Pacuvius. De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, p. 138.
  7. ↑ Petra Schierl: The tragedies of Pacuvius. De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, p. 136.
  8. ↑ Petra Schierl: The tragedies of Pacuvius. De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, p. 136 f.
  9. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 107.
  10. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 12,612-13,398.
  11. ↑ Jefferds Richard Huyck: A Commentary on Ovid's Armorum Iudicium. Metamorphoses 12,612-13,398. Harvard University, Ann Arbor (Mich.) 1991.