(Dis)habilités divines chez Homère et au-delà : Atē, les Litai et l’enfant d’Horkos

Abstract

This article aims at exploring the imperfect and deformed anthropomorphism of three different divine figures: two of them are evoked in the Homeric poems and the third one in Herodotus work. They are: Ate, the blind madness, who confuses people with disastrous consequences; the Litai, who are the implorations always prepared to follow Ate; and finally Horkos’ son, Oath’s child who condemns perjurers to oblivion. All these divine figures are characterised by their physical deformations or weaknesses, which, when analysed closely, reveal themselves to be a mark of their power. Scholars usually group these types of figures together under the label “personifications”. However, this term is not an etic definition of a specific category of divine figure in the Greek world. Through a reconsideration of the notion of “personification”, this article also aims at understanding the function of these figures within the Greek polytheism, and in particular at demonstrating the way in which this kind of imperfect anthropomorphism contributes to the Greek reflection about the divine.