Rumor (Φήμη) and Reason (Λόγος) in J-P Vernant and Marcel Detienne

Considerations of the Attic Tragedy

Abstract

What does one mean when speaking of the Greek man? Singularity brings an obstacle due to the diversity of situations, ways of life and the politics along Greek ancient history. Would that be the man from Homer’s heroe referencies, the polites, or the tragic man of the fifth century b.C? Trough the reflexions and researches of both Hellenists, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne, the ανήρ (Greek man) is presented in this article in its multiplicity of facets, the result of its relations with the divine, the nature, with others and within itself. Along the sixth and fifth centuries Greeks developed practices and reflexions about their identity, practices concerned to the construction of an ideal, figured in its constructions, calendars and cults. Its opposite, the Other, figures the excess. In search for the ideal of behavior and virtue, the Greek man looks for this “other” within itself; the one who needs to be faced. In both authors’ readings trough a constructive reflexion which composes this tragic subject under constant tension, one presents in this study, not the Greek like he used to be, but the one how it appears to be to both Hellenists, in this constant come and go of alterity.