Pathos and mathos before Zeus
Pathos and mathos before Zeus
This chapter seeks to interpret the statement in Aeschylus, Agamemnon 176–8 that Zeus laid down the law pathei mathos (‘learning through suffering’), asking in particular whether we are meant to assume that learning and/or suffering existed before Zeus laid down this law, and, if we are, what the relationship was between them. It argues that the only answer consistent with Aeschylus' text, and with current popular beliefs about primeval times, is that before Zeus there was no suffering (all man's needs were produced spontaneously by the earth) and no learning (because it was unnecessary). Zeus deprived man of happiness, so that he could survive only by acquiring wisdom — which, at the end of the Oresteia, the Athenians at least have succeeded in doing.
Keywords: wisdom, Agamemnon, Oresteia, Zeus, learning, suffering, primeval
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