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Margites
Sign in to saveThe Margites () is a comic mock-epic ascribed to Homer that is largely lost. From references to the work that survived, it is known that its central character is an exceedingly stupid man named Margites (from ancient Greek , margos, "raving, mad; lustful"), who was so dense he did not know which parent had given birth to him. His name gave rise to the adjective margitomanēs (), "mad as Margites", used by Philodemus.
Book · Open Library
- Author
- Margit Meissner
- First published
- 2003
- Editions
- 1
- Subjects
- Czech Jews, Biography, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), Jewish children in the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors, Jews, Jews, czech republic, Holocaust, jewish (1939-1945)
via Open Library
~2 min read
Article
2 sectionsContents
- References
- Bibliography
The Margites () is a comic mock-epic ascribed to Homer that is largely lost. From references to the work that survived, it is known that its central character is an exceedingly stupid man named Margites (from ancient Greek , margos, "raving, mad; lustful"), who was so dense he did not know which parent had given birth to him. His name gave rise to the adjective margitomanēs (), "mad as Margites", used by Philodemus.
The work, among a mixed genre of works loosely labelled "Homerica" in antiquity, was commonly attributed to Homer, as by Aristotle (Poetics 13.92)—"His Margites indeed provides an analogy: as are the Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies, so is the Margites to our comedies"—and Harpocration. Basil of Caesarea writes that the work is attributed to Homer but that he is unsure regarding this attribution. However, the massive medieval Greek encyclopaedia called the Suda attributed the Margites to Pigres, a Greek poet of Halicarnassus.