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-1 .
Hesiod then recounts, however, how this all-consuming Zeus was unable
to contain what he had swallowed and found the goddess Athena, Metis's
child, spring forth, fully formed and armed, from atop his head. Metis's
offspring is thus born under the skein of deception and of a cunning
circling back, in which the mother exploits her apparently inactive and
stationary originating point to sustain and complete a pregnancy and
offspring more powerful than any that would have occurred by normal
means. From such a beginning, nzztis never deviates; it is alive with
shadow and the blink of lightning fall; a cunning that comes from being
woven into shapeless, shifting tolerances; it is surprise set fast in an aspic
of redundancy.
It is perhaps not surprising that something so shaded as nzctis has
resisted academic analysis. Homer can talk of it through example. Book
XXIII of the Iliad, for example, describes a chariot race that pits a young
Antilochus, the son of Nestor the Sage, against ~Menelaus(the king of
Sparta).15 Unfortunately, although the boy is very skilled, his horses are
not as fast as those of his adversary. T h e young man appears bound to
lose. Placed at a disadvantage, Antilochus instinctively recalls his father's
words: 'It is through metis rather than through strength that the woodcutter shows his worth. It is through nGtis that the helmsman guides the
speeding vessel over the wine-dark sea despite the wind. It is through
mctis that the charioteer triumphs over his rivals.' Weaned on such a diet
of practical wisdom handed down from his father, the young man takes
advantage of a sudden narrowing of the track, which had been worn
away by storm rains the night before, and drives his chariot obliquely
-- of everyday
,
China, is not
iiffer but the
- - : :-?:rate coping
- i : ~ r a t i cperiod,
- -1 since then it
S: : :
of ancient
:1 1 Jean Pierre
- -.c called m&,
:;ortunism. 13
-:i ~urcefulness
- an impor- .--.
. . never been
. Anothing to
~ture.
- . i zxnning and
- 1 .--:own as the
- f Zeus, who,
:-d fear that
- r...ially more
.
Zeus, as king of the gods, took as his first wife Metis, and she knew more than all
the gods or mortal people. But when she was about to be delivered of the
goddess, gray-eyed Athene, then Zeus, deceiving her perception by treachery
and by slippery speeches, put her away inside his own belly. This was by the
advices of Gaia (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Sky), for so they counselled, in
order that no other everlasting god, besides Zeus, should ever be given kingly
position. For it had been arranged that, from her, children surpassing in wisdom
should be born, first the gray-eyed girl, the Tritogeneia Athene; and she is the
equal of her father in wise counsel and strength; but then a son to be Icing over
gods and mortal~was to be born to her and his heart would be overmastering:
but before this, Zeus put her away inside his own belly so that this goddess
should think for him, for good and for evil.'"
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193
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194
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- - 12
Pierre Vernant
- . -f the dangers in
- -I >pportunities to
195
196
correspond to an ageless art which has not only persisted through the institutions
of successive political orders but.. .present in fact a curious analogy, and a sort of
immemorial link, to the simulations, tricks, and disguises that certain fishes or
plants execute with extraordinary virtuosity.. . They [the qualities] maintain
formal continuities and the permanence of a iirerizory without language, fionz rlze
depths o f the oceaizs to the streen of our great cities. l 7
The s t r a t e F -
Emphasizing the r z : ?
lance, for recenk, !enabled Liddell-Er- was seen to be 2 2 i
problem where tk-2 ?-I
I
tends to sprin,7' fr.rectness is fuells2 3:-r
the frogfish, an sc >: :r
realize an outccne --These sentiments z z
Chinese military r z : ?
widely read in st-zr:,
feature at all in b3:rz-
zertain fishes or
.-1
:
;:t:iries] maintain
- -r;:qztage, from the
.
.--.ng a 'memory
---. X- ~ o r we
e know
?-lges of silence.
aspect. Its
small fish.
seize it. Then,
- . - :swards it and
._- --.: away from its
--e 5sh follow the
- . --:tic jaws of this
I :r5traps. It is an
-
act::
-.
- - -:te
- 'duplicity'
Z.
an the part of
.a1 common- -,n gradually
- - - X of frogfish to
- 1 :S made more
- i I fcarlier. This
r direct bodily
197
-.
:--
-.
= A
- - zious learning
- :r!d accepts its
.l >remise that
-15pulated) in
-~- - :X, and even
- I -:at upon it
.
-1:oxically, the
::S, therefore,
- .-.
.:-how'. Nor
- - f knowledge.