The article deals with the political significance of the Hobbes’s translations of the Homeric poems. The philosopher of Malmesbury spent the last years of his life in translating the Iliad and the Odyssey from Greek. During this period he was under censorship and he could not freely write. So, according to some scholars, he would use these translations as a sort of “continuation of Leviathan by other means” (Nelson, 2008). The article focuses on a peculiar aspect of the translations that allows to support this reading and to add some new elements about this aged Hobbes’s work. The analysis deals with the English translations of two adjectives, diotrephés (fed by Zeus) and dioghenés (generated by Zeus), that in the Homeric poems are linked to men who are in power and are called "kings". These adjectives, linking the political authority to the divine sphere, seem to be scarcely compatible with the origin of the political power as it is explained in the Leviathan. Hobbes compels and modifies the original text in order to make it as supportive as possible to his idea concerning the political power of the king that he, although under censorship, aims at continuing to spread.
Thomas Hobbes traduttore di Omero: i "casi" diotrephés e dioghenés e il problema dell'origine divina del potere politico
CATANZARO, ANDREA
2014-01-01
Abstract
The article deals with the political significance of the Hobbes’s translations of the Homeric poems. The philosopher of Malmesbury spent the last years of his life in translating the Iliad and the Odyssey from Greek. During this period he was under censorship and he could not freely write. So, according to some scholars, he would use these translations as a sort of “continuation of Leviathan by other means” (Nelson, 2008). The article focuses on a peculiar aspect of the translations that allows to support this reading and to add some new elements about this aged Hobbes’s work. The analysis deals with the English translations of two adjectives, diotrephés (fed by Zeus) and dioghenés (generated by Zeus), that in the Homeric poems are linked to men who are in power and are called "kings". These adjectives, linking the political authority to the divine sphere, seem to be scarcely compatible with the origin of the political power as it is explained in the Leviathan. Hobbes compels and modifies the original text in order to make it as supportive as possible to his idea concerning the political power of the king that he, although under censorship, aims at continuing to spread.
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