Comparativism then and now

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between classics and anthropology as relates to cross-cultural comparison. Despite an ancient pedigree, scholarly comparison of the classical cultures to one another (or to other cultures) has remained circumscribed. Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812), who advocated understanding "the spirit of that time, its representations and relations and all its contemporary connections to things", has been all but forgotten. German Altertumswissenschaft rejected the "savage" comparativism of James George Frazer, William Warde Fowler, William F. Jackson Knight, and Herbert Jennings Rose as haphazard and superficial. This history probably explains the lack of any real comparative method in even the most "anthropological" classical scholarship in recent decades: J.-P. Vernant and Florence Dupont, for instance, noticeably eschew that "comparative sociology" identified by Radcliffe-Brown as the essence of anthropology—not to mention large-scale intercultural comparisons along the lines of Lévi-Strauss' Mythologiques. Some scholars, however, purposefully juxtapose Roman culture and Greek culture, with the possibility then of comparing these cultures with others both ancient and modern. Rather than predetermine the meaning of any specific cultural configuration by placing it alongside supposedly analogous representations, this "new comparativism" actively constructs meaning through juxtapositions and comparisons of what is different between cultures (see Detienne 2007; 2008). To illustrate this approach, this chapter compares metaphorical linguistic expressions in Greek and Latin, arguing that it is possible to tease out significant differences not only in how speakers of these languages conceived of certain experiences but also in their attitudes and values towards—and thus behaviours and practices in respect of—those experiences. Here, metaphors of "making a mistake" are discussed to suggest that Latin's "wandering" metaphor has not only widespread semantic effects but also identifiable effects on culture more broadly conceived.