Hybris-Démesure ? Philologie et traduction

• Main Author: Jean-Marie Mathieu
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses universitaires de Caen 2004-12-01
• Series: Kentron
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/kentron/1820

The usual French translation of the Greek word ὕβρις is “démesure”, a word which now conveys a sense of condemnation of excess (esp. as a transgression of the limits of human condition) – a view very similar to the the use of the English word hubris (or hybris), and asserting the ‘traditional’ view of hybris (cf. Fisher, Hybris, 1992, 2-3). It is related with the old etymology derivating the word from ὑπέρ. The paper by J.-L. Perpillou (RPh, 61, 1987, 197-199, reprinted, with the insertion of one §, in Recherches lexicales en grec ancien, Louvain, 1996, see 129-131) gives a new life to the etymological relation with βρι and insists on the meaning of crushing (and especially rape). This article is a study of these παρονομασίαι and semantical associations in Hesiod and Homer and a few later texts. – With, as a postscript, a short study of the sentence τίκτει κόρος ὕβριν and derivative forms. They seem, in fact, to be derivatives from the form of the sentence in Solon (Fr. 8, 3 G.-P.); but this could be, not an original and Solonian gnome, but a traditional saying about the dangers of symposia. If that is the case, it can be translated as Drunkeness is the mother of Rape (French: “Soûlerie est mère de Viol”).