VERDADE E FLECHAS NA RETÓRICA E NA ESTÉTICA DOS ANTIGOS PERSAS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18830/issn2238-362X.v5.n2.2015.07Keywords:
Achaemenid aesthetics, Achaemenid rhetoric, Zaratushtra (Zarathushtra), Zoroastrian ethics, Zoroastrian religionAbstract
Friedrich Nietzsche was a Saxon philologist and philosopher who studied enthusiasticaly the rhetoric of the ancients, and some of his notes (from 1872?) are known as his Course “on Rhetoric”. In his most important work, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885), through his titlecharacter Nietzsche gives voice to a revived Persian prophet who, in a certan passage, affirms: “'To tell the truth and to handle the bow and arrow well' ”“ that seemed both dear and difficult to the people who gave me my name”. Zarathushtra’s affirmation, echoed by Nietzsche, is grounded in Herodotus (Histories, I.136), who said that the Persians taught their children only three precepts: to ride a horse, to shoot an arrow, and to tell the truth. We have studied the Avesta (Zoroastrian most holy book), some texts from the Achaemenid era, written in Old Persian, as well as some Achaemenid iconic representations, with the intention of showing what they can teach us about the association between truth and arrows in the rhetoric and aesthetic practices of the ancient Persians, devouts of the god Ahura-Mazdâ. A passage from the Avesta (with its oldest stratum written in an oriental Iranian language, “Avestan”), directly associates truth with arrows when it praises the (mythical?) king Vishtâspa, patron of Zarathushtra, as he “who with bow and arrows has sought space for truth, who with bow and arrows has found space for truth, he who agreed to be the arm and support of the religion of Ahura[-Mazdâ], of Zarathushtra” [Zam (Zamyâd) Yasht of the Khorda (Small) Avesta, 85 (Yasht, 19.85)]. In this investigation we analyse the privileged place of the concept of Asha (“Truth/Righteousness/Order”) in the Zoroastrian religion and the ideologic, rhetoric and aesthetic use of associations with that concept promoted by the Achaemenid sovereigns, and we review some passages in Old Persian and from Herodotus where the ancient Persian act of shooting arrows has a link with Persian rhetoric.
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