Démosthène, Sur la couronne, 296 et le vocabulaire grec de la mutilation corporelle

Abstract

In ancient Greek there is no general verb such as «to mutilate» in order to express corporal mutilation, however, there is a large variety of terms dealing with the cutting, the severing or the amputation of an individual’s part of his body. The main difficulty lies in the polysemous character of some of these words. The present article focuses on one of them, ἀκρωτηριάζω, used by Demosthenes, On the Crown, 296: he is accusing the pro-Macedonian politicians to  «mutilate» their cities. This verb has three different meanings: either severing a human body’s extremities, cutting the prow of a vessel or forming a promontory. In our case, modern translators, following Harpocration, grammarian of the II^th century AD, have chosen to use the verb in its first meaning, considering that the orator thus personified the cities. A close look at all the occurrences in the ancient literature shows a possible different approach, since ἀκρωτηριάζω seems not to have been used to mean a mutilation on a human being before the middle of the Hellenistic period. Demosthenes may have rather used here the image of cities as defenceless as triremes amputated from their rams.