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LESSON 2 - First Part / Second Part
ACHILLES' GRIEF - From Homer's Iliad 

by George Valsamis

Α Sentence in Greek is called πρότασις. The word πρότασις is formed by the preposition πρὸ (pre, for, ahead, before, in front) and the noun τάσις (tensity). A sentence, a πρότασις, is a tensity that emerges in communication and leads ahead - not just a statement, but the disclosure of something probable, which is placed in front of those who listen, calling them to estimate it carefully and bear the consequences of this estimation. Therefore, the more primary and important a πρότασις is, the more it becomes - is meant to become - a principle, a law, an ἀρχή (=beginning, principle, ground, foundation, law, rule). Cf. a discussion on the meaning of πρότασις.

 

How does the πρότασις

Κεῖται Πάτροκλος 

conform to what we said above, about the meaning of the very word πρότασις?  - Isn't Patroclus' death just a fact?

 

PATROCLUS may be dead without any doubt at all. Both armies may fight around his naked corpse. Anyone may see him lying in the dust of the battlefield - and yet κεῖται Πάτροκλος is not just a fact. Inside language, inside speech, the way Achilles listens to it, it is a πρότασις. That means: the one who listens to this πρότασις must decide himself what is exactly the fact that this πρότασις describes, and what this decided fact is expecting from him.

A πρότασις transforms meaning into a call to action. By describing the οὐσίαν ὄντος, a πρότασις calls for the πρᾶξις of the listener. Antilochus, then, does not just record into Achilles' memory a completed fact. Antilochus' πρό-τασις "κεῖται Πάτροκλος" means: "Realise now yourself what this lying is expecting from your life. You have now to perform your πρᾶξις and your οὐσία according to Patroclus' lying".  To this Homeric πρότασις of Patroclus' lying is essentially based what Plato was going to call μελέτη θανάτου (study of death), the core of all real and genuine philosophy.

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson2.asp?pg=10