ABSTRACT
This essay has a narrow focus but a large penumbra. My focus is a current interpretation of the couplet spoken by the Muses in the prologue to Hesiod’s Theogony, an interpretation avowedly influenced by the work of Jacques Derrida. I think it not just mistaken, but mistaken in an exemplary fashion. That is, in considering how it goes wrong I hope to reveal something more general about the impact of Derrida’s work, actual and potential, bad and good, on classical studies. (This will eventually involve me in a quite detailed analysis of an exemplary piece by Derrida himself.)1 In addition, I will offer the beginnings of an account of a significant and general pattern of archaic Greek thought evinced by Hesiod’s couplet (one which has particular importance for the later development of Greek philosophy); a pattern which, I argue, is obscured by a certain pervasive anachronism that classicists engaged by Derrida have imported from his work.
