Mères et politique dans les Histoires d’Hérodote et dans les Vies et les Moralia de Plutarque : pistes de recherche

Abstract

Herodotus and Plutarch, writing in very different historical and discursive contexts, displayed characters of mothers in the public sphere. Those are either mothers of historical statesmen either mothers politically involved in politics. To understand what the maternal function meant in Ancient Greek context, this article describes in its first part the use of the vocabulary of maternity in Herodotus. Then, it analyses the place of human mothers in individual denominations and genealogical discourses. The interest is to understand how far the individual mother was of political and social importance for lineage and individual characterisation. The last part is devoted to the role of mothers in the public sphere. The point is to determine to what extend this public role is due to their biological function, their individual and social status or to the literary topos.

Keywords

• mother
• motherhood
• Greek Antiquity
• Herodotus
• Plutarch