Momus
{{Short description|Personification of satire and mockery in Greek mythology}}
{{for multi|the Scottish artist and singer|Momus (musician)|the Mardi Gras society|Knights of Momus}}
File:1561 v. Heemskerck Momus tadelt die Werke der Goetter.JPG, 1561, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin]]
Momus ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|m|oʊ|m|ə|s}}; Ancient Greek: Μῶμος Momos) in Greek mythology was the personification of satire and mockery, two stories about whom figure among Aesop's Fables. During the Renaissance, several literary works used him as a mouthpiece for their criticism of tyranny, while others later made him a critic of contemporary society. Onstage he finally became the figure of harmless fun.
In classical literature
{{Greek myth (personified)}}
As a sharp-tongued spirit of unfair criticism, Momus was eventually expelled from the company of the gods on Mount Olympus. His name is related to {{lang|grc|μομφή}}, meaning 'blame', 'reproach', or 'disgrace'.{{Cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=%CE%9C%E1%BF%B6%CE%BC%CE%BF%CF%82&la=greek#lexicon|title=Greek Word Study Tool|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu|access-date=August 31, 2019}} Hesiod said that Momus was a son of Night (Nyx), "though she lay with none", and the twin of the misery goddess Oizys.Hesiod, [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm Theogony 214] In the 8th century BCE epic Cypria, Momus was credited with stirring up the Trojan War in order to reduce the human population.David Marsh, Lucian and the Latins, University of Michigan 1998, [https://books.google.com/books?id=sLXWYW32neQC&dq=Cypria++%22Momus%22&pg=PA116 p.116] Sophocles wrote a later satyr play called Momos, now almost entirely lost, which may have derived from this.Dana Ferris Sutton, "A handlist of satyr plays", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology vo.78 (1974), [https://books.google.com/books?id=VyX-xjSHMmcC&dq=Momos++Sophocles&pg=PA112 p.112]
Two of Aesop's fables feature the god. The most widely reported of these in Classical times is numbered 100 in the Perry Index.{{Cite web|url=http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/perry/100.htm|title=MOMUS AND THE GODS|website=mythfolklore.net|access-date=August 31, 2019}} There Momus is asked to judge the handiwork of three gods (who vary depending on the version): a man, a house and a bull. He found all at fault: the man because his heart was not on view to judge his thoughts; the house because it had no wheels so as to avoid troublesome neighbours; and the bull because it did not have eyes in its horns to guide it when charging.Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, History of the Graeco-latin Fable, Vol.3, Brill NL 2003, [https://books.google.com/books?id=BHScT2Dd3ykC&q=Momus&pg=PA131 pp.131-3] Because of it, Plutarch and Aristotle criticized Aesop's story-telling as deficient in understanding, while Lucian insisted that anyone with sense was able to sound out a man's thoughts.Hermotimus or the Rival Philosophies, [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl2/wl205.htm p.52]
As another result, Momus became a by-word for fault-finding, and the saying that if not even he could criticize something then that was the sign of its perfection. Thus a poem in the Greek Anthology remarks of statues by Praxiteles that "Momus himself will cry out, 'Father Zeus, this was perfect skill'."{{Cite web|url=https://www.loebclassics.com/view/greek_anthology_16/1918/pb_LCL086.315.xml|title=The Greek Anthology 16|first=Jeffrey|last=Henderson|website=Loeb Classical Library|access-date=August 31, 2019}} Looking the lovely Aphrodite over, according to a second fable of Aesop's, number 455 in the Perry Index, it was light-heartedly noted that he could not find anything about her to fault except that her sandals squeaked.Adrados, pp.512-3
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Political satire
In Lucian's 2nd-century social comedy The Gods in Council, Momus takes a leading role in a discussion on how to purge Olympus of foreign gods and barbarian demi-gods who are lowering its heavenly tone.{{Cite web|url=https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl4/wl430.htm|title=Works of Lucian, Vol. IV: The Gods in Council|website=www.sacred-texts.com|access-date=August 31, 2019}}
Renaissance author Leon Battista Alberti wrote the political work Momus, or The Prince (1446), which continued the god's story after his exile to earth. Since his continued criticism of the gods was destabilizing the divine establishment, Jupiter bound him to a rock and had him castrated. Later, however, missing his candor, Jupiter sought out a manuscript that Momus had left behind in which was described how a land could be ruled with strictly regulated justice.David Cast, "Marten van Heemskerck's 'Momus criticizing the work of the gods': a problem of Erasmian iconography. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Volume 7.1 (1974), [https://books.google.com/books?id=88_3CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA28 pp.25]
At the start of the 16th century, Erasmus also presented Momus as a champion of the legitimate criticism of authorities. Allowing that the god was "not quite as popular as others, because few people freely admit criticism, yet I dare say of the whole crowd of gods celebrated by the poets, none was more useful."Margaret Mann Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus: A Study with Translations, [https://books.google.com/books?id=EDg9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA34 pp.34-5] Giordano Bruno's philosophical treatise The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584){{cite book |title=Spaccio della bestia trionfante. Or the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast |translator=William Morehead |location=London |year=1713 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ggJeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP7|last1=Bruno |first1=Giordano }} also looks back to Lucian's example. Momus there plays an integral part in the series of dialogues conducted by the Olympian deities and Bruno's narrators as Jupiter seeks to purge the universe of evil.{{cite book |author=Richard Henry Popkin |title=The Columbia History of Western Philosophy |publisher=Columbia University |year=2013 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TE021UmMiAsC&pg=PA321 |pages=320–321|isbn=9780231500340 }}
Social satire
17th-century English writers introduced the figure of Momus in a gentler spirit of fun, as in Thomas Carew's masque Coelum Britannicum (1634), which was acted before King Charles I and his court. In Coelum Britannicum, Momus and Mercury draw up a plan to reform the "Star Chamber" of Heaven. Two centuries later, Coelum Britannicum influenced Henry David Thoreau{{how|date=February 2022}} as he was preparing to write his Walden.Robin Grey, The Complicity of Imagination: The American Renaissance, Contests of Authority, and Seventeenth-Century English Culture, Cambridge University 2009, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2E8joaumCnsC&pg=PA135 pp.133-136]
John Dryden's short "Secular Masque" (1700) mocks contemporary society through the medium of the Classical divinities, with Momus playing a leading part in deflating with sarcastic wit the sports represented by Diana (hunting), Mars (war), and Venus (love), for "'Tis better to laugh than to cry."{{Cite web|url=https://britlitwiki.wikispaces.com/The+Secular+Masque|title=Wikispaces|website=britlitwiki.wikispaces.com|access-date=August 31, 2019}} It is with similar wryness that Carl Sandburg's statue of "Momus" (1914) surveys the never-changing human scene, "On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history", as they continue to overpopulate the world and then bleed it.{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12847/momus|title=Momus by Carl Sandburg|first=Poetry|last=Magazine|date=August 31, 2019|website=Poetry Foundation|access-date=August 31, 2019}}
Comedy
Elsewhere in Europe, Momus was becoming softened into a figure of light-hearted and sentimental comedy, the equivalent of Harlequin in the French and Italian Commedia dell'arte.Derek F. Connon, Identity and Transformation in the Plays of Alexis Piron, London 2007, [https://books.google.com/books?id=w36s4EjIPdMC&dq=momus+theatre&pg=PA126 pp.125-6] A typical production has him competing for the amorous favours of a nymph in Henry Desmarets' opéra-ballet Les amours de Momus (1695).French language outline [http://operabaroque.fr/DESMAREST_MOMUS.htm online]
By this period, Momus was the patron of humorous satire, partnering the figures of comedy and tragedy. As such he appeared flanked by these female figures on the frontispiece to The Beauties of the English Stage (1737),{{Cite web|url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=840180001&objectId=3287471&partId=1|title=Image gallery: print / frontispiece|website=British Museum|access-date=August 31, 2019}} while in Leonard Defraine's Figures of Fabled Gods (1820), he partners Comus, god of Carnival, and Themis, patroness of assemblies.{{Cite web|url=https://www.allposters.com/-sp/Comus-Themis-and-Momus-Greek-Gods-Posters_i10656207_.htm|title=Comus, Themis and Momus, Greek Gods Giclee Print by Leonard Defraine at AllPosters.com|website=AllPosters.com|access-date=August 31, 2019}} Because of the Harlequin connection, and as the character able to make home-truths palatable through the use of humour, Momus had now taken the place of the Fool on a French Minchiate card pack. He also lent his name to George Saville Carey's satirical poem, Momus, or a critical examination into the merits of the performers and comic pieces at the Theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market (1767).{{Cite book|url=http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004807208.0001.000|title=Momus, a poem; or a critical examination into the merits of the performers, and comic pieces, at the Theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market|first=George Saville|last=Carey|date=September 30, 2008|access-date=August 31, 2019}} The god himself plays no part there, only "Momus' sons," the comic actors.
References
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External links
- {{Commons category-inline|Momus}}
{{Greek religion}}
{{Greek mythology (deities)}}
{{Authority control}}
Category:Greek trickster deities
Category:Greek deities of mockery
Category:Personifications in Greek mythology