[...]
Zeus’ metis
nothing can surprise him
nothing can cheat his vigilance
nothing can frustrate his designs


Iliad's man of metis: vigilant premeditation (=/= impulsiveness)
•displays a greater grip of the present (where nothing escapes him)
•more awareness of the future (several aspects of which he has already manipulated)
•richer experience accumulated from the past


(Iliad's art of the charioteer -->)
pukine: *dense rich compressed experience*
kairos: fleeting opportunity
metis: catch kairos by surprise (to seize)
poikilos: shimmering sheen and shifting movement [--> *the fox has a mind which is poikilos* ~~> crafty]
aiolos: many-colored (versicolor), marked with colors that overlap [--> all creatures whose wriggling and moving mass is never still: worms, horseflies, wasps, swarm of bees] ~~> he whose cleverness enables him to turn his hand to anything


*comparing the future with the past*
*too look beyond the victory*


Prometheus: the one who reflects in advance =/= Epimetheus: the one who understands after the event (Prometheus's twin brother, his double and opposite)
--> prometheia of man: radical ignorance of the future


cunning's field of application: the world of movement, of multiplicity, of ambiguity (==> metis)
(for the greeks:) continuous metamorphoses is the name of the game + only like could be affected by like
==> a polymorphous monster (mistrustful mobile elusive being)
==> a metamorphing mind (mistrustful mobile elusive mind)


shimmering nature of metis is a mark of its kinship with the divided shifting world of multiplicity


[*]poros: the discovery of a way out (water is very good at poros, finding passage)

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semantic field of cunning intelligence (metis of Iliad + Odyssey)
1. look beyond the immediate present
2. multiple (many-coloured, shifting)
3. duplicity of the trap


dolos --> cunning
kerde --> tricks
kairso --> ability to seize an opportunity

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Treatise on Fishing (Oppian)
Treatise on Hunting (Oppian2)


hunting and fishing (originally) provide the model of intelligence


baits, nets, weels, nooses, snares


dolos, techne, mechane --> in the world of animal & human


**relations of force are constantly upset by the intervention of metis**


metis of fish can take a thousand forms


angler-fish
tongue disguised as food
fleshy appendage growing on the fishing frog is a true fishing bait and as such has a double character: to the little fish it looks for all the world like food but it is food which soon changes itself into a voracious maw


fish = ambiguous creature
sea (...the world of animals) = world of metis
human = hunter/fisherman confronted with a world of traps and at grips with animals full of cunning


Oppian --> it is by *techne* that the octopus merges in with the rock to which it clings


hunter:
1. agility
2. dissimulation: the art of seeing without being seen (dokeuein: to be on the lookout, on the watch)
3. vigilance (mind full of finesse [like fine sugar])


Plato violently condemns line fishing, the hunting of aquatic creatures, the use of weels, the hunting of birds and all forms of hunting with nets and traps, he does so because all these techniques foster the qualities of cunning and duplicity which are diametrically opposed to the virtues that the city of the Laws demanded from its citizen.
(Detienne)

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*fox* and *octopus* -->
in Greek thought serve as models, the incarnation of cunning in the animal world
fox --> reversal (technique of reversing oneself)
octopus --> polymorphism (symbolizes the unseizability that comes from polymorphy)


reversal
•the way fox catches bustards --> it droops its head downward and gently wags its tail, deluded bustards approach this object which they mistake for one of their own kind, fox suddenly turns round
•(foxfish?) fish turns itself inside out like a glove, so that the interior becomes the exterior: the hook falls out


fox
[...]it lives, in its intelligence, in the depths of an earth which is admirably laid out. The dwelling that it digs itself has seven different entrances linked by as many corridors and the openings are situated a long way from each other.
[...]The fox is not to be captured by ambush nor by noose nor by net for it has no equal in smelling out an ambush; it is clever at severing ropes and escaping death through the subtlety of its cunning tricks.
(Oppian > Dettienne)


fox's escape = olisthcinein (in greek: an athlete whose body, rubbed with oil, slips through the grasp of his adversary)


--Detienne--> *it was not in nature that the Greeks found this type of reversal behavior in animals, but rather in their own minds (in the conception that they formed of metis)*
(metis is not something that is “out there”? ---> go to ajayeb bestiary)


octopus
(to the Greeks) octopus = a knot made up of a thousand arms, a living, interlacing, network, a poluplokos being (coil چنبره snake with its coils and folds, labyrinth, Typhon: multiple creature “with a hundred heads” whose trunk tapers out into its eel-like limbs)
*octopus mechane: enables it to merge with the stone to which it clings
*octopus logos: poluplokos
-it too knows how to disappear into the night, but it is a night which it can itself secrete (the ink, this dark cloud, this impenetrable night which defines one of the essential features of the octopus and of the cuttlefish)--> *pathless night* --> metis: only they can discover a poros
cephalopod -->  *oblique creatures*: they have neither front nor rear, they swim sideways with their eyes in front and their mouth behind, their heads haloed by their waving feet ==> confusion of directions --> aporia (aporai)


living traps --> they exploit a device (that Plutarch calls) sophisma: fish lurer


fox + octopus --define-->
•a type of human behavior: *present a different aspect of yourself to each of our friends*(!)
•a model for a form of intelligence (i call it *coiled intelligence* هوش مارپیچ) --trap--> the net in which his adversary becomes entangled [=/= chamaeleon: metamorphoses produced by fear]




fox + octopus --> *master of bonds*
[*]bond = weave + twist
[*]net: invisible (mesh of) bonds <-- favorite technique of metis


arm = bond
every part of its body is a *bond* which can secure anything (but nothing can seize)


*fox = a living bond* (can bend, unbend, reverse its own position at will)


Oppian is all about bonds, ropes, cords
pieces are joined end to end to form the “well twisted withies” (which the good hunter always carries with him)


Hermes: living web of interweaving (sumplekein), stations himself *close to the door*, mobile as the mime


[*]lecture-performance: art of (bending and) interweaving logos


the fisherman's “cloud” is the unyielding answer to the “cloud” of the cuttle-fish
*It is only by himself becoming, by means of his net, a bond and a circle, by himself becoming deep night, endless aporia, an elusive shape, that the man of metis can triumph over the most cunning species in the animal world.*
(Detienne)


[*]metis: intelligence which operates in the world of becoming, in circumstances of conflict = forethought perspicacity + quickness and acuteness of understanding + trickery + deceit


[*]trap = polymorphism (the opposite of what it seems to be)
dolos mechanos


(Detienne's research: recognize and explain -->) stability of terminology


world of appearance + Becoming


by means of rhetorical ploys sophist can make the weaker argument triumph over the strong ---> go to Kelile Demne cunning intelligence


(dolos -->) [*]cunning: woven, braiding or interlacing, *fitted together* <-- ***ancient techniques that use the pliability and torsion of plant fibers to make knots, ropes, meshes and nets to surpris[...]