Il corpo mitico dell'eroe. Eroi e santi nella rappresentazione di un cristiano d'Oriente.

The Greek heroes and gods are vanished into darkness, like bats; actually, Jesus Christ is the victorious light: these are Theodoret’s words in the Graecarum affectionum curatio, one of the most important texts of Christian apologetics. In his work, Theodoret offers to pagans a picture of their own heroes, in order to demonstrate the iniquity of the heroic cult. Evidences of such a statement is provided through Christian rhetorical topoi. However, an important argument against the heroic cult is the practice of ascetic endurance. According to Theodoret, on the one hand, the bodies of pagan heroes, who are unable to endure suffering and diseases, are doomed to be defeated by pain. On the other hand, martyrs and ascetics are able to endure suffering and to assume it, just through their bodies, hardened by karteria, so that they turn it into the mark of holiness. In this sense, Christ’s hypomone is re-enacted by the ascetic hypomone. Therefore, the heroic bodies, defeated by their inability to endure suffering, stress the distance between vera religio and myth. So, the Christian author displays a new kind of relationship between humanity and divinity, describing a scene in which bodies are as meaningful and eloquent as logos.