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Some Psychological Terms in Greek Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

T. B. L. Webster
T. B. L. Webster
Affiliation:
University College, London
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Extract

The justification for including this article in a volume dedicated to Sir David Ross must be that the tragic poets reflect the psychological terminology of educated Athenian society during a period which corresponds almost exactly with the life-time of Socrates and includes the first twenty years or so of Plato's life. Of course the tragic poets wrote in a poetic language strongly influenced by Homer and less strongly by lyric poetry, but they were also influenced by contemporary thinkers, doctors, sophists, and philosophers. The present study is confined to the words psyche, thymos, kardia (and its synonyms), phren/phrenes, nous.

It may be useful first to note the range of usage of these words and secondly to point out very briefly the historical development. The range of usages of these words is difficult to define; in fact such definition cannot produce boxes into which instances can be sorted but may usefully mark points on the scale of meaning between which any given instance falls. Of the five words, kardia and phrenes are names for parts of the body, ‘heart’ and ‘diaphragm’. It is perhaps rash to identify psyche and thymos with the cold/moist and hot/dry components of breath, but certainly in many passages of Homer they have some such physical meaning. Nous, however, is a verbal abstract and verbal abstracts in Greek mean not only a process but also the agent or the result of the process; as a process, it means ‘appreciating the situation’ in the military sense in which appreciate involves also making a plan; as an agent, it means ‘the appreciating mind’; as a result, it means ‘the plan or thought’ which results from the appreciation. By analogy, I suspect, with nous the other words also can be used for mental processes and results as well as for agents; thymos can already mean ‘thought’ in Homer, kardia ‘courage’ in Archilochos, and phrenes ‘intention’ in Solon. The full possible range of meaning is: (a) part of the body, (b) psychological agent, (c) psychological process, (d) result of psychological process. But these meanings fade into one another and any particular instance may be difficult to classify precisely.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , November 1957 , pp. 149 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 In its original form this paper was part of a series on the general theme of the ‘Relation of language to thought in ancient Greece’, and was discussed by my colleagues in University College, London. I should like to express my gratitude for their criticisms and particularly to Mr. D. J. Furley, Mr. E. W. Handley (now published in Rh. Mus.), and Professor E. G. Turner for permission to use their papers on psychological terminology in Homer, the lyric poets, and Aristophanes. I am also much indebted to three dissertations, Assmann, M., Mens et animus, Amsterdam 1937Google Scholar, Harrison, E., Development of Thymos from Homer to Plato, Oxford 1951Google Scholar (unpublished), Meissner, B., Mythisches und Rationales in der Psychologie der euripideischen Tragödie, Göttingen 1951.Google Scholar

2 Onians, R. B., Origin of European Thought, 24 f.Google Scholar, argues rather for ‘lungs’.

3 It is certainly attractive to suppose with R. B. Onians, op. cit., 108 f., that psyche was very early connected with the cerebro-spinal fluid which was believed to be responsible for procreation.

4 Od. 9, 302; Archilochos 60 D; Solon 3, 2 D (this use may be already foreshadowed, Iliad 13, 431, Odyssey 2, 117; but these passages could be otherwise interpreted).

5 E.g. Hesiod, Op. 686–7 (cf. the further development in E. Andr. 418).

6 E.g. Hipponax 42 D; Anakreon 4 D.

7 (i) A. Eum. 114 = S. OT. 94 = E. Or. 847, cf. Hdt. 1, 112, 3; Thuc. 3, 39, 8; Lysias 22, 20 (origin Iliad 22, 163).

(ii) A. Ag. 965 (to Agamemnon); E. Tro. 1134 = Hdt. 4, 190, cf. Thuc. 1, 136, 4; Antiphon 5, 82; Pindar N. 1, 47.

8 So Wecklein. The Budé translation ‘jamais en mon cœur je ne t'aurai trahi’ finds a possible parallel in Tro. 640.

9 Cf. Bacchylides 5, 151.

10 E.g. A. Pers. 630, Ag. 965 (to the audience); S. OC. 998; E. Or. 674.

11 E.g. A. Pers. 841; S. Ant. 930; El. 218; E. Alc. 108, etc. Cf. Pindar P. 4, 122; Hdt. 3, 40, 4; Isocrates, Hel. 55.

12 S. OT. 727 φυχῆς πλάνημα is similar, there of amazement. Cf. also E. fr. 1038 N.

13 E.g. A. Pers. 442, Ag. 1643; E. Hec. 580; HF. 626, 1366; Pindar, P 1, 48; N 9, 39; Hdt. 3, 14, 1; Thuc. 2, 40, 3; Lysias 20, 24. In Antiphon 5, 93, Lysias 24, 3 this meaning is combined with the soul/body antithesis: the enduring soul saves or heals the tired or crippled body.

14 Cf. S. El. 903; E. Andr. 159; IT. 881; Tro. 1171; and with S. Phil. 1014 particularly Hdt. 7, 16, a 2. Cf. also Ar. Nub. 319. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational, 138 f.Google Scholar seems to me to underrate these passages which are partly omitted, partly misinterpreted by Burnet, in PBA 1915–1916, 253 f.Google Scholar

15 Cf. S. fr. 472 P; E. fr. 388 N; Isocrates 13, 17.

16 Democritus B 31; Isocrates 11, 22; 13, 8. Both perhaps dependent on Socrates, but the idea in its simplest form that the words of a friend can cure wounded feelings is found A. PV 380 (cf. G. Thomson ad loc.).

17 Antiphon 5, 93; 4, a 7. On the chronology see Dover, K. J., CQ. 44 (1950), 44 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Cf. S. Ant. 559; E. Bacch. 75 (with Dodds ad loc.); Lysias 1, 33.

19 Cf. S. Aj. 154; Ant. 1069; E. Hec. 87; Med. 247; Hipp. 259; Phoen. 1297, 1552.

20 phronema and psyche are similarly parallel in E. Heracl. 926.

21 E.g. Lysias 6, 23; 32, 12.

22 E.g. A. PV. 706 = S. OT. 975 = Hdt. 1, 84, 4; S. Ant. 493; E. El. 577.

23 E.g. A. Suppl. 566; PV. 539; S. OT. 914; Aj. 955; E. Med. 8; Hipp. 1114. Cf. Antiphon 4, y 2; Hdt. 7, 39, 1 (which is a variation on the theme of S. Ant. 317 f.).

24 E.g. E. IA. 919; HF. 1210. Cf Hdt. 1, 120, 3; 8, 130 3; Andocides 3, 31.

25 Courage: A. Sept. 507; S. El. 26. Cf. Thuc. 1, 49, 3. desire: S. El. 1318; E. Med. 310. Cf. Hdt. 1, 1, 4; Parmenides B 1, 1. anger: A. Suppl. 448; S. OC. 1197; E. Med. 1079, etc. Cf. Hdt. 1, 137, 1; Thuc. 2, 11, 7.

26 Cf. also E. Med. 310 (desire or desiring soul), S. El. 26 (courage or courageous soul).

27 Cf. E. R. Dodds, op. cit., 186. Snell, B., Philologies, 97 (1948), 134Google Scholar suggests that these lines caused Socrates to assert that virtue is knowledge. I think E. may allude to Socrates' questioning of acknowledged authorities in Med. 300–1.

28 Cf. Lesky, , Sitzb. Ak. Wiss. Wien, 221 (1943), 3, 70 f.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Becker, , ‘Bild des Weges’, Hermes, Einzelschriften, 4 (1937), 168 ff.Google Scholar

30 For kardia in this psycho-physical sense, cf. also Ag. 1121, Cho. 183; E. Bacch. 1288. In prose kardia is only used of the physical organ and the author of the Sacred Disease (17 ff.) denies it intelligence.

31 E.g. A. Ag. 592 (κέαρ); Sept. 781; S. Ant. 1085; E. Med. 245, 433.

32 Cf. S. OT. 688; E. Alc. 837; HF. 833 (cf. 626 with psyche instead of kardia).

33 A. Ag. 179, 977, 996; 1028; Eum. 103; Suppl. 466; E. Hipp. 912.

34 E. IA. 475; fr. 412 N. Cf. A. Eum. 679; S. fr. 393 P ‘to open the closed gate of the psyche’. (The distinction between ‘ears’ and psyche/phren in S. Ant. 317 f. is not unlike this.)

35 Cf. E. Hec. 1027; IA. 1173.

36 A. PV. 361; S. Trach. 931.

37 E. Tro. 992. Cf. A. Cho. 211; 233; S. OT. 727; Trach. 538; E. Hipp. 283.

38 A. Cho. 55 cf. 451; Ag. 1052; Sept.. 25; S. Aj. 16. Cf. also the dialogue in Democritus B 125 between phren and the senses.

39 E. Tro. 662. Cf. S. OT. 528 (already quoted); E. Med. 661; Hipp. 926; 1454; fr. 212 N.

40 E.g. A. Suppl. 379; Pers. 115; Eum. 301; S. Trach. 217; OT. 153; E. Hec. 85; Phoen. 1284; IA. 1580.

41 S. Trach. 736; cf. E. Bacch. 1270.

42 The normal prose phrase is given by Lysias fr. 90 Cf. E. Bacch. 269, etc.

43 Cf. A. Pers. 472; PV 34; Suppl. 1050; S. Ant. 993; E. Hipp. 685. Mr. E. W. Handley pointed out to me that Pindar, P. 5, 19 is especially like S. Ant. 1015.

44 E.g. A. PV. 392; S. OT. 1347; El. 1023, 1027; E. Hipp. 920; fr. 25/4 N.

45 E.g. A. Cho. 742 PV. 163.

46 Cf. A. Sept. 622.

47 S. fr. 940 P; E. Hel. 730 (where E. uses phrenes instead of nous in the next line; cf. fr. 831 N).

48 E.g. Odyssey 2, 92 (cf. Hdt. 3, 100, 3); 1, 347; Iliad 15, 80.

49 Cf. 1370. In Hec. 603 nous is responsible for generalisations as distinct from what is needed at the moment. In spite of its Homeric ancestry the freedom of nous to range apart from the body was apparently interesting and surprising in the fifth century, cf. Ar. Ach. 396 ff.

50 IG, i1, 442 = Kaibel, Epigr. gr., 21. E. fr. 1018 is sometimes quoted in this connection but means rather ‘nous is an uncanny powerful thing like a god’.