Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the GreeksRohde, Erwin
Religion
Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks
Rohde, Erwin
Greece -- Religion
independent being of its own and alone deserving the name "soul", a
name which belongs as little to ~thumo/s~ as to ~no/os~. Gomperz
thinks that ~thumo/s~, etc., were at first the only recognized
faculties of the body and that ~psuchê/~ was only (for the Greeks)
added later. This is certainly not to be made out from Homer--or any
other part of Greek literature.]
[59\1: ~peri\ psuchê=s the/on~, ~Ch~ 161; ~peri\ psuche/ôn
ema/chonto~, ~ch~ 245; ~psuchê\n paraballo/menos~, ~I~ 322;
~psucha\s parthe/menoi~, ~g~ 74, ~i~ 255; ~psuchê=s anta/xion~, ~I~
401; and cf. ~i~ 523: ~ai\ ga\r dê\ psuchê=s te kai\ aiô=no/s se
dunai/mên eu=nin poiê/sas pe/mpsai do/mon A/ïdos ei/sô~. No one
strictly speaking can go into Hades bereft of his ~psuchê/~, for it
is the ~psuchê/~ alone which goes there. Thus ~psuchê/~ here clearly
= life, as is shown also by the addition of the words ~kai\ aiô=nos~
for the sake of clearness. It is more doubtful whether this is the
explanation of ~psuchê=s o/lethros~, ~Ch~ 325, or of ~psucha\s
ole/santes~, ~N~ 763, ~Ô~ 168. Other passages adduced by Nägelsb.,
_Hom. Th._^2, 381, and Schrader, _Jb. f. Philol._ 1885, p. 167,
either admit or require the material sense of the word ~psuchê/~:
e.g. ~E~ 696 ff., ~Th~ 123, ~s~ 91, etc.]
III
[60\1: A more detailed statement and documentation of the following
analysis of the Nekyia in Od. ~l~ will be found in _Rh. Mus._ 1, 600
ff. (1895). [_Kl. Schr._ ii, 255.]]
[61\1: The information given by Teiresias, ~l~ 107 ff., about
Thrinakia and the cattle of Helios seems to be put in such a brief
and inadequate form just because the fuller account given by Kirke,
~m~ 127, was already known to the poet who did not wish to repeat
this word for word.]
[62\1: A final example of such pictures intended to suggest the
background of the Odyssey is the conversation between Achilles and
Agamemnon in the "second Nekyia", ~ô~ 19 ff. The composer of these
lines has understood quite correctly the meaning and purpose of his
model, the original Nekyia of ~l~, though his continuation of it is
certainly very clumsy.]
[63\1: ~k~ 539-40 is borrowed from ~d~ 389-90, 470.--I find after
writing this that Kammer had already suggested imitation of ~d~ in
the Nekyia: _Einheit d. Od._, 494 f.]
[64\1: It is striking (and may have some special reason) that in
Kirke's account there is no mention of the Kimmerians. It is easier
to see why the careful description of the country in Kirke's speech,
~k~ 509-15, is not afterwards repeated but merely recalled to the
memory of the reader in a few words (~l~ 21-2).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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