THE RISE OF THE UNITARY SOUL AND ITS OPPOSITION TO THE BODY: FROM HOMER TO SOCRATES by JAN N.

BREMMER

When discussing the beginnings of philosophical anthropology one cannot escape the problem of the soul and its relation to the body.1 There can be little doubt that this is a problem that has long fascinated thinkers, even though modern philosophers and psychologists mention the soul less and less. The beginning of this fatal development for the soul, which lies in the Enlightenment and the rise of materialism, is gradually becoming clearer,2 but the origins of the idea of the immortal soul have not yet been fully illuminated. It is the aim of this contribution to further the solution of this problem. Naturally, the subject could easily fill a book, and I shall therefore limit myself to the formative period of the development, the era from Homer to Socrates. It may seem strange to us, but in our oldest Greek literature, Homers Iliad and Odyssey, the word psych has no connection with the psychological side of a person, which is represented by a multitude of terms. In other words, the Greeks may have given us the basis for our terminology, but initially they did not have the concept of a unitary soul that is the main seat of consciousness and emotions but also represents man after death. They were not the only ones without such a concept. The Old Testament does not present us with an idea of the soul that even comes close to resembling that of modern times. In other
1

In this contribution I make generous use of my earlier studies of the soul: J.N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983), where I also give the previous bibliography; Greek and Hellenistic Concepts of the Soul, in L. Sullivan (ed.), Death, Afterlife, and the Soul (New York and London, 1989) 198-204; The Soul, Death and the Afterlife in Early and Classical Greece, in J.M. Bremer et al. (eds.), Hidden Futures (Amsterdam, 1995) 91-106; The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 1-4, 11-26; The soul in early and classical Greece, in J. Figl and H.-D. Klein (eds.), Der Begriff der Seele in der Religionswissenschaft (Wrzburg, 2002) 159-69; , in A.-F. Christidis (ed.), A History of Ancient Greek. From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2006) 1146-53 and Die Karriere der Seele: Vom antiken Griechenland ins moderne Europa, in H. Kippenberg et al. (eds), Handbuch Europaische Religions-geschichte, 2 vols (Gttingen, 2009) I.497-524. Yet I have consistently tried to take into account the most recent views and findings. 2 See now A. Thomson, Bodies of Thought. Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment (Oxford, 2008).

words, both Greece and Israel, the two civilisations at the basis of Christianity, lacked a concept of the soul as the object of salvation. These observations raise the question as to when and why the unitary (modern) concept of the soul originated. I will therefore first look at the pre-unitary concept of the soul in Homer ( 1.1), as well as to post-Homeric developments until the fourth century, which see an increasing opposition of the soul and the body in certain quarters of Greek society ( 1.2). We then will turn to reincarnation, which reflects and reinforces the postHomeric development ( 2) and, finally, we will look at the explanations for the rise of the unitary soul and its opposition to the body ( 3).

1.1 The soul of the living Observers of the usage of the word psych in Homer will be immediately struck by the fact that it is mentioned only as part of the living person at times of crisis, but never when its owner functions normally.3 This aspect of psych is well illustrated by Achilles complaint, when the embassy of the Greek army beseeches him to suppress his anger and resume fighting, that he has been continually staking (paraballomenos) his psych (IX.322).4 The metaphor derives from gambling and implies that Achilles is putting a valued possession at risk. Apparently, Homer represented the psych as an entity that was worth fighting about. That is why Achilles and Hector can run a race in which Hectors psych is the main prize,5 and that is why Agenor can observe that Achilles is vulnerable to sharp bronze, and only has one psych in him, for they say that he is mortal (XXI.56870, tr. Cairns).6 The same usage can be found in Hesiod (Op. 686) where he notices that

For close analyses of the Homeric material see more recently S.D. Sullivan, A multi-faceted term. Psych in Homer, the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod, Studi Ital. Filol. Class. NS 6 (1988) 151-80 and Psychological and Ethical Ideas: what Early Greeks Say (Leiden, 1995) 76-122; R. Padel, In and Out of the Mind. Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton 1992); J. Chadwick, Lexicographica Graeca (Oxford, 1996) 307-20; M. Clarke, Flesh and spirit in the songs of Homer (Oxford, 1999), to be read with the review article by D. Cairns, Myths and metaphors of mind and mortality, Hermathena 175 (2003) 41-75. 4 The books of the Iliad will be referred to with Roman numerals, those of the Odyssey with Arabic ones. Note also Tyrtaeus 11.5 and 12.18 for risking ones psych in battle, and Pisander, fr. 8.1. West /Bernab for lying and risking ones psych. 5 Similarly, Il. V.654, IX.406-9, XI.445, XVI.625, XX.159-61; Od. 1.5; note also the connection between psych and race in Hesiod, fr. 76.7 M/W, cf. Cairns, Myths and metaphors, 54. 6 As is stressed by Cairns, Myths and metaphors, 47-9.
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men take risks because they equate money with the psych.7 In other words, psych is the basis for life and without it life is no longer possible, an aspect sometimes stressed by the combination of psych with ain, the source of vitality in man.8 And because it is the basis, man considers it to be a most valuable possession. Psych is also the basis for consciousness. This becomes clear from Homers description of swoons, which are all described in a more or less similar manner. 9 For example, when a spear was pulled from the thigh of Sarpedon, one of the allies of the Trojans, his psych left him and a mist came upon his eyes (V.696). The leaving of the psych clearly coincides with the loss of consciousness. Once the latter has been recovered, psych is no longer mentioned. That is probably the reason that people speculated about its precise place in the body, since it is described as flying away through the mouth (IX.409), the chest (XVI.505), a wound in the flank (XIV.518) or from the limbs (rhetea:10 XVI.856, XXII.362). In no Homeric passage does psych have any psychological connection. We can only say that when it has left the body forever, its owner dies. If psych did not have any connection with the psychological side of the person, what, then, constituted the psychological make-up of the early Greeks? Reading Homer, one will find that there is not one seat of the psychological attributes of man, but an enormously varied vocabulary.11 The most important word for the seat of emotions such as friendship, anger, joy and grief, but also denoting emotion itself, is thymos,12 a word
7 8

Note also Solon, fr. 13.46 West2 for risking the psych in the context of making money. Il. XVI.453; Od. 9.523-4, cf. Bremmer, Early Greek Concept, 15-6; Cairns, Myths and metaphors, 49 note 21. 9 A. Nehring, Homers Description of Syncope, Class. Philol. 42 (1947) 106-21; A. Schnaufer, Frhgriechischer Totenglaube (Hildesheim and New York, 1970) 191-201. 10 For the debated meaning of this term see Cairns, Myths and metaphors, 53 note 31. 11 For a thorough survey of the various discussions of this phenomenon in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries see T. Jahn, Zum Wortfeld Seele-Geist in der Sprache Homers (Munich, 1987) 124-81; note also Th. Gelzer et al., How to express emotions of the soul and operations of the mind in a language that has no words for them = Proceedings of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture 55 (1988); S.D. Sullivan, Metaphorical uses of psychological terminology in early poetry: evidence for distinctive meanings of the terms, SIFC NS 14 (1996) 129-51. 12 See most recently C. P. Caswell, A Study of Thumos in Early Greek Epic (Leiden 1990); S.D. Sullivan, Person and thymos in the poetry of Hesiod, Emerita 61 (1993) 15-40 and Self and psychic entities in early Greek epic, Eos 82 (1994) 5-16; B. Koziak, Homeric Thumos: The Early History of Gender, Emotion and Politics, Journal of Politics 61 (1999) 1068-91.
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still used today to denote a kind of gland. But there are other words as well, such as one for fury (menos), one for the act of the mind (noos),13 and the words for kidney, heart,14 lungs,15 liver, and gallbladder (cholos)16 - all of which are being used to indicate the seat of emotions or the emotions themselves; moreover, these terms are often used in a semantically indistinguishable and redundant way. It thus seems that there is in Homer not one centre of consciousness, not a firm idea of an I that decides what we are doing. Whereas we have one word, soul, to denote the dimension of human life that is distinguishable from the body and that to a large extent determines the nature of the human being, the early Greeks had a variety of words to denote this dimension. How can we explain this situation? First, of course, we can look for parallels. It is the great merit of Scandinavian anthropologists in particular to have collected large amounts of data to show that according to most primitive peoples man has two kinds of souls. On the one hand, there is what these scholars call the free soul, a soul that represents the individual personality. This soul is inactive when the body is active; it only manifests itself during swoons, dreams or at death (the experiences of the I during the swoons or dreams are ascribed to this soul), but it has no clear connections with the physical or psychological aspects of the body. On the other hand, there are a number of body-souls, which endow the body with life and consciousness, but of which none stands for that part of a person that survives after death.17 The Homeric concept of the soul of the living is clearly closely related to these ideas. Here too we find on the one hand the psych, a kind of free-soul, and on the other the body-souls, the thymos and all that. The free soul was often associated with the breath, and this seems to have happened in Greece as well, given psychs etymological
S.D. Sullivan, The Psychic Term Noos in Homer and the Homeric Hymns, SIFC NS 7 (1989) 152-95. 14 A. Cheyns, Recherche sur lemploi des synonymes tor, kr et kradi dans lIliade et lOdysse, Rev. Belge Philol. Hist. 63 (1985) 15-73; M. Biraud, Signification et histoire du mot , LAMA 10 (1989) 1-32; S.D. Sullivan, The Psychic Term tor: its nature and relation to person in Homer and the Homeric Hymns, Emerita 64 (1996) 11-29. 15 I. Balles, Air. barae, gr. gr. und die Vertretung von idg. *-ku im Griechischen, in M. Fritz and S. Zeilfelder (eds), Novalis indogermanica: Festschrift fr Gnter Neumann zum 80.Geburtstag (Graz, 2002) 1-23. 16 Cairns, Myths and metaphors, 68-74. 17 For a review of the Scandinavian approach see Bremmer, Early Greek Concept, 9-12; K.R. Wernhart, Ethnische Seelenkonzepte, in Figl and Klein, Der Begriff der Seele, 45-60 at 53-7.
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connection with psychein (to blow, to breathe); indeed, in many Indo-European cultures the term for soul is connected with the breath.18. The connection also seems clear from the fact that the psych leaves the body at the beginning of a swoon, as in Andromaches swoon where she breathed forth (ekapusse) her psych, a verb most likely connected with Greek kapnos, smoke (XXII.467). In Greece, the connection between psych and breathing or blowing was already made by Anaximenes (ca. 550-500 BC), who seems to have stated that the psych held our body together and controlled it just as the wind controls the earth (B 2 DK); in fact a number of philosophers, such as Anaximander, Anaxagoras and Archelaos, connected the psych with ar.19 A similar connection can still be seen among the Orphics, who also connected the soul with the winds (OF 421F Bernab), and the connection with the breath occurs as a figura etymologica in an Orphic Gold Leaf found in 1974: (the Underworld), where the psychai of the dead psychontai, breathe.20 The comparison with the Scandinavian approach has recently been questioned by Walter Burkert. In a wide-ranging critique of Bruno Snells classic Die Entdeckung des Geistes (19461), he has argued that such a classifying approach insufficiently takes into account that native speakers sich nicht ganz sicher zurechtfinden in the Bereich schwankender Erfahrungen und unklarer Verbalisierungen.21 It seems to me that we have to be careful here. First, we do not know what native speakers said in daily life, as we only have highly stylised poems. Second, although it is true that the Greek psychological vocabulary is often used in a semantically indistinguishable and redundant way, this should not be overstated.22 Third, even if we would concede the latter point, it still remains true that psych is clearly different from the other terms, as it is used only in a very particular way

Greece: J. Jouanna, Le souffle, la vie et le froid: remarques sur la famille de psych dHomre Hippocrate, REG 100 (1987) 203-24. Indo-European: D.Q. Adams, A Dictionary of Tocharian B (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1999) 41-2; H. Eichner, Indogermanische Seelebegriffe, in Figl and Klein, Der Begriff der Seele, 131-41. 19 Atius IV.3.2. 20 J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (London, 19882) 472-7; Euripides, Or. 1163; Plato, Crat. 399de. The quotation is from Gold Leaf no. 1 in the standard edition of F. Graf and S.I. Johnston, Ritual texts for the Afterlife. Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (London and New York, 2007) 6f. 21 W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften VIII: Philosophica (Gttingen, 2008) 287. 22 As is shown by S.R. van der Mije, Mnemosyne IV 44 (1991) 440-5, in his review of Jahn, Zum Wortfeld Seele-Geist.
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and, last but not least, the family resemblance of the Greek soul belief with other soul systems remains valid and has not yet been refuted.

1.2 Post-Homeric developments In post-Homeric times the psych no longer leaves the body of a living person, but otherwise its meaning gradually expands in the course of the Archaic Age.23 Sappho (fr. 62.8 Voigt) now addresses somebody as beloved psych. Hipponax says: I will give my much-enduring psych to evils,24 a passage where psych comes very close to our meaning self, just as in Theognis Somewhat differently, in a famous poem, the more or less contemporaneous Anacreon says of a boy with virgin glance that he is the charioteer of my psych (fr. 360 Page), where the psych presumably is the seat of his emotional feelings. Among pre-Socratic philosophers, psych seems to have been especially important for Anaximenes and Heraclitus. Unfortunately, as Burkert points out,25 the latters fragments are very hard to interpret and the formers text cannot said to be his with absolute certainty. Yet it is clear that the psych was a source of interest already early on, since the sixth-century Pherecydes of Skyros,26 supposedly, was the first to consider the soul immortal.27 Other philosophers speculated about the nature or substance of the psych, which some connected to air, others to fire or blood.28 These so-called corporealists, amongst whom we may count the already mentioned Anaximenes, but also Heraclitus and Empedocles, eventually lost out to the incorporealists Pythagoras, Plato

S.D. Sullivan, The extended use of psych in the Greek lyric poets (excluding Pindar and Bacchylides), Parola del Passato 44 (1989) 241-62; Clarke, Flesh and Spirit, 285-319. 24 Hipponax fr. 39 West2 = 48 Degani2. 25 Burkert, Kleine Schriften VIII, 288. 26 On Pherecydes see most recently H. Granger, The Theologian Pherecydes of Syros and the Early Days of Natural Philosophy, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 103 (2007) 135-163. 27 Cicero, Tusc. 1.16.38 (= F 7 Schibli); Tatian, Or. 25 (= F 51a,b Schibli). 28 For psych in the pre-Socratic philosophers see H.G. Ingenkamp, Inneres Selbst und Lebenstrger, Rhein. Mus. 118 (1975) 48-61; B. Gladigow, Tiefe der Seele und inner space, in J. Assmann (ed.), Die Erfindung des inneren Menschen (Gtersloh, 1993) 114-32; I.G. Kalogerakos, Seele und Unsterblichkeit. Untersuchungen zur Vorsokratik bis Empedokles (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996).
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and Aristotle.29 Here it is sufficient to note that psych, apparently, took on an increasingly significant role in psychology and the macrocosm.30 Pindar continued these developments. On the one hand, he made the soul even more important by calling it now from the gods (fr. 131b Maehler) and, on the other, he brought psych in a sense close to character, when he describes men as having psychai superior to possessions (Nem. 9.32).31 In the later tragedians, the psych has become the seat of all kinds of emotions and seems to have completely incorporated the thymos; it can even become tied to bed (Euripides, Hipp. 160) or joined to a thiasos (Euripides, Bacch. 75-6).32 This development of psych as the centre of mans inner life culminates in Socrates view that mans most important task was to care for his psych. Until now we have concentrated on the soul but left out the body. Yet in certain quarters the two were gradually conceived of as being in opposition to one another, and we must therefore also take a closer look at the body. It is rather remarkable that in Homer sma, body, is used only for dead bodies of people and animals.33 This was already noted by Aristarchus, and Bruno Snell concluded therefore that the early Greeks did not yet see the physical body as a unit but as an aggregate. 34 Yet the Cologne Epode of Archilochus (fr. 196a.51 West2), which was discovered only in 1974, showed that the early Greeks could use sma very well as a term for the body of a living person, as the I of the poem says: and caressing all of her beautiful sma, I let go my (white?) force (probably semen), touching her blond hair. Theognis (649-50), too, can say: Ah wretched Poverty, why do you lie upon my shoulders and disfigure my sma and noos. However, in these cases, we do not yet have the contrast of body and soul. Pindar comes closest to the opposition when in his already mentioned fragment he says: the sma of
For this debate see the very learned analysis of J. Mansfeld, Doxography and Dialectic. The Sitz im Leben of the Placita, ANRW II.36.4 (1990) 3056-3229 at 3065-85. 30 As also observed by Clarke, Flesh and Spirit, 288. 31 S.D. Sullivan, The Wider Meaning of Psyche in Pindar and Bacchylides, SIFC NS 9 (1991) 163-83. 32 F. Solmsen, Phrn, Kardia, Psych in Greek Tragedy, in D.E. Gerber (ed.), Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Chico, 1984) 265-74. 33 Il. III.23, VII.79, XXII.342, XI.53, XII.67, XVIII.161, XXIII.169, XXIV.187, cf. Clarke, Flesh and Spirit, 116-9, 163-5, 315-9. 34 Aristarchus apud Apollonius (wrongly called Apollodorus by Clarke, Flesh and Spirit, 116 note 137) Sophistes, Lex. Hom., p. 148.23 Bekker; Erbse on Schol. Il. III.23-7; B. Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes (Hamburg, 19461; Gttingen, 19805) 17f.
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all submits to the exceedingly strong death, and yet there still will linger behind an ainos eidlon, a living image of life, for this alone has come from the gods. It sleeps while the members are active; but to those who sleep it reveals in many dreams the fateful approach of adversities and delights (fr. 131b Maehler). The opposition becomes really manifest in our sources in 432 BC, when on an official war monument the psychai of fallen Athenians are said to have been received by the aithr, the upper air, but their smata by the earth (IG I3 1179.6-7). This idea of heaven as the destination for the psych proved to be inspirational for Euripides, who seems to have applied it first to deified mortals (Erechtheus, fr. 370.71-2 Kannicht) but later allowed the aithr also to ordinary mortals, after which, in various variations, the idea occurs on private gravestones well into later antiquity.35 Yet Euripides never uses the word psych in this connection but prefers pneuma for reasons that are not clear to me.36 We find our next example perhaps one to two decades later in one of the defence speeches of the orator Antiphon. Having stressed his innocence, a speaker continues: even when the sma gives up, it can be rescued by a psych that has a clean conscience and will endure anything.37 About 400 BC the opposition of soul/body occurs much more concisely on one of a small group of bone-tablets from Olbia: Dio(nysos?): (????) truth: body soul.38 Here we are clearly in the company of Orphic/Bacchic speculation, although the precise context of these tablets still remains unknown. Around this time the opposition must have become pretty standard and in the fourth century we find it used in different ways by all the main Attic orators, from Lysias until Demosthenes.39 If in these examples the opposition is not necessarily very negative, this is very different among the later Pythagoreans and Orphics. The Pythagorean philosopher

35

Euripides, Suppl. 533-4 and 1139-41, Hel. 1013-6; Or. 1086-7, frr. 839.9-11, 908b, 971 Kannicht, cf. P. Pucci, Euripides Heaven, in V. Pedrick and S.M. Oberhelman (eds), The Soul of Tragedy (Chicago and London, 2005) 49-71; P. Hansen, Carmina epigraphica Graeca saeculi IV a. Chr. n. (Berlin and New York, 1989) no. 535, 545, 558, 593; L. Robert, Hellenica 13 (1965) 170-1; I. Erythrae 302; SEG 37.198, 38.440; 42.1612; 46.2212; 50.1465. 36 W. Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis (Cambridge Mass. and London, 2004) 112, 121 connects the pneuma with Diogenes of Apollonia, who (T 6 Laks) rather uses ar, air, as his cosmic principle and does not seem to use pneuma. 37 Antiphon 5.93, tr. M. Gagarin. 38 Graf and Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife, 185. 39 Lysias 2.15, 24.3; Aeschines 2.151; Demosthenes 19.227, 37.41, 60.33.
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Philolaos (B 14 DK) was credited by Clement of Alexandria, possibly wrongly,40 with being the first to have stated that the body was the tomb of the soul, an even more pessimistic view of the body than that of the Orphics, who saw the body only as the prison of the soul, 41 a view adopted by Plato in his later work,42 and which experienced a long popularity well, into the Middle Ages, among Cathars and others.43 Apparently, the revaluation of the soul in theories of reincarnation also led to a devaluation of the body. 2. The rise of reincarnation44 It seems to me that this development towards a unitary, immortal soul cannot be separated from the rise of reincarnation. According to Porphyry (VP 19), who quotes Dicaearchus (fr. 33 Wehrli2), a pupil of Aristotle, it was Pythagoras who first introduced reincarnation into Greece, and it is not before the Byzantine Suda that Pherecydes is claimed to be the first to teach reincarnation.45 In fact, the earliest mention of Pherecydes in connection with the afterlife of the soul explicitly refers to Pythagoras, not Pherecydes, as an authority. This appears from the following poem by the fifth-century Ion of Chios on Pherecydes: Thus adorned with manly pride and reverence, he (Pherecydes) has a pleasant life for his psych even though he be dead, if indeed Pythagoras was truly wise, who beyond all knew and searched out the thoughts of men (fr. 30 West2, tr. Schibli).

40

Clem. Al. Strom. 3.17, cf. C. Huffman, Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic (Cambridge, 1993) 402-6. 41 P. Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-mme de Socrate Saint Bernard, 3 vols (Paris, 1974-75) II.325-414, who overlooked the later epigraphical evidence, cf. D. Pikhaus, Levensbeschouwing en milieu in de Latijnse metrische inscripties (Brussels, 1978) 301-2; M.L. Violante, Il corpo-prigione in alcune epigrafi funerarie cristiane fra IV e VII secolo, Civ. Class. Crist. 3 (1982) 247-67. 42 Pl. Crat. 400c, Grg. 492e-493a, Phaedo, 80e-81e, Phaedr. 248cd; Courcelle, Connais-toi toimme II.394-414; J. Mansfeld, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Others in a Middle Platonist Cento in Philo of Alexandria, Vigiliae Christianae 39 (1985) 131-56 at 132, repr. in Mansfeld, Studies in Later Greek Philosophy and Gnosticism (London, 1989) Ch. VII. 43 Cathars: R. van den Broek, The Cathars Medieval Gnostics?, in idem and W. Hanegraaff (eds), Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times (Albany, 1998) 87-108. Others: Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-mme II, 345-80; I. Tolomio, Corpus carcer nell Alto Medioevo. Metamorfosi di un concetto, in C. Casagrande and S. Vecchio (eds), Anima e corpo nella cultura medievale (Tavarnuzze, 1999) 3-19. 44 This paragraph has been mainly adapted, if updated, from Bremmer, Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, 11-13, 24-6. 45 Suda, s.v. Pherekydes = A 2 DK = F 2 Schibli, contra H.S. Schibli, Pherekydes of Syros (Oxford, 1990) 105-9.
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Pythagoras contemporary Xenophanes confirms his concern with reincarnation, as he tells the following uncomplimentary anecdote: and once, they say, when he (Pythagoras) passed by a dog which was being maltreated, he pitied the animal and said these words: Stay! Dont beat him! For he is the psych of a friend whom I recognised straight away when I heard his voice (B 7 Diels-Kranz).46 In his book On the Soul (407b20), Aristotle is equally explicit: They try to say what kind of thing the psych is, but do not go on to specify about the body which is to receive the psych, as though it were possible, as in the tales of the Pythagoreans, for just any psych to clothe itself in just any body. And so is a first-century Ephesian epigram which states if according to Pythagoras the psych passes to somebody else....47 Unfortunately, the details of Pythagoras teachings are only clear in outlines. Although we cannot be fully certain, it is not very likely that he had left writings. 48 Yet the anecdote about this friend shows that he taught the continuity of the psych after death, in which it keeps certain individual characteristics: if not, the friend could not have been recognised. And indeed, in later doxography Pythagoras is counted among those who think the soul to be immortal.49 Moreover, the soul can migrate into animals; it is only later that we also hear of the possibility of a migration into plants; 50 in fact, in the Phaedrus (249b) Plato still mentions only animals. Much remains obscure, though. Did the soul immediately incarnate after death? What caused it to incarnate in humans, plants or animals? Was the difference in destination caused by the behaviour during ones lifetime? When did the psych finally arrive in Hades, where there was a pleasant life according to Ion (see above)? The latter question may be the easiest to solve, since both Pindar (fr. 133 Maehler) and Plato (Phaedr. 249a) speak of three cycles, the first of which

For Xenophanes views of Pythagoras see C. Schfer, Xenophanes von Kolophon (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996) 199-201. 47 I. Ephesos 3901 = SEG 31.951 = R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1998) 315 (= 03/02/29 Ephesos); Inscriptiones Graecae II2 3816. 48 For a different opinion see C. Riedweg, Pythagoras (Munich, 2002) 61f. 49 For Pythagoras view of the soul see most recently L. Zhmud, Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im frhen Pythagoreismus (Berlin, 1997) 117-28. 50 For plants see Heraclides Ponticus, fr. 89 Wehrli2; Alexander Polyhistor FGrH 273 F 93, 28; Schol. Homer, Il. 16.857a; Riedweg, Pythagoras, 96-7 (Pythagoras on beans).
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has been occasioned by a mistake in the underworld, in what looks like a Pythagorean context.51 But from where did Pythagoras derive his ideas about reincarnation and why did they become so popular? For a long time, influence from shamanism was the answer - if the wrong one as I hope to have demonstrated in my book on the soul.52 Other scholars have suggested that Pythagoras eventually derived his views from ancient India,53 but various reasons make this unlikely. First, although contacts between Indians and Greeks may have been possible in Susa, where Greeks and Indians came to bring their taxes,54 it will be hard to prove that contacts between India and Greece actually existed around 500 BC, although a century later they are already demonstrable.55 Secondly, the doctrine of transmigration is still relatively undeveloped in the early Upanishads and becomes universally accepted only in Buddhism and Jainism. Unfortunately, though, the date of the Buddha, the only fixed point of early Indian chronology, has recently become the focus of intense discussion. It used to be the accepted orthodoxy that the Buddha died within a few years of 480 BC, but recently many scholars have come out in favour of the short chronology, which puts him about a century later. If this redating proves to be correct, influence on Greece becomes even less likely. Thirdly, Indian reincarnation is closely connected with sacrifice. Thus, even if the Greeks had borrowed ideas of the Indians, they had certainly changed them completely.56 If, then, the likelihood of influence from outside Greece is receding,57 can we

51 52

Graf, Eleusis, 87f. Bremmer, Early Greek Concept, 25-48. 53 W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge Mass. 1972) 133; H. Lloyd-Jones, Greek Comedy, Hellenistic Literature, Greek Religion and Miscellanea (Oxford, 1990) 301; Schibli, Pherekydes, 108; Burkert, Entretiens Hardt 45 (1999) 206. 54 J. Boardman, Persia and the West. An Archaeological Investigation of the Genesis of Achaemenid Art (London, 2000), who passim shows that especially Samos, Pythagoras homeland, was influential in Persia; G. Giovinazzo, Les Indiens Susa, Annali Ist. Univ. Or. 60-61 (2000-01) 59-76. 55 K. Karttunen, India in Early Greek Literature (Helsinki, 1989) 112-14; W. Halbfass, Early Indian References to the Greeks and the First Western References to Buddhism, in H. Bechert (ed.), The Dating of the Historical Buddha, 2 vols (Gttingen, 1991-92) I.197-208; S. West, Sophocles Antigone and Herodotus Book Three, in J. Griffin (ed.), Sophocles Revisited (Oxford, 1999) 109-36 at 113 notes the almost complete absence of any reference to India in Pindar, tragedy, and Aristophanes. 56 Buddha: A.T. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition I (New York, 19882) 44-5; Bechert, The Dating of the Historical Buddha; L.S. Cousins, The Dating of the Historical Buddha: a review article, J. Roy. Anthrop. Soc. III 6 (1996) 57-63 at 63: possible connections with the Greek
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perhaps identify internal developments that may have played a role? I am fully aware that we have no explicit indications in this respect, and my proposals are therefore no more than speculations, if perhaps reasoned ones. Let us now return to Pythagoras. In our tradition his political activities are consistently connected with Croton, where he lived like a king and had a huge following of 300 youths.58 It seems therefore more likely to think of his views about reincarnation as having been developed or publicised after his expulsion from Croton and during his exile in Metapontum, where he reportedly died ca. 500 BC.59 This conclusion gains in probability if we consider the possible function of reincarnation in Greece at the turn of the Archaic period. Traditionally, the ancient Greeks were much less concerned with personal survival than with social survival in the group. It is only when the individuals own fate becomes important that it gets less attractive to be a member of the crowd of souls. That does not mean that the early Greeks were not interested in their own survival, but the survival for which the upper-class cared was the kleos aphthiton, eternal fame, on earth within its social group, not in the hereafter.60 In the course of the Archaic Age this attitude started to change and interest rose in personal survival, even though the kleos aphthiton remained an ideal in rhetorical treatises until well into Late Antiquity.61 Literature and art also testify to a growing anxiety about memory survival as well as both death and dying. The Archaic Greeks devised various ways of meeting these new attitudes, such as developing new eschatological ideas like the Elysion, and building grave monuments whose inscriptions

world must be rethought. Sacrifice: H. Bodewitz, The Hindu Doctrine of Transmigration. Its Origin and Background, Indologica Taurinensia 23-24 (1997-98) 583-605. 57 For the intriguing problem of the relation between Greece and Celtic ideas of reincarnation see H. Birkhan, Kelten (Vienna, 1997) 913-5 and Druiden und keltischer Seelenwanderungsglaube, in Figl and Klein, Der Begriff der Seele, 143-58. 58 Iustinus 20.4.14; Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, 254. 59 Aristoxenos, fr. 18 Wehrli2; Dicaearchus, fr. 35 Wehrli2, cf. F. Rosenthal, Greek Philosophy in the Arab World (London, 1990) Ch. I, 53 (= Orientalia 6, 1937, 53), whose source is the eleventh-century Arab historian Mubashshir, who draws chiefly on Porphyry, but does have additional details. 60 S. Goldhill, The Poets Voice (Cambridge, 1991) 69-166; C. Segal, Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey (Ithaca and London, 1994) 85-109; E.J. Bakker, Le Kleos pique et la potique dHomre, Cah. Et. Anc. 35 (1999) 17-26. 61 A. Setaioli, The Fate of the Soul in Ancient Consolations Rhetorical Handbooks and the Writers, Prometheus 26 (2005) 253-62.
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reminded passers-by of its dead owners. In a way, reincarnation can be seen as a more radical answer to this general development.62 There is a second aspect to reincarnation as well: those who are reincarnated are singled out from those who are not. Pythagoras loss of political power may well have been an extra stimulus for developing the doctrine of reincarnation, since it would guarantee a survival beyond all previous possibilities. This possibility must have been attractive to his followers but also to the aristocracy in general, since its power and influence was in the process of losing ground in the late Archaic period. On the one hand, aristocrats started to lose their political power through developments, such as the Persian conquests, as will have been the case in Ephesus, or the rise of tyrannies, as happened in Athens. On the other hand, the value system of Greece had also been shifting for some time, and aristocratic ideals had gradually come under fire, as is illustrated, for example, by the poetry of Theognis.63 Such a loss of role and position cannot but have had a destabilising influence on some of the aristocrats, who must have been looking for new activities, new roles and a new legitimation. Pythagoreanism, the aristocratic nature of which we have seen, could well be considered as a response to what was, in effect, the beginning of a process of aristocratic marginalisation. Its extreme number of rules must have been attractive to people who felt uncertain about their place in the world, as we know from modern researches into religious sects. Moreover, the fulfilment of these rules may well have given the pupils of Pythagoras a new standing within the community. Thirdly, the promise of reincarnation must have given the Pythagoreans a sense of importance, which could restore in a way, even if only in the area of religion, their special place in society. We may perhaps be reminded here of the thesis of Max Weber that the rise of religions of salvation, such as Christianity, were the consequence of a depolitisation of the Bildungsschichten.64 Fourthly and finally, even if Pythagoras views cannot be separated from the religious and political developments of the late Archaic period, he would hardly have conceived of
Sourvinou-Inwood, Reading Greek Death, 108-297; V. Casadio, Museum Criticum 24 (1994) 49f. 63 E. Stein-Hlkeskamp, Adelskultur und Polisgesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1989) 104-38. 64 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tbingen, 19725) 306f, cf. H. Kippenberg, Die vorderasiatischen Erlsungsreligionen in ihrem Zusammenhang mit der antiken Stadtherrschaft (Stuttgart, 1991).
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the reincarnation of the psych, if this organ had not already become important - instead of the other way round.

3. The rise of the unitary soul But why did psych become so important and develop into a unitary soul? And why and when was the soul put in opposition to the body? It is to these problems that we now turn our attention. The reasons for the development of psych into a unitary soul are not yet clearly understood, and explanations are still very tentative. Recently, both the French philosopher Andr Laks and the German/Swiss historian of religion Walter Burkert have offered explanations that deserve further scrutiny. Laks sees the development as the result of the interplay of three main fields: lyric poetry, philosophy and Orphic/Pythagorean currents, whereas Burkert sees the teachings of, especially, Socrates as an important factor.65 Laks first two aspects seem to me persuasive. As we have already seen ( 1.2), in lyric poetry attention was directed to the organs of emotion and vitality, and, however difficult for us to reconstruct in detail, many pre-Socratic philosophers were greatly interested in the psych. However, the religious movements Laks mentions are later than the lyricists and, at the earliest, contemporaneous with Heraclitus. In fact, the Orphic view of the body as the prison of the soul, which evidently fits the revaluation of the soul, is not attested before the later Plato ( 1.2). Consequently, the Orphics used the development, but probably did not stand at its cradle. Seeing where the development occurs is not an explanation, however. In fact, when we look at the anthropological studies of the soul, we will search in vain for any suggestions as to why primitive peoples had a dualistic concept of the soul; studies of soul-belief never even seem to ask this question. I have no full answer myself, but some factors may perhaps be suggested. Rather strikingly, the dualistic concept of the soul changes when small primitive peoples become incorporated into larger states or when their culture becomes more differentiated. At this stage, the free-soul starts to incorporate the other souls.66 Similarly, as we have seen, after Homer the psych gradually acquires the qualities of the thymos and becomes the centre of consciousness. This becomes
A. Laks, Soul, sensation, and thought, in A.A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999) 250-70; Burkert, Kleine Schriften VIII, 288-90.
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especially clear in Athenian tragedy, where dramatic situations now present persons, especially women, whose psych sighs or melts in despair, suffers pangs, or is bitten by misfortune - emotions never associated with the psych in Homer.67 This development evidently reflects the growth of the private sphere in Athenian society, which promoted a more delicate sensibility and a greater capacity for tender feelings. In other words, the more primitive concept of the soul seems to belong to a less regulated, less differentiated, more public way of life, in which people do not have to make that many choices and in which they need to contain their emotions to a lesser extent than in more centralised societies.68 Apparently, the members of these societies do not need a centre of consciousness, as life is lived according to steady rules that do not tolerate exceptions, and less of their emotions need to be continuously suppressed. Needless to say, these earlier societies are usually less individualistic. Their members are primarily members of a group, as they are still in Homer, and only in later times do they become more like separate individuals. In other words, the rise of the unitary soul cannot be separated from the rise of the polis and the more regulated life that this rise entailed. But what caused the soul to be put into opposition to the body? We have seen that this theme does not really occur before the later fifth century. Now Burkert has connected the idea that the soul goes to the aithr with both the apotheosis of Heracles, which is already attested in the seventh century, and the representation on the six-century throne of Amyclae of Hyacinthus and Polyboea driving to heaven.69 The chronological distance between these two myths and our fifth-century evidence is too big, however, to be of real influence. The comparison that Burkert makes with Iranian material looks much more promising, as the Zoroastrian soul will reach the stars, then the moon, then the sun, and finally the lights without beginning, where Ahura Mazda dwells. In the last decades of the fifth century we see indeed an increasing mention of the magi in Athens,70 and, as
66 67

For examples see Bremmer, Early Greek Concept, 23f. Cf. Solmsen, Phrn, Kardia, Psych in Greek Tragedy. 68 I obviously refer here to the insights of the German sociologist Norbert Elias on the relation between the levels of civilisation and political control. For a good introduction see G. Schwerhof, Zivilisationsproze und Geschichtswissenschaft. Norbert Elias Forschungsparadigma in historischer Sicht, Historische Zeitschrift 266 (1998) 561605. 69 Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis, 112f. 70 Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 235-47.
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Burkert has shown, an influence of Iranian material, however difficult to analyse, is no longer to be denied.71 Directly or indirectly, Iranian magi may therefore have contributed to some extent to the birth of the opposition between the psych and the body. Finally, the last decades of the fifth century were also the main era of the sophists. It is thus not impossible that they too contributed to the opposition, as Burkert suggests. Yet there is very little material that supports this suggestion. All we really have is the report of his pupils that in Socrates view mans most important task was to care for his psych.72 In the end, the birth of the opposition of the soul to the body, however influential the opposition was in later times, still poses many questions.

Further reading: J.N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983) provides an introduction to the ethnological literature on the soul and the definitions of the various types of souls. H. Holzhey, Seele IV. Neuzeit, in Historisches Wrterbuch der Philosophie IX (Basel, 1995) 26-52 is a very useful introduction to the (early) modern period. R. Martin and J. Barresi, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self. An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (New York, 2006) is the best discussion of the modern decline of the soul.

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Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis, 112-23 (quote at 114). Plato, Apol. 29d, 30a; [Plato], Alc. I.128b-130e; Xenophon, Mem. 1.2.4; Isocrates 13.8, cf. E. Ehnmark, Socrates and the immortality of the soul, Eranos 44 (1946) 105-22; F. Solmsen, Plato and the Concept of the Soul (Psych): some historical perspectives, J. Hist. Ideas 44 (1983) 355-67; P.M. Steiner, Psyche bei Platon (Gttingen, 1992).
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