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The Greeks and the Irrational The Greeks and the Irrational http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft0x0n99vw&chunk.id=0&doc.... Preferred Citation: Dodds, Eric R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1951, 1973 printing 1973. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft0x0n99vw/ The Greeks and the Irrational By E. R. Dodds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1962 The Regents of the University of California To GILBERT MURRAY Preferred Citation: Dodds, Eric R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1951, 1973 printing 1973. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft0x0n99vw/ To GILBERT MURRAY Preface THIS BOOK is based on a course of lectures which I had the honour of giving at Berkeley in the autumn of 1949. They are reproduced here substantially as they were composed, though in a form slightly fuller than that in which they were delivered. Their original audience included many anthropologists and other scholars who had no specialist knowledge of ancient Greece, and it is my hope that in their present shape they may interest a similar audience of readers. I have therefore translated virtually all Greek quotations occurring in the text, and have transliterated the more important of those Greek terms which have no true English equivalent. I have also abstained as far as possible from encumbering the text with controversial arguments on points of detail, which could mean little to readers unfamiliar with the views controverted, and from complicating my main theme by pursuing the numerous side-issues which tempt the professional scholar. A selection of such matter will be found in the notes, in which I have tried to indicate briefly, where possible by reference to ancient sources or modern discussions, and where necessary by argument, the grounds for the opinions advanced in the text. To the nonclassical reader I should like to offer a warning against treating the book as if it were a history of Greek religion, or even of Greek religious ideas or feelings. If he does, he will be gravely misled. It is a study of the successive interpretations which Greek minds placed on one particular type of human experience—a sort of experience in which nineteenth-century rationalism took little interest, but whose cultural significance is now widely recognised. The evidence which is here brought together ― iv ― illustrates an important, and relatively unfamiliar, aspect of the mental world of ancient Greece. But an 1 of 165 7/11/2006 1:33 PM The Greeks and the Irrational http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft0x0n99vw&chunk.id=0&doc.... aspect must not be mistaken for the whole. To my fellow-professionals I perhaps owe some defence of the use which I have made in several places of recent anthropological and psychological observations and theories. In a world of specialists, such borrowings from unfamiliar disciplines are, I know, generally received by the learned with apprehension and often with active distaste. I expect to be reminded, in the first place, that "the Greeks were not savages," and secondly, that in these relatively new studies the accepted truths of to-day are apt to become the discarded errors of to-morrow. Both statements are correct. But in reply to the first it is perhaps sufficient to quote the opinion of Léy-Bruhl, that "dans tout esprit humain, quel qu'en soît le développe-ment intellectuel, subsiste un fond indéracinable de mentalité primitive"; or, if nonclassical anthropologists are suspect, the opinion of Nilsson, that "primitive mentality is a fairly good description of the mental behaviour of most people to-day except in their technical or consciously intellectual activities." Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from "primitive" modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation? As to the second point, many of the theories to which I have referred are admittedly provisional and uncertain. But if we are trying to reach some understanding of Greek minds, and are not content with describing external behaviour or drawing up a list of recorded "beliefs," we must work by what light we can get, and an uncertain light is better than none. Tylor's animism, Mannhardt's vegetation-magic, Frazer's year-spirits, Codrington's mana, have all in their day helped to illuminate dark places in the ancient record. They have also encouraged many rash guesses. But time and the critics can be trusted ― v ― to deal with the guesses; the illumination remains. I see here good reason to be cautious in applying to the Greeks generalisations based on non-Greek evidence, but none for the withdrawal of Greek scholarship into a self-imposed isolation. Still less are classical scholars justified in continuing to operate—as many of them do—with obsolete anthropological concepts, ignoring the new directions which these studies have taken in the last thirty years, such as the promising recent alliance between social anthropology and social psychology. If the truth is beyond our grasp, the errors of to-morrow are still to be preferred to the errors of yesterday; for error in the sciences is only another name for the progressive approximation to truth. It remains to express my gratitude to those who have helped in the production of this book: in the first place to the University of California, for causing me to write it; then to Ludwig Edelstein, W. K. C. Guthrie, I. M. Linforth, and A. D. Nock, all of whom read the whole or a part in typescript and made valuable suggestions; and finally to Harold A. Small, W. H. Alexander, and others at the University of California Press, who took great and uncomplaining trouble in preparing the text for the printer. I must also thank Professor Nock and the Council of the Roman Society for permission to reprint as appendices two articles which appeared respectively in the Harvard Theological Review and the Journal of Roman Studies ; and the Council of the Hellenic Society for permission to reproduce some pages from an article published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies . E. R. D. OXFORD AUGUST 1950 ― vii ― ― 1 ― I Agamemnon's Apology The recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making. WILLIAM JAMES 2 of 165 7/11/2006 1:33 PM The Greeks and the Irrational http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft0x0n99vw&chunk.id=0&doc.... SOME YEARS ago I was in the British Museum looking at the Parthenon sculptures when a young man came up to me and said with a worried air, "I know it's an awful thing to confess, but this Greek stuff doesn't move me one bit." I said that was very interesting: could he define at all the reasons for his lack of response? He reflected for a minute or two, Then he said, "Well, it's all so terribly rational , if you know what I mean." I thought I did know. The young man was only saying what has been said more articulately by Roger Fry[1] and others. To a generation whose sensibilities have been trained on African and Aztec art, and on the work of such men as Modigliani and Henry Moore, the art of the Greeks, and Greek culture in general, is apt to appear lacking in the awareness of mystery and in the ability to penetrate to the deeper, less conscious levels of human experience. This fragment of conversation stuck in my head and set me thinking. Were the Greeks in fact quite so blind to the importance of nonrational factors in man's experience and behaviour as is commonly assumed both by their apologists and by their critics? That is the question out of which this book grew. To answer it completely would evidently involve a survey of the whole cultural achievement of ancient Greece. But what I propose attempting is something much more modest: I shall ― 2 ― merely try to throw some light on the problem by examining afresh certain relevant aspects of Greek religious experience. I hope that the result may have a certain interest not only for Greek scholars but for some anthropologists and social psychologists, indeed for anyone who is concerned to understand the springs of human behaviour. I shall therefore try as far as possible to present the evidence in terms intelligible to the non-specialist. I shall begin by considering a particular aspect of Homeric religion. To some classical scholars the Homeric poems will seem a bad place to look for any sort of religious experience. "The truth is," says Professor Mazon in a recent book, "that there was never a poem less religious than the Iliad. "[2] This may be thought a littlesweeping; but it reflects an opinion which seems to be widely accepted. Professor Murray thinks that the so-called Homeric religion "was not really religion at all"; for in his view "the real worship of Greece before the fourth century almost never attached itself to those luminous Olympian forms."[3] Similarly Dr. Bowra observes that "this complete anthropomorphic system has of course no relation to real religion or to morality. These gods are a delightful, gay invention of poets."[4] Of course—if the expression "real religion" means the kind of thing that enlightened Europeans or Americans of to-day recognise as being religion. But if we restrict the meaning of the word in this way, are we not in danger of undervaluing, or even of overlooking altogether, certain types of experience which we no longer interpret in a religious sense, but which may nevertheless in their time have been quite heavily charged with religious significance? My purpose in the present chapter is not to quarrel with the distinguished scholars I have quoted over their use of terms, but to call attention to one kind of experience in Homer which is prima facie religious and to examine its psychology.
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