FT11. E.R. Dodds tells of how Greece's Classical Age "inherited a whole series of inconsistent pictures of the 'soul' or 'self' -- the living corpse in the grave, the shadowy image in Hades, the perishable breath that is spilt in the air or absorbed in the aether, the daemon that is reborn in other bodies." In other words, the Greeks went from the Stone Age theory of the corpse as continuing some form of life, to the idea of the breath/spirit to the spirit/soul with a potential for immortality. Dodds conjectured that the spirit/soul theory was borrowed from Asian shamanism when the Greeks settled along the coasts of the Black Sea in the seventh century b.c.
The Greeks and the Irrational (UCal Press 1951) by Dodds is a brilliant analytical survey of the irrational side(s) of the Greek mind.
The Greeks and the Irrational (UCal Press 1951) by Dodds is a brilliant analytical survey of the irrational side(s) of the Greek mind.
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