The Origins of Greek Thought

144 Pages·1982·6.24 MB·English

by  Jean-Pierre Vernant

THE ORIGINS OF
GREEK THOUGHT
Jean-Pierre Vernant
Translated from the French
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca, New York
Published in France as Les origines de la pensee grecque by Presses Univer
sitaires de France. © 1962, Presses Universitaires de France.
Translation copyright© 1982 by Cornell University Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address Cornell University Press,
124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1982 by Cornell University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Vernant, Jean Pierre.
The origins of Greek thought.
Translation of: Les origines de la pensee grecque.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Civilization, Greek. 2. Philosophy, Ancient.
I. Title.
DF78.V4813 938 81-15247
ISBN 0-8014-1004-5 AACR2
FOR LOUIS GERNET

Contents
Introduction 9
1. The Historical Background 15
2: Mycenaean Royalty 23
3. The Crisis of Sovereignty 38
4. The Spiritual Universe of the Palis 49
5. The Crisis of the City: The Earliest Sages 69
6. The Structure of the Human Cosmos 82
7. Cosmogonies and Myths of Sovereignty 102
8. The New Image of the World 119
Conclusion 130
Readings 133
Index 136
7

Introduction
With the deciphering of the Mycenaean Linear B
script, the date of the first Greek texts available to us
receded by half a millennium. This deepening of
chronological perspective alters the entire framework in
which the problem of the origins of Hellenic thought is
set. The earliest Greek world, as the Mycenaean tablets
conjure it up for us, is allied in many ways with the con
temporaneous Near Eastern kingdoms. The same type of
social organization, a similar way of life, and a similar
human being are revealed in the Linear B writings of
Knossos, Pylos, and Mycenae and in the cuneiform ar
chives found at Ugarit, Alalakh, Mari, and the Hittite
Hattusas. But as one begins to read Homer, the picture
changes: the Iliad reveals another society, a different
human world, as though by the Homeric age the Greeks
could no longer fully comprehend the features of the
Mycenaean civilization to which they were connected
and which, through the epic poets, they believed they
were evoking out of the past.
This break in Greek history is one we should try to
9
Introduction
understand and locate with precision. The religion and
mythology of classical Greece, as M. P. Nilsson in par
ticular has shown, are unmistakably rooted in the
Mycenaean past. 1 But in other areas the rupture appears
complete. When Mycenaean power crumbled under the
pressure of the Dorian tribes that invaded mainland
Greece in the twelfth century before our era, it was not a
dynasty alone that perished in the conflagration that con
sumed first Pylos and then Mycenae. A type of kingship
was destroyed forever, a whole form of social life
centered on the palace. A person, the divine king, van
ished from the Greek horizon. The collapse of the
Mycenaean system had consequences that extended far
beyond the realm of political and social history. In chang
ing their spiritual universe, transforming certain of their
psychological attitudes, it had repercussions on the
Greeks themselves. The king's disappearance prepared
the way, through the long and murky period ofisolation
and reconstruction we call the Dark Age of Greece, for
two interdependent innovations: the institution of the
city-state and the birth of rational thought. In Europe and
Ionia toward the end of the Geometric period (900-750
B.c.), the Greeks resumed relations with the Orient,
which had been suspended for several centuries. When
'Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in
Greek Religion, 2d ed. (Lund, 1950). See also Charles Picard, Les religions
prehelleniques (Paris, 1948) and "La formation du polytheisme hel
lenique et Jes recents problemes relatifs au lineaire B," in Elements
orientaux dans la religion grecqu·e ancienne (Paris, 1960), pp. 163-177; G.
Pugliese Carratelli, "Riflessi di culti micenei nelle tabelle di Cnosso a
Pilo," in Studi in onore de U. E. Paoli (Florence, 1955), pp. 1-16; L. A.
Stella, "La religione greca nei testi micenei," in Numen, 5 (1958),
18-57.
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