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Personification As A Mode of Greek Thought PDF
Personification As A Mode of Greek Thought PDF
Author(s): T. B. L. Webster
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 17, No. 1/2 (1954), pp. 10-21
Published by: The Warburg Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750130
Accessed: 29-08-2017 00:30 UTC
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT
By T. B. L. Webster
M y thesis ininthis
was a way whichpaper is that
the early Greekspersonification
looked at the world, (in
and awhich
sense that I shall define)
affected their thought on all subjects, and that the peculiar achievement of
the Greeks in thought can be seen as a continuous battle between the tendency
to personify and the opposite tendency to schematize. Space will preclude
the quotation of many examples, and I do not claim that my collection of
personifications in literature and art from the late eighth to the early third
century B.C. is in any way complete; excluding local personifications, personi-
fications of things, and neuter personifications I count rather fewer than 300
personifications and have examined about 2,000 instances in which they
occur; I hope therefore that my collection may be representative.
I do not restrict the meaning of personification to the conscious creation
of artificial human figures in which neither the creator nor anyone else believes.
I include all cases in which something not a human being is described as if it
had a quality or qualities normally associated with human beings. The obvious
qualities associated with human beings are (a) physical life and movement,
(b) mental powers and feelings, (c) bodily appearance as a man or woman.
In any particular case of personification only one of these need be present;
but I have refrained from subdividing personification into, e.g., activization,
animization, anthropomorphization, because such terms would mean nothing
to an ancient Greek and they obscure the unity which this way of thinking
had in early times: it must be remembered that the gods whom Homer
describes so vividly were often worshipped in the form of aniconic stones1-
Aphrodite at Paphos, Eros at Thespiai, Charites at Orchomenos-and that
when Hera goes to visit Okeanos who has quarrelled with his wife Tethys, she
says, "I will go and see the boundaries of the earth, Ocean the origin of gods
and mother Tethys":2 the physical fluid Ocean and the anthropomorphic
Okeanos are combined in the same sentence. Okeanos is both water and
person just as Aphrodite is both stone and person. It is therefore safer
the single word personification to cover all the phenomena which for
subject, but it will be found useful later to classify personifications
according to their strength and according to their function.
In an earlier paper3 I wrote: "the range of personification in Hom
cludes inanimate things, such as the 'ruthless stone' and the spears that 'y
to taste flesh,' natural phenomena (the heavens and the heavenly bod
seasons, the winds, the earth, and the body), invisible forces which
either the human body (such as death, sleep, youth, strength, or exha
or the human mind (the mind and the heart, love, fear, infatuation, p
justice, rumour), or human life generally such as fate and Nemesis. H
man is surrounded by things physical, animate, and invisible which
sufficiently understood. Personification is a means of taking hold of
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT 11
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12 T. B. L. WEBSTER
1 Plato,
Crito, 50a.
5 Naples 3253, Fu
2 88.
Aristotle,
Poetics, 1449a 17.
3 Herodotus, V, 28.
6 Plato, Gorgias, 5
4 Aeschylus, Persae, 548.
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT 13
known legend. A clear and interesting case is the chariot drive of t
Plato's Phaedrus.1 The soul is personified as a charioteer of a winged
drawn by a good horse and a bad horse; with great difficulty the
perceive in its drive the Platonic Ideas dwelling in their place beyon
Here three allusions would not escape Plato's audience. Parmen
already described himself as driving to heaven to receive a revelat
Plato has shifted the emphasis to point out the difficulty of philosophy
ordinary man. Secondly, the audiences of Parmenides and Plato wo
the legend of Herakles' drive to heaven which is common in art, pa
in the late fifth and early fourth century. Thirdly, the audience
when they heard of the Ideas in their place beyond heaven, would
the pictures of Herakles with the Hesperides, among whom the personi
stract Hygieia is once included. This legend was allegorized by Her
a contemporary of Sokrates, who made the lion-skin courage and
philosophy, the serpent passion and the three apples virtue. The a
both re-interpreted old stories and invented new stories. In the Phaedr
Plato's process is similar but different: certain elements from the
Herakles are applied anonymously to the soul and thus make the pe
tion of the soul convincing.
An example of a rather different kind where new life is given t
personification is the personification of the star Arcturus as the prolog
of Plautus Rudens, derived from a play written by Diphilos in the latte
of the fourth century. The belief that stars were persons or gods is
Homer, and both Homer and Hesiod show traces of their acting as r
angels; but from the time of late Plato and early Aristotle the stars
complicated movements had become especially interesting, and the
the Platonic Epinomis made them recording angels like the Ar
Diphilos. Here the astronomical advances of the fourth century ad
life and a sanction to a long-established personification.
In all these ways Greek personifications might still be alive and vivi
the personal view of the world was no longer the normal view. Nev
they can be arranged in a scale of decreasing vividness; and alth
sections of this scale run into one another, the scale can usefully b
into deification, strong personification, weak personification, and
terms. In general it is probably true to say that with a few excepti
as Themis, Nike, and Hygieia personifications of abstracts do not often
with the same kind of permanent and developing individualit
Olympian gods, but are deified at moments of great and compelling
Homer makes Ate the eldest daughter of Zeus when Agamemnon ap
and Hesiod makes Dike a daughter of Zeus because the Boeotian
is corrupt. The position of the deified elemental powers is rather d
in Homer (like Okeanos) the sun and the winds are both natural ph
and gods who have a legendary life outside the natural phenomeno
they represent; for Helios in the legend of the Odyssey any other minor
who owned cattle might have been substituted. The heavenly bodi
in legend and in worship, and science, as we have just seen, may re
divinity. Legend naturally does not grow round the deified elemen
1 Plato, Phaedrus, 246 ff.
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14 T. B. L. WEBSTER
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT 15
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16 T. B. L. WEBSTER
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT 17
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18 T. B. L. WEBSTER
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT 19
child home."' In the late fifth century Prodikos2 described Herakles' m
with Virtue and Vice: "Virtue is a beautiful girl of noble birth, her skin
her eyes bashful, her gait modest, her dress white; Vice is plump an
her skin painted to be redder and whiter than nature; she holds her
that she seems taller than she is; her eyes are wide open; her dress is
to show her charms to the best advantage." In Plato's Apology3 Vice
runner who catches Sokrates' accusers, and in the Phaedo4 Pleasure
nail in her hand to nail the soul to the body. Demosthenes5 says:
decision of every one of you jurors love of mankind is ranged against jea
justice against vice, and all that is good against all that is bad." The
were particularly fond of ethical personifications of this kind and
fittingly end this series with the dialogue first between Courage and Cow
and then between Continence and Incontinence, which is probably r
ascribed to Demetrius of Alexandria.6 I have only mentioned ethical p
fications but many others including political personifications could b
and persuasive personifications overlap with explanatory personificat
cause the idea to be explained is felt to be so important that other
must be persuaded of its truth.
Explanatory personification is obviously a useful shorthand for the
If he wants to say that Alkibiades has won a victory at the Olympia
Pythian games, he paints him being crowned by Pythias and Oly
personifications of the festival period.' If he wants to say that a you
(like many heroes of New Comedy) fell in love with a girl in a proces
paints him with Aphrodite, Eros, and Pompe, the personification
procession.8 He can indicate time by adding figures of Sun, Moon, or
and place by the nymph of the locality. Lysippos can sculpt Kairos, th
moment, or Apelles can paint Diabole, slander. But all these personifi
occur in literature as well as art and most of them in prose as well as
In particular here I want to notice the use of personification to ex
relationship between ideas, which are thereby isolated and fixed. A ge
is the commonest way of relating personifications to one another bu
forms of human relationship also occur: thus in Homer the war-god A
a sister Eris (strife) and a son Phobos (panic); Phobos and Deimos (fe
Ares' grooms; and Phobos has a companion Phyza (flight).9 The
group explains that all these ideas are related to war. In the Odysseyxo th
has two daughters by Neaira called Lampetie and Phaethousa; mot
daughters are aspects of the sun's light which are thereby fixed and
and shown in their relation to him. Similarly Agamemnon's three da
in the Iliad,11 Chrysothemis, Laodike, and Iphianassa are aspects of his
1 Aeschylus, Cho., 646 f. Bcazley, op. cit., 838, no. 46, about 4Io B.C. ;
2 Xenophon, Mem., II, i, 21. Oenochoe in New York, 25. 19o, Schlefold,
3 Apology, 39b. Kertscher Vasen, pl. I o.
4 Phaedo, 83d. 9 Iliad, IV, 440; XIII, 299; XV', I19;
6 Demosthenes, XX, 165. Ix, I.
6 Apud Stobaeum, VIII, 20. 10 Od., XII, 132; cf. XXIII, 246, where
7 Overbeck, Schriftquellen, no. x132. Cf. Lampos and Phlaethon are horses of Eos.
Panathenaic amphora in Harvard 1925, 30, '1 Iliad, IX, I45; cf. Diiring, Eranos, XLI,
CVA, pl. 6. 94-
8 Squat lekythos in New York, I I. 213. 2,
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20 T. B. L. WEBSTER
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PERSONIFICATION AS A MODE OF GREEK THOUGHT 21
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