Aeschylus' Use of Psychological Terminology: Traditional and New

Robert Nickel is an assistant professor of classics at Laurentian
University.

This engaging and illuminating study examines words that denote various
kinds of psychological activity—intellectual, emotional, and
moral—in the tragedies of the Athenian playwright Aeschylus.

Aeschylus uses eight different words to describe the various centres of
his characters’ psychic activity, including such familiar terms as
phren, thumos, and psyche. This indication of the importance of psychic
activity in his plays should come as no surprise, for he frequently
depicts characters in crisis situations in which “what they think,
feel, remember, or devise all become very important.” Sullivan
examines how these thought processes are described, as well as the
relationship between specific psychic terms and specific psychic
activities. In doing so, she makes an important contribution not only to
the study of this often difficult and mysterious author, but also to the
history of the development of the western mind.

Sullivan shows that nowhere are psychic terms more important than in
the Suppliants, a play in which everything turns on the mental attitudes
of the 50 daughters of Danaus. She examines with a keen eye how
inconsistencies in their firm, even violent, resolution never to marry
anticipate a change in attitude that allowed for the establishment of a
new dynasty and the fulfilment of Zeus’s will.

This book merits attention not only from students of Greek tragedy, but
also from those interested in psychological processes, and especially in
the origins of their conceptualization and articulation.