The origins of European thought about the body, the mind, the soul, the world, time, and...

Cambridge University Press

1988

xviii, 583 p.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

9780521347945

Contents Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition Introduction Part I. The Mind and the Body: 1. Some processes of consciousness 2. The organs of consciousness 3. The stuff of consciousness 4. Cognition - the five senses 5. The liver and the belly Part II. The Immortal Soul and the Body: 6. The psyche 7. The Genius, Numen, etc 8. Anima and Animus 9. The knees10. The strength 11. The stuff of life 12. River-worship and some forms of the life-substance 13. The world: beginnings of Greek 'philosophy' 14. Death and cremation 15. The offerings to the dead and to the Gods 16. Nectar and Ambrosia Part III. Fate and Time: 17. 'On the knees of the Gods' 18. Peirata 19. Kairos 20. The ewaving of fate 21. Other peoples - fate and magic 22. Moiran epitithenal, pepromenos 23. Hyper moron and the relation of the Gods to fate 24. The Jars of Zeus, the scales of Zeus, and the Keres 25. Time - Emar 26. Lachesis, Klotho, and Atropos 27. Phases of body and mind, sorrow, sleep, death, etc 28. Telos Addenda Indexes.

This remarkable work of scholarship sought to deal with the very roots of European civilisation and thought: the fundamental beliefs about life, mind, body, soul and human destiny which were embodied in the myths, legends and customs of the ancients and later emerged, often unrecognized, in literature, philosophy and science. Professor Onians adduces an extraordinary range of comparative evidence, predominantly from Greece and Rome, but also from Norse, Celtic, Jewish, Indian, Chinese and Christian sources. The volume remains a fascinating compendium of ideas, conjectures and explanations which can continue to stimulate and inform the anthropologist, historian of science and philosophy, and classicist.

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