'be persuaded' by another man (7:120), or even by a god (4:104). The phrenes can perhaps even 'speak' like a god, as when Agamemnon says he obeyed his baneful phrenes (9:119).
These instances are quite rare in the Iliad, but they do point toward what will develop into consciousness over the next two centuries.
Kradie
This term, which later comes to be spelled kardia, and results in our familiar adjective 'cardiac,' is not quite so important or mysterious as other hypostases. It refers to the heart. In fact, it is the most common hypostasis still in use. When we in the twentieth century wish to be sincere, we still speak out of our hearts, not out of our consciousness. It is in our hearts that we have our most profound thoughts and cherish our closest beliefs.
And we love with our hearts. It is curious that the lungs or 4 Mario Ponzo, "La misura del decorso di processi psichici esequita per mezzo delle grafiche del respiro," Archives Italiennes de Psicologia, 1920-21, 1: 214.-238.
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phrenes have never maintained their hypostatic role as has the kradie.
Originally, I suggest, it simply meant quivering, coming from the verb kroteo, to beat. Kradie even means in some passages of early Greek a quivering branch. Then, in the internalization of Phase II that went on during the Dorian invasions, the quivering that was seen with the eye and felt with the hand externally becomes the name of the internal sensation of the heartbeat in response to external situations. With few exceptions, this is its referent in the Iliad. No one believes anything in his heart as yet.
Again I would remind you of the extensive modern literature on the responsiveness of our hearts to how we perceive the world.
Like respiration or the action of the sympathetic nervous system, the cardiac system is extremely sensitive to particular aspects of the environment. At least one recent commentator has introduced the concept of the cardiac mind, calling the heart a specific sense organ for anxiety, as the eyes are the sense organ for sight.5 Anxiety in this view is not any of the poetic homologues which we in our consciousness might use to describe it. Rather it is an inner tactile sensation in the sensory nerve endings of cardiac tissue which reads the environment for its anxiety potential.
While this notion is doubtful as it stands, it is good Homeric psychology. A coward in the Iliad is not someone who is afraid, but someone whose kradie beats loudly (13:282). The only remedy is for Athene to ‘put’ strength in the kradie (2:452), or for Apollo to ‘put’ boldness in it (21:547). The metaphier of a container here is building a ‘space’ into the heart in which later men may believe, feel, and ponder things deeply.
Etor
Philologists usually translate both kradie and etor as heart.
5 Ludwig Braun, Herz und Angst (Vienna: Deuticke, 1932), p. 38.
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And certainly a word can have synonyms. But in instances so important as the assigning of particular locations of sensations and forces of action, I would demur on a priori grounds, and insist that to the ancient Greek these terms had to represent different locations and sensations. Sometimes they are even clearly distinct in the text (20:169). I have thus the temerity to suggest that etor in Phase I came from the noun etron — belly, and that in Phase II, it becomes internalized into sensations of the gastro-intestinal tract, particularly the stomach. Indeed, there is even evidence for this in the Iliad, where it is precisely stated that food and drink are taken to satisfy the etor (19:307).6 This translation is also more apt in other situations, as when a warrior loses his etor or guts in the front ranks of the battle by being dis-emboweled ( 5:215 ).
But more important is the stimulus field it provides for mental functioning. We know that the gastro-intestinal tract has a wide repertoire of responses to human situations. Everyone knows the sinking feeling on receiving bad news, or the epigastric cramp before a near automobile accident. The intestine is equally responsive to emotional stimuli of lesser degree, and these responses can be easily seen on the fluoroscopic screen.7 Stomach contractions and peristalsis stop at an unpleasant stimulus, and may even be reversed if the unpleasantness is increased. The secretory activity of the stomach is also extremely susceptible to emotional experience. The stomach is indeed one of the most responsive organs in the body, reacting in its spasms and empty-ing and contractions and secretory activity to almost every emotion and sensation. And this is the reason why illnesses of the gastro-intestinal system were the first to be thought of as psychosomatic.
It is therefore plausible that this spectrum of gastro-intestinal sensations was what was being referred to by the etor. When 6 See also Hesiod: Works and Days, 593.
7 Howard E. Ruggles, “Emotional influence on the gastro-intestinal tract,” California and Western Medicine} 1928, 29: 221-223.
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Andromache hears the groaning Hecuba, her etor heaves up in her throatj she is close to vomiting (22:452).8 When Lycaon's plea to live is mocked by Achilles, it is Lycaon's etor along with his knees that are 'loosened' and made weak (21:114). We would say he has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. And when the gods themselves join in the battle, it is the etor of Zeus that laughs with joy, or what we would call a belly-laugh (21:389),
The container metaphor is not used as with the other hypostases, probably because the stomach already contains food. For this very reason we will see that it does not grow into an important part of any conscious mentality in the literature to follow.
I think it is obvious to the medical reader that these matters we are discussing under the topic of the preconscious hypostases have a considerable bearing on any theory of psychosomatic disease. In the thumos, phrenes, kradie, and etor, we have covered the four major target systems of such illness. And that they compose the very groundwork of consciousness, a primitive partial type of consciousizing, has important consequences in medical theory.
I shall only indicate the ker in passing, partly because it plays a diminishing role in this story of consciousness, but also because its derivation and significance is somewhat cloudy. While it is possible that it could have come from cheir and then become somatized into trembling hands and limbs, it is more probably from the same root as kardia in a different dialect. Certainly the passage in the Odyssey which states that a warrior is wounded where the phrenes or lungs are set close about the throbbing ker (16:481) leaves little doubt. It is almost always referred to as the organ of grief and is of limited importance.
But of utmost importance is the next hypostasis. Let it be immediately stated that it is an uncommon term in the Iliad — so 8 And just as the stomach pulsates like the heart, so they sometimes become confused, as when in the wounded lion's kradie his valiant etor groans (20:169).