did chrysippus understand medea?

Did Chrysippus Understand Medea?Author(s): Christopher GillSource: Phronesis, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1983), pp. 136-149Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182170 .

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Did Chrysippus understand Medea?

CHRISTOPHER GILL

The Stoics are generally thought to have been rather bad literary critics. They consistently superimposed on Greek poetry their own philosophical preoccupations, often introducing these by means of allegorizing interpretations.1 For instance, they ignored the important differences between the psychology of earlier Greek poetry and their own, theoretically developed, psychology, and used phrases from Homer, in particular, as support for their own psychological theories.2 For this reason, it may seem implausible to look to Stoic writers for any real insights into the psychological portrayal of figures in Greek poetry. However, I think there is one Stoic discussion which is rarely studied but which is worth exploring for its potential insight. This is Chrysippus' discussion of three lines from Euripides' Medea. This is referred to several times by Galen, in a work which has recently been edited and translated by Phillip De Lacy, under the title, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato.3 In Book Three, Galen deals with Stoic theories of the psyche and, in Book Four, Stoic theories of the emotions (pathe). Galen himself is not a Stoic but takes a Platonic view of these subjects.4 Hence, he consistently criticizes Chrysippus (whom he takes as representative of orthodox Stoic doctrine), while he agrees with Posidonius, who modified Stoic doctrine on Platonising lines; and he cites approvingly Posidonius' criticisms of Chrysippus. The passages in Galen's work which interest me are those in which he reports Chrysippus' attempt to illustrate his psychological theory by several poetic quotations, notably the famous lines which conclude Medea's decision-scene (1078-80):

xvLi oLavo&vw Aiv ota bp&v RXXw x0xx&,

oR6s &i XpELOO(V '&V iL(V ,OVXeVLKaTLV,

0O1TEp [LEyLaT(v a'L'TLOS XaXxAV pOTOiS.

Chrysippus' interpretation of these lines is a subtle and interesting one. What is it?

Before trying to answer this question, let me take a question that is more straightforward, the answer to which will help to clarify Chrysippus'

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interpretation. How does Galen (who sets out to contradict Chrysippus) interpret these lines? For Galen, the decision-scene represents the struggle of reason (logismos) against anger (thumos) in the psyche of Medea. 'She knew what an unholy and terrible thing she was doing, when she set out to kill her children, and therefore she hesitated .. . Then anger dragged her again to the children by force, like some disobedient horse that has overpowered the charioteer; then reason in turn drew her back and led her away, then anger again exerted an opposite pull, and then again reason. Consequently, being repeatedly driven up and down by the two of them, when she has yielded to anger', she utters these famous lines.5 Galen analyses the situation in Platonic terms, based on the tripartite psyche theory of Republic, Book Four, and the charioteer-horses analogy of the Phaedrus.6 Plato himself, in the Republic, cited a line from a significant scene in Book Twenty of the Odyssey to illustrate his tripartite psyche theory (in Platonic terms, a line in which Odysseus' reason rebuked his thumos).7 Galen develops Plato's allusion, and elaborates the analysis in terms of the tripartite psyche. Indeed, the passage is a remarkable example of the way in which Homer, without the concept of a unified but divisible psyche, is capable of describing the phenomenon later conceived of as psychic conflict.8 Galen sees Medea's situation as the inverse of Odysseus': 'she says that her anger overpowers her reason, and therefore she is forcibly led by anger to the deed, quite the opposite of Odysseus, who checked his anger with reason', III 3.17 (307K).

Galen's reading of Medea's dilemma has also been adopted by modern critics. Bruno Snell, for instance, in a well-known discussion, translates the passage and comments as follows. '"I am overcome by evil, and I realize what evil I am about to do, but my thumos (my agitation, my passion) is stronger than my bouleumata (sound considerations), that thumos which is to blame for the greatest evils that men commit". The conflict, therefore, is a battle inside the hearts of man. Passion, thumos, is stronger than the reasonable intentions.'9 Snell sees these lines, and the scene of which they are the climax, as a deliberate contribution to the late fifth century debate (to which Socrates also contributed) about the capacity of reason to control emotion. In the Medea, Euripides dramatises an 'inner battle' or 'moral conflict' between 'passion and reason'.10 However, there is a rather different way of interpreting the scene, which is sketched in a discussion by Bernard Knox. 'There is one person who can and does pose a real obstacle to Medea's plans, who can effectively confront her with argument - Medea herself. In the monologue . . . she pleads with herself, changes her mind, and changes again and then again to return finally and firmly to her

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intention to kill them ... her thumos will not relent: the children must die. In this great scene the grim heroic resolve triumphs not over an outside adversary or adviser but over the deepest maternal feelings of the hero herself.' For Knox, then, the agents in the conflict are not reason and passion but two sentiments (which are not well described either as reason or passion), 'grim heroic resolve' and 'deepest maternal feelings'. Also, his description implicitly queries Snell's claim that the conflict takes place between two distinct elements within Medea's psyche. 'Medea herself, the whole person, is somehow involved (with both reasons and emotions) in both sides of the dispute.1' Related to the question of the psychological interpretation of the decision-scene is that of the correct translation of one of the crucial lines, 1.1079. Snell, as we have seen, translates as 'my thumos (passion) is stronger than my . . . sound considerations' (i.e., reason), a rendering which is also adopted by many other scholars.12 However, some scholars argue that bouleumata means here what it means elsewhere in the Medea, namely, her 'plans' (specifically, her plans to kill the children), and that kreisson means not 'is stronger than ' but 'is master of, controls'.13 This philological question does not determine, but is related to, the psychological issue. Clearly the first translation favours the psychological view adopted by Galen and Snell. The second translation does not perhaps rule this out (we may still see a conflict between the rational recognition in manthanob etc. and the irrational power described as thumos).14 But the second translation goes more naturally with the view adumbrated by Knox, that Medea operates as one person, and is dominated now - after the struggle - by 'grim heroic resolve' or thumos.

What is Chrysippus' interpretation of these lines; and does it help to clarify this question of the correct interpretation of Medea's psychological state? The first puzzle to be considered is Chrysippus' motive in citing these lines at all. For - at least on Galen's reading of their meaning - these lines seem to contradict the conception of the psyche Chrysippus advances.15 Chrysippus, developing Zeno's theories, denies the validity of the Platonic account of the psyche as an entity composed of distinct elements or parts, for instance, the logistikon, thumoeides and epithumetikon elements dis- tinguished in the tripartite theory.16 He maintains that the human being functions in a unified way; that he is a psycho-physical complex, whose functions centre on a directive agency or hegemonikon, which is the central locus of reasonings, desires and 'spirited' feelings alike.17 In man, whose nature is fundamentally rational, all psychological processes (including feelings of desire and anger) are in some sense rational.18 This theory seems to leave no room for the conflict between reason and thumos (or desire),

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which Plato saw as basic to the nature of the psyche, and which Galen saw exemplified in these lines of Medea's. Yet Chrysippus cited these lines, and did so, apparently, in support of his theory. Why?

Chrysippus seems to have cited these lines in illustration of his account of pathos (usually translated 'emotion') and the distinction between this and an error of reasoning (hamartema).19 What does Chrysippus understand by pathos? Given his psychological theories, we should not expect him to define 'emotion', Platonically, by contrast to judgment' or'reason'; and it is unsurprising that he insists that pathe are certain kinds of 'judgments' and are (certain kinds of) 'rational conations or impulses' (hormai).20 What is more surprising is that he also defines a pathos as an 'irrational and unnatural movement of the psyche and an excessive conation', IV 2.8 (368K). As Galen remorselessly points out, there is some difficulty in seeing how a pathos can be in one sense rational and in another irrational. Yet a passage Galen quotes goes some way towards elucidating this apparent paradox. 'First one must keep in mind that the rational animal (i.e., the human being) is by nature such as to follow reason and act with reason as his guide. But often he moves in another way toward some things and away from some things in disobedience to reason (apeithes to(i) logo(i)) when he is pushed too much', IV 2.10-11 (368K). Implicit here is the general Stoic assumption that all men share the same fundamentally (and fundamentally rational) human nature but that in practice men in- stantiate this nature unequally. In all men, impulses (hormai) are 'rational' in the sense that they involve judgments (e.g., the judgment that such and such a goal is desirable). And in the wise man, who instantiates human rationality fully, these judgments are also 'in accordance with reason and (human) nature'. In fools, on the other hand, that is, in the common human state, impulses are rational in the first sense but not the second. The foolish man 'moves . . . in disobedience' to the reason that it is his (basic human) nature to follow; and hence his impulses are both rational and irrational. Is this disobedience a conscious and deliberate one? This point is not immediately clear. Sometimes Chrysippus' language seems to suggest the process is both conscious and deliberate. The 'irrationality' in the pathos 'must be understood as disobedient to reason and rejecting it (apestrammenon)', IV 2.12 (368K). But his second account suggests a rather different alternative. He compares the pathos (an excessive impulse or conation) to the state of a man's legs when they are running instead of walking. The process of running originates in the person's deliberate choice, but once it gets going it gains its own momentum, and so running legs 'do not obediently change their pace' as walking ones do, IV 2.16

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(369K). This illustration suggests the possibility that the person may be conscious of his pathos (as he is of his running runaway legs), but that this 'movement' of the psyche may no longer express his deliberate choice.

Chrysippus' account of pathos, then, makes room, in a sense, for a conflict between reason and impulse, but it is not a conflict of the Platonic type between two alien entities, reason and the unreasonable, 'the man and the beast' in us.21 The pathos is unreasonable in the sense that it does not involve the kind ofjudgment (in accordance with 'right reason') that a fully reasonable man would make. But it involves some judgment, some exercise of human rationality. Indeed, it may involve some (rational) consciousness that one is being irrational, that one's impulse or conation is 'excessive';22 and perhaps too a deliberate (rational) rejection of or 'disobedience' to reasonable commands. In this process there is some psychological division, but it is not so much within the person, and between psychological elements, but rather a division between the person as he is at this moment and as he might be, if he exercised his full potentiality for human reason. At any one moment, the person functions (in one sense rationally) as a whole;23 even if his functioning is (as he may himself recognize) a kind of mal- functioning.

Given Chrysippus' account of pathos, his interest in Medea is not so surprising. To judge from Galen's account, Chrysippus introduced Medea as an illustration of the difference between a pathos and a hamartema (i.e., an error in reasoning alone). 'It is not the case that if a person is carried away by error (diemartemenos) and from a misapprehension of something that is in accord with reason, he is also acting in a way that rejects and disobeys reason', IV 2.24 (371 K). Medea is cited as a case of pathos and not harmartema. 'Medea, on the other hand, was not persuaded by any reasoning to kill her children; quite the contrary, so far as reasoning goes, she says that she understands how evil the acts are that she is about to perform, but her anger is stronger than her deliberations; that is, her affection (pathos) has not been made to submit and does not follow reason as it would a master, but throws off the reins and departs and disobeys the command', IV 2.27 (372K). This second passage is not presented by Galen as exact quotation of Chrysippus but as paraphrase, and it may contain one or two terms which reflect Galen's, rather than Chrysippus' view.24 How- ever, the passage is probably close enough to the original for us to see why Chrysippus chose Medea's lines as an illustration of his account of pathos. Medea's predominant impulse (to kill her own children) is clearly 'irrational and unnatural' (cf. IV 2.8 [368K]), in that it runs counter to what a reasonable human being and mother would naturally want to do. Also

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this impulse is now 'excessive' and out of control, like the legs of a running man, IV 2.14-18 (369-70K). Even though Medea sees that what she is about to do is evil, kakon, and hence 'unreasonable', she sees the impulse to do so as now the determining force in her. Like the running, runaway legs, her impulse is not amenable to the control of someone who recognizes its irrationality. And yet Chrysippus does not take her words as involving a complete denial of (rational) intentionality on Medea's part; her state is not one of 'brute' irrationality in which Medea does not function as a human being at all. He describes her state as that of 'disobedience' and rejection of reason, that is, a recognition, but deliberate rejection, of what a reasonable human being would do in these circumstances. And it is this aspect of Medea's condition (an aspect that brings it close to his own accounts of pathos,with their stress on the 'irrational rationality' involved in this)25 that probably attracts Chrysippus' attention to the Medea at all.

That it was indeed these features of Medea's situation (especially that of the rejection or deliberate disobedience of reason) comes out in a number of other examples he apparently discussed in the same context as Medea. He seems to have made the general claim 'that a person not only rejects reason in desires (epithumiai) ... but also makes in addition the sup- position that he should cleave to' the thing even if it is not beneficial; and to have cited in illustration of this a line from a comedy 'Let me be undone; this now is good for me'.26 This perverse state of mind, recognizing and rejecting reason, is one he associates with anger as well as desire (thus he seems to have discussed Medea in this connection).27 'For that reason we can hear utterances of the following kind both in the case of lovers and persons with other violent desires, and of angry persons, that they want to gratify their anger and to let them be, whether it is better or not'.28 These utterances bring out the fact that the person in a state of pathos can still operate in at least one sense as a rational human being, who is not 'blind' to reason but rather, deliberately, rejects it and disobeys it.29 It is not only one element in the person (the temporarily dominant element of 'passion') that finds articulation in these utterances, but the whole person; even if, on other occasions, when not in a state ofpathos, the same person can speak in quite different, reasonable, terms.30

If this is one side, at least, of the psychological state Chrysippus sees exemplified in Medea's lines,31 how does his view bear on the issues of interpretation we have mentioned; and how far does it illuminate these? It seems clear that Chrysippus' interpretation of these lines, in accordance with his overall psychological theory, runs counter to the view of Galen and Snell, that the lines articulate the result of a conflict within Medea between

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two distinct elements, 'reason and passion', or logismos and thumos. His interpretation seems closer to the view adumbrated by Knox that the conflict is not so much between two partial elements within the self but between two possible (complete) selves; and that her final lines show her readopting 'her intention to kill them ... her grim heroic resolve', even though this resolve is maintained in the teeth of her own deeply felt, and fully argued, objections. In Chrysippus' Medea (as in comparable examples of people in pathos) we see not so much the defeat of reason by passion but rather the deliberate rejection of reason, by someone who is rational enough to be aware of what she is rejecting. We have no evidence of Chrysippus' interpretation of the earlier stages of the decision-scene; but it is likely that he would not be happy with Galen's description of her as 'dragged' and 'driven' alternately by reason and anger.32 It is likely that Chrysippus would have seen Medea as more actively involved in either side, identifying herself (as we say now) with either side in turn, and on each side acting as a complete self, with 'reasons' and 'emotions' of different kinds, in play on each side.33 Indeed, he might have found appro- priate to the decision scene a Stoic statement we find in Plutarch: 'Emotion is no different from reason nor is there dissension and strife between these two things, but the turning of one reason in both directions; this escapes our notice because of the swiftness and speed of the shift'.34 In this respect, Chrysippus' interpretation bears on contemporary critical discussion of Medea's decision-scene, and helps to define the psychological issues implicit in that discussion.5

In his interpretation of Medea's decision as the deliberate rejection of reason, Chrysippus underlines a very important aspect of the portrayal of Medea, namely the contribution of rational intentionality to her desire for revenge. The 'rationality' in Medea comes out not only in the cunning with which she manipulates others to effect her revenge, and in the skill with which she engineers a situation which effectively forces herself to kill the children (before someone else does).36 It also comes out in the way she deliberately intensifies, by arguments and exhortation, her own desire to carry out her revenge.37 These self-exhortations (which were at once seen as one of the most striking features in the play)38 might seem to support Galen's interpretation: one element in her, reason, urges on another element, her anger (on one occasion embodied in her heart, kardia).39 But this is not the most accurate way to describe what we find in the play. It is truer to say that Medea, on these occasions, combines reasons and feelings in an attempt (partly by persuasive self-description) to make one of her possible selves the dominant one, and the one who takes effective action: that is, the

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one that has the 'heart' and 'spirit' (thumos) to kill her own children.40 The nurse at the start of the play, and Jason, at the end, describe her in 'animal' terms; and the nurse characterizes her temperament in terms which imply that she will, instinctively and automatically, react in a violent way.41 But, in fact, there is something distinctively, and repulsively, human in the way she activates her own desire for her unnatural revenge, and in the role of deliberation and 'rationality' in this process.42 In underlining this side of Medea, her deliberate rejection and disobedience of reason, Chrysippus points to an aspect of fundamental importance in her portrayal.43

However, in highlighting this side of Medea, Chrysippus might seem to have ignored one aspect of Medea's psychological condition in lines 1078-80, her psychological passivity. I have in mind not so much her passivity in the situation, and the fact that her feelings are stimulated by the sense that she is Jason's victim.44 I have in mind the fact that, even as she announces the 'mastery' of thumos, she distances herself from this (describing it as the cause of men's greatest evils), as though signifying her own subjection or passivity to thumos.45 Chrysippus' reported comments on the lines do not seem to discuss this aspect of her condition, which might seem better captured by Galen's description of her as 'dragged' by thumos to kill the children.46 Yet Chrysippus is in fact aware of this aspect of pathos, and formulates it in a passage quoted by Galen, after a series of examples of perverse rejection of reason (of which Medea is one). Chrysippus apparently compared people in a state of pathos to those who are 'not in their right minds or in possession of their faculties'.47 He elaborated the point: 'People thus angered are also appropriately said to be carried away, like those who are carried too far onwards in races, the similarity being in the excess, which in the runners goes counter to their conation in running, and in the persons angered, counter to their own reason. For they could not be said, like those who are in control of their movement, to be moving in conformity with themselves, but instead to be moving in conformity with some force external to themselves', IV 6.35 (412K). Chrysippus refers here to his second definition of a pathos, that of impulse or conation (horme) in excess.48 And the comparison with runners bring out the point that, while the state of pathos (like the act of running) expresses in some sense the person's intention, there is also a sense in which the emotional state (like the running body) lies outside the person's immediate control. He may be said (in the language of the first definition of pathos) to reject or disobey reason (IV 2.10-12 [368-9K]), implying some kind of deliberate choice. And yet, once he is in state of intense anger, for instance, the capacity not to disobey reason may no longer be in his power.

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It is unclear from Galen's discussion whether or not Chrysippus used these lines of Medea to bring out this paradoxical combination of features (though the Medea passage is one of several mentioned by Galen in his own criticism of Chrysippus on this point).49 But, whether or not Chrysippus specifically underlines this or not, Medea's lines bring out with particular force the way in which a person in a state of intense anger can come to feel that his thumos (like running legs) is no longer in his control, even if - as in Medea's case - the impulse to anger has been stimulated by the person's deliberate effort. Indeed, it seems likely that it was this very combination of features in Medea's lines (perverse disobedience of reason combined with a sense of the lack of psychological control) that made this example of interest to Chrysippus. And it is a combination which his account of the psychology of pathos makes it easier for us to analyse.

In this respect, then, it seems right to say that Chrysip ps understood Medea rather well and that his theories can help us to understand her.50 However, for the purpose of illuminating his account ofpathos, Medea is in one respect somewhat inappropriate. For Medea is a rather exceptional sort of person, not only in the intensity of her emotions but also in the articulate self-consciousness with which she charts her deliberate plunge into passionate anger.51 And yet pathos (given the general foolishness of mankind) must be a very common phenomenon, and one that does not presuppose that the person is fully conscious of his state of mind, and articulates his disobedience of reason and psychological uncontrol. Indeed, Chrysippus apparently presented, alongside cases of articulated pathos (of the Medea-type), examples of inarticulate rage, in which the person is so 'blinded' as to be scarcely aware of his own physical actions, let alone capable of articulating his psychological state (IV 6.43-46 [414-5K]). In another example from Euripides, Menelaus' (wordless) reaction to the sight of Helen - dropping his sword and kissing her - is compared, by Galen at least, to Medea's state: 'Menelaus ... was beguiled by his desire, Medea ... was forced by anger'.52 There are, of course, similarities between these cases and that of Medea. Her pathos also leads to a physical action, the killing of the children; and, in Chrysippus' theory, even the acts commited in blind rage, or by a man 'beguiled by desire' involve some human rationality, for they involve 'judgments' about what is worthy of anger or desire.53 But it is not a precondition of a pathos that a person should articulate the judgment involved in the emotion, let alone his consciousness of the irrationality of that judgment, and to that extent Medea's case as not a typical one. However, this point is too obvious for Chrysippus to have overlooked. What Chrysippus must have valued in

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Medea's lines (and the similar passage he cites)54 is her self-consciousness and articulateness about what is normally implicit and perhaps unconscious. All pathe, for Chrysippus, involve the disobedience and rejection of the reason that lies at the base of every human nature. All pathe constitute the kind of 'excessive' impulses which (like running legs) fall outside the person's direct, rational control. But it is unusual for all this to be realized and stated by the person involved; and it was because she does this that Medea is illustratively useful to Chrysippus.

The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth

NOTES

For a more sympathetic view, see P. De Lacy, 'Stoic Views of Poetry', AJPh 69 (1948), 241-71. He does not, however, deny the existence of the dubious interpretative techniques noted by, e.g., G.M.A. Grube, The Greek and Roman Critics (London, 1965), p. 136, D.A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity (London, 1981), pp. 42, 95. 2 They seem to have ignored, for instance, the fact that Homeric psychology does not operate with the notion of a unified psyche, which includes, in some sense, the other elements or functions (e.g., thumos), and is not based on a clear account of the relationship between psyche and body. Hence, Chrysippus uses various Homeric phrases to support his theory that the psychic functions operate in a unified way, based in the chest (en stethessin is the Homeric phrase he repeatedly cites to this effect). See Galen (ref. in n. 3, below), III 2.10 (295K) ff. I Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, V 4, 1, 2, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, vol. 1, Books 1-V, vol. 2, Books VI-IX, ed. with tr. and comm. by Phillip De Lacy (Berlin, vol. 11, 1978,2 1981, vol. 21, 1980). All future refs. to 'Galen' in this article denote vol. I of this edition. Following De Lacy's practice (described in vol. 1, p. 59), passages are referred to by means of the standard book divisions, followed by De Lacy's sections, with Kuhn's pages added in brackets (see example in n. 2, above). De Lacy's translation is used throughout. Attention has recently been drawn to Galen's discussion of Chrysippus' treatment of Medea by J. Pigeaud, La Maladie de L'Ame (Paris, 1981). Pigeaud sees Galen's discussion, as I do, as evidence for rival interpretations (those of Galen and Chrysippus), which are potentially important for the understanding of Euripides' Medea. 4 To be more precise, he wants to reconcile the common elements in the Hippocratic medical corpus (of which he sees his own medical theorizing as a continuation) and Platonic psychology; hence the title of the work in question. s III 3.14-16 (306K), cf. also III 4.23 (317K) ff., III 7. 14-16 (338K), IV 2.27 (372K), IV 6.19 (408K) ff. For Galen's general view of the philosophical value of poetry, see De Lacy, 'Galen and the Greek Poets', GRBS 7 (1966), 259-66. 6 Cf. Pigeaud, pp. 381-3. Actually, Galen's account differs from R. 435e ff. and Phdr. 253d ff., in that there the analysis is conducted solely in terms of the psychic elements (of which reason and the charioteer are conceived as the natural ruler), whereas Galen also invokes a 'she' (aute) who is distinct from any of these, who is subject to the pressure of these parts, and who finally 'yielded' to one of them. This notion of a 'self' separate from its parts does, however, appear later in the Republic, in Books Eight and Nine, e.g. 550a-b,

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553b-d; for the notions of these parts as 'dragging' someone, see 550b5, cf. 560b4, 572c9 (cf. T. Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory [Oxford, 19771, p. 226). In Book Ten, we have psychic elements (to beltiston = logislikon[?] and to alogiston), which respond, respectively, to logismos and the impulse to lament (604d); but he here neither specifies another 'self' nor identifies the 'self with either (except inferentially in 61 1 b-d). In the Laws, 644d-645a, we have the curious image of man as a puppet 'drawn' by a number of strings, including logismos, but also being urged to 'co-operate' (sullambanein) with the 'drawing' or pull (agoge) of the string of reason. See further A.W.H. Adkins, From the Many to the One (London, 1970), p. 160, J. Moline, 'Plato on the Complexity of the Psyche', AGPh 60 (1978), 1-26. 7 P1. R. 441b, ref. to Hom. Od. 20.17. Many of Plato's comments on poetry earlier in the Republic imply the tripartite psyche expounded in Book Four, and show the subjugation of reason to thumos or epithumia, e.g. 387e-388d, 389e-390d, 391b-e (contra 390d, an example of sophrosune, Od. 20.17-18 again). Plato's discussion seems to have drawn the attention of later psychological theorists to, e.g., Homeric phraseology; see Chrysippus' examples in Galen III 2.10 (295K) ff., incl., again, Od. 20.17-18, and cf. Galen's own views, III 3.8-13 (304-306K). 8 For discussion of the passage see Chr. Voigt, Oberlegung und Entscheidung (Meisen- heim am Glan, 1934), pp. 87 ff., J. Bohme, Die Seele und Das Ich im homerischen Epos (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 66-9. Galen cites the whole passage and discusses it in III 3.2 (302K) ff.; he sees the passage as dramatising an inner dialogue between logismos and thumos, and ascribes the cited lines to logismos. He also uses the horses/charioteer analogy of P1. Phdr. 9 Scenesfrom Greek Drama (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), p. 52. 10 Ibid., pp. 45 ff. Snell sees the debate with Socrates as more obvious in the Hippolytus, 380 ff.; but he sees the Medea as a dramatisation of the same 'inner battle'. Cf. Snell's earlier discussions, Die Entdeckung des Geistes' (Hamburg, 1946), pp. 120 ff. (Eng. tr. by T.G. Rosenmeyer, The Discovery of the Mind [New York, 1960], pp. 124 ff.), 'Das frilheste Zeugnis (iber Sokrates', Philologus 97 (1948), 125 ff. Cf. also W. Schadewaldt, Monolog und Selbstgesprach, Neue Philologische Untersuchungen 2 (1926), 198. W.W. Forten- baugh, 'Antecedents of Aristotle's Bipartite Psychology', GRBS 11 (1970), 233-50, finds implicit in the lines an anticipation of Aristotle's psychic dichotomy: 'deliberation and reflection in contrast with emotional response' (237). W.S. Barrett, however, is sceptical of the idea that these passages in Hipp. and Med. carry any general significance beyond their immediate dramatic context; see his edition of Hipp. (Oxford, 1964), p. 229. 11 Word and Action (Baltimore, 1979), pp. 299-300. Knox refers also to D.J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama (Toronto, 1967), p. 195, 'Medea herself is really the only one capable of resisting Medea'. A. Rivier advances a similar view. 'le monologue de MMd&e pr6sente d'abord non pas un va-et-vient psychologique entre deux sentiments, la haine de Jason et l'amour des enfants (que soutient la raison), mais deux couples de decisions contraires prises successivement sous la pression d'un sentiment, puis l'autre' (pp. 60-1), cf. p. 85, 'Il me semble que nous sommes toujours en face d'un personnage saisi dans son unite vivante, dramatique, plut6t que divis6 entre deux facult6s antagonistes'. 'L'e16ment demonique chez Euripide jusqu'en 428', Euripide, Entretiens Sur L'A ntiquite Classique, vol. 6 (Vandoeuvres-Gen6ve [ 196011958). Cf. also n. 45, below, for a qualification of this view, and n. 34, below, for Pigeaud's 'Chrysippean' reading. 12 See, e.g., H.-D. Voigtlander, 'Spatere Oberarbeiterungen im Medeamonolog?', Philologus 101 (1957), 217 ff., A. Lesky, in Euripide (cf. n. I 1, above), p. 83, E. Schlesinger,

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'Zu Euripides' Medea', Hermes 94 (1966), 26 ff. These scholars, however, seek to refine the stark opposition between reason and passion Snell sees dramatised here, cf. n. 33 below. Cf. Ovid, Met. 7. 10-11, 'ratione furorem/ vincere non poterat', 18-2 1, 'si possem. sanior essem/ sed trahit invitam nova vis aliudque cupido,/ mens aliud suadet; video meliora proboque,/deteriora sequor'. 13 E.g., H. Diller, 'ETMOI AE KPEIIE:N TUN EMQN BOTAETMATUN' Hermes 94 (1966), 267 ff; cf. Euripides, Medea, ed. G. Schiassi (Bologna, 1967) ad loc. The previous uses of bouleumata are Med. 372, 769, 772, 1044, 1048, all in the sense of 'plans'. 14 Thus Diller sees the conflict stated in 'xav'&vw ov . . . Ovu.6s Si' not in the opposition of thumos and bouleumata. For him, however, the conflict is not between reason and passion but between the human, and the mother, in Medea and the implacable, vengeful 'goddess' who wins the struggle and appears as &os &'r6o [qxavis at the end of the play (Diller, 275, cf. 251 and n. 42, below). 15 As Galen points out, III 3.13 (306K), III 3.22 (308K), IV 6.19 (408K) ff. 16 Pi. R. 435c ff.; the epithum&tikon element is described as alogiston (439d), while the thumoeides is presented as intermediate, emotional in nature, but also 'a natural ally to the logistikon' (441a). 17 See Galen, e.g., III 1.9-15 (287-8K), IV 1.4 (361K) ff. The hegemonikon is situated in the region of the heart, a thesis Galen attacks at length in Book III. 18 Thus Chrysippus denies that animals experience desire (epithumia) because this process requires reason, cf. III 7.16 (338K) and IV 2.3-4 (367K). 19 Galen, IV 2.19-27 (370-72K). 20 Galen, IV 1.16 (365K) ff. 21 See, e.g. R. 439c-d, 588c ff. I am simplifying Plato's theory here (cf Moline), but isolating a tendency in Plato's model, and one both Chrysippus and Galen were highly conscious of. 22 Plato's account also recognises this phenomenon, e.g. the Leontius case in R. 438e. Leontius clearly sees his epithumia to see the corpses as 'irrational', and 'distances' himself from the desire by ascribing it to his eyes. 23 This insistence on the interplay between 'reason' and 'emotion', and the exploration of the way people function as a complex whole in moments of 'passion', anticipates some modern theories, e.g. R. Solomon, 'Emotions and Choice', in Explaining Emotions, ed. A.O. Rorty (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980), pp. 251-81, cf. Solomon, The Passions (New York, 1976). 24 For instance, to pathos, in IV 2.27 (372K) seems to denote not the overall psychological state, as it does in IV 2.8 (368K) ff.; but the psychological element of 'emotion' or 'affection', in contrast to logos. Also, the verb 'throws off the reins' (apheniazein) suggests the horse/charioteer image Galen used in his own interpretation of the Medea-passage, III 3.15 (306K), cf. III 3.5-6 (303K), his interpretation of Od. 20.16-17. The concluding comments (hos heteras, etc.) in IV 2.27 (372K) are clearly Galen's own. But the language of 'disobeying' is consistent with Chrysippus' quoted words in IV 2.10-12 (368-9K). 25 Cf. IV 2.27 (372K) and IV 2.10-12, 16-17 (368-9K). 26 IV 5.42-44 (402K). Galen is citing Posidonius' criticisms of this Chrysippean theory. Chrysippus' explanation for this perverse attitude seems to have consisted 'in the sup- position that what one is pushed towards (othountai) is a great good', IV 5.44 (402K), even though one also recognises that, by rational criteria, it is bad. For the notion of being 'pushed' in pathos, cf. IV 2.11-12 (368-9K). 27 IV 6.19 (408K) ff. The comments here seem to be Galen's own. I take it that

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Chrysippus referred to Medea's lines once only in the work on pathW, but that Galen discusses his reference several times from various points of view, cf. n. 5, above, because he regards the lines (as he interprets them) as damaging to Chrysippus' view. 28 IV 6.27 (410K); other examples in IV 6.28 (410K) ff. and in IV 6.38 (413K). 29 IV 6.33 (412K). But this is not true of all cases of pathos; see the example of 'blind' pathos in IV 6.44-8 (389-90K). Even in these cases, however, some rationality is involved (all pathe involve some kind of judgement), but not the kind of rationality that recognises the irrationality of the pathos. See discussion in last paragraph of text. 30 E.g. Achilles, who is capable of speaking reasonably to Priam (Hom. Il. 24, 549-51, cited in IV 6.40-41 (414K), but not to others. Chrysippus may have in mind the famous lines in Book Nine, 'All that you have said seems spoken after my own mind,/ But my heart swells with bitter anger' (II. 9.645-6), cf. 'And bitter anger, which drives even the very wise to harshness' (11. 18.108), which are similar in sentiment to Medea 1078-80, and which he also cited, acc. to Galen, III 2.12 (297K). 31 For the other side, see discussion below. 32 III 3.14-15 (306K). Cf. also n. 6, above; Galen also invokes a 'self or 'she', besides the psychic elements, that seems not accounted for in his psychological theory, but is more satisfactorily identified as the whole person in Chrysippus' theory. 33 The emotion associated with the Medea who opposes the killing might be taken by Chrysippus as some form of eupatheia since it is in line with reason. So far as one can tell from IV 2.27 (372K), he reads kreissona tan bouleumaton as 'stronger than her (reasonable) deliberations'; but bouleumata need not, in his theory, rule out the presence of reasonable emotions as well as deliberations. Voigtlander holds a similar view; he also attributes some kind of 'rationality' to the 'irrational' thumos. 'Die Erwagungen, die fir die Mutterliebe sprachen, dienten ihr, hatten aber zugleich objektiven Sinn; denn das die Mutter ihre Kinder liebt, ist uberall in der Welt der Fall, ist das Normale. Die "Erwa- gungen", die fir die Rache sprach, diente nur, sie grilndete allein in Subjektiven; denn dass die Mutter ihre Kinder tOtet, is ja eben die Tat, mit der Medea aus der objektiven Ordnung heraustritt', 229, cf. Lesky, p. 83, Schlesinger, 29-30 (for refs. see n. 12, above). 34 Plu. Mor. 446F-447A ( = S VF 3.459); cf. the 'swift' transitions in E. Med 1016-1072. Cf. Pigeaud, p. 381: 'Chrysippe utilisait ces deux vers comme appui de sa demonstration de l'unite de la passion et dujugement ... Le triomphe du thymos sur les bouleumata n'est pas le resultat d'un duel, mais le deferlement d'une vague qui emporte avec elle la vague pr6c6dente et d6passe la lisiere oi elle s'6tait arretee. Ces deux vagues n'en sont qu'une, et c'est le mouvement meme de la mer'. 35 Chrysippus' psychological theories are themselves not without contemporary relevance (cf. n. 23, above), and hence of particular interest in contemporary critical discussion. 36 Cf. P.E. Easterling, 'The Infanticide in Euripides' Medea', YCS 35 (1977), 177-92, cf. Rivier, p. 61. 37 Galen too recognises her exceptional reasoning power, but only in 'the schemes she devised for taking vengeance on her enemies and all that she said to herself as she tried to calm her anger and persuade it to refrain from impious deeds', and not in this respect also, III 4.25 (318K). 38 They were parodied soon after in Aristophanes' Acharnians. Cf. Ach. 480-9, esp. "ypapii 8' a' v, 483, with Med. 1242 ff., esp. '4e -?Tp6s XaWLa', 1245. 39 Med. 1242; cf. the address to the thumos (in dissuasion) in 1056 that Galen probably has in mind in III 4.25 (318K), cf. n. 37, above.

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40 See e.g. 401 ff. (an address to 'Medea'), incl. 407-9 (Medea persuasively characterizes herself by characterizing 'women'), 807-810 (Medea characterizes herself in male, 'heroic' terms, cf. Knox, p. 300), 1049-55, 1242 ff. 41 Jason calls her a she-lion not a woman (1342-3); the nurse speaks of her as omma ... tauroumenen (92), cf. agrion ethos etc. (103-4), megalosplangchnos, duskatapaustospsuche (109-110), the last passage discussed by Galen, III 4.23 (317K). 42 Her final appearance as a quasi-dea ex machina, on the other hand, suggests that her revenge has put her somehow outside the human sphere, cf. Knox, pp. 303-6, Rivier, pp. 62 ff., Diller, 271 ff. 43 1 am not suggesting we have any reason to think Chrysippus actuafly discussed these points, or that he was essentially interested in literary criticism for its own sake, only that what he did say (so far as we can discern this) indicates an awareness of this side of Medea. Chrysippus' interest in the Medea as a whole (not just these three lines) is attested by the report in D.L. 7.180 that 'in one of his treatises (title unspecified) he copied out nearly the whole of Euripides' Medea, and someone who had the volume in his hands, when asked what he was holding, said, "Chrysippus' Medea"'. 44 See, e.g., Med. 111 ff., 252 ff., 708 ff., 1072-3. This point seems to be emphasised in 1077-8: she is about to do kaka because she is conquered by kaka. 45 The evils are kaka again (1080, cf. n. 44, above). In rendering kaka as 'evil', I do not wish to imply that Medea has in mind 'morally evil' as opposed to 'bad, i.e. unfortunate, undesirable'. This distinction is quite irrelevant to Medea's concerns, and the latter is closer to the sense she has in mind in all three cases (cf. Diller, 271, n. 1). See Rivier on the subtlety of Euripides' portrayal here; Medea both seems to herself, and in some sense is, a victim of an 'external', quasi-divine force, and vet that thumos is, in another sense, part of 'her' and her psychological make-up, pp. 62-5. 46 Cf. IV 2.27 (372K) and III 3.15-17 (306-7K). 47 IV 6.24-7 (409-IOK), cf. IV 6.35 (412K). 48 Cf. IV 2.13-18 (369-70K). 49 IV 6.19-22(408K) and context. 50 Again, I am not suggesting his approach was designed to illuminate the tragedy, only that his analysis clarifies her psychological state better than others, e.g. the Platonic analysis, as articulated by Galen and Snell, cf. nn. 1, 43, above. Pigeaud, by contrast, sees Euripides' play as deliberately ambiguous, admitting both Galen's and Chrysippus' readings; Chrysippus' reading was instantiated fully, however, in Seneca's version of the play (p. 384 and 402). 51 Galen had some sense of this exceptional quality in Medea, III 4.23-7 (317-8K). 52 IV 6.19 (408K), cf. IV 6.9 (405K). The wording in the quoted sentence seems to be Galen's, and so also may be the juxtaposition to Medea, though the example itself seems to be Chrysippus'. 53 See IV 1. 15-16 (365-6K). 54 See the other examples in IV 6.31-8 (411-3K). The mention of ate in IV 7.2 (416K) is interesting in this connection; for a state of ate is presumably something of which the person is unconscious at least at the time, e.g. Agamemnon in Hom. II. 19. 85 ff. (cf. R.D. Dawe, 'Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia', HSCP 72 [1968], 89-123); and yet in tragedy some figures (like Medea) seem to go into a state of ate voluntarily, e.g. Eteocles in A. Th. 653 ff., Polyneices in S. OC 1399-1446.

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did chrysippus understand medea?

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