ABSTRACT
The very first word of Greek literature is a word of strong emotions: menis, wrath (Ilias 1.1; Muellner 1996). And the very first personal voice in Greek poetry, that of the lyric poet Archilochos around 650 BC, is the voice of a man who addresses his thymos, his spirit, urging it to control the emotions, to feel neither too much joy nor too much sorrow, but rather to understand the rhythm of life (West 1993: 11 frg. 128). Emotions are of crucial importance for the understanding of the social, political and cultural life of the Greeks, but they were not the only factor that dominated their life. 1 Their private and public conduct was subject to strict norms and was to a great extent determined by rituals.
