HOW THE MIND IS AFFECTED IN HOMER AND THE SANSKRIT EPICS. PART I: NEGATIVE MENTAL CHANGES MARIA MARCINKOWSKA-ROSÓŁ SVEN SELLMER T HE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE Iliad and Odyssey has been studied from a mul- titude of angles, and much attention has been paid to the so-called “men- tal entities” or “mental organs” (θυμός, φρένες, etc.), especially to their functions, mutual relations, and connection with the body. 1 In addition, a cer- tain, but quite limited, amount of work has been done on the descriptions of the modifications and transformations that these entities undergo. 2 The histori- cal and scholarly value of these descriptions is based on the fact that they con- stitute the dynamics of mental life in archaic epic poetry, and at the same time tell us plenty about the way the mind is imagined, about its potential for change and its less common states. This is why we believe that a more comprehensive and systematic exploration of this area can further enrich our knowledge of Homer’s psychological language and the epic concept of the human mind. In the present inquiry, we make an attempt to identify, collect, and interpret all descriptions of negative transformations and states of mental entities in Homer, that is, all de- scriptions in which modifications or states of the mental entities are valued neg- atively, in opposition to positive or neutral changes. Moreover, we believe that the interpretation of the Homeric material can be considerably enhanced by jux- taposing it with some other ancient text, preferably of similar character and of oral origin, but independent of Homer. Because no Greek (or Latin) work fulfills these conditions, we propose to use two ancient Indian ones, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, which, of all the preserved ancient texts, satisfy them to the highest degree, since—as heroic epics that grew out of an oral tradition—they are similar in character to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and represent a culture suf- ficiently close to the Greek that a comparison between them is possible and meaningful. In fact, Homer and the Indian epics are the two oldest extant repre- sentatives of epic poetry in Indo-European languages. As we shall see, the In- dian texts contain material that is partly analogous to the Homeric descriptions Classical Philology, volume 119, number 4, October 2024. q 2024 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/732018 1. The number of relevant works is so large that a full account cannot be given here. Much of the literature up to the middle 1980s is listed and discussed in Jahn 1987, 124–81. Among the newer publications, the fol- lowing have been most helpful for our investigations: Long 2015; Cairns 2014; 2018/2019; Classen 2005; Clarke 1999; Pelliccia 1995; Caswell 1990; Schmitt 1990; Sullivan 1988. 2. See Onians 1951, 31–38, 44–50; Clarke 1999, 69, 78, 90–106, 139–43; Austin 1975, 112–13; Schmitz 1982, 387–408, 426–36. Some examples of mental disturbances in Homer are also discussed in Sullivan 1988, esp. 133–62; 1994; 1996; 1997; and the effects of mental disturbances on human behavior in Marcinkowska- Rosół and Sellmer 2022a. 435