Note 11 — PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

Of the dead we read in λ 219, οὐ γὰρ ἔτι σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα ἶνες ἔχουσι. Taking the words strictly this might mean that the dead possess sinews but not the flesh or bones that should be held together by the sinews. This is how Nauck, in fact, understood the Homeric words: Mélanges Grécorom. iv, 718. But it is very difficult to picture “shadows” which in this manner possess sinews but no body of flesh and bones: the corrupt words of fr. 229, preserved apart from their context, are quite insufficient to prove that Aesch. derived such an unrealizable impression from the Homeric words.—That the poet of these lines from the Nek. simply meant “flesh, bones, and sinews, too, which might have held them together”, is shown quite clearly by what follows: ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν τε πυρὸς κρατερὸν μένος αἰθομένοιο δαμνᾷ, ἐπεί κε πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, ψυχὴ δ’ ἠΰτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. How, then, could the fire help destroying the sinews too?