R E V I E W Open Access
Sacred psychiatry in ancient Greece
Georgios Tzeferakos
*
and Athanasios Douzenis
Abstract
From the ancient times, there are three basic approaches for the interpretation of the different psychic phenomena:
the organic, the psychological, and the sacred approach. The sacred approach forms the primordial foundation for
any psychopathological development, innate to the prelogical human mind. Until the second millennium B.C., the Great
Mother ruled the Universe and shamans cured the different mental disorders. But, around 1500 B.C., the predominance
of the Hellenic civilization over the Pelasgic brought great changes in the theological and psychopathological fields.
The Hellenes eliminated the cult of the Great Mother and worshiped Dias, a male deity, the father of gods and humans.
With the Father's help and divinatory powers, the warrior-hero made diagnoses and found the right therapies for
mental illness; in this way, sacerdotal psychiatry was born.
Keywords: Ancient Greece, Animism, Sacred psychiatry, Homer, Tragedians
Introduction
Three basic trends in psychiatric thought can be traced
back to earliest times: (a) organic approach, the attempt
to explain diseases of the mind in physical terms; (b)
psychological approach, the attempt to find a psycho-
logical explanation for mental disturbances; and (c) sa-
cred or magical approach, which can be further divided
into the animistic, mythological and demonological
models [1]. The origin of the word ‘magic’leads us back
to the Persian religion. The prophet Zoroaster (sixth
century B.C.) helped man in his struggle against evil.
Aiding Zoroaster in his proselytization of the right road
were the priests known as Mah (pronounced Mag),
which meant ‘the greatest ones’. In subsequent years, the
great Magi lost their high reputation and became known
as charlatans and tricksters, hence, the connotation to
the word ‘magic’[2].
The magical sacred approach forms the primordial
foundation for any psychopathological development be-
cause it reflects a modality of interpretation of reality
that is innate to the prelogical human mind. The animis-
tic model is based on prelogical, emotional reasoning,
originating from certain historical conditions. Primitive
man lived in deep communion with nature and per-
ceived all phenomena to be connected by mysterious
forces. Chance does not exist, and everything that
happens has a precise meaning because the world is
inhabited by animated entities that support every single
event. Different feelings and emotions, psycho-sensorial
disturbances, and delusions are the work of obscure and
ineffable forces that people the world of nature and can
act on a man's mind and soul [3].
Greek thought in the middle of the second millennium
B.C. transformed the animistic conception into a natur-
alistic, anthropomorphic theology, in which indistinct
and fluid forces were materialized in myths. Every symp-
tom was thought to be caused by a certain deity, which
could, if implored, benevolently cure it. The human pas-
sions, the emotional suffering from endopsychic con-
flicts, and the different psychiatric symptoms were
projected and concentrated in a divine symbol. The
myth was a form of knowledge that took place by sym-
bolizing in concrete divine shapes the phenomena of na-
ture and the complex life of the soul and mind. The
‘anthropomorphism’of the Greek mythology, where
even gods have feelings and emotions, is a historical
breakthrough [4].
The genesis and the evolvement of the more elaborate
mythological comprehension of the man and the uni-
verse are in a direct relationship with the historical dy-
namic process of an increasing complexity of the social
structure. During the pre-Homeric era, in the Minoan
and the Mycenaean societies, citizens were divided ac-
cording to their financial status, to their position in the
administrative hierarchy, and to their relationship with
* Correspondence: tzefgr@yahoo.gr
Second Department of Psychiatry, University of Athens, Attikon Hospital,
1 Rimini str., Athens 12462, Greece
© 2014 Tzeferakos and Douzenis; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public
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article, unless otherwise stated.
Tzeferakos and Douzenis Annals of General Psychiatry 2014, 13:11
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the kings. The king in these primitive societies was the
sole judicial, legislative, and administrative authority.
Another important criterion for the social position and
integration in the different groups and ‘fratrias’, in the
pre-Homeric and Homeric societies, was the genea-
logical lineage. Noble families claiming to have des-
cended from mythological heroes gained social power
and prestige.
The extensive colonization of the Mediterranean coast
by the Greeks led to the emergence of new social
groups. The merchants gained wealth and power and
also became the bearers of new cultural, scientific, and
political ideas taken from the neighboring nations. Grad-
ually and through turbulent strife, the mainstay of the
social structure in the ancient Greek world, the city-state
(‘polis’) became the cradle of democracy. In the classical
era, although the old noble families still held much of their
power, the new wealthy aristocracy and the middle social
clashes gained access to legislative, administrative, and ju-
dicial institutions. This social ‘democratization’allowed
and supported the great scientific and cultural changes
that took place in this historical period.
Shamanism
Primitive man cured his minor troubles through various
intuitive, empirical techniques. The first attempts to ex-
plain illness were equally intuitive: sometimes simple
phenomena having a cause-and-effect relationship were
easily understood (overeating and drinking may cause
discomfort and thus purgatives will cure it); but that was
not always the case.
When the causes of an ailment were not obvious,
primitive man ascribed them to the malignant influences
of either other humans or divine beings and dealt with
the former by magic or sorcery and the latter through
magico-religious practices.
In these primitive societies, the typical witch, doctor,
or shaman was a person capable of transcending into an
ecstatic state, with the help of aromatic herbs, alcohol,
seeds, and music. While being in ecstasy, he was able to
communicate with the pathogenic spirits, drive them
away, and thus cure the patient. In hunting societies,
shamans acquire their healing powers from animal spirits
[5]. A shaman was able to communicate with the beasts,
travel through time and space, sink deep into the world of
the spirits, and change his psychic and physical form.
When the Greeks colonized the Black Sea, during the
seventh century B.C., they came in contact with sha-
manic rituals and beliefs. A key figure of shamanism was
Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.). He was, in today's terms,
a mathematician, astronomer, psychologist, psychiatrist,
physician, musicologist, mystic, and philosopher. He
gathered excessive wisdom by living through 10 or 20
human generations [6], and he believed in reincarnation
(‘metempsychosis’). Through an indefinite cycle of psy-
chic reincarnations, one could achieve immortality, a
privilege seized only by the gods. Pythagoras could be
considered the ‘father’of Psychology since, as Porphyrios
says, ‘He was the first one to define with precision the
anthropocentric science, which teaches us the nature of
an individual’[7]. He was the founder of the encephalo-
centric doctrine which considered the brain as the seat
of human consciousness, sensation, and knowledge and
claimed that the psychic organ has a tripartite division,
closely resembling the structural theory of Freud: (1)
reason, which was the innate category of truth, (2)
intelligence, which carried out the synthesis of sensory
sensations, and (3) impulse, which derived from the
soma. The rational part had its seat in the brain and the
irrational one in the heart. Pythagoras considered the
mental life to be a harmony supported by the relation-
ship between antithetical forms: love-hate, good-bad,
etc. Life itself was regulated according to this theory by
opposite rhythmic movements, e.g., sleep-wakefulness,
and mental symptoms originated from a disequilibrium
of this basic harmony. The work of Pythagoras and
Empedocles, originator of the cosmogenic theory of the
four classical elements (fire, earth, air, and water),
formed the basis for the humoral theory of Hippocrates
[8]. Pythagoras stressed the value of group psychother-
apy, medical herbs (opium for anxiety, cauliflower and
scilla against depression, anis against epilepsy), and
music for the treatment of emotionally ill patients [9].
On the other hand, the Pythagoreans avoided cauteriza-
tions and incisions [10]. According to Edebstein [11],
the ‘Hippocratic oath’is of Pythagorean origin because
some of its main principles are the rejection of assisted
suicide and abortion, the prohibition of surgical proce-
dures, and public disclosure of medical cases. Hippocra-
tes and his followers performed surgeries, administered
drugs for abortion, and publicly discussed case reports,
with direct reference to the patients' names [12].
The psychic immortality was a common belief be-
tween the Pythagoreans and the Orphic religious cult,
which, according to Herodotus, originated from the
Egyptian religion [13]. Fundamental feature of Orphism
was the psychic ‘catharsis’or cleansing, from somatic
impulses and passions, through shamanic-like rituals,
music, strict dietary practices, and exorcisms [14].
Psychically depressed patients were stimulated with
Phrygian music, while the excited ones were sedated
with the Doric tonalities. Orphic mysteries mainly prac-
ticed in Thrace descended to the Hellenic world from
Northern Europe and Siberia [15].
Between legend and history: Melampus and Asclepius
Ancient Greek medicine was a complex practice per-
ceived as something between myth and reality, as an
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expression of a magical divinatory, hieratic, and empir-
ical technical practice. Examples of such interrelation-
ship are the myths of Melampus, a priest-psychiatrist
who allegedly lived in Argos 200 years before the Trojan
War [16], and Asclepius who was considered to be the
‘god of medicine’by the ancient Greeks [17].
Until the second millennium B.C., a female deity gov-
erned the Universe, according to the archaic Pelasgic re-
ligion. She was the Great Mother Earth, named Cybele
or Selene or Hecate, who dominated man and predated
other deities. She gave birth to all things, fertilized not
by any male opposite but by symbolic seeds in the form
of the wind, beans, or insects [18]. The Great Mother
regulated the sexual and affective life and if angered
could unleash malevolent influences that brought about
zoopathic psychoses. The place of origin of her following
is uncertain, but it is thought that she had popular fol-
lowings in Thrace. Her most important sanctuary was
Lagina, a theocratic city-state in which the goddess was
served by eunuchs, called Dactyls [19].
The predominance of the Hellenic civilization, in the
second millennium B.C., over the Pelasgic, modified the
psychopathological interpretation. This fundamental
change almost led to a civil war, with lots of killings, es-
pecially in the Delphi temple. The Hellenes eliminated
the cult of Hecate and worshiped Dias, a male deity, the
father of gods and humans. The warrior cult of the hero
replaced that of the Mother earth. It was the hero who
set himself up as a physician and priest against the
forces of evil. With the Father's help and divinatory pow-
ers, he made diagnoses and found the right therapies for
mental illness; in this way, sacerdotal psychiatry was
born around 1500 B.C. [1].
Melampus
The first and most famous priest-psychiatrist of this new
civilization was Melampus, whose existence stands be-
tween myth and reality. In Odyssey (χι 223-42) [20],
Homer describes the lineage of Theoclymenus, ‘a
prophet, sprung from Melampus' line of seers’. This nar-
rative concerning Melampus is done with such brevity
that its details must have been familiar to Homer's audi-
ence. According to Apollodorus [21], Melampus was the
mythological son of Amythaon and Eidomeni and he
was born in Pylos around 1400 B.C. about 200 years
before the Trojan War. The name Amythaon implies the
‘ineffable’or ‘unspeakably great’; thus, Melampus and his
heirs were the Amythaides of the ‘House of Amythaon’.
According to Herodotus and Clement of Alexandria, he
was the introducer of the worship of Dionysus who
asserted that his power as a seer and healer was derived
from the Egyptians [13,22]. Roccatagliata [1], on the other
hand, claims that Melampus was the son of God
Dionysus, and his father gave him divinatory powers and
psychiatric diagnostic and therapeutic abilities. The name
Melampus derives from his black feet: just after his birth,
he was left in the shade of a tree, but his feet stuck out
and were burned by the sun (‘melas’which means black
and ‘pous’which means foot) [23]. According to the myth,
Melampus could understand the language of the animals.
This charisma was given with gratitude by two snakes,
which were rescued by him, by licking his ears while he
was asleep. The cleaning of Melampus' ears by the snakes
is considered to be the origin of the use of the snake as a
medical symbol, although Asclepius was later associated
with this symbol. The father of Asclepius himself, God
Apollo, taught Melampus medicine and purified him at
the river Alpheios, the waters of which were believed to
have curative powers [24].
Melampus became famous for curing Iphiclus, the son
of Phylacus. Iphiclus had become impotent, which was a
very serious symptom in a civilization that so exalted the
phallus and the icon of the dominant male. Melampus
used his unique ability to understand the language of the
beasts. He sacrificed an ox and observed the eagles that
gathered around. The big birds revealed the cause and
the cure of Iphiclus' impotence: the last time Phylacus
had made a sacrifice, Iphiclus had been terrified of the
enormous bloody knife that his father used. In order to
calm the boy down, the king had tossed the knife aside.
It had hit a tree and become stuck in it, injuring a hama-
dryad (nymph bonded to a particular tree). The hama-
dryad cursed the prince with the sickness. In order for
Iphiclus to be cured, the knife had to be removed from
the trunk of the tree and heated in boiling wine, which
the patient should then drink. Melampus found the
knife, scraped off the rust, mixed it with wine and gave
the mix to Iphiclus to drink for 10 days. After this treat-
ment, Iphiclus was able to have a son, called Podacres.
It has been argued that the rust could have strength-
ened Iphiclus physically, but one cannot help comparing
Melampus' work to the present psychoanalytic thera-
peutic methods. The healer inquired about Iphiclus' past,
the beloved but castrated son, thus revealing the cause
of the symptom. Recalling the trauma and resolving the
pathological complexes is the next essential step in the
psychoanalytic healing process [25].
After the invitation of king Proetus, Melampus cured
the women of Argos, whom God Dionysus had turned
mad. The daughters of King Proetus, Lysippa, Iphice,
and Iphianassa, together with several other young vir-
gins, refused to adore Dionysus, wandered on the moun-
tains behaving strangely and hallucinating: they thought
they had become cows. He allowed them to dance and
scream, believing that in this way, the women's frenzy
would defuse [26]. He then purged the young women
with the extract of hellebore roots, a plant containing al-
kaloids, in order to treat their delusions and made sure
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they had a bath in river waters. Hellebor can induce
massive foul-smelling black stools and can cause convul-
sions, and it was used to treat different psychic disor-
ders. The ancient Greek word Hellebor origins from the
two words ‘ellò’(‘fawn’) and ‘bibròskein’(‘eaten’), thus
meaning ‘plant eaten by the fawns’[27].
Asclepius
The historical facts of Asclepius' life are shrouded in the
mists of time. According to Homer, his sons, Machaon
and Podalirios, have participated in the Trojan War as
heroic fighters and healers. This would place Asclepius'
life at about 1300 B.C., a time of waning Mycenaean
dominance in the Aegean Archipelagos [28].
Asclepius may have been a historical figure who in
successive transmissions of oral tradition became first a
hero and then a demigod. According to the myth,
Asclepius was the son of the God Apollo and the nymph
Coronis. Coronis was the daughter of Phlegyas, king of
the Lapiths, who lived in Thessaly. The Lapiths were
famous for their struggle with and victory over the
Centaurs. This story represents the triumph of the forces
of reason and civilization over man's bestial nature. Sig-
nificantly, after the death of his mother, Asclepius was
raised by Cheiron, one of the few surviving Centaurs.
Asclepius' father left a snow white crow to watch over
his lover. But Coronis betrayed Apollo in favor of Ischys,
with whom she was enamorated. When the crow re-
ported the mortal's transgression, the God cursed it and
turned it black. The unfaithful wife was executed by the
Goddess Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, and Asclepius
was born from the dead body of his mother. As she lay
on the funeral pyre, Apollo had a change of heart and
turned to Hermes, who cut the still living child from his
dead mother's womb. This is considered to be the first
Caesarean birth delivered from a dead mother [29]. The
name Coronis derives from the ancient Greek word ‘cor-
ònos’, meaning crows, considered as being related to an
ancient diagnostic and therapeutic ritual. During this
practice, it was possible to attend to the incarnation of
heroes as ravens or snakes by the intervention of the
Goddess Athena.
Apollo took the child to the cave of Chiron, the cen-
taur, to be raised. Chiron was a son of Kronos, half man
and half horse, who lived on the mountain Pelion. In his
body, he joins together both human and animal realms.
The human realm is apollonian: abstract, lucid, and filled
with light and reason. The animal realm is chthonic:
dark, muscular, virile, and connected to the earth as to
sweat and semen. He was viewed as a dark god, and his
cave was an entrance to the underworld. Chiron em-
bodies the dual nature of healing: the Apollonian intel-
lect that orders and illuminates through language,
reason, and precision and the visceral intuition and
animal intelligence which works with torn and bloody
flesh. It represents the combination of ‘praxis’and
‘logos’, treating with the hands and with words. ‘Chiron’
comes from the Greek root meaning ‘working by hand’,
which also gives us the English word ‘surgeon’. In Greek
religion, hands (‘cheires’) and divine powers were
equated [30]. Statues of Asclepius and other Greek heal-
ing figures were often gilded just on their hands and fin-
gers [31]. Chiron had been struck by an arrow, meant
for someone else, and suffered an incurable wound from
which he drew his healing power. With few exceptions,
the Greek myths portray the healer with his own persist-
ent wounds. In mythic thought, healing power and
woundedness are inseparable. Chiron taught the arts of
medicine, hunting, and music to Asclepius, but he was
not the only one who helped him become a great healer.
Athena gave Asclepius two vials of blood from the
Gorgon Medusa's jugular veins. With the blood drawn
from her right side, he could raise the dead and with the
blood from the left side he could destroy life instantly [32].
This blood is a perfect example of the concept of ‘phárma-
con’. This Greek word means a medicine or venom, a sub-
stance that could lead to the patient's death or, if given by
the proper healer or ‘iatròs’, could save him [33].
Asclepius was depicted in statues as either young or
old but often accompanied by a staff with a single ser-
pent twined around it. The snake is a natural symbol of
renewal because it sheds its skin periodically to rejuven-
ate itself. Beneath the temple were labyrinths where live
snakes were kept. The name of Asclepius itself originates
from the Greek word ‘askalabos’, which means snake.
Asclepius' triumphs led to resentment on the part of
the chthonian Hades, the god of the underworld. He
resented the loss of subjects resulting from Asclepius'
therapies. Hades complained to Dias, who became fear-
ful that the natural order of things would be disturbed.
So when Asclepius used Medusas' blood to resurrect a
dead man, Dias struck him dead with a thunderbolt [34].
Later, the father of the gods restored Asclepius to life
and placed him in the heavens [35].
Cults of Asclepius flourished throughout the Greco-
Roman world. Important temples existed at Epidaurus,
Athens, Ephesus, Tricca, and Kos [36]; one was erected
in Rome on the Tiber Island in 300 B.C. Located in
peaceful and attractive settings, these temples were
established to encourage patients to believe that there
were good reasons to want to recover. The preservation
of a climate of spiritual healing was largely entrusted to
a priestly group derived from a few selected families.
The priests established procedures for worship, sug-
gested appropriate sacrifices at Asclepius’altar and
sought to create a holding environment for the pilgrims.
The relationship between medicine and the temples of
Asclepius did not seem to be competitive but rather
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complementary. The Hippocratic physicians of the island
of Kos constituted themselves as a kind of guild under
the name of the ‘sons of Asclepius’. The priests were
helped by lay practitioners or Asclepiads who supple-
mented the ministrations of the priests and guided the
pilgrims in their healing activities [37]. They tended to
focus their attention on the corporeal and pragmatic ele-
ments of the treatment program and also acquired a
number of specifically medical skills. Vials for medical
administration and surgical implements were discovered
in the ruins at Epidaurus.
Included among the temples' treatment techniques
were a balanced diet, a daily massage, quiet sleep,
priestly suggestions, and warm baths, all of which were
thought to comfort and soothe patients [38]. Each tem-
ple specialized in the treatment of different diseases: in
Tricca hysteria, in Epidaurus psychogenic disturbances
of consciousness treated with blood from Medusa, and
in Megara psychoreactive manifestations caused by
different passions. The main therapeutic procedure,
though, remained that of therapeutic divination through
the interpretation of dreams [39]. After rites of purifica-
tion, and offerings to Apollo and Asclepius, incubation
involved staying within a sacred central region of the
temple grounds, the ‘abaton’, often constructed as a laby-
rinth sunken into the ground (inside the MotherEarth
and resembling the underworld). There, the afflicted per-
son slept or tranced to experience healing dreams or vi-
sions. The interpretation of these dreams, by the priests
of the temple, elucidated and revealed the cause and the
proper cure for the disorder [40]. A typical cure is re-
corded in the temple inscriptions from Epidauros, a man
with a urethral stone comes to the god for help. He lies
down and has an erotic dream of intercourse with a
beautiful man and has an ejaculation that expels the
stone [41]. The bestdocumented case of long-term rela-
tionship with the God Asclepius in order to heal a var-
iety of illnesses, psychic as well as somatic in origin, is
that of Aelius Aristides, an orator and hypochondriac,
who lived in the second century A.D. and a contempor-
ary of Galen (who also used incubation as a therapeutic
method in the Asclepeion of Ephesus), whom he once
consulted. Aelius spent almost a decade wandering from
one Asclepian temple to another, in different parts of
the Mediterranean world, seeking and obtaining divinely
inspired dreams, including some in which he had direct
interviews with the god. Incubation or ‘temple-sleep’,as
a psycho-therapeutic method, was also used in Ancient
Egypt, and it was associated with Imhotep (2655-2600
B.C.), the earliest known physician in history [42]. Imho-
tep or Imuthes in Greek, meaning ‘he who comes in
peace’, besides being a physician, was also an engineer and
architect; he was the architect of the step pyramid at
Saqqara built by the Pharaoh Zoser. He was worshiped at
Memphis, and a temple was constructed in his honor on
the island of Philae [43].
In ancient civilizations, dreams were analyzed in order
to foresee the future, to understand the soul, and to
make political, military, and religious decisions [44]. The
oldest historical mention of the importance of dreams
dates back to the early Mesopotamian civilizations. Gar-
diner translated the earliest book of dreams, found in
the Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus (around 2000-1790
BC), time of the 12th dynasty, which contains interpreta-
tions of all kinds of dreams [45]. In ancient Greece, until
the sixth century B.C., the complex oneiric life was con-
sidered a premonitory divine sign (Odyssey ω9–12)
[20]. During this period, however, a crucial change took
place: the dream, from an important element of the rela-
tionship between man and god, became the expression
of inner truth, useful not only to divine but also to attain
a more profound knowledge of the human soul [46]. In
Odyssey (τ560-7) [21], Homer describes two kinds of
dreams: (a) the real and valuable ones, arising from the
‘keratin’gate (the eyeball), foretelling the future and
warning for incoming dangers and (b) the deceitful
(Odyssey ζ21-40) [21], penny, and futile, arising from
the ‘elephantine’gate (the teeth), which could only lead
to disasters (Iliad β5-34) [47].
Soul and mental health in Homer
According to Homer, Asclepius was the first one to dis-
tinguish between medicine and surgery: he gave the
power of recovery to his son Podalirius and the ability to
treat wounds to Machaon. On the other hand, no separ-
ation between psychic and somatic conditions was made
[18]. The Homeric poems, most likely composed in the
second half of the eighth century B.C.; they are represen-
tatives of an oral tradition reflecting the views of Greeks
living in former times [48]. Their study is so invaluable
because in order to bring a culture into focus, one must
not only take into account the so-called scientific data
available for the time and place but also one must turn
to the poet and playwright, myth-maker, and legend-
bearer for they re-create the myths in terms of their own
genius and tap the culture at its deepest unconscious
level [49].
Τhe Greeks of Homer had not yet developed a unitary
concept of the psychic life [50]. Homer distinguished in-
deed different types of soul. There was a soul not located
in a specific area, a kind of ‘life-soul’or ‘breath-soul’that
animates the body, called ‘psychē’, and different body
souls, called ‘thymos’or ‘noos’or ‘menos’[51]. The ‘psy-
chē’was representative of the individual's life and iden-
tity. It was not associated with any specific body part; it
lacked any psychological attribute and possessed merely
eschatological traits: at the moment of death, it fled
away from the limbs or through the wounds and
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departed to Hades where it began an afterlife (Odyssey λ
566-7, Iliad χ466-7, χ160-1, ι409-10, π826, π856) [20,47].
By contrast, the body souls were active during the
waking life. The ‘thymos’was the source of emotions,
the potency to set the body in movement. It resided in
the chest, concentrated into the ‘phrenes’(the dia-
phragm or the lungs) [52], the location of feelings. The
‘noos’was associated with rational and intellectual atti-
tudes, intervening when the subject had to reason and
ponder. It resided in the chest, without any specific ana-
tomical relationship, and it was the prodromal figure of
the concept of the mind. The ‘menos’was the aggressive
impulse, the fury, the rage in the battle. It was located in
the chest but was not a physical organ.
In Homer's poems, we find also the terms ‘kradiē’or
‘ētor’, which are translated with ‘heart’. Although Crivel-
lato and Ribatti [48] claim that these terms were not re-
lated to intellectual functions but only designated some
source of feelings, Vasmatzidis [4] considers the heart
(‘kradiē’or ‘ētor’) to be the main seat of the psychic life,
the cognitive center, and the origin of many emotions.
In Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, the mystery of the inner
mental life was explained by means of an objectivation
and projection. Every irrational, reckless, insane behav-
ior, and every claudication of the mind,the reason was
attributed, not to organic or psychological causes but to
the action of an invisible fluid sent to individuals by an
external demonic force or an angry deity (Odyssey λ61,
φ237) [20]. Homer believed that mental disease, mad-
ness, or insanity, called ‘Até’, had supernatural origin
(Odyssey ι410-11, ψ11-12, Iliad ζ234-6) [20,47]. All
sorts of mental and physical events were credited to
intervention by demons (‘alástor’) or by the gods [39]. In
Odyssey, when the old nurse Eurykleia announces to Pe-
nelope that Odysseus has returned and has killed the
suitors, she tells the old woman that the gods have
driven her mad and wrecked her mind, which is ordinar-
ily sane [20]. In Iliad, Agamemnon trying to find excuses
for his offending and insulting behavior against Achilles
(he took away Achilles' mistress Briseis), which led to
Achilles' denial of joining the battle, invokes ‘Até’, sent
by Dias and the Erinyes, the night stalkers [47].
Hesiod in his Theogony [53] describes the birth of the
Erinyes: Cronos, the son of Uranus and Earth, urged by
his mother, castrated his father with a jagged sickle. The
blood drops from Uranus' castrated genitals fall on Earth
and gave birth to different deities and creatures: the
strong Erinyes, the great Giants with gleaming armor
and long spears, Nymphs called Meliae, and above all
the Goddess Aphrodite.
‘Até’, this divine insanity, conceptualized the idea of
punishment, only once in the Homeric poems. In Iliad's
ι502-12 [47], ‘Litaé’, the goddesses of compassion and
contrition, sisters of ‘Até’, limp after their vicious sister
trying to comfort her victims. But if someone rejects
them, they call upon Dias to send against him their
avenging sister. Hesiod, in his ‘Works and Days’presents
‘Até’as the punishment for committing ‘Hubris’, the ar-
rogant transgression of the universal law of humility and
modesty [53]. Later on, ‘Até’, under the influence of the
Ionian philosophers and the ethical code of Orphism, is
equated to the concept of punishment [4].
Insanity in the tragedians and Herodotus
The theme of madness as a divine punishment for
wicked deeds can be seen in the work of the tragedians
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and the contempor-
ary of the tragedians, the historian Herodotus. Tragedies
contain some of the most vivid descriptions of insanity
in ancient literature, so vivid that the writers must have
made personal observations of the clinical presentation
of insanity [54]. This tragic divine madness is considered
to be caused by a god or gods, usually as a punishment
for wicked or impious action.
In both Aeschylus' Eumenides [55] and Euripides'
Orestes [56], Orestes suffers a psychotic attack: terrifying
visions, wild ravings interspersed with periods of sleep,
fits of despair, refusal of food and drink, and repeated
wishes of death. Orestes had murdered his mother,
Clytemnestra, to avenge the death of his father,
Agamemnon, who had been slain by her, upon his return
from the Trojan Wars. Her accomplice was her lover
Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin.
Erinyes pursued the perpetrator around the world.
With the help of Apollo and Athena, he was brought to
trial in Athens with a jury of 12 Athenian citizens.
Apollo was a witness for the defense, but he did not
seem to make out a strong case. The judges' verdict was
equally divided, and it was Athena's vote that tilted the
scale in favor of Orestes. This ‘Athena's vote’closely re-
sembles one of the basic principles of today's judicial
system, the principle of ‘in dubio pro reo’. It is also
Athena's intervention that finally calms down the
Furies-Erinyes by assuring them that the trial has been
fair, that they are neither defeated nor disgraced, and
that the position offered to them in Athens gives them
perpetual honor and usefulness. Thus, the fearful and
cruel Erinyes turn to Eumenides (‘kind ones’) and pro-
nounce blessings instead of curses [57].
Another classical description of mental illness is that
of Sophocles in his play, Ajax [58]. Among later Greek
writers, Ajax was regarded the typical ‘melancholic man’,
whose characteristics closely resemble the manic–
depressive illness.
The armor of Achilles, after his death, was to be given
as a prize. The two candidates for receiving this invalu-
able prize were Ajax and Odysseus because they were
the ones who fought more bravely to retrieve the corpse
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of the dead warlord. Odysseus, with the aid of Athena,
was the recipient. Ajax was very frustrated and under
the influence of ‘Até’sent by Athena (the reason for his
madness was due to his ‘hubris’, when he foolishly de-
nied Athena's help in the battle); he decided to murder
the leaders of the Greek army in retaliation. Tecmessa,
Ajax's wife describes with horror the delusional break-
down of her husband: in his psychotic madness, he
slaughters the cattle, binds the beasts and beats them
with a singing whip, and ‘pours forth such awful curses
as no man, but some demon, must have taught him’.He
talks with shadows and mocks the Greeks, laughing at
them with irony. It was Zeus' intervention, with a
lightning, that put an end to this horrible frenzy.
Ajax recovers and faces the dark reality: he stands
ashamed in front of his compatriots, having lost his dig-
nity and their respect. The donation of Achilles' armor
to Odysseus marks the end of an era and the beginning
of a new one: the ideal icon of the valiant warlord-hero
is replaced by the cunning wisdom of Odysseus. The
drama climaxes when Ajax commits suicide by falling on
his sword.
Heracles falls outside this pattern of punishment for
wrong doing. In the Euripidean tragedy ‘Heracles’[59],
the hero suddenly becomes a violent madman, murders
his wife and children in his father's palace, under the de-
lusion that they are his enemies and finally sinks into an
exhausted sleep. His madness is inflicted upon him by
Lyssa, the personification of insanity, on the orders of
Hera, Dias' wife. Hera persecuted Hercules throughout
his life because she was jealous of Dias' affair with Heracles'
mother, Alemene.
Lyssa, gorgon-faced (being able to turn into stone any-
one who dared look her in the eyes) and holding a goad,
appears in a black chariot on the roof of the palace, ac-
companied by Iris. Iris is the symbol of the rainbow and
a messenger between earth and sky, between humans
and gods. Lyssa expresses her doubts and objections;
Heracles is not a common or injustice man. Driving him
mad and, thus, making him the murderer of his wife and
children is a horrifying and terrible act.
The other form of Athenian playwright was comedy,
with the most prominent and popular writer being
Aristophanes. In one of his comedies, The Wasps, he de-
scribes the methods used to cure a patient's mental dis-
order [60]: persuasion with soothing words, washing and
purification, incubation in the temple of Asclepius in
Aegina, participating in mystic rites (wild Corybantic
dance and music), and finally, if all else had failed, con-
straint in the house. Of these forms of treatment, purifi-
cation (‘katharmos’) was believed to be a method of
freeing a person or a community from a religious pollu-
tion (‘miasma’) and is one of the magical treatments for
mental disorders. Insanity, therefore, was regarded in
popular thought to be caused by some kind of religious
pollution, which could often be unintentional [61]. Re-
lated to this belief was the ritual of ‘pharmakou’; every
year, a community used to pick up a deformed, out-
casted, criminal or mentally disturbed individual and
exile him in order to avert or minimize catastrophes and
disasters. In Sophocles' ‘Oedipus Tyrant’[62], the patri-
cide and incest Oedipus, after the revelation of his hid-
eous crimes, is expelled from Theba to avoid the ethical
pollution of the city and its inhabitants.
The theme of madness as a divine punishment for
wicked deeds can also be seen in the work of the con-
temporary of the tragedians, the historian Herodotus.
Among the great and mad figures of sixth and fifth cen-
tury B.C. history, who appear in Herodotus' narrative, is
the Agiad King of Sparta Cleomenes. After being
recalled to Sparta, for suspected subversive activities,
Cleomenes went mad, although it seems that he suffered
from a degree of mental illness throughout his life. At
around 50 years of age, he fled Sparta, being seized by
‘fear of his people’and sought assistance from the
Arcadians to attack Sparta. When the Spartans brought
him back, his behavior was so disorganized that they
had to confide him to the stocks, bound and guarded.
There he committed suicide in a particularly revolting
and cruel manner: he sliced his flesh into strips with a
knife he took from one of his guards. Some Greeks be-
lieved that the cause of Cleomenes' madness was the
divine punishment for different acts of sacrilege that he
performed: he had invaded Eleusis and ravaged the
shrine of Demeter and Persephone, he had showed no
respect for supplicants in a temple at Argos, and, above
all, he had corrupted the Priestess of Apollo at Delphi to
lie about the legitimacy of his rival, King Demaratus,
which had resulted in Demaratus being driven from his
throne. On the other hand, Herodotus believed that
Cleomenes' madness was the result of his alcohol abuse.
Herodotus presents another example of madness af-
fecting a King; King Cambyses of Persia (c. 540 B.C.)
was a cruel, irrational tyrant, who treated his compa-
triots with the savagery of a lunatic.He killed a sacred
animal, the Apis bull, married two of his sisters concur-
rently, and then killed his favorite sister/wife and his
brother. Many believed that the slain of Apis calf was
the reason for his madness, while Herodotus adopted a
more mundane explanation: he suffered from congenital
epilepsy or ‘sacred disease’and also he drank alcohol ex-
cessively [13].
Conclusions
Sacred psychiatry differs substantially from superstition
and from the psychiatric treatments carried out by sha-
mans and magicians, not only in its organization but
also in its therapeutic approach and its coherent
Tzeferakos and Douzenis Annals of General Psychiatry 2014, 13:11 Page 7 of 9
http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/13/1/11
interpretive method. It was a part of a complex mytho-
logical system, and its representatives were medical-
sacerdotal charismatic persons who, at the same time,
collected clinical and semiotic data, thus paving the way
for Hippocrates, the father of Medicine, to lay the foun-
dations of today's medical practice. Hippocratic medi-
cine rejected the belief for any ‘divine’intervention to
the appearance and development of a disease—without
the intention though to doubt the traditional templar re-
ligion—and denied any magical therapeutical application
that took place with incantations, prayers, and purifica-
tions. Hippocrates never denied the divinity of the dis-
eases, but this divinity existed through nature. Nature is
the field where man, with the help of his spiritual and
intellectual tools, struggles and competes for freedom.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
GT carried out the collection of the data and wrote the article and DA had
the overall supervision of the process, wrote part of the article, and reviewed
it. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Received: 31 December 2013 Accepted: 24 March 2014
Published: 12 April 2014
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doi:10.1186/1744-859X-13-11
Cite this article as: Tzeferakos and Douzenis: Sacred psychiatry in ancient
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