Cognitive Science and Ancient Texts

Cognitive Linguistics offers a novel approach to interpreting ancient texts, by focusing on the culturally entrenched scripts or scenes that shape word meaning. This article makes use of ‘invariance,’ as understood in Filmore’s Scenes-and-Frames Semantics as an interpretative tool, and argues that by using this tool, a scholar can discover new substantive readings. A case study of the Greek adjective ásylos demonstrates this. Based on its morphology as an alpha private of the verb sylân (to despoil), á-sylos means ‘un-sylân-able’ or ‘un-despoil-able.’ Working from the verb’s first attested uses in Homer’s Iliad, a prototypical sylân scene is reconstructed, revealing an invariant structure consisting of an ‘Item of Value,’ an ‘Owner,’ an ‘Aggressor,’ and a ‘Protector.’ This structure is then applied to Euripides’ Helen, where the sylân scene is metaphorically mapped onto the play’s action. With the Protector now dead, the play becomes an attempted, but thwarted, sylân by an Aggressor of the sacred space of the Item of Value, the marriage-bed, highlighting the wife’s role in maintaining its sanctity and the anxieties of husband as Owner about its potential violation. The marriage-bed must remain á-sylos. The article provides compelling evidence that the cognitive linguistic approach provides innovative methods for understanding how speakers of ancient Greek thought and how cultural scenes shape textual meaning.