Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

150 THE ENVY OF THE GODS AND THE CONCEPT OF FATE
Nilsson gives numerous examples from Greek thought, according to
which every man must pay for happiness with unhappiness. Sophocles,
Pindar, Herodotus and others return to the idea again and again; its
clearest expression is probably Herodotus' story of Polycrates and Amasis,
familiar to us from Schiller's poem of Poly crates' ring. Nilsson
selects this particular story to illustrate the point that disproportionate
praise brings misfortune in its wake. It must be countered by some form
of self-abasement, such as spitting in one's bosom or an obscene gesture.
In this the Greeks behaved in the same way as primitive peoples. What
we have here is the evil eye complex. Croesus, according to Herodotus,
was struck by fate because he regarded himself as the happiest of men.
Again and again one finds sayings and warnings such as: God's lightning
strikes the largest animals, the biggest buildings, the tallest trees.
Whatever excels, God disables.
Nilsson rightly supposes that this sort of outlook on life leads to
quietism. 'Since the greatest are most vulnerable to the blows of fate, it is
better to be among the lesser ones. ,18
Acting in the face of divine envy
This view of Nilsson's corresponds with my basic thesis on the inhibiting
effect of envy in all societies. But again, Nilsson asks the significant
question as to why fear of hubris and nemesis did not cripple the Greeks'
delight in action and achievement; he finds at least part of the answer in
the fact that envy had been blunted because no individual god was ever
identified with it, but only a very general divine force-in the final
analysis a kind of fate. What will be, will be. If I am destined to achieve
something that brings nemesis down upon my head, that is part of my
lot. Simple fatalism restored to man so much courage and defiance that
he was prepared to risk incurring the envy of the gods, not merely to
tremble before it. 19
The British Hellenist E. R. Dodds's penetrating work, The Greeks and
the Irrational (1951), in discussing Ranulf and Nilsson, attempts a more
far-reaching interpretation of divine envy. He makes use not only of
ethnological data from other cultures, but also of more recent psycholog-
18 Op. cit., pp. 696 ff.
19 Op. cit., p. 701.