The Poignant Meaning of Τύχη in Ancient Greek

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Philosophy

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while now, might have noticed that I am an adept of ancient languages. When others grab their phone, put on the tv, or devour snacks in their downtime, I turn to philology – and often also to those other activities, truth be told.1 And I love them all, from the venerable Akkadian to plain old Latin. Or should I say arâm Akkadian and amo Latin?2 Every aspect of ancient languages is interesting, obviously, but what fascinates me perhaps the most is the morphology and grammar of languages – the forms and structures which give each tongue its own feel and sense of elegance – and their lexicon.3 ,,Big deal!”, you might say about the latter, ,,Who doesn’t like, you know, words?” But words can convey a world of meaning, which is difficult to express in languages with a different vocabulary. And one of these words, which we should therefore immediately adapt in any of the still living languages that wants it, is the ancient Greek τύχη. So, let us play some semantics, without annoying others for a change!4

In this blog we will explore why τύχη is indeed such an enigmatic and even poignant word. First, I will introduce you to the many meanings this word acquired while it was used in antiquity. Then we will survey some examples of ancient authors who used τύχη in its, in my opinion, most poignant meaning. And we conclude today with some musings on the value of at least skimming the richness of some other languages than the one(s) we ourselves grew up with.

This blog is also available in Dutch.

The Many Meanings of Tύχη

The commonly understood meaning or interpretation of a word that is employed within any language might change. And this will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever spoke, wrote, or used sign language over a longer period of time! But the history of some words is arguably more wild than others. And this can certainly be said about the subject of today’s blog, which seems to have gradually morphed from an animate entity into an abstract idea.5

In all probability, the ancient Greek word Tύχη started out as the name for the personification of fortune. In time, though, it also came to have more abstract meanings. In this sense it was associated with that most unpredictable of forces which any human being might encounter: Luck or fate. But terms like luck and fate can cover a whole spectrum of interpretations. From good fortune to bad luck, and from inevitability to coincidence.6 The term was also connected by the ancient Greeks to arguably adjacent concepts, like insight, technical prowess, and premonition.7 And it should be said that the idea that Tύχη as a personified entity which could play a role in our lives never really seem to have abated.8 Through this versatility Tύχη became an important component of what could be called the ancient Griek field “field of fortune.”9

But the most poignant uses of Tύχη, in my opinion, are the ones which refer to all those circumstances that are outside of our control but do determine our lives in many and often impactful ways.10 An unsettling idea, indeed. It is therefore understandable that much effort within ancient Greek ethical thought was devoted to finding a way to live which would minimize the influence of Tύχη on one’s life.11 And this ambition proved to be a mainstay, as many other schools of thought since have struggled with that same question.12 As with these later efforts, this struggle already engendered impressive writings in antiquity: from Hesiod to the Stoics.

Poignant Uses of Τύχη in Ancient Greek Texts

While reading, one might suspect that this was all just an excuse to talk about those two great poems that everyone associates with ancient Greece: Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. But, alas! The word τύχη is, as far as I could find, not used in these works.13 It does, however, appear in that other influential work from Greece in the Archaic period (ca. 750-500 BCE), Hesiod’s Theogony.14 In this work we meet τύχη, one of the daughters of Thetis, who seems to be a personification of fortune as we saw above.15 And her appearance can hardly fail to move the reader, then and now, as they anxiously read this momentous poem. Because her presence as the personification of fortune appears after and alongside the creation and feuds of many other gods and monsters in this primeval story, many of which are rather terrifying.16 But even in texts from Archaic Greece, there are already hints towards a more abstract interpretation.17

In the so-called Classical Era of ancient Greece (ca. 500-335 BCE) τύχη kept being employed as the personification of fortune, but the word was also increasingly utilized more abstractly.18 This is particularly obvious in Attic dramatical works. Such as in the efforts of playwrights like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. However, not every use, to my mind at least, can definitively be categorized as one or the other. Menander, for instance, writes about τύχη as an agent that can introduce one of his plays with a monologue and might in addition destroy all our well-made plans. But he also sorrowfully notes that our faculties for reason may equally have nothing on the influence of τύχη as it can be envisioned in a more abstract way.19 And in Euripides’ famous play Oedipus Tyrannus the meaning attributed to the concept of fate has been argued to fluctuate throughout.20 In this regard, the word τύχη, as a tool for thinking, writing, and other forms of (creative) expression, emerges as being very versatile.

But when τύχη is unequivocally used in an abstract sense, we can also discern its previously mentioned most poignant interpretation. That being those circumstances that shape our existence here on earth while there is not much we can do about it – though not for a lack of trying! And those attempts that were put into writing and have survived the ravages of time are often still heart wrenching to read so many centuries later. In Stoic literature, for instance, we see touching attempts to embrace fate and live life despite of its power, instead of negating its influence.21 Or take Sophocles’ play Antigone, wherein we are harrowed witnesses to the fact that it is not possible to forego any and all personal attachments or value commitments in order to curb the machinations of fortune.22 Because those attachments and commitments will always impose themselves on us in the end.23 And then there are the arguably most well-known ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. The former attempted to marshal philosophy as a technique to insulate one’s life against disruptions by fate.24 While Aristotle looked to exercising practical judgement in order to avoid the worst that fate had to offer.25 Though even when doing so, we would never be entirely without the need for some luck.26 And this is something shared by all these writers and thinkers: Our lives present us with a near constant need to gauge whether something is within our power to influence in any meaningful way or that it is, in a very real sense, simply up to the world.27

Conclusion: Treasures Hidden in Language

In many languages the words with meanings that are associated with luck or fate often carry a certain gravitas. One only has to remember the German Netflix Series Dark and the drinking game one could play whenever some of the characters would solemnly say Schiksal.28 As such, I could write many a blog about the distant relatives of τύχη in other languages – dead or alive. And maybe I should! As learning about other languages, including ancient ones, opens enriching vistas which would otherwise remain obscure to us.29 Though I hope that the preceding introduction to one especially versatile word from the ancient Greek tongue has made you help ponder the verisimilitude of our existence, at least for a few minutes, before the rut of everyday life has to set in once again.

That rut in and of itself may nevertheless often contain magical elements. Elements that we may hardly notice anymore because we have gotten used to them or are too busy to make the space on the meat hard drive in our heads for such appreciation. For most of us this applies to the beautiful, useful, and sometimes frightening splendor of nature, for example.30 Next week we are therefore going to look for this splendor as it has been written about in the ancient stories that have come down to us, and wonder what these narratives might tell us about the attitudes of the persons who lived in the deep past with regard to their natural environment.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

References

  1. I use the term ‘philology’ here in the older sense of “the analysis of the form and meaning of texts”, see: Jesús de la Villa, “Ideological Change and Syntactic Change in Ancient Greek: The Case of ἄτη and τύχη”, in: Georgios K. Giannakis et al (eds.), Classical Philology and Linguistics: Old Themes and New Perspectives (Boston: De Gruyter, 2023), p. 215-244.
  2. John Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), p. 516, 624; Peter Jones, Latijn voor Beginners, translated by Rodie Risselada & Justine Aalders (Amsterdam: Aula 2003), p. 155.
  3. For a more precise definition, see: Peter Matthews, Morphology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 1-3.
  4. Ibidem, p. 2.
  5. De la Villa, “Ideological Change and Syntactic Change in Ancient Greek”, p. 230.
  6. Esther Eidinow, Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy (New York: LB. Tauris, 2011), p. 151.
  7. Katherine Swancutt, “TΎΧΗ”, The Classical Review 2012, 62 (1), p. 222; Eidinow, Luck, Fate and Fortune, p. 47.
  8. Ibidem, p. 45, 48.
  9. Emphasis in the original, see: Swancutt, “TΎΧΗ”, p. 221.
  10. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), p. 3, 89, 318.
  11. Ibidem, p. 3-4.
  12. Ibidem, p. 4.
  13. De la Villa, “Ideological Change and Syntactic Change in Ancient Greek”, p. 230; Richard John Cunliffe, A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect (Expanded Edition), edited by James H. Dee (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), p. 392.
  14. Richard Brown Rutherford, Classical Literature: A Concise History (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), p. 28-29; Frits Naerebout & Henk Singor, De Oudheid: Grieken en Romeinen in de Context van de Wereldgeschiedenis (Amsterdam: Ambo, 2010), p. 101.
  15. Hes., Theog. 337-360; De la Villa, “Ideological Change and Syntactic Change in Ancient Greek”, p. 230.
  16. Carolina López-Ruiz, Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Myths (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 33-49.
  17. De la Villa, “Ideological Change and Syntactic Change in Ancient Greek”, p. 231.
  18. Ibidem, p. 232, 234; Naerebout & Singor, De Oudheid, p. 14.
  19. The plays in question are today commonly known as The Shield and Girl Pipers, see: Eidinow, Luck, Fate and Fortune, p. 48-49; Steven D. Hales, “A Problem for Moral Luck”, Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 2015, 172 (9), p. 2397; Steven D. Hales, The Myth of Luck: Philosophy, Fate, and Fortune (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), p. 7.
  20. Eidinow, Luck, Fate and Fortune, p. 67.
  21. Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), p. 296. See also: Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 3-4.
  22. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, p. 51.
  23. Ibidem, p. 81, 83.
  24. Ibidem, p. 237.
  25. Ibidem, p. 300, 307. For a recent in-depth discussion, see: Timothy D. Roche, “Happiness and the External Goods”, in: Ronald Polansky (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p. 34-63.
  26. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, p. 318-319.
  27. Ibidem, p. 2.
  28. Hedwig Fraunhofer, “Spatiotemporality in the Anthropocene: Deleuzoguattarian Philosophy, Quantum Physics, and the German Netflix Series Dark”, KronoScope 2021, 21 (1), p. 42.
  29. Evelien Bracke, “Bringing Ancient Languages Into a Modern Classroom: Some Reflections”, Journal of Classics Teaching 2015, 16 (32), p. 35, 38; Jones, Latijn voor Beginners, p. 9.
  30. Robert S. Emmett & David E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: The MIT Press 2017), p. 141-145.