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 Euripides’s Orestes and the Concept
of Conscience in Greek Philosophy

Jed W. Atkins

Henry Chadwick concluded one of his surveys of the notion of conscience

in the ancient world with the following words: ‘‘But you will not find, even
in Augustine, any theory of moral judgment, any analysis of the phenome-
non of conscience, any discussion of its metaphysical status. . . . Discussion
of the philosophical issues, in fact, begins with the mediaeval Schoolmen.’’1
Was he right? Classical Greek and Latin certainly had words that we often
translate with the English word conscience—the Latin conscientia and the
Greek syneidēsis, to name only the most obvious candidates. A number of
scholars have duly documented the wide range of contexts in which these
and related words were used.2 Such surveys reveal an interesting fact: most
of the vocabulary denoting conscience occurs in non-philosophical
contexts—legal speeches, plays, histories, and religious texts. Metaphors
abound: conscience is a lawgiver, judge, accuser, custodian, guide, god, and
these persist even in Greek and Roman philosophical writings. Based on

1
Henry Chadwick, Some Reflections on Conscience: Greek, Jewish and Christian (Lon-
don: Council of Christians and Jews, 1968), 16–17. Chadwick treats the phenomenon of
conscience in antiquity at greater length in his later article ‘‘Gewissen,’’ Reallexicon für
Antike und Christentum 10 (1978): 1025–1107.
2
See, e.g., C. A. Pierce, Conscience in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1955);
C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 181–213;
Chadwick, ‘‘Gewissen’’; Jürgen Blühdorn, ‘‘Gewissen I: Philosophisch,’’ in Theologische
Realenzyklopädie, vol. 13, Gesellschaft/Gesellschaft und Christentum VI—Gottesbe-
weise (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984): 192–213; P. R. Bosman, Conscience in Philo and Paul:
A Conceptual History of the Synoida Word Group (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).

Copyright  by Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 75, Number 1 (January 2014)

PAGE 1
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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

this, it is tempting to conclude with Chadwick that prior to the Middle

Ages conscience was a concept of popular morality that eluded philosophi-
cal analysis. Thus, it is unsurprising that philosophical analysis of the
phenomenon of conscience by Greek and Roman philosophers receives rel-
atively little scholarly attention from historians of ancient philosophy3 and
is altogether absent from a recent survey of the concept’s history.4
Chadwick’s conclusion, however, is inaccurate. The goal of this article
is to show why. I do so by turning not to the Greek and Roman Stoics, who
are usually considered the most likely candidates among ancient philoso-
phers to have deployed a philosophical conception of conscience,5 but
instead to four philosophers far less frequently associated with the concept,
namely, Plutarch, Olympiodorus, John Philoponus—all Platonists—and
Philostratus, a sophist who is also an important source for Neopythagorean
philosophy. Like the medieval philosophers who would follow them, these
philosophers’ analyses were sparked by a common classical source: Euripi-
des’s Orestes 396 played the part of Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel 1.4–
14, the locus classicus for medieval treatments of conscience. Long before a
brief passage with a puzzling term (synteresis) in Jerome ignited the fruitful
philosophical analyses of conscience by Peter Lombard, Philip the Chancel-
lor, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas,6 a single line with a puzzling term
(synesis) in Euripides provoked the four Greek philosophers to analyze the
phenomenon of conscience and to try to come to grips with its metaphysical
status and place within human psychology. In turn, they offered several
competing accounts of conscience, differing over whether conscience was a
rational power of the soul, a faculty of its own, or perhaps even a cognitive
act rather than a faculty or power.
My discussion takes the four philosophers in chronological order.
However, these philosophers can also be divided into pairs: Plutarch and
Philostratus (sections one and two) and Olympiodorus and Philoponus

3
But see Richard Sorabji, ‘‘Graeco-Roman Origins of the Idea of Moral Conscience,’’
Studia Patristica 44 (2010): 361–83.
4
See Douglas C. Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues: From Bonaventure to Mac-
Intyre (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2001).
5
For a deflationary account of the evidence for the Greek Stoics’ contribution to the
development of the concept of conscience, see Don Marietta, Jr., ‘‘Conscience in Greek
Stoicism,’’ Numen 17 (1970): 176–87.
6
For a survey of the medieval treatments of conscience, see Timothy Potts, ‘‘Conscience,’’
in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann,
Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 687–
704. For a selection of the chief texts with commentary, see Timothy Potts, ed., Con-
science in Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

(sections three and four). Each philosopher presented a contrasting con-

ception of the phenomenon of conscience from his counterpart, and the
second pair further developed insights or positions suggested by the first.
By exploring the relationship between conscience and consciousness, Olym-
piodorus and especially Philoponus anticipated some aspects of Aquinas’s
discussion of conscience.
Before turning to the philosophers themselves, I should first briefly
introduce the key text behind their commentaries and say a word about
methodology. After Homer, Euripides was the most widely read Greek poet
throughout antiquity, and of Euripides’s plays none was more widely read
and more frequently performed than the Orestes. Thus, it is not surprising
that later thinkers interested in the phenomenon of conscience would
choose a passage from the Orestes.7 The particular passage that caught
their attention features a conversation between Menelaus, brother of the
recently murdered King of Mycenae, Agamemnon, and his nephew, Aga-
memnon’s son, Orestes. The latter had avenged his father’s death by slaying
his mother, who was implicated in Agamemnon’s murder:

MEN. What is wrong with you? What malady [νσος] is destroy-

ing you?
OR. Synesis, since I am conscious of having done terrible things
[σνοιδα δεν’ ε ργασμνος].
MEN. What do you mean? Clarity is the wise thing, not unclarity.
OR. What destroys me most of all is grief [λπη] . . . (Or. 395–
98).8

These lines have been the subject of much scrutiny by modern commenta-
tors. Scholars tend to agree that line 396 reproduces a shortened version of
a tripartite formula: (1) a form of the verb synoida—literally ‘‘to know
with,’’ ‘‘to know along with,’’ or ‘‘to know together with’’; (2) a reflexive
pronoun (here elided, perhaps for metrical reasons, but presumably it
would have been understood by the reader); (3) some transgression of a
moral law or code.9 Commentators have found less of a consensus over the

7
I owe this point to Mark Griffith.
8
The text and translation are from Euripides, Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes, ed.
and trans. David Kovacs, Loeb Classical Library 11 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2002), with the exception of the translation for line 396, which I have altered
here and in all subsequent occurrences in other texts to achieve consistency.
9
See P. R. Bosman, ‘‘Why Conscience Makes Cowards of Us All: A Classical Perspec-
tive,’’ Acta Classica 40 (1997): 63–75, esp. 67–68; Bosman, Conscience in Philo and
Paul, 54–55; Pierce, Conscience, 21–28; Friedrich Zucker, Syneidesis-Conscientia: Ein
Versuch zur Geschichte des sittlichen Bewusstseins im griechischen und im griechisch-
römischen Altertum (1928; repr. in Semantica, Rhetorica, Ethica [Berlin: Akademie-

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

meaning of synesis (often translated ‘‘intellect’’)10 and are equally divided

over whether the concept of conscience itself is present in this text.11
Here is not the place to adjudicate these disputes, since our quarry is
ancient receptions of this text rather than the text itself. Nevertheless, the
dispute among scholars over the presence of conscience in the Orestes
reveals an important risk attendant to any historical analysis of the concept:
one must take care not to foreclose the possibility of discovering important,
though unanticipated, insights into the phenomenon of conscience by iden-
tifying conscience too closely with any particular account of conscience.
For instance, one scholar dismisses the notion that anything like the modern
phenomenon of conscience could be present in the Orestes passage because
he, like many other commentators, finds present in the term synesis an intel-
lectual conception of conscience.12 These commentators seem to presume,
like John Stuart Mill, that any account of the phenomenon of conscience
should be emotive, since ‘‘feeling . . . is the essence of conscience.’’13 How-
ever, as Thomas E. Hill, Jr., has shown, a survey of modern accounts of
conscience reveals widely divergent interpretations of a shared experience
or phenomenon, and it would be a mistake to treat any one of these ‘‘con-
ceptions’’ as the concept itself.14 It is equally important, I would suggest,
to observe this distinction between the concept of conscience and various
conceptions of the phenomenon when considering whether the notion of
conscience is present in ancient texts.
At its most general, the concept of conscience seems to involve the
human capacity ‘‘to sense or immediately discern that what he or she has
done, is doing, or is about to do (or not do) is wrong, bad, and worthy of
disapproval.’’15 This general description of the phenomenon of conscience

Verlag, 1963], 96–117), 101. For the full formula, see Ar. Thesm. 477; Xen. An. 1.3.10;
Dem. Or. 19.33.
10
For analysis with bibliography, see C. W. Willink, ed., Euripides Orestes (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986), ad loc.
11
Yes: Zucker, Syneidesis-Conscientia, 101; Pierce, Conscience, 30–31; H. Osborne,
‘‘Synesis and Syneidesis,’’ Classical Review 45 (1931): 9; Werner Biel, Euripides Orestes
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1965), 47. No: V. A. Rodgers, ‘‘Synesis and the Expression
of Conscience,’’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 10 (1969): 250; Manfred Class,
Gewissensregungen in der griechischen Tragödie (Hildesheim: Olms, 1964), 102; P. R.
Bosman, ‘‘Pathology of a Guilty Conscience: The Legacy of Euripides’ Orestes,’’ Acta
Classica 36 (1993): 11–25, esp. 18; Bosman, Conscience in Philo and Paul, 68–69.
12
Bosman, ‘‘Pathology,’’ 18.
13
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, chap. 3, quoted in Langston, Conscience and Other
Virtues, 101–2.
14
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., ‘‘Four Conceptions of Conscience,’’ in Integrity and Conscience,
ed. Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 14.
15
Ibid.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

does not touch on its metaphysical status or commit one to a particular

account of moral psychology. It is precisely different treatments of these
concerns that distinguish separate conceptions of conscience. Thus, as we
turn now to examine the reception of the Orestes, I shall use the terms
‘‘concept’’ and ‘‘conception’’ to refer respectively to the phenomenon of
conscience and the particular moral psychologies offered by the Greek phi-
losophers to account for it.

I. CONSCIENCE AS A RATIONAL POWER

OF THE INTELLECT: PLUTARCH

Discussion of the phenomenon of conscience in philosophical, legal, and

religious texts seems to have increased in the centuries immediately preced-
ing and following the beginning of the Common Era. Vocabulary for the
concept began to appear with increasing frequency in both the Latin- and
Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire. For example, Cicero sprinkled
his writings with the term conscientia and its variants. Perhaps not surpris-
ingly, these references to conscience usually appeared in forensic speeches
and other legal contexts, where Cicero was able to put to good use the
concept of an internal court of law in which the guilty tries and convicts
himself.16 Philo of Alexandria, the first-century bce Jewish commentator
and philosopher, wrote frequently of the cross-examining and judging con-
science, which he referred to as syneidos (‘‘conscience’’) or elenchos (often
personified as ‘‘the refuter’’).17 St. Paul made attendance to one’s conscience
(syneidēsis) one of the ‘‘two central principles of his ethic.’’18 Finally, the
Stoic philosopher Seneca not only used judicial language to characterize
the type of moral self-judgment commonly attributed to conscience, but
even occasionally employed the word conscientia in these contexts (e.g.,
Ep. 43.5).19 By the first century ce, conscience had clearly become a com-
mon concept in ethical discourse. Thus, it is hardly remarkable that Plu-
tarch (ca. 45–120 ce) discussed the concept in his moral writings.

16
See Cic. Leg. 1.40, Rosc. Am. 66–67, Mil. 61, Cat. 1.17. For a brief discussion of
conscience in Cicero’s speeches, see Ingo Gildenhard, Creative Eloquence: The Construc-
tion of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 104–13.
17
Cf. Philo, De opificio mundi, 128; De confusione linguarum, 121; De ebrietate, 125;
Quod Deus immutabilis sit, 100, 128; Quod deterius potiori insidiari solet, 23. For dis-
cussion of conscience in Philo, see Richard T. Wallis, The Idea of Conscience in Philo of
Alexandria (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Cul-
ture, 1975), 1–47; and, more recently, Bosman, Conscience in Philo and Paul, 107–90.
18
Chadwick, Reflections, 16.
19
For a thorough discussion of Seneca’s use of judicial imagery, see Brad Inwood, Read-
ing Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 201–23.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

One of Plutarch’s most vivid discussions of the phenomenon of con-

science occurs in De tranquillitate animi. Here he presents the guilty con-
science as a significant impediment to a tranquil state of mind. He writes,

Even as, on the contrary again, ‘‘conscience, since I am conscious

of having done terrible things’’ [ σνεσις, τι σνοιδα δεν’
ε ργασμνος], like an ulcer in the flesh, leaves behind it in the soul
regret [μεταμλειαν] which ever continues to wound and prick
it. For the other pangs [λπας] reason [ λγος] does away with,
but regret [μετνοιαν] is caused by reason itself, since the soul,
together with its feeling of shame [α σχνη], is stung and chastised
by itself. . . . That lament, ‘‘None is to blame for this but me
myself,’’ which is chanted over one’s errors, coming as it does from
within, makes the pain even heavier by reason of the disgrace one
feels (De tranq. anim. 476E–477A).20

Plutarch begins his account by quoting line 396 from Euripides’s Orestes,
and in fact he echoes a couple of important elements of the Orestes passage.
First, he compares conscience to a sickness or illness that produces pain
(λπας; cf. Eur. Or. 398). Second, it appears that he replaces synesis in
Euripides’s text with logos. However, this substitution is not simply a mat-
ter of semantics,21 but represents a very different conception of conscience,
one which supplies the concept a metaphysical status that was absent in
Euripides’s text. To understand why, we must explore Plutarch’s psy-
chology.
A complete account of Plutarch’s psychology would require the
detailed discussion of a great number of passages scattered throughout the
philosopher’s Moralia. It is highly unlikely that the results of the attempted
synthesis would be tidy.22 One complicating factor, for instance, is Plu-
tarch’s tendency to mix psychology with demonology. In some passages the
philosopher represents daemons as external semi-divine beings. At other
places, however, he seems to identify daemons ‘‘with the more elevated

20
For Plutarch, De tranquillitate animi, I have used for text and translations Plutarch’s
Moralia VI, trans. W. C. Helmbold, Loeb Classical Library 337 (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1939). I have at times slightly modified the Loeb’s translations.
21
Pace Bosman, ‘‘Pathology,’’ 19.
22
See John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220
(London: Duckworth, 1977), 202–14. For more on Plutarch’s psychology, see Roger
Miller Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch and Selected Papers (New York: Garland, 1980);
and Tim Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999),
72–98.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

part of the soul.’’23 Despite these challenges, Plutarch provides a relatively

complete account of the soul in De facie in orbe lunae 940F–945D and De
genio Socratis 589F–592E—accounts modeled after Plato’s Timaeus and
Phaedo, respectively. Since it has been convincingly shown that the two
works present ‘‘essentially the same psychological theory,’’24 they together
provide a convenient entry point for a summary of Plutarch’s psychology.
First, consider the account in De facie, a passage couched in myth and
imagery from the start. After beginning the discussion with the myth of a
muddy island in the Atlantic—probably in imitation of the myth of Atlantis
in Plato’s Timaeus (De fac. 940F–942C; cf. Pl. Ti. 24E–25D)—Plutarch
turns to psychology. His goal is to show that the intellect (nous) is separate
from the soul (psychē). It is no less an error to suppose that intellect is a
part of the soul than to think that the soul is a part of the body (De fac.
943A; cf. De gen. 591DE). Plutarch uses the myth of a two-stage ‘‘death’’
to illustrate this point.25 The first death—what human beings commonly
understand as death—occurs on the earth. At this time the soul and the
intellect leave the body and ascend to the moon (943B). Once on the moon,
a second death takes place. At this time, nous, ‘‘the best part of man,’’
leaves the soul and ascends to the sun (943B). Eventually, this two-step
process reverses itself. The sun sows intellects into the souls on the moon
and the moon passes the souls and intellects into bodies, which are provided
by the earth (945C). According to Plutarch, then, the human being is com-
posed of three elements: body, soul, and intellect, with each being succes-
sively ‘‘higher’’ than its predecessor.
However, in addition to dividing soul, body, and intellect, Plutarch also
separates the soul itself into parts. What are the parts of the soul? How are
they formed and for what purpose? In the De facie myth, the soul, as the
middle element, interacts with both the body and the intellect. At times the
soul mingles with the body (i.e., when the body is ‘‘ensouled’’ on earth) and
at other times, with the intellect (i.e., when the soul is ‘‘intelligized’’ on the

23
Daniel Babut, Plutarque et le stoı̈cisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969),
390.
24
See W. Hamilton, ‘‘The Myth in Plutarch’s De facie (940F–945D),’’ Classical Quarterly
28 (1934): 24–30, and ‘‘The Myth in Plutarch’s De genio (589F–592E),’’ Classical Quar-
terly 28 (1934): 175–82, quotation at 175.
25
For a summary of the two-stage death, see John Dillon, ‘‘Plutarch and Second-Century
Platonism,’’ in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, ed. A. H.
Armstrong (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 214–29. For Plutarch, De facie in
orbe lunae, I have used for text and translations Plutarch’s Moralia XII, trans. H. Cher-
niss and W. C. Helmbold, Loeb Classical Library 406 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1957).

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

moon). However, the body and intellect never interact directly, and so need
an intermediary. It is the confluence of the soul with the body and the intel-
lect that produces the parts of the soul. The commingling of the body and
the soul results in the irrational and affective part of the soul; the combina-
tion of the soul with the intellect produces reason or logos (943A). Logos,
of course, was the key term in Plutarch’s account of conscience in De tran-
quillitate animi. Thus, it is now clear how logos fits into Plutarch’s psychol-
ogy. It is the product of the conjunction of the highest elements of the
human being—soul and intellect (nous).
While strictly speaking logos is a product of the mixture of both soul
and intellect (nous), Plutarch more closely associates the term with the lat-
ter. In fact, Plutarch sometimes appears to conflate nous and logos.26 At
times he so fully emphasizes the role of nous in the production of logos that
the other term, soul (psychē), is practically forgotten. For example, in De
Iside et Osiride Plutarch identifies the Egyptian god Osiris with ‘‘nous and
logos in the soul’’ (371A), which should rule over Typhon, the irrational
and bodily part of the soul (371B).27 Reason is the means by which the nous
exerts its influence over the soul as its ‘‘ruler and lord’’ (371A).
The mastery of nous and logos over the rest of the soul involves guid-
ance—and punishment. Plutarch deals especially with these facets of his
psychology in his treatment of Socrates’s famous sign or daemon (cf. De
gen. 589F–592E).28 Once again the discussion is couched in a myth. Ti-
marchus, a friend of Socrates’s son Lamprocles, sees a vision in which a
multitude of souls are being carried along by the river Styx. Some of these
souls slip off to Hades while others are carried upwards to the moon (De
gen. 591C). A guide interprets the vision. Every soul has a share in nous,
which here, just as in De facie, is presented as a distinct entity from the
soul.29 While most of the soul descends into the body and becomes irra-
tional, the nous and that part of the soul that is in contact with it remain

26
Babut, Plutarque et le stoı̈cisme, 390.
27
For Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, I used for text and translations Plutarch’s Moralia V,
trans. F. C. Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library 306 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1936). I have modified the translations.
28
On this passage see Andrei Timotin, La démonologie platonicienne: Histoire de la
notion de daimōn de Platon aux derniers néoplatoniciens (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 249–51,
with additional bibliography at 249 n. 24; see also Klaus Döring, ‘‘Plutarch und das
Daimonion des Sokrates,’’ Mnemosyne 37 (1984): 376–92, esp. 381–85. For Plutarch,
De genio Socratis, I have used for text and translations Plutarch’s Moralia VII, trans.
P. H. De Lacy and B. Einarson, Loeb Classical Library 405 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1959). I have at times modified the translations.
29
See Hamilton, ‘‘Myth in Plutarch’s De genio’’; and, more recently, Werner Deuse, ‘‘Plu-
tarch’s Eschatological Myths,’’ in On the Daimonion of Socrates, ed. H.-G. Nesselrath
and D. A. Russell (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 182.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

above, floating above the body ‘‘like a fisherman’s buoy’’ (De gen. 591E).
While most people suppose that nous, the rational part that is free from
corruption, is itself within the soul, ‘‘those who conceive the matter rightly
call it a daemon, because it is external’’ (591E).
The nous-daemon, like the nous-logos in Isis and Osiris, represents the
ruling and controlling part of the soul.30 When an individual errs, the nous-
daemon punishes the soul:

The daemon applies what is called remorse [μεταμλειαν] to the

errors [ταις μαρταις], and shame [α σχνην] for all lawless
and willful pleasures—remorse and shame being really the pain-
ful blow inflicted from this source upon the soul as it is curbed
by its controlling and ruling part—until from such chastening
[κολαζομνη] the soul, like a docile animal, becomes obedient and
accustomed to the reins, needing no painful blows, but rendered
keenly responsive to its daemon by signals and signs (De gen.
592BC).

In this passage, Plutarch does not specify by what means the nous-daemon
punishes the erring soul. However, given Plutarch’s psychology it is plausi-
ble to assume that the nous carries out its punishments through the applica-
tion of reason (logos) to the irrational and recalcitrant soul. This hypothesis
receives additional support from the similarities between the passage in De
genio Socratis and the one from De tranquillitate animi. First, both the
nous in the former and the logos in the latter are responsible for self-
punishment. Second, Plutarch’s description of the punishment inflicted by
the nous at De gen. 592BC shares much of the same terminology with the
account in De tranq. anim. Upon recognition that the individual has erred
(ταις μαρταις; cf. De tranq. anim. 477A: τοις μαρτανομνοις), the
nous-daemon chastises the soul (κολαζομνη; cf. De tranq. anim. 476F:
κολαζομνης) and produces feelings of remorse (μεταμλειαν; cf. De tranq.
anim. 476F: μεταμλειαν), a sense of shame (α σχνην; cf. De tranq. anim.
476F: α σχνη, 477A: τω  α σχρω  ), and disgrace (λγηδνα; cf. De tranq.
anim. 477A: τ λγεινν).

30
For an overview of the nous-daemon in Plutarch, see André Corlu, Plutarque: Le
démon de Socrate (Paris: Klincksieck, 1970), 47–64. See also Frederick Brenk, ‘‘An Impe-
rial Heritage: The Religious Spirit of Plutarch of Chaironeia,’’ in Aufstieg und Niedergang
der römischen Welt, pt. 2, vol. 36, fasc. 1, ed. Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini
(Berlin: du Gruyter, 1987), 248–349, esp. 275–94. Brenk situates Plutarch’s demonology
within a larger survey of the subject in ‘‘In the Light of the Moon: Demonology in the
Early Imperial Period,’’ in ibid., pt. 2, vol. 16, fasc. 3 (1986), 2068–2145, esp. 2117–30.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

Plutarch, then, has taken conscience, a phenomenon in his day that

writers frequently described but seldom analyzed, and incorporated it into
his psychology. Conscience is a phenomenon that comes about when the
intellect applies reason to a soul that has failed to submit to its guidance
and rule. The emotional distress associated with conscience is produced by
the logos as it operates upon the soul in its punishing capacity. Plutarch
locates the origin of conscience both within the soul and without: it is both
identified with the soul’s rational self-judgment (cf. De tranq. anim. 476E–
477A and De sera 556 AB) and with an external daemon. This ambiguity
is explained by Plutarch’s association of conscience with nous, which itself
is only partly in contact with the (rational part of) the soul. The ambiguous
status of conscience in Plutarch’s account will continue to infect the treat-
ments of the concept by later Platonists, as we shall see with Olympio-
dorus’s account.

II. CONSCIENCE AS A JUDGING ENTITY: PHILOSTRATUS

While Plutarch’s association of conscience with the intellect’s rational pow-

ers would be echoed by later Platonists, not all commentators on the notion
of conscience in Euripides’s Orestes shared this conception. Philostratus, a
sophist who lived during the second and third centuries, certainly did not.
In book 7 of his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, which tells the story of this
Pythagorean philosopher and miracle worker, Philostratus depicts a con-
versation between Apollonius and Demetrius the Cynic. In a lengthy speech
(VA 7.14), Apollonius argues that a human being is never without a
witness, for he himself is always present with himself. This type of self-
examination is not only commended by the Delphic Oracle’s command to
‘‘know thyself,’’ but also depicted by Euripides’s Orestes 396. Apollonius
explains,

[Wisdom] approves not only of the inscription at Delphi, but of

Euripides’s words, when he holds that men’s conscience [ζνεσιν]
is what destroys them when they realize that they have done evil.
Conscience conjured up the vision of the Eumenides for Orestes,
when he went mad after killing his mother, since his intellect
[νους] determined his actions, but conscience [σνεσις] deter-
mined his visions (VA 7.14.10).31

31
For Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, I have used for text and translations
Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana II, ed. and trans. Christopher P. Jones,
Loeb Classical Library 17 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005).

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Philostratus has Apollonius linger over the meaning of the word synesis in
Euripides, and takes the opportunity to do some simple psychology. Like
Plutarch, Apollonius’s psychology involves nous (intellect or reason). How-
ever, in contrast to Plutarch, Apollonius clearly distinguishes nous from
synesis. Nous determines one’s actions; it is the decision-making part of
human beings. Synesis, on the other hand, is a separate entity. It reviews
the decisions made by nous and either praises or condemns the agent. While
nous is the rational faculty, synesis is related more closely to the emotional
part of human beings. Synesis, not nous, is responsible for producing Ores-
tes’s visions of the furies.
Apollonius’s subsequent remarks make it clear that the case of Orestes
illustrates more generally the phenomenon of a guilty conscience. Strik-
ingly, nous appears to be fallible in exercising its capacity to make moral
choices. Thus, if one’s nous chooses evil, synesis will condemn it, and
thereby produce the emotions of fear and anxiety typical of conscience-
stricken individuals. In this retrospective capacity, synesis works as an in-
dependent judging entity, a picture that is reinforced by judicial language
such as ‘‘laws’’ (νμοι) and ‘‘condemn’’ or ‘‘cross-examine’’ ("λγζει; VA
7.14.11). On the other hand, synesis functions prospectively as well as ret-
rospectively. For the man who chooses well, it serves as a constant compan-
ion, guide, and source of praise and encouragement (7.14.10).
This conception of the conscience as an independent judging faculty
has a modern ring to it. Indeed, both Bishop Butler and Immanuel Kant in
the eighteenth century provided influential accounts of conscience empha-
sizing just this notion.32 Moreover, Apollonius’s conception of a conscience
working prospectively and positively in addition to retrospectively and neg-
atively departs significantly from the accounts in Euripides and Plutarch.33
(For a similar notion of the positive, prospective conscience, see Seneca,
Ep. 43.5, 97.12–13.) What is more, the account Philostratus attributes to
Apollonius appears to use neither nous nor synesis in a technical philosoph-
ical sense, nor does it attempt to integrate the two within a larger psy-
chological framework. These latter two observations should not really be
surprising given the popular characteristic of Apollonius’s Neopythagore-
anism, an eclectic philosophical and religious movement that was con-
stantly borrowing from and contributing to a wide variety of other
philosophical, religious, cosmological, and medical traditions.34

32
See Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, 80–84.
33
See Bosman, ‘‘Pathology,’’ 20.
34
See Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pytha-
gorean Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 317–34.

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It is possible that Philostratus’s discussion of Orestes 396 was meant to

correct Plutarch’s account of the phenomenon of conscience as the rational
application of nous to the soul. Philostratus was familiar with Plutarch’s
writings and elsewhere expressed his disagreement with his predecessor.35
However attractive and plausible such a hypothesis may be, it should be
noted that there is no direct evidence that Philostratus had Plutarch’s
account of conscience in his sights. The sixth-century Neoplatonic com-
mentators Olympiodorus and Philoponus, however, would discuss con-
science in contexts that evoked or referred to Plutarch’s demonology and
psychology. In their discussions of Orestes 396, the first of these two later
philosophers developed a more psychologically sophisticated account of
conscience as a faculty than the one offered by Philostratus; the second
responded by offering an alternative to this conception of conscience as a
separate faculty.

III. CONSCIENCE AS A FACULTY

OF THE SOUL: OLYMPIODORUS

One of the most elaborate pre-medieval accounts of conscience is found in

Olympiodorus’s commentary on Plato’s First Alcibiades. In the beginning
of Plato’s dialogue, Socrates explains to Alcibiades that he had been hin-
dered from conversing with him by his daimonion, an entity that is ‘‘not
human’’ (103A). Olympiodorus takes advantage of the opportunity to
embark on a lengthy discussion of demonology (§15–23). He concludes
this discussion with the following remarks:

Accordingly it must be said that the allotted daemon is conscience

[τ συνειδς], which is precisely the choicest peak of the soul [περ
#κρον #ωτν "στι τη ς ψυχης]. It is unerring within us, and a
steadfast judge and witness to Minos and Rhadamanthus of the
things that are now taking place in this life. This also becomes the
cause [α%τιον] of our salvation, since it always remains unerring
within us and does not assent to the sins of the soul but shrinks
back from them and converts the soul to what is proper [τ δον].
Just as a child is roused from sleep in tears on account of some bad
dream, so also the conscience [τ συνειδς] rouses the soul from

35
See Graham Anderson, ‘‘Putting Pressure on Plutarch: Philostratus Epistle 73,’’ Classi-
cal Philology 72 (1977): 43–45.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

its sins, as when the one man asks, ‘‘Why are you distraught?
What sickness is destroying you?’’ And the other one answers,
‘‘Conscience, since I am conscious of having done terrible things’’
[ σνεσις, τι σνοιδα δεν’ ε ργασμνος]. And on the other
hand, the lyric poet writes, ‘‘Fostering hope—a good nurse of old
age.’’ You would not err, therefore, in calling the allotted daemon
‘‘conscience’’ [τ συνειδς]. But it must be understood that with
respect to conscience [του συνειδτος] there are two sorts: the
one type relating to our faculties of knowing [τ μ&ν "π' ταις
γνωστικαις μω  ν δυνμεσι] is called ‘‘attentive’’ [προσεκτικν]
and the other relating to the appetitive faculties [τ δ& "π' ταις
(ρεκτικαις δυνμεσι] is called ‘‘conscience’’ homonymously with
the genus [συνειδ ς μωνμως τω  γνει] (In Alc. 23.2–18).36

Olympiodorus here presents a multifaceted account of the conscience.

First, we should note the intertextual references. There is of course the ref-
erence to the now-familiar Orestes 396. However, Olympiodorus also
refers to a fragment by the Greek lyric poet Pindar to illustrate the blessings
of a clear conscience. The full fragment reads as follows:

Sweet hope accompanies him,

fostering his heart, a nurse of old age.
Hope, which most of all guides mortals’
ever-twisting judgment (Fr. 214).37

It may at first appear curious that Olympiodorus should refer to this frag-
ment to illustrate the blessings of a clear conscience, for the fragment from
Pindar itself contains no language suggestive of the concept. However, this
is not the first time that a Greek philosopher has associated Pindar’s words
with the concept of conscience. In Plato’s Republic, the aged Cephalus
claims that ‘‘for the man who is conscious that he’s done nothing unjust
[τω
 δ& μηδ&ν )αυτω  #δικον συνειδτι] there is always present sweet
hope—a good nurse of old age, as Pindar says’’ (Pl. Resp. 331A).38 He

36
For the text, I have used Olympiodorus: Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato,
ed. L. G. Westerink (1956; repr., Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1982). The translation is my own.
37
The text is from Pindar II: Nemean Odes, Isthmian Odes, Fragments, ed. and trans.
William H. Race, Loeb Classical Library 485 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1997). The translation is my own.
38
The text is from Platonis Opera IV, ed. John Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902). The
translation is my own.

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subsequently quotes in full the passage from Pindar reproduced above. Sig-
nificantly, Cephalus’s description of conscience employs the same formula
as the Orestes: a form of the verb synoida, a reflexive pronoun (implied in
the Orestes but present in the Republic), and some moral failing of which
the knower is conscious. Thus, Plato’s Republic, a work with which Olym-
piodorus was familiar,39 provides a convenient link between Euripides,
Orestes 396, and Pindar, Fragment 214, and between the retrospective mis-
ery of a guilty conscience and the prospective blessings of a clear con-
science.
Olympiodorus explores the prospective and retrospective capacities of
conscience further by utilizing some familiar imagery. As is common in the
passages we have been examining, he associates the conscience with judg-
ment and punishment by using such familiar legal terminology as ‘‘judge’’
and ‘‘witness.’’ In its judicial capacity the conscience is inerrant. However,
the conscience here also plays a prospective role. It unfailingly avoids what
is evil and turns the soul towards ‘‘what is proper.’’ The conscience thus
functions in a guiding and motivating capacity. Apparently, though, the
soul is capable of resisting the conscience’s guidance and direction towards
appropriate action. Thus, it is only after the conscience has failed in its
prospective capacity as guide that it begins to operate in its retrospective
capacity as judge.
How, though, does this account of the conscience relate to psychology?
Olympiodorus mentions that the conscience is ‘‘within us,’’ but he also
associates it with daemons. Is conscience a part of the soul? If so, to what
part of the soul does it belong? Is it more closely related to reason or the
emotions—or is it a faculty of its own? In order to answer these questions,
we must examine the following three aspects of this passage: (1) the identi-
fication of the conscience (syneidos) with the individual’s allotted daemon;
(2) what the scholiast means when he says that the conscience is the ‘‘choic-
est peak of the soul’’; and (3) the division of conscience (syneidos) itself into
two types depending on whether it is relating to the attentive or appetitive
faculties.
Olympiodorus’s readiness to give the name ‘‘conscience’’ to Socrates’s
daemon seems to be in line with a longer tradition whose roots go back
at least as far as Plutarch. As we have seen, Plutarch identified the nous-
daemon as the originator of the phenomenon of conscience. According to

39
See Harold Tarrant, ‘‘Politikê Eudaimonia: Olympiodorus on Plato’s Republic,’’ in
Plato’s Political Theory and Contemporary Political Thought, vol. 2, ed. Konstantine
Boudouris (Athens: International Association for Greek Philosophy and Culture, 1997),
200–207.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

Plutarch’s psychology, the nous must occupy an ambiguous status with

respect to the soul: part of the nous maintains contact with the soul while
the rest stands outside of the soul. To complicate the picture further, in
addition to the nous-daemon Plutarch also embraced a seemingly separate
class of daemons that are wholly distinct from the soul. Drawing on Pla-
tonic passages like Phaedo 107D and Republic book 10, 617DE and
620DE, Plutarch argued for a species of guardian daemons who ‘‘accom-
pany a man through life, know his inmost thoughts and most secret actions,
and after death act as his advocate (or accuser) before the throne of judg-
ment.’’40
Plutarch’s basic division of daemons into these two classes was later
utilized by the North African writer and philosopher Apuleius.41 In the sec-
ond part of his lecture On the God of Socrates (De deo Socratis), Apuleius
deals particularly with the class of guardian daemons.42 For Apuleius, like
Plutarch, the guardian daemon allotted to every man is an ever-present wit-
ness, guardian, and judge over the thoughts and acts of the individual.
While properly speaking these daemons are separate from the mind, in
Apuleius’s presentation the differences between daemon and mind begin
to be obscured.43 Indeed, he explicitly identifies the daemon as conscience
(conscientia), which he places within the soul itself (in ipsis . . . mentibus;
De deo Soc. 16).44
Olympiodorus, then, is working within a larger tradition when he asso-
ciates daemons—and in particular Socrates’s daemon—with conscience.45
However, both Plutarch and Apuleius equivocated as to whether daemons
in their role as conscience were part of the soul. Does this same ambiguity
infect Olympiodorus’s account? The answer depends on how one construes
his claim that syneidos ‘‘is precisely the choicest peak of the soul.’’
Once again Olympiodorus’s language evokes a long-standing discus-
sion among Platonists. From at least the time of Numenius in the second
century ce, Platonists have called the highest uncorrupted part of the soul

40
Dillon, Middle Platonists, 319–20.
41
For the influence of Plutarch on Apuleius, see P. G. Walsh, ‘‘Apuleius and Plutarch,’’ in
Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of A. H. Armstrong, ed.
H. J. Blumenthal and R. A. Marcus (London: Variorum, 1981), 20–32; Gerald Sandy,
The Greek World of Apuleius (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 199.
42
See Timotin, Démonologie platonicienne, 260–86.
43
Dillon, Middle Platonists, 320.
44
For the text of De deo Socratis, I have used Apuleius: De philosophia libri III, ed.
C. Moreschini (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1991).
45
For similar passages, see Maximus’s Dialexeis 8 and 9 in Maximus of Tyre: The Philo-
sophical Orations, ed. M. B. Trapp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

‘‘the flower of the intellect [nous].’’46 Plotinus argues that this part of the
soul remains uncorrupted because it does not sink into the body entirely.
Instead, it remains in the intelligible world and participates in the activity
of the divine Nous (cf. Enn. 4.8.8). Perhaps by the ‘‘choicest peak of the
soul’’ Olympiodorus is referring to the part of the soul that has not yet
descended into the body and remains in the intelligible world?
This is possible, but not likely. Plotinus’s teaching was, as he himself
admits, against the standard teaching of the school, and almost every Plato-
nist afterwards followed Proclus in rejecting Plotinus’s theory of the soul’s
partial descent (cf. Proclus, Elem. Theol. Prop. 211).47 According to Proclus,
Plotinus’s theory of partial descent divides the soul and needlessly confuses
the highest part of the soul with the nous, which is distinct from the soul.
However, even the Platonists who rejected Plotinus’s theory of the soul’s par-
tial descent vacillated on the relationship between intellect (nous) and soul.
As E. R. Dodds points out, the Neoplatonic nous is simultaneously part of us
and that to which we aspire, which indicates some ambiguity on whether it
should be seen as a part of the soul.48 Thus, the Platonic psychology no less
than the Platonic demonology that was at hand for Olympiodorus’s use as
he attempted to explain the function and status of the conscience was infected
with ambiguity. Perhaps it was in an attempt to clear up this ambiguity that
he added the following final sentence to his conclusion that Socrates’s dae-
mon may be called ‘‘syneidos’’: ‘‘But it must be understood that with respect
to conscience there are two sorts: the one type relating to our faculties of
knowing is called ‘attentive’ and the other relating to the appetitive faculties
is called ‘conscience’ homonymously with the genus.’’ This clarifying sen-
tence seems to settle any debate about whether conscience (syneidos) is sepa-
rate from the soul. Conscience here is a faculty of the soul.
Now, strictly speaking, Olympiodorus does not call conscience itself a
faculty. Rather, he says that it relates to two faculties (δυνμεσι). However,
Olympiodorus’s position becomes clearer when his remarks are put into
the context of a contemporary discussion of consciousness. According to
John Philoponus, some ‘‘recent’’ interpreters of Aristotle posited a sixth
faculty (#λλην *κτην τιν+ δναμιν) of the soul in addition to the standard
quintet of ‘‘intellect [nous], thought, opinion, rational wish, and choice’’
(In de an. 464.34–36). This additional ‘‘attentive’’ (τ προσεκτικν) fac-
ulty ‘‘roves over all powers [δι+ πντων . . . τω  ν δυνμεων], cognitive and

46
See Dillon, Middle Platonists, 393.
47
See also E. R. Dodds, Proclus: The Elements of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963),
309.
48
Dodds, Elements of Theology, 309.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

vital’’ (In de an. 465.11–12).49 What is more, one of these commentators,

the Platonist Damascius, divides the attentive faculty into two parts: ‘‘What
is that which remembers that it remembers? It is a faculty [δναμις] by
itself beside all the others, which always acts as a kind of witness to some
one of the others, as conscience [συνειδς] to the appetitive faculties [ταις
(ρεκτικαις], as self-consciousness [προσεκτικν] to the cognitive ones.
Therefore it is not surprising that we should remember without being aware
of it, just as we sometimes read without realizing the fact’’ (In Phaed.
271.1–4).50 Damascius’s example of the reader who reads without being
aware of it suggests why he believes there must be an additional attentive
faculty. If one cognizes without also perceiving that one is doing so, then
the perception of cognition must not be part of the faculty that is cognizing,
for otherwise one would unfailingly be aware that one is cognizing every
time one performs a cognitive act such as reading, thinking, or hearing.
Thus, Damascius assumes that such attention to one’s own acts belongs to
an independent faculty that may or may not be fully engaged at the time of
the reading, thinking, or hearing.
Damascius’s own division of the attentive faculty into two parts, depend-
ing upon whether it is engaged with cognitive or appetitive faculties, mirrors
that of Olympiodorus. Both philosophers give the name ‘‘conscience’’
(syneidos) to the attentive faculty when it relates to the appetitive faculty.
Given this evidence, it appears that Olympiodorus is endorsing a conception
of conscience similar to that of Damascius. Conscience and consciousness
belong to a single faculty of their own. This faculty is a relational one with
ties to both the rational and appetitive faculties. Unlike Damascius, however,
Olympiodorus suggests that the term ‘‘conscience’’ (syneidos) covers both
consciousness and moral conscience.
Westerink suggests that Olympiodorus is mistaken to use syneidos as
his term for both the faculty of self-awareness and conscience.51 However,
we should not so readily assume that this use of the term is due to a lapse
on the part of Olympiodorus. His choice of words is understandable, even
if it may invite confusion. Consider for instance the relationship between

49
For Philoponus, I have used for text Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis de anima libros
commentaria, ed. Michael Hayduck (Berlin: Reimer, 1897), quoting translations from
‘‘Philoponus’’: On Aristotle’s ‘‘On the Soul 3.1–8,’’ trans. William Charlton (Ithaca: Cor-
nell University Press, 2000).
50
For Damascius, I have used the text and translation in The Greek Commentaries on
Plato’s Phaedo, vol. 2, Damascius, ed. L. G. Westerink (Amsterdam: North Holland Pub-
lishing Company, 1977).
51
Westerink, Damascius, 162, note on §271.

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consciousness and conscience in English. English-speakers may define con-

science as ‘‘consciousness of the moral quality of our actions,’’ that is, as a
specific type of consciousness or awareness.52 Similarly, Olympiodorus has
at his disposal both the lexical and philosophical resources to identify moral
conscience as a subset of consciousness. While syneidos does generally
mean conscience and Olympiodorus has been using it as such in the pas-
sage, it may very well have occurred to him as a possible word for both the
broader sense—consciousness—and the specifically moral sense—
conscience. After all, syneidos is a form of synoida, the verb whose forms
and derivatives can indicate either conscience or consciousness depending
on context.53 Though it may appear strange to use a word associated with
the specific sense of a concept to indicate the more general notion as well,
in fact the history of the development of the English language reveals this
very phenomenon. In seventeenth-century English the word conscience—
the term for the narrower concept of moral awareness—also referred to the
broader concept of consciousness.54
Olympiodorus, then, has provided an intricate analysis of the phenom-
enon of conscience. Though using traditional Platonic vocabulary and con-
cepts, Olympiodorus specifies that the conscience is a faculty of the soul
that relates both to the cognitive and appetitive powers. This conception of
conscience as an independent faculty of the soul presumably enjoyed the
support of Damascius and those other recent commentators mentioned by
Philoponus in his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima 3. However, such a
conception was not necessarily endorsed by Philoponus himself.

IV. CONSCIENCE AS A COGNITIVE ACT: PHILOPONUS

In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima 3, Philoponus55 considers the

origin of consciousness. How do we perceive that we see, hear, or think?
Plutarch had proposed that such consciousness was the function of the
rational soul.56 The aforementioned ‘‘recent’’ commentators disagreed and,

52
See entry II under ‘‘Conscience’’ in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘‘Consciousness of
right and wrong; moral sense.’’
53
See Lewis, Studies in Words, 181–99.
54
See entry II under ‘‘Conscience’’ in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘‘Consciousness of
right and wrong; moral sense.’’
55
The authorship of ‘‘Philoponus’s’’ In de anima 3 is disputed. For the reasons for attri-
buting authorship to someone other than Philoponus, see Charlton, ‘‘Philoponus,’’ 1–10.
Given the lack of conclusive evidence on the matter, I shall take the liberty of referring to
the author of In de anima 3 as Philoponus.
56
For Philoponus’s (seemingly inconsistent) presentation of Plutarch’s position, see espe-
cially In de an. 464.23–30 and In de an. 465.22–31.

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as we have seen, posited a sixth faculty to the rational soul—the ‘‘attentive’’

faculty that roves over and reflects on all of the other faculties. Let us now
consider Philoponus’s description of this position in full:

This attentive part, they say, stands over what happens in a human
being and says ‘‘I exercised intellect,’’ ‘‘I thought,’’ ‘‘I opined,’’ ‘‘I
became spirited,’’ ‘‘I experienced desire’’; and in general this atten-
tive power of the rational soul ranges over all the powers, the
rational, the non-rational and the vegetable. If, they say, the atten-
tive power is to range over all, let it go over the senses too and say
‘‘I saw,’’ ‘‘I heard.’’ For it is proper to what lays hold of the activi-
ties to say this. If it is the attentive part, then, that says this, it
follows that this is what lays hold of the activities of the senses.
For there ought to be one thing laying hold of all, since the human
being is one. If one laid hold of these and another of those, it
would be, as he himself says elsewhere, as if you perceived this and
I that. It must, then, be one thing, and that is the attentive part.
This attentive part roves over all powers, cognitive and vital. But
if it is roving over the cognitive it is called ‘‘attentive,’’ which is
why, when we want to rebuke someone who is wool-gathering
in his cognitive activities we say ‘‘Pay attention to yourself!’’
Whereas if it is going through the vital powers it is called ‘‘con-
science’’ [συνειδς], which is why the tragedy says ‘‘Conscience
[ σνεσις], since I am conscious to myself of having done terrible
things.’’ The attentive part, then, is what lays hold of the activities
of the senses (In de an. 464.37–465.17).57

Here Philoponus describes at some length the psychological theory behind

Olympiodorus’s conception of conscience as a faculty. Like Olympio-
dorus, Philoponus quotes from Euripides’s Orestes to illustrate the phe-
nomenon of conscience. According to the position Philoponus is
presenting here, conscience is an application of a more general faculty of
awareness. Here too is a similarity with Olympiodorus’s account. We
should note that Philoponus is not so much interested in the moral con-
science as in the larger psychological theory of awareness that this con-
ception of conscience presupposes. Indeed, he does not explicitly address
the concept of conscience per se after this. However, he does subsequently

57
I depart from Charlton’s translation by rendering syneidos as ‘‘conscience’’ rather than
‘‘conscious.’’

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go on to offer an interesting analysis of the view that an additional faculty

is needed for the phenomenon of consciousness. Implicit in these remarks
we will find one final conception of conscience.
How does Philoponus view the recent modifications to Aristotle’s psy-
chology? Formally, he sides with the supporters of the additional faculty of
‘‘attentiveness’’ over against Aristotle: ‘‘So Aristotle does not speak rightly
but, as we said, the job of knowing the activities of the senses belongs to
the attentive part of the soul’’ (In de an. 466.27–29). However, a close
reading of the example that he subsequently uses to demonstrate how con-
sciousness functions suggests that he has some disagreement with propo-
nents of this additional faculty. Philoponus explains,

And that this is so [namely, that it is the job of the attentive part
of the soul to know the activities of the senses] can be seen from
the things themselves. For when reason [του  λγου] is engrossed
with something, even if sight sees, we do not know that it has
seen because reason is engrossed. And later, when reason [ λγος]
comes to itself and, though not seeing the friend, even now says
that it has seen him, it is as if it were taking up a small imprint of
the thing seen and, though it was engrossed, now having come to
 λγου] to
its senses it said that it saw. So it belongs to reason [του
say ‘‘I saw’’ (In de an. 466.29–34).

Philoponus’s example demonstrates that self-awareness is dependent

upon cognition but does not necessarily attend every cognitive act. It is
possible to see a friend but, because one’s attention is diverted by some
distraction, not realize that one has seen the friend until after the fact. Thus,
attention to (or reflection on) what one is seeing does not seem to be con-
tained in the act of seeing. Rather, two cognitive acts seem to be involved:
an act of thinking or sensing or imagining comes first and then the second-
ary act of self-awareness. As we noted earlier, Damascius had concluded
from a similar example (a reader who does not realize he is reading) that
consciousness must belong to its own faculty. However, Philoponus stresses
that the second cognitive act, that of consciousness, belongs to reason.
Wolfgang Bernard has aptly summarized the upshot of Philoponus’s dis-
cussion: ‘‘Thus, according to Philoponus, self-awareness is neither self-
contained, nor a faculty. It is dependent on a primary (usually cognitive)
act and it is the ability of the ultimate cognizing faculty, reason [logos], to
reflect on its own acts.’’58 As a result, there is no need for the addition of a
sixth faculty that reflects on the operations of the others; reason possesses

58
Wolfgang Bernard, ‘‘Philoponus on Self-Awareness,’’ in Philoponus and the Rejection
of Aristotelian Science, ed. Richard Sorabji (London: Duckworth, 1987), 160.

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 Atkins ✦ Euripides’s Orestes and Conscience in Greek Philosophy

the ability to reflect upon its own acts. It is this reflection that constitutes
self-awareness.
Where does the conscience fit into such a framework? As I mentioned
above, Philoponus (in agreement with Olympiodorus) associates conscience
with consciousness. This relationship should not be surprising: it is neither
an unreasonable nor unprecedented position to associate attending to
oneself in general—consciousness—with a sort of moral or ethical self-
interrogation—conscience.59 Given this relationship with consciousness,
conscience must be a cognitive act whereby one reflects on one’s thoughts
and desires as well as the actions that one has performed; and in fact, a
little later (In de an. 555.12) Philoponus defines syneidos (‘‘conscience’’) as
an ‘‘intellectual act’’ (νοερ+ν πρα ζιν). What holds true for the more general
case of consciousness must also hold for the more specific case of con-
science: reason has the capacity to reflect on the acts in question. Thus,
there is no more need for a separate faculty for conscience than there was
for consciousness.
Philoponus’s conception of conscience is in a sense backwards-looking:
his identification of conscience with an act of reason (logos) recalls Plu-
tarch’s own suggestion that conscience was a product of reason (logos).
This observation is perhaps unsurprising given Philoponus’s positive pres-
entation of Plutarch’s psychology in the same section as his treatment of
conscience (cf. In de an. 463–66). However, Philoponus’s conception of
conscience also in at least some respects anticipates that of Aquinas, who
likewise argues that conscience is a cognitive act belonging to reason. Like
Philoponus, Aquinas arrives at this conclusion by relating conscience to
consciousness. To be conscious or aware of something requires that one is
thinking or reflecting on it. Likewise, conscience (conscientia) results ‘‘from
the actual connection of knowledge to what we do. And so, properly speak-
ing, conscience designates an act’’ (ST I, Q. 79, A. 13).60

V. CONCLUSION

At the conclusion of his survey of the medieval treatises on conscience, Timo-

thy Potts asks the reader to ‘‘consider . . . [their achievements] in relation to

59
See Richard Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and
Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 259. Sorabji offers the Stoics as an exam-
ple of philosophers who ‘‘spoke of attending to themselves [προσοχ,] in moral self-
interrogation.’’
60
Translation after Aquinas on Law, Morality, and Politics, trans. Richard J. Regan, 2nd
ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 4, which in turn follows the 1952 Marietti recension
of the Leonine text. See also Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy, 50–51. Of course,

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2014

the history of European philosophy since Plato: where else can we find such
a wide-ranging discussion of the topic, before or since?’’61 The evidence pre-
sented in this article has done nothing to change this assessment. However,
while pre-medieval discussions of conscience may not have addressed at any
great length such matters as whether conscience can err, in what circum-
stances it is binding on the individual, or its relationship to practical reason-
ing and the virtues, I hope to have shown that at least some ancient Greek
philosophers did share their medieval successors’ concern with analyzing the
phenomenon of conscience and its place within the human soul.
The series of pre-medieval analyses of conscience examined in this
article owed its stimulus and coherence to Euripides’s Orestes, which fur-
nished Philostratus and—especially—Platonists such as Plutarch, Olympio-
dorus, and Philoponus with a common text, vocabulary, and philosophical
concerns. As a consequence, the conceptions of conscience offered by these
philosophers related to each other in significant ways, even if the authors
of these accounts were not in every case aware of their predecessors’ treat-
ments of Euripides’s Orestes. While Plutarch argued that Orestes’s guilty
conscience was caused by reason, itself a product of nous, Philostratus sug-
gested that synesis was a faculty independent of nous and reason. Olympio-
dorus, though working in the same Platonic tradition as Plutarch, opted for
a more sophisticated account of the conception of conscience as an entity
suggested by Philostratus. For Olympiodorus conscience is an independent
faculty of awareness that relates to both the cognitive and appetitive facul-
ties of the soul. Philoponus in turn accepted the relationship between con-
sciousness or awareness and conscience proposed by such commentators as
Olympiodorus, but followed Plutarch in associating it with reason. Accord-
ing to Philoponus’s account, conscience is a cognitive act. Philoponus’s
conception of conscience sounds foreign to modern ears accustomed to
thinking of the concept in terms of an independent judging faculty. Ironi-
cally, perhaps it is precisely its difference from the popular modern notion
of conscience that makes this older conception relevant for those who
would rehabilitate the concept of conscience at a time when faculty psy-
chology has fallen out of favor in psychology and philosophy.62

Duke University.

while both Philoponus and Aquinas conceive of conscience as an act of reason, the former
does not also align conscience with Aristotle’s conception of the practical syllogism like
the latter.
61
Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy, 70.
62
I would like to thank Peter Burian, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji for conver-
sations about conscience, and the two anonymous reviewers for JHI for their helpful
comments.

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