The outstanding gymnast Simone Biles has pulled out of several Olympic events, saying: ‘I just don’t trust myself as much any more.’ Many took the view that this was a fashionable ‘mental health’ issue. Ancient Greeks might have come up with a rather different analysis.
Plutarch (c. ad 100) is said to have been the author of a letter of condolence to one Apollonius whose son had just died. In it he considered how best one should react to loss in the context of the whole field of human suffering, which Greeks regarded as the common lot of all mankind. For example, Achilles in the Iliad claimed that Zeus possessed two storage-jars, one filled with evil, the other with blessings. A man could be served from the jar of evil alone, or from a mixture of both. There was no other option.
For Plutarch, two inscriptions at Delphi ‘indispensable to living’ were the key to dealing with such inescapable misfortune: ‘know yourself’ and ‘nothing in excess’.
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