Abstract

The adjective λυσιμελής (“limb-loosening”) and related statements about bodies dissolving or melting are found in Greek literature in an astonishing variety of contexts, above all in relation to sleep, death and erotic desire. The present paper asks what made the idea of (limbs) loosening so attractive for authors and it traces their use from early Greek epic (Homer and Hesiod) through lyric (Archilochus, Alcman, Sappho, Ibycus, Anacreon and Pindar) to Plato’s Phaedrus. This brings several factors to light: the adjective and related expressions describe existential experiences of loss of control in an embodied way that 1) points to real psychosomatic correlations, 2) contributes to vividness in the sense of ‘embodied cognition’ and often 3) switches between the concrete and the metaphorical, with the latter intensifying the expressive potential especially in lyric. At the same time, a gradual shift can be observed from an integrated concept of the body towards a (conceptual) metaphor. This apparently unremarkable adjective and its related notions thus permit a deep insight into both the cultural ideas and the literary strategies of early and classical Greece.