Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...

, Horme (;

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

: ) is the Greek spirit personifying energetic activity, impulse or effort (to do a thing), eagerness, setting oneself in motion, and starting an action, and particularly onrush in battle. She had an altar at

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

, where mainly the divine servants and relations of Zeus (including

Pheme In Greek mythology, Pheme ( ; Greek: , ''Phēmē''; Roman equivalent: Fama), also known as Ossa in Homeric sources, was the personification of fame and renown, her favour being notability, her wrath being scandalous rumours. She was a daughter ...

and

Aidos Aidos or Aedos (;Greek: , ) was the Greek goddess of shame, modesty, respect, and humility. Aidos, as a quality, was that feeling of reverence or shame which restrains men from wrong. It also encompassed the emotion that a rich person might feel ...

, as well as

Athena Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of ...

) had altars. Her opposite character is

Aergia In Greek mythology, Aergia (; grc, Ἀεργία, 'inactivity') is the personification of sloth, idleness, indolence and laziness. She is the translation of the Latin Socordia, or Ignavia. She was translated to Greek because Hyginus mentioned he ...

, a goddess of sloth and

apathy Apathy is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern about something. It is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of intere ...

. The word "horme" is also used to refer to the philosophical concept represented by the goddess.Cicero, P.G. Walsh (2000) ''On Obligations''

Legacy

* The name 'horme' was adopted by Sir

Percy Nunn Sir Thomas Percy Nunn (28 December 1870 – 12 December 1944) was a British educationalist, Professor of Education, 1913–36 at Institute of Education, University of London. He was knighted in 1930. Early life Nunn was born in Bristol in 1870. ...

to refer to all the purposive behaviours (drives or urges) of an organism – whether conscious or not. He based this on a suggestion by Jung but saw it as having a wider significance than Jung's idea of relating the term to psychological values.

Maria Montessori Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori ( , ; August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori e ...

made this a central point of her later thinking, stressing that the behaviour of the child was driven by an inner urge to self construct, to become the adult they were destined to be. This idea of the future drawing the child on (as opposed to child development being just driven by causality) was related to the Aristotelian concept of

entelechy In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his ''Physics'', ''Metaphysics'', ''Nicomachean Ethics'', and ''De Anima''. The c ...

which would have formed an implicit part of her

Thomist Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed questions a ...

education as a devout Catholic. The concept, but not the name, has been developed by writers such as

James Hillman James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practi ...

where he applies the idea to adults and refers to it as 'destiny' or the individual's

daemon Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word ...

. * In ''On Obligations'', Cicero contrasts horme with reason as one of two aspects of the soul. He seems to be using where one would expect to see the word "passion" or "emotion″. In the Walsh translation it is rendered "appetite". * The Greek writer

Arrian of Nicomedia Arrian of Nicomedia (; Greek: ''Arrianos''; la, Lucius Flavius Arrianus; ) was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the Roman period. '' The Anabasis of Alexander'' by Arrian is considered the best ...

owned a much-loved greyhound called Horme, whose character and name he recorded for posterity in his ''Kynēgetikos''.

Notes

References

Pausanias Pausanias ( el, Παυσανίας) may refer to: *Pausanias of Athens, lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's ''Symposium'' *Pausanias the Regent, Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC *Pausanias of Sicily, physician of th ...

, ''Description of Greece'' with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* Pausanias, ''Graeciae Descriptio.'' ''3 vols''. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903.
Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library

{{Authority control Greek goddesses Personifications in Greek mythology