What does thumos, or thymos mean, exactly?
ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ) ʸᵉᵃʰᵎ THUMOS!!! People have literally written books on thumos, but this is my general understanding of thumos, at least in its Homeric usage.
Your thumos (θυμός) lives in your chest, usually your phren (φρήν), which is the area around the heart, the diaphragm, the breathing organs. The thumos is your hot blood life force. It’s the thing that exists inside when your body’s alive and feeling things, directly connected to bodily powers—this being in opposition to your psyche (ψυχή), which can exist outside the body and is an independent being of its own, something closer to what we think of as a “soul.” When you take a spear to the liver and you’re spilling black blood and night falls over your eyes, your psyche flees to the underworld, but the thumos dies with your body. It’s intrinsically tied with the physical condition of your meat self. If you faint, your thumos is what returns when you revive—it is not inside of you unless you’re alive and experiencing life.
In Homer, the thumos is the organ of intellect, will, deliberation. Often it’s mentioned when a decision is being made between two difficult alternatives, usually when the character is really fired up and passionate. When Agamemnon offends Achilles in Book I:
Achilles’ chest was a rough knot of painTwisting around his heart: should heDraw the sharp sword that hung by his thigh,Scatter the ranks and gut Agamemnon,Or control his temper, repress his rage (thumos)?
Il. I.188-192, trans. Stanley Lombardo
But anger isn’t the only emotion associated with thumos, though it may be the most frequent. Achilles delights in his thumos when he’s playing the lyre, and Priam, speaking of Achilles’ father, says when a father hears of his son, he is happy in his thumos. It’s connected with love, gladness, sorrow, fear, shame. I imagine that when you feel that surge and pressure in your ribs when you’re feeling something so strongly, the almost painful aching expansion that drives you to action because you can’t sit still, you can’t contain the size of this feeling in your chest—the Greeks connect that experience to thumos.
