Soma sema
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"You are a little soul, carrying a corpse [...]" --Epictetus "... doctrines popular, Pythagorean, Platonic was the strongly-marked dualism of body and soul. c The body a tomb ' (soma sema) was everywhere its key-note."--Stoics And Sceptics "The watchword, therefore, was soma sema, “the body, a tomb.” And a system both of thought and of practice, exactly paralleling that of Indian asceticism, was ..."--Masks Of God Primitive Mythology |
Sōma-sèma is an Ancient Greek concept which means that the human body is a grave to the soul.
"τὸ μὲν σῶμά ἐστιν ἡμῖν σῆμα" (To men soma estin hemin sema, English: The body is the tomb of the soul) is a dictum by Plato.
It is recorded in Gorgias and Cratylus. It is an instance of word play based on the prosonomasie of soma and sema.
See also
