The Seba library treats Ate in 7 passages, across 4 authors (including Padel, Ruth, E.R. Dodds, Arthur W.H. Adkins).
Ate, the older personification, means in Homer a disastrous state of mind: inner confusion, delusion, ruinous recklessness, shading into 'disaster,' which this recklessness can cause.
Padel establishes Ate as the archetypal female personification of madness in Homer, tracing her daemonic genealogy and her function as an agent who blinds human beings mentally and morally.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994thesis
ate in Homer is not itself a personal agent... Always, or practically always, ate is a state of mind — a temporary clouding or bewildering of the normal consciousness. It is, in fact, a partial and temporary insanity; and, like all insanity, it is ascribed, not to physiological or psychological causes, but to an external 'daemonic' agency.
Dodds provides the canonical depth-psychological reading of Ate as externally ascribed psychic disruption rather than moral failure, establishing the archaic structure of 'psychic intervention' in Homer.
, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951thesis
the Erinyes are still for Aeschylus dispensers of ate, although both they and it have been moralised. It rather looks as if the complex moira-Erinys-ate had deep roots, and might well be older than the ascription of ate to the agency of Zeus.
Dodds situates Ate within the archaic complex of moira-Erinys-ate, arguing for its pre-Olympian depth and tracing how Aeschylus moralizes but does not dissolve this inherited structure.
, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951thesis
Homer's personified Ate stands rather within Erinys's gift, her agent, not her double... Erinys's ruinous disposal of ate is clearer in Agamemnon's case... 'Erinys who wanders in air, walks in mist,' with Zeus and Fate, 'sent' ate to his mind, making him insult Achilles.
Padel delineates the precise functional relationship between Ate and Erinys, showing how Ate operates as Erinys's instrument of ruinous mental compulsion in both epic and tragic contexts.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994thesis
it is blindness, ate, to dishonour the man who is aristos, because one will probably feel the lack of him if he sulks in his tent; and only if one does feel the lack will one consider it to be ate.
Adkins argues that Homeric Ate is fundamentally a miscalculation of consequences within a results-oriented value system rather than a moral blindness in any internalized ethical sense.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
there is even a moment when she feels her human personality lost and submerged in that of the alastor whose agent and instrument she was... the feeling that in a certain situation a person or thing is not only itself but also something else.
Dodds uses Lévy-Bruhl's concept of 'participation' to explain how Aeschylean characters experience themselves as absorbed into the daemonic force of Ate, blurring personal agency and supernatural compulsion.
, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951supporting
ate Arai, 23, 150
Otto's index entry co-locates Ate with the Arai (curses), suggesting their functional proximity in the Homeric and tragic religious imagination without elaborating the connection.
, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, 1929aside