Victory in the depth-psychology corpus is never simply a martial outcome; it is a node where power, grace, magic, and the sacred converge. The richest treatment comes from Benveniste’s structural linguistics, where Greek kudos is revealed as a divine talisman—not glory but a magical charge that gods grant to warriors, making victory less an achievement than a dispensation from above. This reframing resonates across the corpus: Onians shows the victor’s crown as the telos of victory, its fulfilment and payment to the gods; Sullivan traces how Pindar transforms the athletic victory ode into testimony for an inherited, divinely sustained excellence; Benveniste further demonstrates that eukhos, conventionally translated ‘victory,’ properly means the warrior’s vow, so that victory is the god’s answer to a devotional promise. At the cosmogonic register, Eliade and Vernant situate victory over chaos-monsters as the paradigmatic creative act, repeated ritually at every founding and building. Berry and Jung complicate any triumphalism: Berry reads Freud’s self-described ‘feeling of a victory’ as the decisive separation of psychological insight from literalism; Jung warns that apparent ego-victory over the anima is most often an adulteration by a still deeper archetype. Plato’s Laws invokes athletic self-conquest as the model for a nobler, interior victory. Together these voices insist that victory is always relational—between mortal and divine, ego and unconscious, cosmos and chaos.
the gift of kudos ensures the triumph of the man who receives it: in combat the holder of kudos is invariably victorious. Here we see the fundamental charact
Benveniste argues that kudos is not ‘glory’ but a divinely bestowed magical talisman that makes its possessor’s victory inevitable, fundamentally revising Homeric exegesis.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis
kudos does not depend on men but is the exclusive possession of the gods … It is a magic power the possession of which confers superiority in certain circumstances, often in battle, where it is a guarantee of victory.
Benveniste establishes that victory in Homeric thought is structurally a gift of divine magic, not human agency, and so belongs to the domain of royal and priestly power.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis
Is eukhos ‘glory’ or ‘victory’? It is neither: in battle a warrior makes one ‘vow’ and only one: that is to win a victory. For a warrior, to grant him his ‘vow’ is to give him victory.
Benveniste shows that the Greek term conventionally rendered ‘victory’ actually denotes the warrior’s vow to the gods, so victory is semantically inseparable from devotional promise.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis
‘endow with kudos, with the talisman of victory’ … ‘to infuse a wounded body with the power to overcome the injury’ as Leto and Artemis do to Aeneas when they are tending him
The derivatives of kudos confirm its quasi-physical, magical character: gods literally fill warriors with the force of victory as a healing and empowering substance.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
‘Are we again going to yield victory to Hector, so that he may take our ships and win kudos?’ … ‘so that you will win for me a great timē and kudos at the hands of all the Danaans’
Multiple Iliadic passages analyzed by Benveniste show kudos as the prize men strive to win and gods to withhold, confirming victory’s status as a moveable divine endowment.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
the victor’s crown was the telos of his victory, its embodiment, fulfilment … it is an offering to the god, its fulfilment, actual payment.
Onians shows that for Pindar the crown is the telos—fulfilment and divine payment—of victory, binding athletic triumph to a sacred economy of vow and recompense.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
the paradigmatic act of the divine victory was likewise repeated on the occasion of every construction, for every new construction reproduced the creation of the world.
Eliade situates cosmogonic victory over the chaos-monster as the sacred prototype ritually re-enacted in every act of building and world-founding.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957supporting
Pindar sees the specific victory and focuses upon it, but he also extends his vision far into the past and projects it as well into the future … the present triumph reveals an inherited strain of excellence.
Sullivan demonstrates that for Pindar the athletic victory is an epiphany of divinely inherited aretē, not an isolated event but a moment disclosing a lineage of excellence.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
between you and me I have the feeling of a victory rather than of a defeat … By allusion Freud seemed to have recognized that concrete event could be as much an enemy to psychological insight as the common sense of the Philistine.
Berry reads Freud’s self-described psychological ‘victory’ as the founding moment of depth psychology’s separation from literalism, casting victory as the psyche’s triumph over concrete reduction.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
if it was really the ego that conquered the anima, then the mana does indeed belong to it … But why does not this importance, the mana, work upon others? … All that has happened is a new adulteration.
Jung deconstructs the ego’s fantasy of victory over the anima, arguing that apparent triumph is merely possession by a deeper archetype and the mana of genuine self-mastery remains unearned.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953supporting
shall our young men be incapable of a similar endurance for the sake of a much nobler victory, which is the nob
Plato invokes the athlete’s bodily self-conquest as a lesser analogue for the nobler interior victory of virtue, establishing a hierarchy of victories culminating in self-mastery.
, Laws, -348supporting
After the defeat of the Titans, the Olympians’ supremacy is assured by their victory over the Giants … For them, defeat means that they will have no part of the privilege of immortality.
Vernant shows that divine victory in Greek mythic thought is the structural act that establishes cosmic hierarchy and apportions immortality, locating victory at the origin of order itself.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
Olympians 1 was written for Hieron, king of Syracuse, to celebrate his victory of horse and rider at Olympia … By birth he was ruler, one having great wealth and power. On this occasion, at Olympia, being owner of the winning horse, he exhibited excellence in contest.
Sullivan’s close reading of Pindar’s Olympian 1 illustrates how athletic victory functions as public manifestation of a ruler’s divinely sanctioned excellence.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
a recompense—material or otherwise—awarded to the one who emerges victorious from a stru
Benveniste’s comparative Vedic-Avestan analysis reveals that the Indo-European concept of reward is fundamentally structured around the figure of the victor in a contest, linking victory to sacred economy.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside
the goodwill of the gods, which shows that in kratos there is a relationship of forces which may vary: ‘Let us now leave this bow and entrust ourselves to the gods. Tomorrow the god will give’
Benveniste’s analysis of kratos as a fluctuating force dependent on divine favour supplements the account of kudos by showing that Homeric martial supremacy is always contingent on sacred mediation.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside