Metaphors of ambiguity, uncertainty, and crisis in Early Greek poetry

Abstract Greek mythology and Early Greek history were full of crises, including familial and civic strife or war. This is reflected in our extant sources of Archaic Greek literature, where crises are recurring and dominant themes. Though the events and effects of war and strife can be narrated directly, uncertainty and crisis are also abstract concepts: as such, within the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), they can also be expected to be conceived of and expressed through metaphors. This paper focuses on two source domains of varying specificity and detail that are employed in Early Greek poetry to conceptualise critical situations concerning physical imbalance and the sea / seafaring , and discusses different instantiations and allegorical scenarios of the conceptual metaphors uncertainty is unbalance and danger is the sea .