Sophrosyne Sophrosyne Sophrosyne () is an ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, decorum and self-control. In other languages there is no equivalent word. In Greek literature sophrosyne is considered an important quality, and is sometimes expressed in opposition to the concept of hubris. A noted example of this occurs in Homer's "The Iliad". When Agamemnon decides to take the queen, Briseis, away from Achilles, it is seen as Agamemnon behaving with hubris and lacking sophrosyne. In
The White Goddess the Ogham letters in the alphabet used in parts of Gaelic Ireland and Britain contained a calendar that contained the key to an ancient liturgy involving the human sacrifice of a sacred king, and, further, that these letter names concealed lines of Ancient Greek hexameter describing the goddess. Graves' "Tree Calendar" has no relation to any historical Celtic calendar. His interpretations rather rely on the book "Ogygia" by the 17th-century bard Roderick O'Flaherty. In "The White Goddess", Graves proposed a hypothetical Gallic tree goddess, Druantia, who has become somewhat popular with contemporary Neopagans. Druantia is an archetype of the eternal