The Greek word that I’ve translated as “like-mindedness” is homophrosynê. The homo- root comes from the adjective homoios, which means “the same” and which makes itself felt in such English words as “homeopathy”—to treat a disease, pathos, with the same, homoios, thing that causes it—and “homosexual.” The phron- root has to do with the intellect, the mind; our word “phrenology” derives from it. (The word I’ve translated as “alike in mind” a few lines later is, in the original, a form of the verb that’s connected to homophrosynê: homophronein, “to think in the same way.”) Not least because of
...more