Terminology Much of our political terminology is Greek in etymology: aristocracy, democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, plutocracy, tyranny, to take just the most obvious examples, besides politics itself and its derivatives. Most of the remainder – citizen, constitution, dictatorship, people, republic and state – have an alternative ancient derivation, from the Latin. It is the ancient Greeks, though, who more typically function as ‘our’ ancestors in the political sphere, ideologically, mythologically and symbolically. It is they, above all, who are soberly credited with having ‘discovered’ or ‘invented’ not only city-republican forms but also politics in the strong sense: that is, communal decision-making effected in public after substantive discussion by or before voters deemed relevantly equal, and on issues of principle as well as purely technical, operational matters. Yet whether it was in fact the Greeks – rather than the Phoenicians, say, or Etruscans – who first discovered or invented politics in this sense, it is unarguable that their politics and ours differ sharply from each other, both theoretically and practically. This is partly, but not only nor primarily, because they mainly operated within the framework of the polis, with a radically different conception of the nature of the citizen, and on a very much smaller and more intimately personal scale (the average polis of the Classical period is thought to have numbered no more than 500 to 2,000 adult male citizens; fifth-century Athens’ figure of 40,000 or more was hugely exceptional). The chief source of difference, however, is that for both practical and theoretical reasons they enriched or supplemented politics with practical ethics (as we might put it).

Greek political thought: the historical context

Poets, lawgivers, and the beginnings of political reflection in archaic Greece

Kharikleia, the heroine of Heliodoros’s Aithiopika , shares with the novel a tripartite identity; she is a metaphor for the incorporation of multiple literary models into a single text. Heliodoros sets up the Nile river as a figure for the heterogeneity of both heroine and book. The implication is that the discovery of the source of the Nile will mean the discovery of a single, true identity. Ultimately, however, the figure of the Nile casts doubt on whether genealogy, as the search for a point of origin, is a useful way of understanding the nature of hybrid entities such as Kharikleia and her text.

Heliodoros' "Sources": Intertextuality, Paternity, and the Nile River in the Aithiopika

The sophists Let us begin by considering three Athenian texts of the fifth and fourth centuries bc . The first, short enough to quote in full, is a fragment of what was probably a satyr (i.e. serio-comic) play. Controversy continues as to whether the author of these forty-odd lines of verse was the tragedian Euripides (c. 485–c. 406), or Critias, uncle of Plato, versifier, political pamphleteer, and leading member of the oligarchic junta that overthrew Athenian democracy in 404 following Athens’ defeat by Sparta, who was killed in the course of its suppression the following year. The speaker is Sisyphus, archetype of villainy and cunning – whose never-ending punishment was and remains legendary: There was a time when human life had no order, but like that of animals was ruled by force; when there was no reward for the good, nor any punishment for the wicked. And then, I think, men enacted laws ( nomoi ) for punishment, so that justice ( dike ) would be ruler ( turannos )… and hubris its slave, and whoever did wrong would be punished. Next, since the laws prevented people only from resorting to violence openly, but they continued to do so in secret, then I think for the first time some shrewd and clever ( sophos ) individual invented fear of the gods for mortals, so that the wicked would have something to fear even if their deeds or words or thoughts were secret. In this way, therefore, he introduced the idea of the divine, saying that there is a divinity, strong with eternal life, who in his mind hears, sees, thinks and attends to everything with his divine nature ( phusis ). He will hear everything mortals say and can see everything they do; and if you silently plot evil, this is not hidden from the gods, for our thoughts are known to them. With such stories as these he introduced the most pleasant of lessons, concealing the truth with a false account. And he claimed that the gods dwelt in that place which would particularly terrify men; for he knew that from there mortals have fears and also benefits for their wretched lives - from the revolving sky above, where he saw there was lightning, the fearful din of thunder and the starry radiance of heaven, the fine embroidery of Time, the skilful ( sophos ) craftsman. Thence too comes the bright mass of a star, and damp showers are sent down to earth. With fears like these he surrounded men, and using them in his story he settled the divinity in a fitting place, and quenched lawlessness ( anomia ) by means of laws ( nomoi )… Thus, I think, someone first persuaded mortals to believe ( nomizein ) there was a race of gods.

Herodotus, Thucydides and the sophists

Xenophon (c.430 to at least 356 bc ) and Isocrates (436–338 bc ), contemporaries of Plato, had the opportunity to learn from Socrates and other philosophers who aimed to produce political virtue. Isocrates’ own ‘philosophy’ took the form of an ‘education through speaking and writing’ that prepared pupils to play their part in domestic and international politics. His speeches served as models. Xenophon spent his maturity in exile from Athens ‘hunting, writing his works and entertaining his friends’ in Scillus in the Peloponnese. His works also offer a ‘philosophic’ education in political virtue and sound government. Aristotle believed that the aim of community government was to implement the common good. For him the polis was the supreme community, and its goal the greatest good ( Pol. 1252a1–7; cf. 1278b30–1279a21, 1282b14–22). Xenophon and Isocrates addressed the government of other communities as well as the polis. Xenophon’s Cyropaedia sought to explain Cyrus’ successful government of eastern kingdoms (1. 1. 1–6); his Hiero dramatized the reform of tyrannical rule of a polis, while his Oeconomicus 7–21 examined Ischomachus’ successful government of his household; his Constitution of the Spartans (Lacedaimoniōn Politeia) described the excellent laws of the Spartan Lycurgus. These works made a lasting impression on political thought. Xenophon’s models seem undemocratic (a Persian prince, a tyrant, an aristocratic householder, Sparta), and he had no reason to love the Athenian democracy that had procured his exile and executed his teacher Socrates, but the principles that inform his models are consistent and have broad application. Isocrates wrote speeches that also endorse various kinds of government: Areopagiticus (probably 354) persuades the Athenians to restore their ancestral constitution, while Panathenaicus (339) proves their ancestral constitution superior to the Spartan constitution; ad Nicoclem (c.372) shows the prince Nicocles of Cyprus how to rule his subjects, while Nicocles (c.368) shows his subjects how to behave toward their king; Panegyricus (380) and Ad Philippum (346) persuade first the Athenians and then Philip of Macedon to unite and lead the Greeks against Persia.

T. J. Luce

Papers

Hérodote et les peuples non grecs