This article argues for the significance of Euripides’ Bacchae to what Socrates, in Book X of the Republic, refers to as the ‘ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’. I argue that the play’s presentation of Dionysus – the god of tragic theatre – amounts to a metapoetic treatment of tragic poetry; it is a tragedy about tragedy. The Bacchae can thus be read as a statement of tragic poetry’s self-understanding of its pedagogical and political goals as well as of its (...) possible limitations. I conclude by arguing that there is in fact a deep kinship between tragic poetry (as presented by Euripides) and Socratic political philosophy (as presented by Plato), especially with respect to their relation to, and understanding of, the polis. Ultimately, through analyzing the Bacchae’s presentation of Dionysus, I aim to allow tragic poetry to speak for itself as well as to clarify its relation to Platonic/Socratic political philosophy. (shrink)

The fragmentary state of Cicero’s _De Republica_ makes it difficult to see how it is a unified work. In this article, I argue that Cicero uses ring composition to unify the dialogue as a polemic against the Epicurean prohibition on political involvement. Cicero is following Plato in his use of ring composition, and just as Plato uses ring composition in the _Republic_ to express his views about philosophical method, so does Cicero. Ring composition turns out to be central to a (...) plausible skeptical reading of the _De Republica_, in which Cicero both tries to induce suspension of belief in the Epicurean prohibition on political involvement, as well as prevent the reader from unreflectively adopting his own provisionally held views, both consistent with his commitment to the pedagogical aims of Academic skeptical philosophy. (shrink)

This article argues that despite Aristotle’s criticism of him, Isocrates does not actually hold the belief that political science, or universal knowledge of practical affairs, is impossible. When he appears to express this view, he is using hyperbole to distinguish himself from his adversaries. In reality, while he certainly underscores the significance of particular cases and doxa, he also claims to possess insights into universal principles concerning politics. He does so on the ground of philosophical arguments characterized by their consistency, (...) sophistication, and substantive nature. These arguments are robust enough to be structured into a coherent system of principles akin to a political science in the Aristotelian sense of the term – although Isocrates himself never elaborated this science in a clear and systematic manner. The objective of this article is twofold: first, to defend this unconventional interpretation of Isocrates’ political speeches, and second, to offer a systematic analysis of the implicit political science within them. (shrink)

Nicomachean Ethics 6.8 has been interpreted in a variety of ways. One dispute involves Aristotle’s remarks about the relationship of phronēsis to politics: does Aristotle claim that phronēsis is foremost applicable to an individual’s private life, to the political realm, or to some combination of the two? Two features of this dispute make it worthy of closer attention. First, the conflict of interpretations has not been documented as such. Second, I argue this contemporary conflict is a repetition of an ancient (...) conflict about phronēsis that was being waged in 5th/4th century Athens. Phronēsis was a contested term alongside two related terms, apragmosynē (quietism) and polypragmosynē (meddlesomeness), and the construction of lines 1141b23–1142a12 enters into this historical debate to create a productive tension between two rival views. Aristotle heightens the tension between views represented by quietists and busybodies for his own purposes. In section 1, I surface the neglected historical frame of Nicomachean Ethics 6.8. In section 2, I turn to the contemporary conflict of interpretations, showing how it repeats the historical frame in many ways, and I provide a basic taxonomy of the views typically offered. In section 3, I bring the two debates – historical and contemporary – together and offer my own view of what Aristotle is up to in the passage. I argue that centering the historical frame in this passage highlights Aristotle’s use of Isocratean-style phronēsis, while also transforming the concept by connecting it to a series of questions that go beyond Isocrates’ view, thus preparing for a later exploration of the best forms of human living. (shrink)

In the Middle Ages, the idea of legislative sovereignty was expressed with reference to a host of commonplace arguments, such as pater legis, Sol Iustitiae, or lex animata. And many believe that it was the Roman legal concept of animate law which eventually laid the foundation for the elaboration of the idea of absolute power in the late Middle Ages. If this hypothesis is correct, the philosophic background of some late medieval and early modern absolutistic doctrines of political government could (...) be sought after as early as the classical Greek descriptions of a king who is nomos empsychos, that is, a living law. In this article, I intend to consider this intellectual tradition, and raise some doubts about the merits of the above claim, arguing instead for a separate consideration of the individual sources of the nomos empsychos concept. As such, I am tracing the genealogy of the expression to the fifth-century Pythagorean, Archytas of Tarentum, and I am demonstrating that originally the nomos empsychos was inseparably associated with an intrinsically Archytean tradition. (shrink)

Scholarship on the Republic has tended to stress the centrality of the tripartite soul to the Republic’s conception of justice. Yet since Socrates’s task in the dialogue is to show the desirability of justice in the ordinary Athenian sense, any emphasis on idiosyncratic psychology would render his account of justice fundamentally beside the point. This paper suggests a way out of this dilemma. It argues that Platonic justice in the Republic represents a shrewd twist on the entirely conventional, distributive Athenian (...) notion of justice as refraining from seizing for oneself what belongs to another. Plato’s twist is to substitute the performance of one’s own activity (πρᾶξις τα ἑαυτοῦ) for the possession of one’s household goods (ἕξις τα ἑαυτοῦ) as the proper object of justice. The paper then shows how this account of Platonic justice makes sense both textually and contextually, before concluding. (shrink)

This article concerns the dangers of demagogues in democracies described in the Politics and the edifying purposes of Aristotle’s ethical works in relation to the politically ambitious student. The translation of σπουδαῖος as serious is key to understanding the connection between these works. Although similar arguments appear elsewhere in his Corpus, Aristotle’s arguments in the Great Ethics are unique because the audience is warned about the dangers of political rule and is ultimately led away from the pursuit of it. Aristotle (...) appears to specifically lead this class of politically ambitious students toward a serious pursuit of virtue, justice, and prudence with a final view to both friendship and citizenship. This emphasis is significant because an ‘individual who is serious-about-rule’ (σπουδάρχης) is excessively eager for office. Furthermore, ‘those serious-about-rule’ are dangerous when they act as demagogues, and this is one cause of revolutions in democracies. (shrink)

This article critically analyses the concept of ‘partnership’ (koinōnia) in Book II of the Republic (Pl. Resp. 369b–374e), a concept it believes grounds Plato’s political thesis. It attempts to determine the nature of the concept, explore the agential capacities of the partnering agents, identify the original and derivative rational principles that could emerge from it, and argue that these rational principles are also moral principles. Platonic social justice spells out one of the rational and moral principles that emerge from the (...) partnership. In this regard, the paper aims to show, inter alia, the connection between Platonic partnership and social justice and how such connection helps to explain, for instance, the quality of relationship that could exist between the rulers and ruled in Kallipolis. Incidentally, the paper compares Platonic partnership in respect of his defence of justice with Glaucon’s contractarian moral thesis in connection with his pean for injustice. (shrink)

This article contributes to the scholarly movement beyond rigid classifications of East and West by arguing that the Persia of Herodotus’s History, commonly understood to be a tyrannical regime, possessed both external and internal freedom. It was once common to argue that, for Herodotus, internal freedom was the exclusive purview of the Greeks. Recent scholarship has shown that Herodotus laced the History with several incriminating parallels between Greek and Barbarian political practices, thereby casting doubt on the claim that Herodotus uncritically (...) supported Greek supremacy. This article reverses that method and argues, contrary to previous scholarship, that Herodotus offers several indications in the History that he knew Persia was a politically free regime. By examining the three prominent theories on the ancient definition of tyranny and showing their inapplicability to Persian government, I offer an even-handed defense of Persia that neither excuses real cruelty nor condemns without justification. (shrink)

In the Republic, Plato’s Socrates argues that the wealthy feel contempt for the poor, and the poor feel hatred for the rich. But why is Socrates, leading a life of scandalous poverty, without taking wages for philosophical work, an exception to this rule? Instead of hatred, envy, or no emotion at all, Socrates consistently treats wealth and the wealthy with ridicule and kataphronēsis – active looking-down or contempt – while meditating on the temptation of the poor to appropriate the excess (...) flesh of the wealthy (Resp. 556d). It is contempt that allows Socrates to remain free and wageless, away from the tempting distortion wealth has on the soul (Resp. 330c, 554a–b). Socrates therefore insists his philosopher-kings should be paid only in food, the same reward he proposes for himself in the Apology. Instead of securing freedom from murderous epithumia through moderate property, Socrates implies only contemptuous poverty can safeguard a philosophic life. (shrink)

This article examines Xenophon’s suggestion for conducting cavalry displays in Eq. mag. 3 and develops the argument that the text is a significant document of Xenophon’s thought about political performativity as well as of 4th century Athenian political culture. I argue that one of Xenophon’s strategies to reform the relationship between the Athenian demos and the ideologically fraught elite institution of the cavalry was to conduct public displays that draw on the aesthetics and formal features of New Dithyramb. On the (...) basis of my analysis, I argue that understanding political performances requires closer attention to specific audience expectations, aesthetic norms, and cultural power, and suggest that Xenophon was a political thinker and actor who was highly attentive to such issues in the Athenian context. (shrink)

This article discusses the fortune of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s famous article ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’, and reassesses its basic thesis that the Athenian Empire was popular among the lower classes of the allied cities in the light of recent developments in the field. After surveying the article’s immediate and more recent reception, and discussing its relation with The Origins of the Peloponnesian War and The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, it isolates four key new trends (...) in Greek history that, while going against some of Ste. Croix’s basic convictions, end up reinforcing his overall case. These are: a renewed attention to the mass and elite dichotomy, with recent work interpreting Greek oligarchy as a fundamentally reactive and anti-demotic regime; the recognition of the continued relevance of Persian meddling in the later fifth-century; a sea-change in Attic epigraphy which has led to the post-dating of several ‘imperial’ decrees; the new recognition of the dynamism of the Greek economy, and of the economic function of the Athenian Empire itself. Finally, the article addresses the paradigm of class struggle and stresses how democracy and economic dynamism, to which the Athenian Empire contributed, fostered the growth of slave markets and worsened the exploitation of ‘marginal’ regions as slave suppliers. (shrink)

This survey, by a pupil of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix and eventual successor in his Oxford job, combines personal recollections of de Ste. Croix’s horizons and intellectual range with a penetrating study of his Origins of the Peloponnesian War, its underlying debts and detailed contentions. It addresses his, and Thucydides’, engagement with origins and causes, his central contention about votes by the Spartans and their allies on whether to go to war, the roles of Corinth, Megara and the much-discussed Megarian (...) decree. It also presents a close reading of an Athenian involvement in Macedon and the north and its relevance to de Ste. Croix’s views on Athenian imperialism. It then sets the book’s conclusions in a wider context, ranging from modern writings on the origins of war to its concluding echo of Lenin. (shrink)

This article examines the impact on Spartan historiography of Chapter IV of de Ste. Croix’s Origins of the Peloponnesian War, focusing on his discussions of Spartan politics and society in Sections v–vi. These sections fit oddly within the overall chapter, but they blew a breath of fresh air into Spartan studies through their revisionist approach, intimations of the socio-economic bases of policy-making, and extended accounts of ‘real-life’ political episodes across the classical period. Along with Moses Finley’s near-contemporary article on Sparta, (...) OPW significantly influenced the following generation of British historians (including the author), although they often adopted different interpretations or developed new perspectives on Spartan society only hinted at by de Ste. Croix. OPW also had an important impact on Western European historiography on Spartan politics. Its combination of constitutional and societal approaches gives it an enduring currency in the context of developing Historical Institutionalist approaches to political studies. (shrink)

In this article, jumping off from Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s treatment of Aristophanes and the Megarian Decree, I argue that Old Comedy is an underutilised category of evidence for the study of the popular intellectual history of Athens. My particular focus here is the Athenian empire: how does Old Comedy present Athenian power and what does this comic presentation tell us about how at least some ordinary Athenians understood it? Can one popular Athenian imaginary of the empire be constructed through (...) analysis of Aristophanes and his contemporaries? I will argue that Old Comedy, taken as a corpus, presents a very Athenian empire, that is to say one focused on Athens and its exploitation of others. The comic poets, therefore, likely assumed parochialism and myopia on the part of their audience, but also significant topical interest in the mechanisms of Athenian power, particularly those which brought revenue to Athens. This impression of highly topical engagement with the empire is corroborated by bringing Comedy into dialogue with other sources, in particular the epigraphic record. (shrink)

This article discusses G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s contentions about the effect of Helotage on Spartan foreign policy articulated in chapter IV of Origins of the Peloponnesian War, namely that Sparta’s Helot population was uniquely dangerous, constraining Sparta’s ability to send large numbers of citizen hoplites abroad lest it be exposed to the threat within. It shows that while certain arguments advanced by Ste. Croix are no longer tenable in light of subsequent research, others still stand up to critical scrutiny fifty (...) years on; furthermore, other points neglected by Ste. Croix reinforce his overall claims. (shrink)

This article investigates the theoretical assumptions and implications of de Ste. Croix’s approach to interstate politics in The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. It suggests that two approaches can be identified in the work: one which sees a fundamental connection between political systems within a state and that state’s conduct of interstate politics, and another, closer to conventional ‘Realist’ theories, which sees a clear dividing line between domestic and interstate politics, and in which interstate relations need to be understood according (...) to a distinct analytical framework. Although this tension was probably not a particular concern to de Ste. Croix himself, it does have a bearing on ongoing debates in International Theory; the final part of the article briefly explores the possibility that the concept of ‘compulsion’, important to both Thucydides’ and de Ste. Croix’s understanding of the causes of the Peloponnesian War, might provide a way of reconciling these two approaches. (shrink)

This short preface is meant to explain the purpose of the present volume and point to the diverse approaches and lines of argument pursued by the contributors.

This article examines the disconnect between, on the one hand, the insistence on the part of multiple characters in Thucydides’ first book on the need for the Peloponnesians to invest in naval power to defeat Athens, and, on the other, the failure to act on this in the narrative of books 2–7. It then analyses the numismatic evidence for the way in which Sparta does then act upon this advice in the course of the Ionian War, and suggests that Thucydides’ (...) view that this was done primarily with Persian support may be missing a (brief) Spartan attempt to create a fiscally self-supporting empire. (shrink)