ANCIENT ROUTES TO
HAPPINESS
Acta Classica Supplementum VI
Classical Association of South Africa
Klassieke Vereniging van Suid-Afrika
This publication was funded from the Research Fund
of the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies,
University of South Africa.
All opinions expressed are those of the authors and
are not to be ascribed to the Classical Association of
South Africa or the Editor.
ISSN 0065-1141
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ANCIENT ROUTES TO
HAPPINESS
Edited by Philip Bosman
ACTA CLASSICA SUPPLEMENTUM VI
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH AFRICA
KLASSIEKE VERENIGING VAN SUID-AFRIKA
Pretoria
2017
EDITORIAL BOARD OF ACTA CLASSICA
Editor
Prof. J.L. Hilton, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Chairperson of the Classical Association
Mr Michael Lambert, University of Cape Town
Editorial Secretary
Prof. C. Chandler, University of Cape Town
Treasurer
Prof. P.R. Bosman, Stellenbosch University
Supplementa Editor
Prof. P.R. Bosman, Stellenbosch University
Additional Members
Prof. W.J. Henderson, University of Johannesburg
Prof. D. Wardle, University of Cape Town
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Prof. David Konstan, Brown University, USA
Prof. Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, UK
Prof. Stephen Harrison, University of Oxford, UK
Prof. Manfred Horstmanshoff, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
Prof. Daniel Ogden, University of Exeter, UK
Prof. John Scarborough, University of Wisconsin, USA
Prof. Betine van Zyl Smit, University of Nottingham, UK
PATRON
Justice D.H. van Zyl
HONORARY PRESIDENTS
Prof. J.E. Atkinson
Prof. L. Cilliers
Assoc. Prof. J.-M. Claassen
Prof. P.J. Conradie
Prof. W.J. Henderson
Prof. D.M. Kriel
HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENT
Prof. F.P. Retief
CONTENTS
PREFACE
vii
ELIZABETH IRWIN, Debating the Happiness of Periclean Athens:
From Herodotus’ Solon to its Legacy in Aristotle
1
CLIVE CHANDLER, The Happiness of Sophocles’ Ajax
43
CHIARA THUMIGER, Grief and Cheerfulness in Early Greek
Medical Writings
56
SUSAN PRINCE, Antisthenes and the Short Route to Happiness
74
SUZANNE SHARLAND, Horace on Happiness
PAULINE ALLEN, Giving: Some Tips for Happiness
from Late Antiquity
98
120
PREVIOUS SUPPLEMENTS
I
J.E. Atkinson, A Commentary on Q Curtius Rufus’ Historiae
Alexandri Magni Books 5 to 7,2. Adolf Hakkert Publisher,
Amster-dam 1994.
II
Louise Cilliers (ed.), Asklepios. Studies on Ancient Medicine.
Classical Association of South Africa, Bloemfontein 2008.
III
Philip Bosman (ed.), Mania. Madness in the Greco-Roman
World. Classical Association of South Africa, Pretoria 2009.
IV
Philip Bosman (ed.), Corruption & Integrity in Ancient Greece
and Rome. Classical Association of South Africa, Pretoria
2012.
V
Philip Bosman (ed.), Alexander in Africa.
Association of South Africa, Pretoria 2014.
Classical
PREFACE
Little can be said about happiness that would not somehow sound clichéd.
Happiness itself, however, is no cliché. After two and a half thousand
years, it would still contend for Aristotle’s ultimate end of human
existence, though with a distinctly modern menu, or, to stay with the lifeas-a-journey metaphor, with altered routes and via-points. To be positive,
resilient, comfortable with yourself, aware, altruistic and caring are some
of the buzz words; nowadays steps to happiness are, typically, to exercise
regularly, to eat healthily, to keep on learning, and to set yourself new life
goals.1
Everyone has some idea of what happiness holds or means, obviously
with various levels of sophistication and profundity. Small wonder, then,
that the notion of happiness is frequently subjected to the rigours of
scientific enquiry, with numerous institutes set up to get to the bottom of
it all. These would, I assume, consider the cultural and temporal variables,
as well as the physical, psychological, social, historical, and any other
dimensions we can think of, with the aim to disseminate the greatest
degree to the greatest number. As a result, happiness now comes in skill
sets, and we can establish our relative chances by simply googling the
position of our own country on the global happiness indices. It seems as if
the methodologies of the happiness indices favour the prosperous, crossing
out a shot at happiness not only for the majority of the world’s population,
but also for most of humankind before the spread of consumerism. It must
count as ironic that those same happiness experts would tell us that
comparing one’s own happiness to that of others is a sure route in the
opposite direction. Research on social media indicates that Facebooking
constitutes an unhappiness trap for exactly this reason. And so, inevitably,
the vocabulary of our digital age enters the happiness realm.
1
‘Steps to a happier you’ journalism abounds in the popular media; I relied for my
list mainly on M. Williamson and V. King, 3 November 2014 at
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/03/ten-easy-steps-thatwill-make-you-a-happier-person; see also ‘Happiness habits, backed by science’ at
https://projecthappiness.com/science-of-happiness; both accessed 2/2/2017.
viii
Scholarship on ancient routes to happiness, one would assume, has
similar aims, namely to rediscover dimensions of being happy that might
have got lost along the way, or to explain the happiness trends of current
societies from their ancient roots. Early Christianity shied away from the
Greek εὐδαιμονία in fear of the ‘good demon’ presumed to underlie the
notion. The major constitutional impetus in modernity came from the
‘pursuit of happiness’ written into the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), and currently various African states have some reference
to happiness in their constitutions. Its absence from public documents
either means that happiness does not have legal status, or that the
constitutional architects did not feel it warrants explicit mention in order
to be a cultural driving force. It does not mean that some nations are
incapable of or indifferent to happiness.
Linguistically, the notion of happiness also places a number of conundrums on the table: how does happiness, for instance, relate to joy and
luck (cf. Afrikaans ‘gelukkig’), to well-being and being well off? Does
happiness bear any relationship – like emotional intelligence – to having a
command not only over an array of words and concepts, but also over
feelings and insight into the criteria, conditions and preconditions generally
associated with happiness? How much of happiness is a state of being and
how much a state of mind? Does it lie in the detached contemplation as
Aristotle proposed, or in engaged virtuous acts, adrenaline-rushed action or
chemically induced altered states of mind? How much of happiness
happens to us while we ‘look elsewhere’, or should we, as Herodotus
suggests, ‘look to the end’ before we judge ourselves happy or not?
As can be expected, happiness as a topic in Greco-Roman culture has
attracted due scholarly attention. The two most recent collaborative publications are from a research project at the Norwegian Academy of Science
and Letters Centre for Advanced Study on Ethics in Antiquity: ‘The quest
for the good life’, a collection of articles in the 2011 issue of Symbolae
Osloenses, which has a broad take on happiness in ancient literature and
art, and a 2015 volume, with the registered project as title, focussing more
ix
narrowly on happiness as dealt with by ancient philosophers.2 The current
collection stems from a conference held in Pretoria in October 2012,
sponsored by the University of South Africa with assistance from the
South African National Research Foundation. It has more in common with
the first Norwegian publication, as the conference aimed at exploring
suggestions to a life of happiness broader than philosophical reflections.
Fresh angles on Herodotus and Aristotle add to the existing literature as
much as the perspectives from the Hippocratic corpus, Latin poetry and
Late Antique Christianity.
In the first article, Elizabeth Irwin engages with the usual suspects of
ancient happiness discourses, namely Herodotus and Aristotle, though
with a twist. Herodotus’ staging of a discussion between the Athenian sage
Solon and the legendary wealthy Croesus counts among the classic scenes
in world literature. Irwin reads the text not as a remnant of archaic
thinking on hybris, but as reflecting on contemporary Athenian ideology
and the penchant at the time of imperial power to equate εὐδαιμονία with
material prosperity. Solon’s advice to ‘look to the end of every matter’ is
prophetic (ex eventu?) of the outcome of the war with Sparta, warning the
Athenians not to stake their happiness on the wealth derived from their
ἀρχή. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Irwin goes on to argue, Aristotle errs in
uncritically setting the imperial definition of εὐδαιμονία at the centre of
his own deliberation. It is of little consequence that he presents a cleanedup version of Periclean ideology, as the conclusions drawn from his
erroneous point of departure are as flawed and as prone to error as those
of Croesus and imperial Athens. Consequently, the ‘sophist’ Herodotus’
warning remains as valid to Aristotle’s definition as it was when directed
by his Solon against Croesus. The τέλος is actually one’s own τελεύτη.
Clive Chandler also highlights some peculiarities of Aristotle’s definition that render problematic a simple equation of εὐδαιμονία and our
2
Rabbås, Ø., Emilsson, E.K., Fossheim, H. and Tuominen, M. (edd.) 2015. The
Quest for Happiness. Ancient Philosophers on Happiness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
x
‘happiness’. He poses the question of how valid the ancients held subjective experience by investigating the scenario presented by Attic
tragedy’s madmen, Ajax and Heracles, when they derive pleasure from the
atrocities they commit. As Chandler notes, their actions as perceived by
themselves are not the issue, as these are in line with the heroic code. The
problem lies solely in the fact that the perceivers are under the spell of
divine delusion, causing their actions to be misdirected. But Aristotle
would sternly reject such a version of happiness as too subjective to pass
muster. In his definition, various categories of persons (like children, for
instance) are, – on objective grounds, – excluded from εὐδαιμονία. The
mere fact of the wrath of the gods against Ajax and Heracles already
discounts them too, as do their misfiring cognitive faculties, no matter the
elation they experience. In the classical definition represented by Aristotle,
peer evaluation is crucial and we cannot, in the final event, judge for
ourselves whether we are happy or not.
An ancient route less travelled is Chiara Thumiger’s investigation of the
Corpus Hippocraticum, representing layers in medical literature before the
deliberate fusion of medicine and philosophy in the post-Hellenistic era.
Thumiger finds that the Hippocratic writers objectify happiness even
more than Aristotle, working with an observable conception which is
linked, primarily, to correct bodily functioning and best translated as
‘flourishing’. Happiness as an inner state is absent from the case histories of
the doctors: they are rather more interested in well-being and cheerfulness,
to which balance, the correct regimen and harmony with the external
environment are paramount factors. This, of course, does not mean that
the Hippocratic authors are not interested in mental conditions: drawing
no distinction between body and mind, they are as aware of δυσθυμία and
δυσφορία as of any disease with physical symptoms, and εὐθυμία is as
crucial to the desired state of ὑγίεια as any somatic condition. The
vocabulary set introduced by the ancient doctors has had a lasting effect on
subsequent happiness discourses.
Dead on target for the collection title, Susan Prince tackles the tradition
of the Cynic shortcut (σύντομος ὁδός) to happiness. Imperial Cynic
xi
literature often ascribes it to Antisthenes, who put Diogenes before the
choice of either a long and gentle or a short but rigorous route, both to the
same destination. The Antisthenean choice again displays parallels with
Prodicus’ story of Heracles at the crossroads, as told in Xenophon’s
Memorabilia by Socrates. Antisthenes was keenly interested in the figure
of Heracles, who also subsequently became the Cynic champion. The
relationship between the narratives is complex, however, as the road of
Virtue in Prodicus’ story is both long and hard (as opposed to the short,
easy road to Vice), and the choice implies two separate destinations.
Prince proposes the relationship to be polemical, which highlights the
significance of the implied destination of the Cynic σύντομος ὁδός. It
should be understood as leading to Antisthenes’ view of happiness which,
in Xenophon’s Symposium, implies leisure and contemplation – in essence
not far removed from Plato and Aristotle’s contemplative life as the
happiest form of existence. Further core ingredients of Antisthenes’
happiness are the subjective perception of externals and the knack of
making do with what is at hand. Evidently, happiness now becomes the
less objective notion further developed in the Hellenistic schools. Prince
notes that an Antisthenean understanding of the σύντομος ὁδός may also
relate to his views on education, and finally to his views on language and
discourse as revealing truth directly from life and literature, not needing
systematic philosophy’s theory and logic. The Cynics, in particular, put this
into practice.
The ‘happiness guru of antiquity’, as Suzanne Sharland calls Horace for
his prominence in popular references, serves as our collection’s exponent
of Latin poetry. Sharland argues that the aphorisms regularly quoted from
Horace fail to reflect his complex textual strategies, which entail more
than meets the eye. The question is not simply about the meaning of what
he says, but also whether we are meant to accept that as his view. In the
epodes, his poetic voices often long for idealised settings as escapes from
their dire current circumstances, but they would rarely trade their lives
under normal conditions. The odes are more revealing of Horace’s Epicurean sentiments, emphasising the brutal brevity of life and urging his
readers to enjoy what, while and when they can, albeit tempered by
xii
modesty, tranquillity and leisure. Careful reading reveals that Horace does
not give his counsels as truisms, but directs them to very specific individuals inclined to be trapped by political ambition and the pursuit of
wealth. Beneath the surface of the Horatian oeuvre, the reader should
always suspect a ludic Horace lurking.
Much more straightforward and practical, representing a different social
level from vastly different times, and introducing yet another vocabulary
set, is Pauline Allen’s discussion of Christian erotapokriseis (question-andanswer literature) from the 6th and 7th centuries AD. These personal
correspondences allow glimpses of the issues pressing on real ‘little’ people
concerned with aligning their lives with their faith. One such issue is
almsgiving as a means of ensuring eternal bliss. Here happiness as a blessed
state shifts to the hereafter, and the focus to what needs to be accomplished in this life in order to achieve an eternal reward. The religious
authorities offering their advice typically denounce excess, vainglory and
visible acts of charity, especially when not meeting the requirement of
love. At the bottom of these concerns lies the issue of how happiness
relates to wealth and whether the two are ever compatible – a theme we
have seen running from Herodotus through to the Socratics to the gospels,
and which has remained problematic ever since. But the Christian wise
men also put great score on inner disposition in acts of charity, to the
extent that the humble rich are more highly valued than the proud poor –
an aspect of happiness we have noticed to be underemphasised in
Aristotle and totally absent from the Hippocratic authors.
The widely divergent treatments of ancient routes to happiness in this
collection seem all capable of being positioned on a set of recurring coordinates. These include, inter alia, whether happiness is a condition to be
established on objective criteria and subject to the verdict of our peers, or
whether it can be made ‘up to us’ by dismissing reliance on externals such
as wealth, recognition and health. Other coordinates are whether happiness needs theory and reflection or simply derives from life itself, and
whether it is ever to be realised in this life or not. No doubt such issues
will continue to feature as long as complete happiness evades us.
xiii
I should like to conclude this preface by briefly calling to memory a
remarkable scholar who attended the 2012 conference. John Moles gave
two excellent papers and contributed significantly to the level of discussion, both during and after conference hours. It is with regret that we
had to continue with this publication without his contribution. He will be
missed.
Philip Bosman
Stellenbosch University
Stellenbosch
DEBATING THE HAPPINESS OF PERICLEAN ATHENS:
FROM HERODOTUS’ SOLON TO ITS LEGACY IN
ARISTOTLE
Elizabeth Irwin
Columbia University and
Unisa (Academic Associate)
Introduction
In the first book of his Rhetoric, Aristotle selects εὐδαιμονία as the case
study to illustrate how to handle those most important topics (τὰ μέγιστα)
about which a deliberative orator must be well informed (1360a38-b3),
and provides as a preliminary to his discussion a comprehensive working
definition (1360b4-1362a12) of the concept. Εὐδαιμονία figures even
more importantly in the Nicomachean Ethics: there Aristotle identifies
εὐδαιμονία as the supreme good and the aim of politics, and consequently
makes its definition a priority of the text (EN 1095a14-1096a10, 1098b91099b9). Aristotle’s choice to foreground and define εὐδαιμονία as starting
points of his seminal works is, I will argue, neither accidental nor entirely
transparent: in doing so, he demonstrates the abiding persistence of a
debate of critical importance among his predecessors. Aristotle himself
suggests the need to look back to an earlier period when at the end of
Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics (1100a10-1101a21) he gives
prominence to addressing the view of human εὐδαιμονία expressed by
Herodotus’ Solon. Positioning Solon as if a last – and ultimately
inconsequential – obstacle to establishing his conception of εὐδαιμονία as
the τέλος of human life, Aristotle dismisses the conception of human
happiness epitomised in Solon’s injunctions to ‘count no man happy until
he is dead’ and to ‘look to the end’ before rendering a verdict on man’s life.
And yet, the sheer amount of time Aristotle spends in his attempt to
undermine Solon’s view of human εὐδαιμονία, which he calls ἄτοπον
(‘strange’), as well as the quality of his arguments, belie his easy dismissal
of the wise man. This article examines why Solon’s discourse on human
εὐδαιμονίη1 occupies the prominence that it does in the texts of both
1
For the sake of stressing the differing – and competing – definitions of this term,
I will use εὐδαιμονίη when speaking of Herodotus’ account and εὐδαιμονία when
speaking of its use in fifth-century Athens and by Aristotle.
2
IRWIN
Herodotus and Aristotle. The answer will be found to lie in each author’s
engagement with the political ideology of late fifth-century Athens.
I begin this examination with Herodotus’ Solon, providing an analysis
of Herodotus’ λόγος that demonstrates its intense engagement with its
contemporary intellectual and political context. I will show how
Herodotus’ Solon must be seen as belonging to an intellectual debate of his
times regarding the proper definition of happiness, and that this debate
arose as a consequence of the prosperity – or what some chose to
represent as εὐδαιμονία – Athens derived from her ἀρχή. In Parts 1 and 2,
I argue that behind its traditional sheen, Herodotus’ λόγος represents a
sophisticated engagement with contemporary philosophical – and ethical –
debates regarding the definition of εὐδαιμονία, as well as a critique of that
definition most popular in Athens and promulgated by Pericles. From
there, I go on in Part 3 to show how an appreciation of the philosophy
behind Herodotus’ λόγος helps one to recognise the degree to which
Aristotle in his own definition of εὐδαιμονία has assimilated the ideology
and values of Periclean Athens. I suggest that identifying the historical
antecedents of the ideology underlying Aristotle’s account might alert one
to the potential dangers of accepting an account of happiness built upon
foundations that proved in the case of imperial Athens – that is, if one
‘looks to the end’, as Herodotus’ Solon admonishes – to have been so
flawed.
1. Herodotus’ Solon
It is a commonplace, though one justified, to recognise Solon’s encounter
with Croesus as programmatic for the entire Histories. Readers have been
waiting for Croesus to appear since the sixth chapter of Book 1 when our
narrator defined Croesus’ enslavement of the Ionian Greeks as the first
wrong act done by the barbarians to the Greeks. Moreover, the echo of
Herodotus’ proem in Solon’s admonition about the precariousness of
‘human happiness/good fortune’ (ἡ ἀνθρωπηίη
εὐδαιμονίη) has caused
readers from antiquity onwards to see Solon as a double for the narrator of
the Histories themselves, and it is for this reason, as well as owing to the
problematic chronology of the meeting, that the veracity of the encounter
has been doubted already in antiquity.2 Despite the questionable status of
2
See Plut. De Herod. 857f-858a for the view of Herodotus as ‘forcing on Solon
what he himself thinks’, which is, albeit usually more positively formulated, the
consensus of modern scholarship. On the impossible synchronism of Solon and
3
this story as history, modern readers tend to see the encounter in terms
that stress its ‘archaic’ wisdom.3 The dramatic date of the encounter, Lydia
of the mid-sixth century, coupled with Herodotus’ Homeric style of
narration, and the strong presence of elements from Solon’s poetry, have
masked all too well the strong contemporary resonances of the story in
relation to the political climate of Athens. One prominent exception has
been Moles 1996,4 to which this discussion owes much, but here my focus
will be on the λόγος’s engagement with contemporary philosophical
debates – although the political will never be far away – and with the
legacy of debates of this kind as reflected in the ethics of Aristotle.
To begin, one must recognise the contemporary sheen that Herodotus
has chosen to give to his Solon. Herodotus introduces his Solon as a
‘sophist’ par excellence: arriving in Sardis at the acme of its prosperity, he
gains an audience with a figure possessing a great ἀρχή owing to his own
reputation for ‘loving wisdom’ or ‘practicing philosophy’ (ϕιλοσοϕέων)
which, according to Croesus, has preceded him.5 The use of both terms for
Solon, σοφιστής and ϕιλοσοϕέων, are certainly anachronistic: neither
word belongs to a sixth-century context. Both are, however, well applied
if the narrator’s aim is to draw attention to the similarity between Lydia of
the 6th century and Athens of the 5th. The ‘intellectual scene’ in Lydia, as
Herodotus describes it, evokes that of Athens at the acme of Athens’
prosperity, a destination for sophists who received ξενία from the
wealthiest and most powerful Athenians owing to their reputations for
Croesus as a challenge (dismissed by Plutarch) to the veracity of the λόγος, see his
Solon 27. On the subject, see e.g. Asheri 2007:99.
3
See e.g. Macleod 1983:151-52 (‘Solon and archaic thought’), or Flory 1987 for
Herodotus’ ‘archaic smile’.
4
See now also Irwin 2013. Others have, of course, more generally discussed
Herodotus’ engagement with contemporary Athens: see Moles 2002 for
bibliography.
5
Hdt. 1.29.1: ‘There came to Sardis, then at the height of its wealth (ἀκμαζούσας
πλούτῳ), all the wise men of Hellas who chanced to be alive at that time (ἄλλοι
τε οἱ πάντες ἐκ τῆς ‘Ελλάδος σοϕισταί), brought thither severally by various
occasions; and of them one was Solon the Athenian (καὶ δὴ καὶ Σόλων ἀνὴρ
‘Αθηναῖος) …’ Translations of Herodotus will be throughout those of Macaulay
1890 with some modification. Hdt. 1.29.2: Ξεῖνε ‘Αθηναῖε, παρ’ ἡμέας γὰρ περὶ
σέο λόγος ἀπῖκται πολλὸς καὶ σοϕίης [εἵνεκεν] τῆς σῆς καὶ πλάνης, ὡς
ϕιλοσοϕέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εἵνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας (‘Athenian guest, much
report of thee has come to us, both in regard to thy wisdom and thy wanderings,
how that in thy search for wisdom thou hast traversed many lands to see them.’)
4
IRWIN
being σοφοί.6 Indeed, not only has Herodotus forged analogies between
the setting of his λόγος and the contemporary setting in which his own
text might be heard or read, but, as widely recognised in the scholarship,
there is the strong analogy between one of the λόγος’s protagonists and
Herodotus himself: Solon’s words about the fragility of human good
fortune so conspicuously echo Herodotus’ own as even to draw the
censure of an ancient reader such as Plutarch. One should, however, note
that this need not render Herodotus’ outlook ‘archaic’, as is so often the
verdict. Rather the pull may be felt to come equally from the opposite
direction: that is, Herodotus may be using his Solon to argue for a universal
truth, still no less valid in his own day. This reading of a contemporary
Herodotus using a Solon whose words are far from dated is not simply a
possibility, but indeed compelling, once one realises that in the very act of
calling Solon a sophist, our narrator has transformed himself into a sophist:
Herodotus’ choice of a modernising label resonates with the Platonic
portrayal of the views of the sophist Protagoras who was apparently
famous for arguing that early poets were actually sophists in disguise. In
Plato’s Prot. 316d-17c, Protagoras claims:
Now I tell you that sophistry (τὴν σοφιστικὴν τέχνην) is an ancient
art (παλαιάν), and those men of ancient times (τῶν παλαιῶν
ἀνδρῶν) who practised it, fearing the odium (φοβουμένους τὸ
ἐπαχθὲς αὐτῆς) it involved, disguised it in a decent dress,
sometimes of poetry, as in the case of Homer, Hesiod, and
Simonides … All these, as I say, from fear of ill-will (φοβηθέντες
τὸν φθόνον) made use of these arts as outer coverings … I have
come by an entirely opposite road than these and I admit that I am
a sophist (ὁμολογῶ τε σοφιστὴς εἶναι) and that I educate men; and
I consider this precaution, of admitting rather than denying (τὸ
ὁμολογεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ ἔξαρνον εἶναι), the better of the two.
(Loeb tr. Lamb 1924)
In short, in the very act of adopting the sophist’s unmasking of the wise
men of old as sophists, Herodotus himself becomes a sophist, and in
rendering himself so, he becomes all the more closely aligned to that figure
of his λόγος whom he has chosen to call a ‘sophist’. The analogy
constructed between narrator and his character has consequences for
understanding the target audience of Herodotus’ Solon: when the sophist
6
Callias, son of Hipponicus, is of course the most famous: see e.g. Pl. Prot., [Pl.]
Axiochus.
5
Solon, constructed in the image of his narrator – himself a sophist – speaks
to the Lydian king, possessor of a great ἀρχή who defines wealth as
‘happiness’, this is also the sophist Herodotus speaking to those in his
audience who might employ the same erroneous definition as Croesus.
They are likely to be those living in an ἀρχή at the height of its prosperity
and, as such, a centre for travelling sophists.
Before, however, addressing that audience, I want to look at the degree
to which Solon lives up to his introduction as a sophist, or as Croesus
more flatteringly describes him, one who ‘practices philosophy’. The
answers that Solon gives to Croesus’ inquiry, ‘who is the ὀλβιώτατος?’,7
mark him truly as a ϕιλοσοϕέων. In defying the answer expected by
Croesus, Solon can be understood as attempting to lead Croesus to
recognise the errors of his beliefs, particularly those that pertain to himself.
Quite simply, he suffers from the affliction portrayed as belonging to so
many of Socrates’ interlocutors: he thinks he is something that he is not, in
this case ὄλβιος, and this misapprehension of himself is based on an error
in definition predicated upon misplaced value. Seen as the instruction of
Croesus, the interaction is comparable to a Socratic dialogue: while Solon
disabuses Croesus of his mistaken notion, Herodotus of course disabuses
those readers for whom the εὐδαιμονία of Croesus was proverbial and
who shared a definition of happiness that placed supreme value on the
accumulation of wealth and its power. Again the Apology with its
portrayal of the Athenians’ over-valuation of wealth proves useful in
providing one likely audience for this lesson.8
We could call the whole encounter Philosophy 101 for Croesus. When
Solon answers, ‘Tellus’, Croesus experiences ‘wonder’ (ἀποθωμάσας δὲ
Κροῖσος τὸ λεχθὲν), and is intent on knowing (εἴρετο ἐπιστρεϕέως) the
criteria that make Tellus ‘most blessed’ (κοίῃ δὴ κρίνεις Τέλλον εἶναι
ὀλβιώτατον).9 ‘Wonder’ is, as both Plato and Aristotle note, the ‘beginning
of philosophy’,10 and correspondingly Herodotus makes explicit that
7
Hdt. 1.30.2: νῦν ὦν ἐπειρέσθαι σε ἵμερος ἐπῆλθέ μοι εἴ τινα ἤδη πάντων εἶδες
ὀλβιώτατον (‘Now therefore a desire has come upon me to ask thee whether thou
hast seen any whom thou deemest to be of all men most blessed.’)
8
Pl. Apol. 29d7-e4. Another appropriate text in this discussion is the Platonic
Eryxias staged on the eve of the Sicilian expedition, in which the agreed view of
εὐδαιμονία as the most valuable thing for a man (393e5-6) is attended by an
interrogation of the relative value of wealth and (absolute value of) wisdom.
9
Hdt. 1.30.4.
10
Pl. Theaet. 155d: μάλα γὰρ ϕιλοσόϕου τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, τὸ θαυμάζειν· οὐ γὰρ
6
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Solon’s intention in answering as he did was to ‘urge’ Croesus on (1.31.1):
ὡς δὲ τὰ κατὰ τὸν Τέλλον προετρέψατο ὁ Σόλων τὸν Κροῖσον εἴπας
πολλά τε καὶ ὄλβια (‘So when Solon had moved Croesus to inquire further
by the story of Tellos, recounting how many points of happiness he had.’)
A rare word in Herodotus, the verb προετρέψατο is strongly associated
with sophists and philosophers: πρότρεψις is the name given to the
ἐπίδειξις used by these figures to gain adherents, an exhortation to
potential students to concern themselves with the attainment of wisdom
and virtue to be found under their tutelage. 11 Solon chooses his examples
by design in order to entice his interlocutor to pursue the wisdom he
purports to offer.
Indeed, Solon’s πρότρεψις begins to work: Croesus is moved to seek
further answers, albeit still hoping to have his happiness recognised as
such, even if second best. Pressed again for an answer, Solon seems to utter
something paradoxical in replying that the ‘happiest’ are a pair of young
men, Cleobis and Biton, who died in their prime (1.31.3):
Ταῦτα δέ σϕι ποιήσασι καὶ ὀϕθεῖσι ὑπὸ τῆς πανηγύριος τελευτὴ
τοῦ βίου ἀρίστη ἐπεγένετο, διέδεξέ τε ἐν τούτοισι ὁ θεὸς ὡς
ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν.
Then after they had done this and had been seen by the assembled
crowd, there came to their life a most excellent ending; and in this
the deity declared that it was better for man to die than to
continue to live.
Taken together, Solon’s answers function as a riddle: one is induced to
wonder what understanding of human happiness underlies his choices, on
the one hand, to select as superlatively happy such diametrically opposed
examples as a man who dies a citizen’s death in battle at the end of a long
life and youths who die prematurely in their sleep after a great display of
strength and piety and, on the other, to refuse to recognise as happiness
ἄλλη ἀρχὴ ϕιλοσοϕίας ἢ αὕτη (‘For indeed this affliction, wonder, is that of a
philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this’); see also
Arist. Metaph. 982b.
11
Herodotus uses this verb only twice in the entire Histories: here and at 9.90.2
(only here in the middle). See e.g. Pl. Euthyd. 278d2: τὸ δὲ δὴ μετὰ ταῦτα
ἐπιδείξατον προτρέποντε τὸ μειράκιον ὅπως χρὴ σοϕίας τε καὶ ἀρετῆς ἐπιμεληθῆναι (‘And next, after this, you have to give us a display of exhorting the youth
that he ought to concern himself with wisdom and virtue.’)
7
that which Croesus believes himself to possess beyond all others. 12 Indeed,
a baffled Croesus is provoked to bite, asking just what value Solon ascribes
to his εὐδαιμονίη that he would place these private individuals before him.
Solon’s protreptic has worked: at this point, Solon will provide the
explanation, an ἀπόδειξις that demonstrates human εὐδαιμονίη to be
nothing, precarious in the extreme, and only possible to be recognised as
such upon a man’s death. In the use of particular figures to lead an
interlocutor to a more general point, one might well compare the answer
to Chaerephon’s question, ‘Is anyone wiser than Socrates?’, in which
Socrates claims his name was used to demonstrate that human wisdom is
little or nothing. According to the god (at least as Socrates interprets the
oracle), he, no less than Tellus, Cleobis and Biton, was intended to stand as
a foil for those thinking to possess something that they do not (Pl. Apol.
23a-b):
But the fact is, gentlemen, it is likely that the god is really wise and
by his oracle means this: ‘Human wisdom is of little or no value (ἡ
ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία ὀλίγου τινὸς ἀξία ἐστὶν καὶ οὐδενός).’ And it
appears that he does not really say this of Socrates, but merely uses
my name, and makes me an example (καὶ φαίνεται τοῦτον λέγειν
τὸν Σωκράτη, προσκεχρῆσθαι δὲ τῷ ἐμῷ ὀνόματι, ἐμὲ παράδειγμα
ποιούμενος), as if he were to say: ‘This one of you, o human beings,
is wisest, who, like Socrates, recognizes that he is in truth of no
account in respect to wisdom.’
(Loeb tr. Fowler 1914)
Socrates’ claim about the god offers two points of comparison with
Herodotus’ story. On the one hand, as Socrates claims of himself, Solon
claims that the individuals, Cleobis and Biton, serve as the god’s
παράδειγμα about the value of human life – in the former case, human
achievement in the form of wisdom; in the latter, simply human life itself.
On the other hand, at the same time as Herodotus presents Solon offering
this pessimistic lesson on human existence, he is concomitantly
constructing the narrative in which Croesus, legendary for his superlative
wealth, functions as a παράδειγμα of how another thing that some humans
12
See the brilliant discussion of Lloyd 1987 on how implicit and latent in Solon’s
choices of Tellus on the one hand, and Cleobis and Biton on the other, is the
paradox Aristotle identifies in EN 1100a10-1100b7: the case of the Argive sons
argues that only the dead are happy, while that of Tellus that only the dead can
safely be called happy. I return to Aristotle’s discussion of Solon below in Part 3.
8
IRWIN
value above all, material wealth, labelled by some εὐδαιμονίη, is worth
little or nothing.
Indeed, beyond the simple analogy that the two Argives help to
construct between Herodotus’ λόγος and these more explicitly
philosophic texts, Cleobis and Biton might have further contemporary
resonances in the circles of the fifth-century sophists. The Platonic
Axiochus, a dialogue about death whose dramatic date is 406 BC (368d6369a2), purports to recall the ἐπίδειξις that Prodicus gave recently in the
house of the wealthy Callias in which he argued that it is better to be dead
than alive.13 The view is, of course, a traditional one, as Prodicus’ ἐπίδειξις
is presented as itself noting (367d-368a7), but the dialogue purports that
this view had specific currency in the later 5th century (365b3-66).14
Significant for this discussion is the fact that Socrates’ rendition of
Prodicus’ ἐπίδειξις actually adduces the story of Cleobis and Biton to
prove the same point about the gods’ perspective on human life (367c-d):
And that is why the gods, who understand human affairs, quickly
release from life those whom they consider of greatest worth. For
example, Agamedes and Trophonius, who built the sacred precinct
of the god at Pytho, after praying that the best might happen to
them, fell asleep and never awakened again. There are also the sons
of the Argive priestess whose mother prayed for them in the same
way that they might receive from Hera some reward for their filial
piety, for when the team of mules was late, the sons yoked
themselves to the cart and took her to the temple. And that night
after their mother’s prayer they passed away.
(tr. Hershbell 1981)
While the late date traditionally assumed for the Axiochus could suggest
that the writer of the Axiochus here borrows from Herodotus,15 we have
13
[Pl.] Axiochus 366c: ‘My remarks are the echoes of the wise Prodicus (Προδίκου
ἐστὶν τοῦ σοϕοῦ ἀπηχήματα) … just the other day he gave an ἐπίδειξις at the
house of Kallias son of Hipponicus, and said so much against living that I came
within a hair’s breadth of writing off life altogether. And ever since, Axiochus, my
soul has longed for death’ (tr. Hershbell 1981).
14
The particular salience c. 406 BC seems also apparent in Soph. OC 1224-38,
which is remarkably consonant with what Socrates claims to recall from Prodicus’
recent ἐπίδειξις (366d1-367b7). For a historical reading of the themes of this
dialogue, see Irwin 2015.
15
For this view of the text, see e.g. the works cited in Joyal 2005:97 n. 2.
9
no basis for ruling out the possibility that both texts allude to the same
source: in such a scenario, Herodotus would be understood as making the
character he calls a sophist repeat, as Socrates does, the ‘echoes’ of the
sophist Prodicus. Regardless, however, of whether the Cleobis and Biton
story belonged to Prodicus’ repetoire, it remains the case that this story
finds itself at home in a portrayal of an ἐπίδειξις such as those purported
to have taken place in late fifth-century Athens.
Croesus wants to know the basis of Solon’s evaluation, and Solon
obliges. First, he provides an ἀπόδειξις of mathematical ἀκρίβεια – a proof,
if you will – to show how fragile man’s happiness truly is: given this
creature of the day is dependent on almost 30 000 days going well, a
verdict of happy can, at best, be only provisional until a man is dead.16
Solon’s calculation of the days of man’s life in order to prove a paradoxical
point provides yet another reminiscence of Plato’s Apology in which
Socrates asks the jurors to reckon the days of man’s life as part of a
demonstration that death is, in fact, – contrary to popular belief – a ‘good
thing’ (ἀγαθόν).17 Next, he produces a detailed list of criteria belonging to
the fortunate man (1.32.6): ‘sound of limb (ἄπηρος), free from disease
(ἄνουσος), untouched by suffering (ἀπαθὴς κακῶν), the father of fair
children (εὔπαις) and himself of comely form (εὐειδής)’, that displays clear
generic affinity to such lists as will appear in Aristotle when defining
εὐδαιμονία, but of a certainty must precede him given the Rhetoric’s claim
to be taking εὐδαιμονία as a stock example of things discussed in
deliberative oratory (Rhet. 1360b3-4, tr. Freese 1926):
εἰ δή ἐστιν ἡ εὐδαιμονία τοιοῦτον, ἀνάγκη αὐτῆς εἶναι μέρη
εὐγένειαν, πολυϕιλίαν, χρηστοϕιλίαν, πλοῦτον, εὐτεκνίαν,
πολυτεκνίαν, εὐγηρίαν· ἔτι τὰς τοῦ σώματος ἀρετάς (οἷον ὑγίειαν,
κάλλος, ἰσχύν, μέγεθος, δύναμιν ἀγωνιστικήν), δόξαν, τιμήν,
εὐτυχίαν, ἀρετήν·
If, then, such is the nature of happiness, its component parts must
necessarily be:
noble birth, numerous friends, good friends, wealth,
16
The calendrical reckoning is relevant, c. 432 BC, when Athenians seem to have
adopted the solar calendar for the Council (on which see Dunn 1998 and 1999)
and installed a heliotrope within the walls of the Pnyx (Scholia to Aristoph. Av.
997), an act which must have required similar ἀπόδειξις justifying the decision
based on greater accuracy: see Irwin 2013:269-72 for discussion and bibliography.
17
40c4-e4; note the terms used there for the numerical reckoning of the days
(ἐκλεξάμενον, εὐαριθμήτους).
10
IRWIN
good children, numerous children, a good old age; further, bodily
excellences, such as health, beauty, strength, stature, fitness for
athletic contests, a good reputation, honor, good luck, virtue. 18
Of course, here Solon speaks about the εὐτυχής – not the ὄλβιος or the
εὐδαίμων, until he ends his life well – but this fine distinction between
terms is precisely that which places him once again in a contemporary
intellectual context. When Solon argues that a man having had all the
aforementioned goods has also then to die well in order to be considered
ὄλβιος, being before death at best only εὐτυχής,19 and repeats in
conclusion that such a man ‘justly/rightly’ bears the name (ὄνομα)
ὄλβιος,20 he echoes again such concerns at home in the teachings of
Prodicus, a figure famous for his concern with the correct use of ‘names’
(ὀνόματα), and for having had a following,21 counted among whom were
Socratics like Xenophon and Antisthenes.22 One might well compare a
quotation of the latter (fr. 177 = DL 6.5) to see how closely Solon’s
definition of happiness finds parallels among discussions taking place in the
intellectual circles of late-fifth century Athens: ‘Being asked what was the
18
See also EN 1099b2-1099b8 for an enumeration of the external goods that
happiness requires: ‘good birth, good children, beauty, living children’. In fact, this
list of prerequisites for happiness explains, as Aristotle will comment, why some
people use the term εὐτυχία in place of εὐδαιμονία (1099b7-8), which is, of
course, what Solon proposes to do. The close relationship of the two was also
visually depicted in personifications on Attic vases: see Florence, Museo
Archeologico Nazionale 81948 in which Eutuchia is depicted as if a handmaid
holding a mirror up to Eudaimonia; see Smith 2011:62, 158; fig. 5.11.
19
1.32.7: εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσει τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ
ζητέεις, <ὁ> ὄλβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιός ἐστι· πρὶν δ’ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν μηδὲ
καλέειν κω ὄλβιον, ἀλλ’ εὐτυχέα (‘And if in addition to this he shall end his life
well, he is worthy to be called that which thou seekest, namely a happy man; but
before he comes to his end it is well to hold back and not to call him yet happy
but only fortunate’).
20
1.32.9: ὃς δ’ ἂν αὐτῶν πλεῖστα ἔχων διατελέῃ καὶ ἔπειτα τελευτήσῃ εὐχαρίστως
τὸν βίον, οὗτος παρ’ ἐμοὶ τὸ οὔνομα τοῦτο, ὦ βασιλεῦ, δίκαιός ἐστι ϕέρεσθαι (‘But
whosoever of men continues to the end in possession of the greatest number of
these things and then has a gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted
worthy, O king, to receive this name’).
21
On Prodicus’ interest in language, see De Romilly 1986; for the sources, see
Mayhew 2011:16-38.
22
Xen. Symp. 4.62; Philostr. VS 1.12.496 (= Mayhew 2011 no. 10) and Lib. Decl.
2.16 (= Mayhew 2011 no. 11).
11
height of human bliss (τί μακαριώτατον ἐν ἀνθρώποις), he replied, “To die
having good fortune” (τὸ εὐτυχοῦντα ἀποθανεῖν).’ It is to such discussions
that I now turn.
2. Debating εὐδαιμονία at Athens
Herodotus’ choice to construct a parallel between himself and Solon has
consequences – certainly intended – for the relationship of this λόγος to
his readers. When Solon the sophist or, as described by his host, a
‘practitioner of philosophy’, challenges Croesus’ understanding of
εὐδαιμονίη as wealth, his words serve likewise to challenge those of
Herodotus’ audiences – contemporary and future – who employ that
definition which the ἀπόδειξις of Solon/Herodotus demonstrates to be so
misguided. As we have already begun to suggest, this challenge would have
had particular salience for one audience among Herodotus’ contemporaries
who, like Croesus, possessed a φόρος-bearing ἀρχή.23 Numerous sources of
the 5th and 4th centuries point to εὐδαιμονία as the term used by
Athenians of the prosperity afforded to them by their ἀρχή, an εὐδαιμονία
built upon the same source as Croesus’ ἀρχή, namely tribute (φόρος) from
Ionian Greeks.24 Isocrates asks, ‘… in their war against the Persians, who
does not know from what circumstances [the Athenians] landed
themselves in such great εὐδαιμονία (εἰς ὅσην εὐδαιμονίαν
κατέστησαν)?’,25 and tells of how the Athenians paraded the incoming
tribute on the stage of the theatre of Dionysus, calling the city εὐδαίμων as
they did so.26 It is not clear when exactly this usage began, although below
I offer some thoughts on how and why it proliferated, but one finds this
usage reflected in Pericles’ famous resources speech, spoken on the eve of
the Atheno-Peloponnesian War when he adduced Athens’ professed
εὐδαιμονία, the guarantor of easy victory, to goad the Athenians on to war.
Cataloguing the wealth already amassed on the acropolis and what could
be expected in tribute each year, Pericles is said to have demonstrated how
‘by reason of the long peace the manner of life of the citizens had made
23
It is extremely likely that Plutarch saw this when he represents Solon’s rejection
of gold and silver as an ἀναμέτρησις of happiness, as disregarding the value of ἀρχή
and δύναμις (Solon 27) – glosses which are buzz-words of the late 5th century.
24
Hdt. 1.6.2, repeated as the preface to our story, 1.26.3-27.1: see Moles
1996:261.
25
Isocr. 6.42.
26
Isocr. 8.82.
12
IRWIN
great strides toward εὐδαιμονία’ (τούς τε τῶν πολιτῶν βίους διὰ τὴν
πολυχρόνιον εἰρήνην πολλὴν ἐπίδοσιν εἰληφέναι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν).’27
Such is the meaning of εὐδαιμονία which Thucydides will employ. One
salient example is in his assessment of the δύναμις of the Thracians where,
after cataloguing their material resources, he concludes that they were the
greatest ἀρχή of the region in terms of revenues (‘tribute’: φόρος,
πρόσοδος χρημάτων) and ‘other εὐδαιμονία’.28 Interestingly, this material
definition of εὐδαιμονία is the one that Herodotus consistently uses, but in
contrast to the Athenians’ bold claim to have gained (apparently lasting)
possession of εὐδαιμονία, Herodotus stresses instead its inherent
transience.29
This overwhelmingly material definition was hardly traditional, nor was
it uncontested. Arising from Athens’ empire,30 this definition stood at odds
27
Ephorus apud DS 12.39-40 (Loeb tr. Oldfather 1946), a speech reported also in
Thuc. 2.13. On the relationship of the two renditions of the speech, see Irwin
2013:277-80.
28
Thuc. 2.97.
29
De Heer 1969:67 comments on Herodotus’ use of εὐδαίμων as primarily
indicating possession of riches, shared with Thucydides for whom εὐδαιμονία is
always wealth: cf. e.g. 3.39.3-4.
30
This is perhaps best epitomised in a fragment of the comic poet Telecleides (fr.
45 KA), quoted by Plutarch to describe the extensive powers exercised by
Pericles (Plut. Per. 16.2), all of which related to the exercise of ἀρχή and
concluding with εὐδαιμονία in emphatic final position: ‘Telecleides says that the
Athenians had handed over to him, ‘tributes of the cities, and the cities
themselves, some to bind, other to release / stone walls, some to construct, and
then to tear down again, / treaties, power, mastery, peace, both wealth (πλοῦτος)
and εὐδαιμονία.’ Highly relevant here, but beyond the scope of our discussion, is
the proliferation of Attic vases depicting Eudaimonia in the last decades of the 5th
century, on which see most recently Smith 2005:20-21 and Smith 2011:s.v.
‘Eudaimonia’ for a collection of the images and basic discussion. The images have
been largely underinterpreted owing to the failure of art historians to recognise
the political valence of εὐδαιμονία in relation both to Periclean ideology and to
the ambitions of the war: the practice described in Isocrates (quoted above note
26), for instance, seems relevant for understanding the unique appearance of
Eudaimonia with Dionysus on the volute krater attributed to the Cadmus Painter
in Ruvo, Museo Jatta 36818 (cat. no. J 1093): ARV21181.1. The frequent
presence of Eros with Eudaimonia (e.g. London BM 1846.9-25.12; Ruvo, Museo
Jatta 36818; Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81947) may be seen as
related to the exhortation of Pericles to become ἐράσται (‘lovers’) of the δύναμις
of the city (Thuc. 2.43.1) which, according to Thucydidean usage (on which see
13
with others that were no less contemporary.31 The Spartans, for instance,
are presented as maintaining that εὐδαιμονία comes from ἀρετή, and was
guaranteed to them by their Lycurgan constitution.32 And even at Athens
one sees contestation in claims about the corrupting power of happiness
defined in material terms. See, for instance, Plato’s Callicles of the Gorgias
Kallet-Marx 1993:1-35), denoted the wealth of the city, its χρήματα, in which her
δύναμις consisted. The presence of Hygeia on several of these vases (New York,
MMA 09.221.40; Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81948; London BM
1846.9-25.12 and 1893.11-3.2) would be apotropaic and related to rectifying
Pericles’ oversight when, claiming εὐδαιμονία and the attainability of full
αὐτάρκεια, he persuaded Athenians to adopt a war strategy that led to the plague
(‘sudden and unexpected’: τὸ αἰφνίδιον καὶ ἀπροσδόκητον, Thuc. 2.61.3; the only
thing ‘greater than expectation’: ἐλπίδος κρεῖσσον, Thuc. 2.64.1); even more
telling in this regard is the appearance of Eudaimonia with Asclepius at Epidaurus
(Leuven, Katholieke Universiteit, Didactisch Museum Archeologie (KUL-A) –
1000) given the Athenians had been barred access to Epidaurus during the plague
owing to the war (cf. their enthusiastic introduction of the god soon after the
Peace of Nicias).
31
For example, one can see a range of meanings on display in [Pl.] Defin. 412d11,
as well as the preponderance of those definitions based on material conditions:
‘Eudaimonia is a good composed of all goods (ἀγαθὸν ἐκ πάντων ἀγαθῶν
συγκείμενον); a self-sufficient capacity for living well (δύναμις αὐτάρκης πρὸς τὸ
εὖ ζῆν); perfection in accord with virtue (τελειότης κατ’ ἀρετήν); resources
sufficient for a living creature (ὠϕελία αὐτάρκης ζῴου).’
32
Xen. Const. Lac. 1.2.5: ‘Lycurgus, who gave them the laws that they obey, and
to which they owe their prosperity (ηὐδαιμόνησαν), I do regard with wonder
(θαυμάζω); and I think that he reached the utmost limit of wisdom. For … by
devising a system utterly different from that of most others, he made his country
pre-eminent in εὐδαιμονία (προέχουσαν εὐδαιμονίᾳ τὴν πατρίδα ἐπέδειξεν)’
(Loeb tr. Marchant 1923). Plut. Lyc. 31.1: ‘It was not, however, the chief design of
Lycurgus then to leave his city in command over a great many others, but he
thought that the εὐδαιμονία of an entire city, like that of a single individual,
depended on the prevalence of virtue (ὥσπερ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς βίῳ καὶ πόλεως ὅλης
νομίζων εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ἐγγίνεσθαι) and concord within its own borders.
The aim, therefore, of all his arrangements and adjustments was to make his
people free-minded (ἐλευθέριοι), self-sufficing (αὐτάρκεις), and moderate in all
their ways (σωϕρονοῦντες), and to keep them so as long as possible (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον
χρόνον διατελῶσι)’ (Loeb tr. Perrin 1914). Contrast Aristotle who, in defence of
the status he claims for his εὐδαιμονία, mounts a weak attack against ἀρετή as the
‘Good’ and the τέλος of the political life on the grounds that ‘ἀρετή does not
require being put into practice’ and ‘one can have ἀρετή when one sleeps’ (EN
1095b31-3).
14
IRWIN
who candidly expresses a view which, according to Socrates, many think
but are afraid to admit, namely, that luxury (τρυφή), lack of restraint
(ἀκολασία) and freedom (ἐλευθερία) are ἀρετή and εὐδαιμονία, while
what is normally said is just convention and contrary to nature.33 Similarly,
Antiphon is said to have derided the pursuit of philosophy as advocated by
Socrates on the grounds that it did not make anyone εὐδαίμων, that is,
materially well off.34 Socrates, in turn, criticises Antiphon as wrongly
seeing εὐδαιμονία as τρυφή (‘luxury’) and πολυτέλεια (‘extravagance’).35
Socrates might seem a lone voice in defining εὐδαιμονία on a non-material
basis, and his view was no doubt unpopular, but others shared that view:
beyond the expected echoes among Socratics like Antisthenes,
Democritus, for instance, can insist that εὐδαιμονία is not predicated on
wealth but is rather a quality of the soul,36 and such a view, rejecting as it
does a material definition of εὐδαιμονία, must be acknowledged to be
closer to the Spartan conception of happiness than to that most at home in
Athenians.
33
Pl. Gorg. 492c.
Antiphon in Xen. Mem. 1.6.2, 10: ‘Socrates, I supposed that those engaged in
philosophy ought to be happier (τοὺς ϕιλοσοϕοῦντας εὐδαιμονεστέρους χρῆναι
γίγνεσθαι), but you seem to me to have derived the opposite from philosophy.
For example you are living a life that would drive even a slave to desert his master
…’ (Loeb tr. Marchant 1923).
35
Xen. Mem. 1.6.10: ‘You seem, Antiphon to think that happiness (τὴν
εὐδαιμονίαν) consists in luxury (τρυϕὴν) and extravagance (πολυτέλειαν). But I
believe that to want nothing is divine; to have as few wants as possible comes
next to the divine, and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which
approaches nearest the divine is nearest to the supreme (τὸ μὲν μηδενὸς δεῖσθαι
θεῖον εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐλαχίστων ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου, καὶ τὸ μὲν θεῖον κράτιστον,
τὸ δ’ ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ κρατίστου).’
36
Democr. 65 fr. 40, 170, 171 DK. See also DL 6.11: ‘[Antisthenes held] virtue to
be sufficient in itself for happiness (αὐτάρκη δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν),
since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. And he held that
virtue belongs to deeds (τήν τ’ ἀρετὴν τῶν ἔργων) and does not need very many
words nor lessons (μήτε λόγων πλείστων δεομένην μήτε μαθημάτων).’ Such a
sentiment is likely to explain the particular verdict Croesus gives of Solon as
ἀμαθής: ‘Thus saying he refused to gratify Croesus, who sent him away from his
presence holding him in no esteem, and thinking him utterly senseless (κάρτα
δόξας ἀμαθέα εἶναι) in that he passed over present good things and bade men look
to the end of every matter.’
34
15
A seminal text for this issue brings us yet again to the sophist Prodicus,
this time to his famous Choice of Heracles:37 his mythic allegory presents
two goddesses attempting to persuade the young Heracles at the
crossroads of the benefits of the life they each propose. Contestation is
embodied in the very name (ὄνομα) of the figure arguing for a life of ease,
comfort and luxury: she is called by her friends ‘Εὐδαιμονία’, but others
label her Κακία (‘Vice’).38 By contrast, Ἀρετή has only a single name, and
while to be sure the life she proposes requires labour (πόνος), it is only
through such labour, the goddess maintains, that one can reach ‘the most
blessed εὐδαιμονία’.39 The stress on labour and the association of ἀρετή
with the attainment of εὐδαιμονία all mark this lifestyle as
(stereotypically) Spartan/Dorian, and appropriately so when one considers
that the one making this choice, Heracles, is the mythic forebear of the
Dorian race.40 Here one might note the affinity with Solon’s selection for
the happiest man: Tellus receives the award of most happy because of an
end characterised by traditional ἀρετή – a καλὸς θάνατος for his city – and
what Cleobis and Biton are rewarded for is their πόνος in drawing their
mother’s cart to the sanctuary for the festival. One must observe that here
Herodotus portrays the Athenian wise man and political figure of the past
as possessing a definition of ‘happiness’ at odds with the definition
overwhelmingly employed by present-day Athenians, and one that he
presents the values of his Croesus as embodying. One might understand
Herodotus’ use of Solon to point at once to what the Athenians used to
recognise as wisdom, and also to the contemporary definition of happiness
used both outside Athens and among a minority of Athenians. Rather than
representing Solon’s view as dated, Herodotus may well be using the
Athenian lawgiver to argue for a universal truth that contemporary
Athenians have erroneously rejected on the grounds of alleging it to be
‘archaic’ and as such not applicable to the ‘progress’ which they purport
their city to have attained.41
37
Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-34.
Xen. Mem. 2.1.26.
39
Xen. Mem 2.1.33.
40
On the valence of labour in Dorian and Spartan identity and lifestyle, see e.g.
(Dorian) Thuc. 1.123.1, (Spartan) Xen. Lac. Pol. 2.5.5, 3.2.2 with Lipka 2002:1819, 115, 124, 137 and (for a negative portrayal) Ael. VH 13.38.
41
One can find a similar point made about progress in the light of what is
constant and timeless in Soph. Ant. 332-75.
38
16
IRWIN
One could trace in finer detail the contours of the fifth-century debate,
but space will not allow this if we are to reach Aristotle. The focus is here
as much on the fact of the debate and its political context as on the
definitions themselves, for Aristotle has inherited its legacy. Before,
however, turning to a discussion of Aristotle, one ought to speak briefly of
origins, that is, how this meaning of εὐδαιμονία came to be embraced; for
such a discussion will prove relevant to understanding Aristotle’s own
definition of εὐδαιμονία and his (ultimately dismissive) engagement with
Herodotus’ Solon.
No doubt, the necessary condition for the popularity of this definition
at Athens was the material prosperity arising from the ἀρχή, particularly in
the form of the sudden surge in wealth that came with the movement of
the Delian treasury to Athens in 454 BC, giving rise thereafter to the
building programme and the parade of tribute in the theatre of Dionysus
as visible proof of the city’s εὐδαιμονία. ‘Necessary’, but not sufficient: the
question still remains why εὐδαιμονία should have been chosen as the
term used to refer to this accumulated wealth along with the quality of life
and ambitions that attended it. Three explanations seem in combination to
underlie its adoption, and will prove relevant to understanding Aristotle.
The more traditional of the explanations would seem to bow to piety
and reflect moral anxiety in its invocation of the gods as the basis of
Athens’ prosperity. Given that the Athenians owed their economic surplus
to policies and acts that the evidence attests were open to the moral and
religious criticism of contemporaries,42 the adoption of the term
εὐδαιμονία for this wealth, understood as ‘the state of having a good
δαίμων’,43 served to respond to such criticism by implicating the gods’
favour in Athens’ prosperity, its acquisition and continued possession: ‘we
wouldn’t be in this position were the gods not favourable’; ‘it must be the
gods’ will’.44 Such an argument would explain Solon’s injunction to ‘look to
the end’ before one can make a claim for divine favour: only then can one
tell the difference between εὐτυχία and εὐδαιμονία – momentary good
luck is not the same as the abiding favour of the δαίμων. As Solon well
knew (for example, fr. 13West) and some in the 5th century still believed,
42
Athenian and otherwise; see, for instance, Plut. Per. 12, 14. For Athenians’
implication of the gods in their ‘success’, see e.g. the Melian Dialogue, Thuc.
5.104-05.
43
On the meaning of the δαίμων in εὐδαιμονία, see the discussion of Mikalson
2002; see e.g. Eur. Or. 667-68, quoted by Arist. EN 1169b7-8.
44
On the gods as the source of εὐδαιμονία, see e.g. Pl. Sym. 188d8.
17
though the ‘justice of Zeus’ (conceived literally or metaphorically) most
assuredly does come, sometimes it comes late.
A second reason for the use of εὐδαιμονία rather than, for instance,
πλοῦτος, is to respond to other criticisms of the Athenians’ overvaluation
of wealth, χρήματα, and their overweening confidence arising from that
material prosperity. Once εὐδαιμονία becomes the signifier for wealth,
that which can also be called ‘the Good’, the dogged pursuit of εὐδαιμονία
by the Athenians becomes ‘natural’ and the Athenians, in their avid pursuit
of it, become no different from those who lodge criticism against them,
since they, too, are implicated in the desire for ‘happiness’:45 as Aristotle
claims, ‘the great majority of mankind agree’ that ‘the highest of all goods’
is ‘εὐδαιμονία’. Of course, multiple definitions of ‘happiness’ prevail, and
one’s conception of the ‘Good’ or εὐδαιμονία may be erroneous, as indeed
the definition predicated on wealth and thriving at Athens was, at least
according to the critics, and as one might consider the events that
transpired to have confirmed. Their criticism may be reduced to the
simple home truth that wealth simply is not happiness. As Herodotus’
Solon says, many of the extremely rich are unfortunate (ἀνόλβιοι), their
advantages over the lucky only two: they have better means to satisfy their
desires and they have the resources to better weather great misfortune. But
even so, Croesus will not be able to buy back his son’s life, nor give
enough to Apollo to avert the fate that was – in human terms – the
consequence of his erroneous belief in own εὐδαιμονία emboldening him
to pursue the conquest of Persia. Likewise, Athens’ εὐδαιμονία does little
to avert the disasters of the war and her ultimate defeat. Outside
Herodotus, the same criticism can be expressed in a more lofty
philosophical register: wealth as a pursuit is not ‘final’. Only ever a means
to acquire something else, wealth cannot be an end in itself, cannot be the
τέλος or even a τέλος of human life. This is what Socrates will attempt to
teach the young Eryxias, pointing out that if one is hungry one cannot eat
one’s money or one’s fancy home (Eryx. 394).46 Faced with such a
criticism from both popular wisdom and (some) philosophers, the
Athenians embrace a lexeme for their wealth that could seem to claim
validity as a τέλος in itself, εὐδαιμονία, as well as enjoining another
concept closely related to εὐδαιμονία in the sources, αὐτάρκεια (‘self45
One sees this kind of argument in Athens’ justification of her desire to possess
and keep her ἀρχή: Thuc. 1.76.2.
46
The dialogue chooses as its dramatic date the eve of the Sicilian expedition, a
campaign of conquest fuelled by greed. For this view, see also Arist. EN 1097a27.
18
IRWIN
sufficiency’):47 wealth could enable one to live well, and, so it was claimed,
attain ‘self-sufficiency’, a traditional τέλος applied in novel ways in
Periclean Athens.48 There will be more to say on αὐτάρκεια below, given
its importance to Aristotle, but suffice it to recognise here already that
Herodotus’ Solon must certainly be involved in this discussion when his
challenge to Croesus’ definition of εὐδαιμονία goes on, out of nowhere, to
dismiss the possibility of human αὐτάρκεια (1.32.8-9):
Now to possess all these things together is impossible for one who
is mere man, just as no single land suffices to supply all things for
itself (τὰ πάντα μέν νυν ταῦτα συλλαβεῖν ἄνθρωπον ἐόντα
ἀδύνατόν ἐστι, ὥσπερ χώρη οὐδεμία καταρκέει πάντα ἑωυτῇ
παρέχουσα), but one thing it has and another it lacks, and the land
that has the greatest number of things is the best: so also in the case
of a man, no single person is complete in himself (ὥς δὲ καὶ
ἀνθρώπου σῶμα ἓν οὐδὲν αὔταρκές ἐστι) for one thing he has and
another he lacks; but whosoever of men continues to the end in
47
The collocation of εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια is widespread. See Arist. Rhet.
1360b14-15 where one popular definition of εὐδαιμονία holds it to be αὐτάρκεια
ζωῆς, and the possession of all the commonly held components of εὐδαιμονία is
said by Aristotle to render a man αὐταρκέστατος (1.5.4). See also EN 1176b5-6
(cf. 1097b14-21) for the given (γὰρ) that ‘happiness lacks nothing, but is rather
self-sufficient (οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἐνδεὴς ἡ εὐδαιμονία ἀλλ᾽ αὐτάρκης)’, and also Pl. Def.
412d11, ‘εὐδαιμονία is … a self-sufficient capacity for living well (δύναμις
αὐτάρκης πρὸς τὸ εὖ ζῆν), … resources belonging to a living creature adequate to
render it self-sufficient (ὠϕελία αὐτάρκης ζῴου)’, and (413e10), ‘a πολιτεία is a
community (κοινωνία) of many men, self-sufficient for living successfully
(αὐτάρκης πρὸς
εὐδαιμονίαν).’ For the additional collocation of the idea of the
τέλος and what is τέλειον, see e.g. Arist. EN 1097b20-21: ‘Happiness, therefore,
being found to be something final (τέλειον) and self-sufficient (αὔταρκες), is the
End (τέλος) at which all actions aim.’ For self-sufficiency as a τέλος already
attested in the later 5th century, see Suda s.v. ‘Ιππίας, the legacy of which felt
throughout Aristotle’s Politics, but perhaps most succinctly expressed at 1253a1:
‘… and self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια) is both an end and a chief good (καὶ τέλος καὶ
βέλτιστον)’.
48
Wheeler 1955:420; Gaiser 1975:70; Raaflaub 1984:59-66; 1985:237-41; Irwin
2013:294-309. Raaflaub 1985:238 needs only to be corrected in his claim that the
rarity of the word in the 5th century means it ‘never became an important
concept of political language or propaganda’, since an important concept with a
short (and disastrous) history could render the same record: the latter scenario is
easily observed (e.g. by a simple library catalogue search) in the case of Autarkie in
modern German political thought.
19
possession of the greatest number of these things and then has a
gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted worthy, O king,
to receive this name.
In terms of Solon’s speech, αὐτάρκης and this discourse on the parallelism
between an individual and a country comes out of the blue, not least
because for Solon to use the word αὐτάρκης is a flagrant anachronism.49 Of
course, his elaboration is entirely understandable once one recalls the
connection between εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια thriving in discussions of
political theory at the time (see, for example, the dramatic date of Plato’s
Republic), and recognises that Herodotus has Solon construct this parallel
precisely as a contribution to those same discussions. Moreover, no less
than the philosophers, Herodotus, through his Solon, shows interest in the
τέλος, but it is certainly not the τέλος of εὐδαιμονία or of αὐτάρκεια;
rather, such ‘ends’ (τέλη) as these he categorically rejects as attainable for
living humans; instead, he turns his readers’ attention to the only ‘End’ of a
human life, the literal τελευτή of his or her own life, embodying this, in
one case, in a figure significantly named Tellus,50 and, in the other, making
it explicit that it is impossible to speak of the εὐδαιμονία of a human, at
least while he or she yet lives. Surely Herodotus’ collocation of the terms
εὐδαιμονία, αὔταρκες and the idea of the τέλος in a single speech cannot
be accidental, but rather the result of extensive engagement with the
contemporary intellectual debates demonstrated in Part 1. I return to this
collocation below in the discussion of Aristotle.
A third explanation involves both αὐτάρκεια and the δαίμων of
εὐδαιμονία, but unlike the first makes no attempt at piety; on the
contrary, it implies the (relatively) divine status of εὐδαιμονία’s possessors,
the Athenians, owing to the prosperity of their city – superlative in
relation to all others – that arose from their ἀρχή, and in so doing further
explains the role of ‘the god/the divine’ in Solon’s discourse on happiness
as well as his categorical denial of the αὐτάρκεια of a man or a land. That
the gods are themselves εὐδαίμονες and enjoy εὐδαιμονία is presented as a
49
The first appearance of the word is in Aesch. Choeph. 757, and it is otherwise
rare even in the 5th century: it appears only a single time in each of the tragedians
(Eur. fr. 29, quoted below; Soph. OC 1057), and four times each in Democritus
and Thucydides; contrast the numerous appearances in Plato, Xenophon and the
Hippocratics. For discussions of the concept, see Wilpert 1950; Wheeler 1955,
Warnach 1971.
50
Tellus, moreover, will live up to Aristotle’s criterion that requires as a
component of εὐδαιμονία a complete (τέλειος) life (e.g. EN 1101a16).
20
IRWIN
given in our classical sources.51 And when not stated as a τέλος in itself, to
be autarkic is a key element in the idea of the τέλος of εὐδαιμονία, a state
also ascribed to the gods, and best epitomised in the definition of ‘god’
found, for instance, in the Platonic Definitions (411a3): ‘God is an
immortal living being, self-sufficient for happiness’ (αὔταρκες πρὸς
εὐδαιμονίαν). Despite being the definition of a god, nevertheless the
aspiration to be both εὐδαίμονες and αὔταρκες – or at least to possess these
qualities to the greatest extent admissible within the limits of human
φύσις – is clearly attested in the 5th century, and explicitly in association
with the ambition to achieve an existence approaching as near as possible
that of the gods. Socrates’ conversation with Antiphon in Xenophon
demonstrates one way in which the divide between man and god
conceptualised in these terms is being assailed in fifth-century Athens.
When Socrates chastises Antiphon for defining εὐδαιμονία in material
terms, he goes on to state by way of syllogism:
But I believe that to want nothing is divine (θεῖον); to have as few
wants as possible comes next to the divine (τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐλαχίστων
ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου), and as that which is divine is supreme (τὸ μὲν
θεῖον κράτιστον), so that which approaches nearest the divine is
nearest to the supreme (καὶ τὸ δ’ ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ
κρατίστου).
(Xen. Mem.1.6.10)
That Socrates here describes the state of αὐτάρκεια is clear from other
passages of the Memorabilia, where he is introduced as himself living most
autarkically (Xen. Mem. 1.2.14), and also as instructing those around him
to do the same (4.7.1). Of course, the εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια alleged to
have been advocated by Socratic teaching belongs to an alternate definition
of εὐδαιμονία – not based on wealth, but on virtue (ἀρετή) – but Socrates’
formulation takes the shape it does in opposition to the definition thriving
in Athens, embodied by Antiphon, Gorgias and ultimately Pericles. For
there are two contrary ways to need as little as possible, that is, to
approach the τέλος of αὐτάρκεια: one way is through training oneself to
need what is in absolute terms very little; the other is to be superlatively
(that is, relative to others) capable of satisfying virtually unlimited needs.52
51
See e.g. Eur. Hipp. 751, Pl. Sym. 202c7. Arist. EN 1178b8-9: ‘Above all
(μάλιστα) are the gods as we understand them blessed (μακαρίους) and happy
(εὐδαίμονας).’
52
Krischer 2000:257.
21
And the latter seems to be what the Athenians claimed of their πόλις
qua ἀρχή. For Pericles not only seems to have claimed for the Athenians
εὐδαιμονία, but to have accompanied that claim with one of their virtual
αὐτάρκεια. Beyond urging the Athenians to war with the assertion that the
city had made great strides ‘towards εὐδαιμονία’ – conceived as prosperity
– through their long peace, he is presented as claiming that through their
accumulated resources the Athenians had made their city ‘most autarkic’
and, what is more, the city as the ‘education’ of Greece somehow acquired
the capacity to confer αὐτάρκεια onto each Athenian’s very person.53 The
claim for making their city ‘most autarkic’ seems to have been based on
their naval power, that their superlative trading success conferred on them
the capacity to ameliorate the naturally unautarkic state inherent to every
land.54 It seems, however, that Pericles went further, arguing that their
53
Thuc. 2.36.3: ‘And we ourselves here assembled, who are now for the most part
still in the prime of life, have further strengthened the empire in most respects,
and have provided our city with all resources, so that both in war and in peace it
is sufficient in itself (ἐς πόλεμον καὶ ἐς εἰρήνην αὐταρκεστάτην).’ Thuc. 2.41.2 (cf.
Pl. Menex. 247e-248a): ‘In a word, then, I say that our city as a whole is the school
of Hellas, and that, as it seems to me, each individual amongst us could in his own
person, with the utmost grace and versatility, prove himself self-sufficient (τὸ
σῶμα αὔταρκες) in the most varied forms of activity. And that this is no mere
boast inspired by the occasion, but actual truth, is attested by the very power of
our city, a power which we have acquired in consequence of these qualities’ (Loeb
tr. Forster Smith 1928, as in all further quotation of Thucydides). Pericles’
extravagant claim regarding the σώμα αὔταρκες of the individual Athenian, subtly
qualified by Thucydides’ repeating it with negation in his narrative of the plague
when ‘nobody was autarkic’ (2.51.3), famously appears also in Solon’s emphatic
denial of the possibility of such a state for a human, ever; on the relationship
between Thucydides and Herodotus here, with bibliography, see Irwin 2013:295309.
54
Isoc. 4.42.2: ‘Again, since the different populations did not in any case possess a
country that was self-sufficing (τὴν χώραν οὐκ αὐτάρκη), each lacking in some
things and producing others in excess of their needs, and since they were greatly at
a loss where they should dispose of their surplus and whence they should import
what they lacked, in these difficulties also our city came to the rescue; for she
established the Piraeus as a market in the center of Hellas – a market of such
abundance that the articles which it is difficult to get, one here, one there, from
the rest of the world, all these it is easy to procure from Athens’ (Loeb tr. Norlin
1928). See also ‘The Old Oligarch’ [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.12, for the same point, albeit
stressed from the point of view of Athens’ own benefit from her naval supremacy
rather than its generous provision for others.
22
IRWIN
naval power could render them so superlatively autarkic as to be entirely
self-sufficient, that is, in need of no-one. The evidence suggests that not
only did the belief in their superlative economic status vis-à-vis their
enemies urge the Athenians on to undertake what was from their
perspective total war, but also no less so did a desire to attain full
αὐτάρκεια, a pursuit that entailed, of course, the belief that αὐτάρκεια is
humanly possible.55
The belief that αὐτάρκεια is an attainable goal is tied in with ‘theories
of the state’ contemporary at the time, that the πόλις or πολιτεία arose
out of human limitation, their inability individually to be autarkic. This is
seen, for instance, in the eager acceptance of Socrates’ provisional
suggestion that ‘[T]he city comes about, I think, because each of us is not
autarkic, but rather lacking in many things’ (Pl. Resp. 369b). But here is
where the danger arises: for some, it is a small step from understanding the
origins of the polis as a palliative to mitigate the natural insufficiency of the
individual to actually believing that the polis is entirely capable of enabling
humans to transcend that state: ‘A πολιτεία is a community of many men,
self-sufficient for living successfully’ (αὐτάρκης πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν, [Pl.]
Defin. 413e10). The phrase αὐτάρκης πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν is telling, given
that its use also in the definition of a god (Pl. Defin. 411a3) renders the
human πολιτεία equivalent to a divine being.56 And this conception of the
πολιτεία/πόλις is one to which Aristotle is entirely committed.57
55
Apparent in accounts of Pericles’ speeches. Ephorus (apud DS 12.39) records
Pericles as ‘advising [the Athenians] … as masters of the sea (θαλαττοκρατοῦντας)
to wage war to the end (διαπολεμεῖν) against the Spartans’; cf. Thuc. 2.13. In the
Funeral Oration (2.41.4), Thucydides has Pericles stress the Athenians’ ability ‘to
compel land and sea to lie open to [their] τόλμα, and in Pericles’ final speech, the
Athenians are exhorted to aspire to total control of all lands through control of
the sea (Thuc. 2.62.2): ‘You think that it is only over your allies that your empire
extends, but I declare that of two divisions of the world which lie open to man’s
use, the land and the sea, you hold the absolute mastery over the whole of one,
not only to the extent to which you now exercise it, but also to whatever fuller
extent you may choose; and there is no one, either the Great King or any nation of
those now on the earth, who will block your path as you sail the seas with such a
naval armament as you now possess.’ See also the aspirations in Aristoph. Εq. 797,
1330 and 1333 and expressed in Thuc. 6.18.4 and 6.90.3 by Alcibiades in relation
to the intentions behind the Sicilian expedition, a campaign conceived first under
Pericles.
56
Cf. also the phrase in Ephorus’ account of Pericles’ resource speech (apud DS
12.39-40): τούς τε τῶν πολιτῶν βίους διὰ τὴν πολυχρόνιον εἰρήνην πολλὴν
23
Before, however, turning to Aristotle more fully, one ought also to look
at what fuelled the aspiration for αὐτάρκεια so conceived by the
Athenians, and what consequences arose from their belief in the possibility
of human possession of εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια, since the answers to
these questions are relevant to evaluating the aims and priorities of
Aristotle’s project. According to the sources, αὐτάρκεια may be that which
allows one to rule oneself and do so without interference from others,58
but it is by the same token also a state that if attained allows one to treat
others as one wills, without any concern for morality. When one needs
nothing from others, so this ideology goes, one has no need of the good
will of others, nor of friends, and therefore in the absence of need one can
impose one’s will with no fear of consequence, or, otherwise said, treat
others as δούλοι. So much is clear from our sources. Thucydides’ first use
of the word is actually in conjunction with the inhabitants of Corcyra,
whose remote location, according to the Corinthians’ accusation, afforded
them an αὐτάρκεια that allowed them to treat as they would those with
whom they came into contact, to disregard justice in their dealings in full
confidence that they would never need justice from others.59 The
consequence of believing oneself autarkic is likewise apparent in a
ἐπίδοσιν εἰληφέναι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν (‘that also by reason of the long peace the
manner of life of the citizens had made great strides toward prosperity’). A
missing element here is the popularity of a theory of Prodicus, a famed atheist,
about the gods: those traditionally believed to be gods are nothing more than the
deified embodiments of the superlative achievements of humans, or the humans
themselves (Phld. Piet. 2 = PHerc 1428, cols. ii 28-iii 13 and fr. 19; Cic. De deo.
nat. 1.118; these and other testimony collected by Mayhew 2011, nos. 71-77 (4751; 180-93) with commentary.
57
See, for instance, Arist. Pol. 1252b27-30: ἡ δ᾽ ἐκ πλειόνων κωμῶν κοινωνία
τέλειος πόλις, ἤδη πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, γινομένη
μὲν τοῦ ζῆν ἕνεκεν, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν (‘The unification of several villages, when
complete, is the city-state; it has at last attained the limit of total self-sufficiency,
so to speak, and thus, while it comes into existence for the sake of life, it exists for
the good life’).
58
See [Pl.] Defin. 412b6: ‘αὐτάρκεια is a perfect possession of good things
(τελειότης κτήσεως ἀγαθῶν); the state in respect of which those who have it are
masters of themselves (ἕξις καθ’ ἣν οἱ ἔχοντες αὐτοὶ αὑτῶν ἄρχουσιν).’
59
Thuc. 1.37.3: ‘The insular and independent position of this state (ἡ πόλις αὐτῶν
ἅμα αὐτάρκη θέσιν κειμένη) causes them to be arbitrary judges of the injuries they
do to others instead of being judges appointed by mutual agreement owing to the
fact that they resort very little to the ports of their neighbours, but to a very large
extent receive into their ports others who are compelled to put in there.’
24
IRWIN
fragment of Euripides (fr. 29): ‘May I never be a friend or associate with
that man who is persuaded/confident to think thoughts of self-sufficiency,
considering his friends to be slaves’ (τούτῳ δ’ ἀνδρὶ μήτ’ εἴην ϕίλος / μήτε
ξυνείην, ὅστις αὐτάρκη ϕρονεῖν / πέποιθε δούλους τοὺς ϕίλους
ἡγούμενος). And this, indeed, is the denouement of the Croesus story
(Hdt.1.87.3). Cyrus will ask Croesus, ‘Who of men persuaded you to
campaign against my land and render me an enemy instead of a friend
(ἀντὶ ϕίλου)’, that is, ‘who persuaded you to deal with me as a potential
slave?’60 Rather than ‘who?’ the more salient question is ‘why?’ The answer
is quite simply because he thought he could: a man convinced that he
possesses secure εὐδαιμονία, and is therefore autarkic, may feel that
needing no friends he can treat people as slaves.61 From the point of view
of the narrative, this explains Solon’s sudden declaration that no man, nor
land, is autarkic, while from the point of view of Herodotus’ narration, the
explanation lies in the ideology of Athenian ἀρχή.62
3. ‘Solon’ and Aristotle
While the stature of Solon as a moral authority and the popularity of
Herodotus’ λόγος might seem sufficient to win Solon a mention in
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the discussion of the intellectual debates
informing Herodotus’ λόγος suggests a more penetrating explanation for
its presence: Aristotle’s attempt to establish – or rather reassert –
εὐδαιμονία as an attainable τέλος for humans would have virtually
60
That the ‘enslavement’ of Cyrus, that is, the compelling of the defeated Persians
into a tributary relationship, was the intention of Croesus’ campaign is clear from
his previous campaigns (1.27.4, τοὺς σὺ δουλώσας ἔχεις) and implicit in how he
refers to himself in defeat: now he is the δοῦλος of Cyrus (Hdt.1.89.1). Cf. the
δουλοσύνη intended for the Ethiopians (3.21).
61
Of course, implicated in this view is a theory of friendship based primarily on
need and self-interest, and the idea that one only makes friends of equals, those
from whom one cannot derive one’s own benefit through compulsion. See
Aristotle’s question, ‘Does the εὐδαίμων need friends?’ (EN 1169b3-8; see also EE
1244b).
62
Relevant here, of course, is the fact that by the late 5th century the tribute
relationship could be conceptualised as one of ‘slavery’, whether Persian δασμός or
Athenian φόρος (e.g. Hdt. 1.6, 27.4; Thuc. 1.98.4, 121.5, 124.3, 3.10.3, etc.): the
obligation to pay tribute could be conceptualised as Athens treating φίλοι, that is,
her allies (as well as ideologically her Ionian kin) with whom she agreed to have
the ‘same friends and enemies’, as δούλοι.
25
demanded a substantial response to Solon’s views. For Herodotus has
presented his Solon as a contemporary intellectual criticising as
fundamentally flawed a political ideology whose τέλος, human εὐδαιμονίη
conceptualised as wealth and (at least virtual) αὐτάρκεια, engenders not
only disastrous consequences for those so deluded as to dismiss the advice
‘to look to the end’ with a verdict like that made by Croesus – to him
Solon is ἀμαθής – but also the unethical behaviour that preceded and gave
rise to these consequences. Irrespective of whether Aristotle understood
Herodotus’ political subtext, or merely thought he was engaging with –
and successfully refuting – a view ascribed to a traditional wise man that
had gained immense popularity through a memorable narrative, his
discussion of Solon’s views engages in a debate with criticisms of Athens of
the late 5th century. The words of Herodotus’ Solon defies the claims of
Pericles and of the intellectuals responsible for the theory of social origins
that underpinned Periclean ideology. He is a figure who treats as nothing
the kind of εὐδαιμονίη claimed by Athens, categorically denying the
possibility of human αὐτάρκεια, and in doing so rejects also the pretensions
of those who were induced to believe that αὐτάρκεια could be attainable,
and to believe also that the step from being ‘most autarkic’ to ‘absolutely
autarkic’ was simply a matter of a victory in war guaranteed by the
superior financial reserves, their εὐδαιμονία.
Here I want to address, first, Aristotle’s allusion to Herodotus’ Solon
and then demonstrate, as a basis for further study, just how much of the
ideology of Periclean Athens, that is, the ideology belonging to Athens of
the ἀρχή, underlies and pervades Aristotle’s account of εὐδαιμονία. Since
the implications of such an identification of a Periclean legacy in Aristotle’s
works are broad, and necessitate a re-evaluation of Aristotle’s social,
political and ethical philosophy, it should therefore be clear that the
discussion here can only provide an introduction and invitation to a fuller
re-examination of the political and historical antecedents of the ideas that
informed and underlie Aristotle’s thought.
Solon’s view constitutes virtually the last obstacle to Aristotle’s
definition of εὐδαιμονία and to his claim that it is the attainable τέλος of
human life, and insofar as his words constitute, as we will see, a critique of
an ideology that Aristotle has chosen to embrace in revised form, Solon’s
opposition must indeed be overcome. In what follows, much attention
will be drawn to Aristotle’s mode of argumentation in making his case.
Given Aristotle’s identification of εὐδαιμονία as a subject belonging to the
study of rhetoric in the treatise of the same name, one is entitled to
consider not only the content, but also the rhetoric that he employs in
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IRWIN
dealing with a view that denies the validity of his entire project. Aristotle
presents Solon’s view as a possible objection, asking (EN 1100a10-11),
‘Must we not call a man εὐδαίμων while he lives, following Solon’s
warning to “look to the end”?’ He then embarks on certain preliminary
considerations in which he portrays himself as carefully weighing the
possibility of the validity of Solon’s objection, a rhetorical performance
that serves to establish both his authority and objectivity. Finding ἄτοπον
the possibility that Solon would mean a dead man is actually happy
(εὐδαίμων), given that happiness ought (according to him and presumably
his target audience) to consist in activity, he gives Solon the benefit of the
doubt that perhaps what he meant is that a man cannot be said to have
been happy until his life is over (1100a11-17). This view, however, he
finds no less ἄτοπον. Here traditional views about the dead are invoked to
undermine Solon’s view as one leading to ἀπορία: given, as is commonly
believed, the dead are affected by the fortunes of their descendants, it
would be ἄτοπον, Aristotle points out, for an εὐδαίμων man to lose his
title depending on the vicissitudes of successive generations, and yet also
ἄτοπον would it be were the fortunes of descendants not to touch the
dead at all (1100a17-31). Here Aristotle abandons this discussion as if
there is no way to assist Solon out of this contradiction, and moves on to
the more serious difficulty that Solon poses to his project. This is all
seemingly a legitimate handling of Solon, were it not the case that at the
safe distance of the next chapter, Aristotle will return to the subject of the
vicissitudes of the dead and there render the contradiction inconsequential
when applied to his own position: the dead are not significantly affected by
their descendants, he claims, so as ‘to make the happy unhappy or rob the
happy of their blessedness’. Given that Aristotle will ultimately dismiss the
idea that successive generations influence the happiness of the dead (EN
1101b1-9), his choice to problematise Solon’s formulation with this
concern must be seen as somewhat disingenuous, as a piece of rhetoric
whose effects are, on the one hand, to establish his own authority by
demonstrating his careful evaluation of the view of his predecessor before
setting it aside, as well as his piety in seeming to ascribe to traditional
views of the dead and, on the other, to undermine right from the very
outset the authority of a view of εὐδαιμονία in competition with his own.
At the same time, nestled between the ἀπορία that Aristotle generates
from Solon’s position and the capacity of his own position seemingly to
transcend it, lies Aristotle’s attempt to neutralise Solon’s more challenging
threat to his project, that being εὐδαίμων cannot be predicated of a living
man.
27
Once again Solon’s formulation is found to be ἄτοπον, or rather
Aristotle formulates this as a question, asking how it is not ἄτοπον for a
man recognised as εὐδαίμων at death not to be able to be so while actually
in possession of that state. The choice to express this argument as a
rhetorical question is not accidental: it is a move that renders his readers
actively complicit should they follow his implicit lead and answer in the
affirmative. Ἄτοπον it may well seem, but Herodotus had an answer for
Aristotle as he did for those in his own time who held such a view: the
answer resided in the 26 250 days that he calculates as belonging to a
man’s life and the potential for a reversal of fortune on any one of those
days. Such an answer, of course, would hardly be acceptable to a person
intent on the possibility of human attainment of εὐδαιμονία, as Aristotle
seems to have been, following in the footsteps of Pericles. Instead,
implicitly rejecting this limitation on what can be claimed of a living
human, Aristotle defends through lengthy argumentation his right to
persist in predicating εὐδαίμων of a human, employing a reckoning
comparable to, if demonstrably dwarfed by, Solon’s own. One might
paraphrase Aristotle’s argument as ‘just do the sums, and if one has more
good than bad, and the bad occurs sufficiently early in one’s life to allow
one to recover and enjoy happiness, one is entitled to be considered
happy.’ Sidestepped, however, is the fact that what Aristotle has labelled
ἄτοπον can only seem to be so by adopting Solon’s vantage point, the end
of a man’s life, when one is able to ‘look to the end’: for how can one
know before then if a man will have experienced no reversal of fortune?
And yet Aristotle never addresses this question, choosing instead to couch
his own conclusion again as an interrogative (1101a14-21):
May not we then confidently pronounce [lit. ‘what then is to
prevent us from calling’] that man happy who realizes complete
goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods
(τὸν κατ᾽ ἀρετὴν τελείαν ἐνεργοῦντα καὶ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀγαθοῖς ἱκανῶς
κεχορηγημένον)? Or should we add, that he must also be destined
to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete
lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly (βιωσόμενον
οὕτω καὶ τελευτήσοντα κατὰ λόγον), because the future is hidden
from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly
and absolutely final and complete (τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν δὲ τέλος καὶ
τέλειον τίθεμεν πάντῃ πάντως)? If this is so, we shall pronounce
those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing
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(οἷς ὑπάρχει καὶ ὑπάρξει) the good things we have specified to be
supremely blessed (μακαρίους), though on the human scale of bliss.
(Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)
To his question, ‘what therefore is to prevent us (τί οὖν κωλύει)?’, Solon,
Croesus when on the pyre, and ultimately Herodotus, clearly had an
answer occluded by Aristotle’s rhetoric: the transcience of human
εὐδαιμονίη and the unpredictability of a man’s life. Herodotus’ text has
given readers only a single alternative: one can believe humans may possess
εὐδαιμονίη, that there is such a thing as human εὐδαιμονίη, but then,
changeable as it is it cannot be ‘absolutely final and complete’,
(εὐδαιμονίην οὐδαμὰ ἐν τὠυτῷ μένουσαν, Hdt. 1.5), or – should one be
committed to such an absolute definition of εὐδαιμονίη – one must
abandon the idea that while alive humans could ever possess it.
One does not, however, actually need to invoke Herodotus’ λόγος to
recognise the weakness of Aristotle’s argument, however enticing its
rhetoric and what it promises to offer readers may seem to be. Couched as
a question (‘what is to hinder us?’), the conclusion belies in its very form
the apparent certainty with which Aristotle proceeds. The rhetoric has,
however, a function: it compels Aristotle’s readers to become responsible
for attributing εὐδαιμονία to a living man should they follow his leading
question, persuaded to ignore warnings such as Solon’s. Readers are,
moreover, responsible for not challenging Aristotle on his use of the future
tense (ὑπάρξει), whether because they have failed to identify – or simply
find unimportant – the unanswered question of how it could ever be
possible to say in advance that a man ‘will possess’ those good things that
constitute happiness. Language – a νόμος belonging to humans – may
permit the use of the indicative mood in speaking about the future, but it
is linguistic convention that distorts reality, sometimes dangerously so in
that it may engender a confidence in the future that is neither admissible
to humans, nor in certain areas advisable. To maintain the possibility of a
lasting human εὐδαιμονία, one defined as a divine state which entails an
autarkic existence (no doubt in relation to himself or his πολιτεία) is an
act liable to encourage, if not also arise from, unethical tendencies, and
likewise an act that will engender disastrous results. There are certain
things humans cannot, and indeed ought not, predicate of themselves –
29
even relatively, as in ‘most autarkic’ – owing to the consequences for others
and themselves of possessing such a belief.63 I return to this below.
Having discussed Aristotle’s explicit reference to Solon in chapter 10 of
Book 1, our discussion might close, but that would not do justice to two
aspects of the critique that Herodotus’ Solon levels against the conception
of εὐδαιμονία inherited and embraced by Aristotle: these have to do with
the τέλος to which each σοφός instructs one to look, and the activity of
θεωρία in which both have chosen to engage. I turn first to the τέλος.
Given the philosophical underpinnings already identified in the language
deployed in Herodotus’ λόγος, it can hardly be a coincidence that the idea
of the ‘End’, the τέλος, features in both texts, nor that these ‘Ends’ stand
opposed to each other insofar as Aristotle insists on a τέλος of man’s life
that is not, as Solon maintains, his literal τελευτή, the end that embraces
the fact of human mortality.64 A reader wishing to understand human
εὐδαιμονία is faced with a choice: to whose ‘End’ should she or he then
look and why? Aristotle’s τέλος certainly would seem more alluring, a
loftier end worthy of aspirations and, moreover, offering no uncomfortable
reminder of death, and yet his certainty about its existence is rather belied
by the instability of his own language used in identifying it (EN 1094a1826). First, he expresses the premise with all the tentativeness of a protasis,
‘If there is some τέλος of our actions that we desire on account of itself,
and other things on account of it, it is clear this would be ‘the good’ (τὸ
ἀγαθόν) and ‘the best’ (τὸ ἄριστον)’. Next, he asks the rhetorical question,
‘Wouldn’t the knowledge of this [possibly existing] τέλος be supremely
significant’ and, using a metaphor to support his ‘aim’, ‘like an archer,
having this in sight [that is, ‘looking to this τέλος’], wouldn’t we happen
upon “what is necessary (τοῦ δέοντος, a concept left vague and
unspecified]”?’ The rhetoric attending Aristotle’s εὐδαιμονία is indeed
persuasive, but one might ask whether life really is like archery, and
further ask what happens if none of the ‘ifs’ that Aristotle has forged and
accumulated in order to reach his conclusion are true, would not we,
aiming at this single (erroneous) end be almost certain (unless chance
stepped in) to err? Aristotle will again revert to the instability of another
protasis in the conclusion which allows him to embark upon his project
63
That Aristotle has been capable of persuading many a reader to think such
thoughts perhaps best illustrates just why he chose εὐδαιμονία as his case study in
the Rhetoric.
64
One should note that Aristotle himself is responsible for glossing Solon’s end
(τελευτή) with his own τέλος.
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(1094a24-25), ‘and if this is the case (εἰ δ᾽ οὕτω), one must try (πειρατέον)
[an obligation whose nature is left unexpressed] in outline to understand
what it is …’ Later, by Book 10, all this careful qualification that had
enabled Aristotle to proceed in Book 1 with his premise about human
εὐδαιμονία is dropped. Instead, after a brief acknowledgement implicating
himself and his readers as the source of this identification of εὐδαιμονία as
a τέλος (‘since we have made it the τέλος of human affairs’, 1176a30-32),
and some further qualification (‘if happiness is an activity’ and ‘if activities
are of two kinds’, 1176b2-3) that prevents ἀρετή from being the soughtafter τέλος (‘because you can have it when you are asleep’, 1176a33-35), it
is expressed unproblematically as a given that εὐδαιμονία is the τέλος of
human life (1176b31), and this despite his claim, unreconciled and
irreconcilable with the facts of human existence, that ‘εὐδαιμονία lacks
nothing [as humans do], but is autarkic [as humans are not].’ Adopting
Aristotle’s view leads, however, to its own demise: if it is true that
εὐδαιμονία lacks nothing and is autarkic (so Aristotle asserts while
channelling late fifth-century ideology) then this εὐδαιμονία, according to
‘Solon’ (and backed by empirical evidence), cannot be the τέλος of a
human life, at least not a human life which is still in progress.65
Moreover, even for Aristotle’s εὐδαιμονία, the possession of complete
αὐτάρκεια is not possible: quite simply, Aristotle never gets away from the
material dimension that belongs to the Periclean definition of happiness
which he has chosen to embrace and to which he has given new impetus,
the very one criticised by Herodotus’ Solon. In Book 1, Aristotle grants
that those who include external prosperity in the criteria of εὐδαιμονία are
likely not to be wrong (1098b22-29), and repeats, ‘Happiness
(εὐδαιμονία) manifestly requires external goods in addition, as we said; for
it is impossible (ἀδύνατον), or at least not easy, to do fine things without
sufficient financial backing (ἀχορήγητον ὄντα, 1098b33).’66 Later in Book
10, despite claiming the superiority of the activity of θεωρία over those
65
But the legacy of the conflicting views of αὐτάρκεια lies in Aristotle’s ‘so to
speak’ (ἤδη πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, Arist. Pol.
1252b27-30, quoted in full above, note 57).
66
See also the passage quoted above: the man Aristotle asks to call ‘happy’ is one
also sufficiently endowed with external goods (τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀγαθοῖς ἱκανῶς
κεχορηγημένον); cf. Heineman 1988:34. Aristotle’s qualification, ‘or at least not
easy’, is a crucial admission, even if a flawed premise: for why must it be not easy,
or if it is never easy, surely the effort entailed ought to make it worth more on the
logic of 1099b18-25.
31
belonging to other virtues on the basis of its requiring nothing for its
pursuit (1178b3-5), he admits that even the best and most autarkic life of
θεωρία does require εὐημερία. This concession is made on the basis of
nature’s inability to be autarkic (1178b33-35), a fragmentation of a man’s
existence to allow the individual, once separated from nature, to seem to
be able to transcend insufficiency, relatively speaking: he is most able to do
so insofar as he requires least, or rather less than those practicing the other
(moral) virtues. There is a certain irony in the fact that of all the wisdom
that Solon espouses in Herodotus’ account, the little that Aristotle chooses
to adopt from him is something rather pecuniary and banal: he adduces the
level of prosperity that Tellus, Cleobis and Biton were said to have
enjoyed in order to substantiate his claim that not very much wealth is
necessary for happiness (1179a9-13), given that those singled out as
happiest by Solon had only moderate means.67 And yet, although adopting
Solon when it comes to a view of the ‘standard of living’ required for
happiness, Aristotle somehow fails here to register that these men
achieving, in Solon’s opinion, superlative happiness on moderate means did
so not by engaging in θεωρία, that is, the pursuit he identifies as leading to
the greatest εὐδαιμονία, but instead by exercising traditional ἀρεταί –
courage, self-sacrifice, piety – the very virtues that Aristotle judges to be
inferior, not least for ‘economic’ reasons: they require more external goods
– are less self-sufficient – than θεωρία. The exercise of these ἀρεταί – the
basis of traditional morality – is for Aristotle demoted to that which is
‘human’, and as such lesser,68 while θεωρία is man’s superlative pursuit, an
ἀρετή associated with the divine (θεῖον) in man.69 It is to θεωρία and the
claim for its divine status that we now turn.
67
The fact that Tellus achieves the title of most happy despite moderate means, is
at odds with Aristotle’s claim in EN 1178a23-b3 that the superiority of θεωρία
lies in requiring less external means than those needed for virtues such as justice,
courage and moderation.
68
EN 1178a9-14, quoted below.
69
One might see Aristotle here as the professional teacher flogging his course:
‘Why pay more for happiness when you can have the most amount of happiness
spending less?’; see also 1178a23-34. This is the argument that appeals to a city
committed to trade; the vulgarity is comparable to that of Pericles in the Funeral
Oration (Thuc. 2.39.4), comparing Athenian bravery to that of Sparta: ‘we expend
less effort and yet are no less brave.’ On ‘moral action’ for Aristotle, that is, ‘action
in accordance with moral virtue’, counting as an inferior εὐδαιμονία, see
Heineman 1988.
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Θεωρία provides an important, if hitherto unrecognised, intertext
between Aristotle and Herodotus’ Solon. Θεωρία is the pursuit in which
Aristotle is engaged when he identifies it as leading to the life which is
most εὐδαίμων and most autarkic. Θεωρία is also that activity in which
Solon is said by Herodotus (τῆς θεωρίης ἐκδημήσας ὁ Σόλων εἵνεκεν) to
be engaged when he finds the occasion both to share his reflections on
such matters as human εὐδαιμονία and on the (im)possibility of human
αὐτάρκεια and to enjoin his interlocutor to ‘look to the End’. Again, this
collocation can hardly be coincidence: instead, as I have attempted to
show, the intertextuality arises as a consequence of both authors
responding to a common source, albeit antagonistically. For Herodotus,
this is a contemporary political ideology, for Aristotle it is its legacy. The
apparent conclusions drawn by Solon from his θεωρία represent a
diametrically opposed conception of human εὐδαιμονία to that arising
from Aristotle’s own: while Solon’s θεωρία led to a sharp delineation of the
divine from the human, mindful of human mortality, the results of
Aristotle’s θεωρία culminate in an assault on that very divide.70 The
aspiration of the θεωρετικὸς βίος as outlined in chapter seven of Book 10
is nothing less than the transcendence of man’s humanity, the achievement
of the status of the gods, at least insofar as man is (relatively if not
absolutely) able. The boldness of Aristotle’s argument is again belied by its
form, a series of protases whose truth status is far from given, and their
function is to lay upon his reader the responsibility for the acceptance of
them as truth. He begins (1177a11-18):
But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is
reasonable (εὔλογον) that it should be activity in accordance with
the highest virtue (κατὰ τὴν κρατίστην); and this will be the virtue
of the best part of us. Whether then this be the intellect (νοῦς),71
or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us (ἄρχειν
καὶ ἡγεῖσθαι) by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble
70
To reiterate his ‘arguments’, really nothing more than a series of conjoined
assertions: there is such a τέλος to human life, that human εὐδαιμονία is the τέλος,
that it is an activity (which rules out ἀρετή as a τέλος, since it can be possessed
when asleep: EN 1095b32-33, cf. EN 1176a33-35), that it is autarkic (at least as
far as a man can be) and moreover attainable.
71
This elevation of νοῦς to superlative status is surely an echo of Anaxagoras, and
as such a further link to Pericles, well recognised as an adherent of that
philosopher (Plut. Per. 4.4-5.1), and a figure cited with approval by Aristotle in
the context of this discussion (EN 1179a13-17).
33
and divine (ἔννοιαν ἔχειν περὶ καλῶν καὶ θείων), either as being
itself also actually divine (εἴτε θεῖον ὂν καὶ αὐτὸ), or as being
relatively the divinest part of us (εἴτε τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν τὸ θειότατον), it
is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue
proper to it (κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν ἀρετὴν) that will constitute perfect
happiness (ἡ τελεία εὐδαιμονία); and it has been stated already that
this activity is the activity of contemplation (θεωρητική).
(Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)
He continues by elaborating on this view and finally reiterates it in a
preliminary conclusion (1177b26-1178a2):
Such a life as this however will be higher than the human level (ὁ
δὲ τοιοῦτος ἂν εἴη βίος κρείττων ἢ κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον): not in virtue of
his humanity will a man achieve it (οὐ γὰρ ᾗ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν οὕτω
βιώσεται), but in virtue of something within him that is divine
(ἀλλ᾽ ᾗ θεῖόν τι ἐν αὐτῷ ὑπάρχει); and by as much as this
something is superior to his composite nature, by so much is its
activity superior to the exercise of the other forms of virtue. If then
the intellect is something divine in comparison with man, so is the life
of the intellect divine in comparison with human life (εἰ δὴ θεῖον ὁ
νοῦς πρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, καὶ ὁ κατὰ τοῦτον βίος θεῖος πρὸς τὸν
ἀνθρώπινον βίον). Nor ought we to obey those who enjoin that a
man should have man’s thoughts and a mortal the thoughts of
mortality (οὐ χρὴ δὲ κατὰ τοὺς παραινοῦντας ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν
ἄνθρωπον ὄντα οὐδὲ θνητὰ τὸν θνητόν), but we ought so far as
possible to achieve immortality (ἀθανατίζειν), and do all that man
may to live in accordance with the highest thing in him (πάντα
ποιεῖν πρὸς τὸ ζῆν κατὰ τὸ κράτιστον τῶν ἐν αὑτῷ); for though this
be small in bulk, in power (δυνάμει) and value (τιμιότητι) it far
surpasses all the rest (πολὺ μᾶλλον πάντων ὑπερέχει). 72
Aristotle’s breathtakingly ambitious claim, ‘Such a life will be greater than
the human level: not in virtue of his humanity will a man achieve it, but in
virtue of something within him that is divine’, is an implicit and beguiling
offer of what may be attainable by his readers, should they only follow his
lead. But how does he get here? The ‘argument’ which enables Aristotle to
reach this bold conclusion lies precisely in αὐτάρκεια, the claim that it is
72
In quoting only to dismiss the tragic sententia about the necessity of mortals
thinking mortal thoughts, Aristotle goes so far as to dismiss the moral reservations
expressed during the very period which informed so much of his account.
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possessed – albeit only relatively speaking in comparison to others – by the
man who engages in θεωρία (1177a27-b1):
Also the activity of contemplation will be found to possess in the
highest degree the quality that is termed self-sufficiency (ἥ τε
λεγομένη αὐτάρκεια περὶ τὴν θεωρητικὴν μάλιστ᾽ ἂν εἴη); for while
it is true that the wise man equally with the just man (ὁ δίκαιος)
and the rest requires the necessaries of life, yet, these being
adequately supplied, whereas the just man needs other persons
towards whom or with whose aid he may act justly, and so
likewise do the temperate man (ὁ σώφρων) and the brave man (ὁ
ἀνδρεῖος) and the others, the wise man on the contrary can also
contemplate by himself, and the more so the wiser he is; no doubt
he will study better with the aid of fellow-workers, but still he is
the most self-sufficient of men (ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως αὐταρκέστατος).
Here, especially, one hears the echoes of late fifth-century Athenian
thought, and, if one listens to Aristotle as Solon would to Croesus, one
begins to realise the danger of where such a belief held by a human tends.
Aristotle’s exhortation that one should, as much as possible, attempt to
gain immortality and his subordination of moral concerns (what Aristotle
might call ἀνθρωπικά) are evocative of the final speech attributed to
Pericles by Thucydides. Here Pericles dissuades Athenians from responding
to any moral qualms about the continued execution of the war by holding
before them the μνῆμα they will leave behind (2.64.3-5):
And realise that Athens has a mighty name (ὄνομα μέγιστον)
among all mankind because she has never yielded to misfortunes,
but more freely than any other city has lavished lives and labours
upon war, and that she possesses today a power which is the
greatest that ever existed down to our time (δύναμιν μεγίστην δὴ
μέχρι τοῦδε κεκτημένην). The memory of this greatness (μνήμη
καταλελείψεται), even should we now at last give way a little – for
it is the nature of all things to decay as well as to grow – will be
left to posterity forever (ἧς ἐς ἀΐδιον τοῖς ἐπιγιγνομένοις), how
that we of all Hellenes held sway over the greatest number of
Hellenes, in the greatest wars held out against our foes whether
united or single, and inhabited a city that was the richest in all
things and the greatest. These things the man who shrinks from
action (ἀπράγμων) may indeed disparage, but he who, like
ourselves, wishes to accomplish something (ὁ δὲ δρᾶν τι καὶ αὐτὸς
βουλόμενος) will make them the goal of his endeavour, while
35
every man who does not possess them will be envious. To be hated
and obnoxious for the moment has always been the lot of those
who have aspired to rule over others; but he who, aiming at the
highest ends, accepts the odium, is well advised. For hatred does
not last long, but the splendour of the moment and the after-glory
are left in everlasting remembrance (ἡ δὲ παραυτίκα τε λαμπρότης
καὶ ἐς τὸ ἔπειτα δόξα αἰείμνηστος καταλείπεται).
This ‘remembrance’ that Pericles claims will belong in the future to
Athenians, however, requires that a certain amount of forgetting also
attends it. Forgotten or ignored must be the travesties committed against
others by an Athens under the sway of Periclean ideology and also those
consequences for Athens itself, two bloody coups, defeat in the war, and
the fact that Athens’ survival depended on the decision of her enemy not
to inflict upon the Athenians in defeat what the Athenians inflicted on so
many others.73 Such lapses of memory were, of course, possible from
Aristotle’s vantage point, a figure whose knowledge of the AthenoPeloponnesian war, of Athens’ defeat and its aftermath belonged to that of
a metic arriving in Athens some decades later, consuming such rosier
versions of the ἀρχή as he would find in Thucydides and later Isocrates.74
Such selective memory is, however, dangerous. As in the case of
‘Croesus’ – that is, Periclean Athens – so, too, with Aristotle, the danger
does not reside solely, nor most importantly, in the precariousness of the
pursuits that such a belief encourages one to undertake, confident of
success and the permanence of one’s εὐδαιμονία, but in the ‘ethics’ that
arise from such a view, ethics that gave rise to the ‘hatred of the moment’
and to the censure of those whom Pericles derogatorily labels the
ἀπράγμονες for whom ethics were a concern.75 Rather, Aristotle’s
73
Xen. Hell. 2.2.3, 10, 20; Isoc. 8.79.
See, for instance, Isoc. 4, esp. 20, 38-53, 100-09. That Aristotle ‘evidently
counts Pericles as a happy man’ (Heineman 1988:35; cf. EN 1140b7-11) is truly
remarkable given that he entirely fails to possess the constituent elements of
happiness listed by Herodotus’ Solon: Pericles loses his sister and sons to plague
(not ἀπαθὴς κακῶν), who were held to be worthless (Pl. Alc. 118d-e; cf. Arist.
Rhet. 1390b27-30) and were apparently childless (therefore not εὔπαις); he
himself was mocked for his appearance (not εὐειδής: Cratinus, Thraittai 73 K-A);
and he himself does not end his life well, instead dying of plague (not ἄνουσος),
and therefore by Aristotle’s own standards not a ‘complete life’.
75
Thuc. 2.63.2-3: ‘From this empire, however, it is too late for you even to
withdraw, if any one at the present crisis, through fear and shrinking from action
74
36
IRWIN
preference for the ἀρετή belonging to intellect, the hierarchising of ἀρεταί
in which the one involving νοῦς is said to display the κράτιστη ἀρετή
owing to its being that which ‘leads and rules’, allows for a most unethical
subordination of what those ‘thinking human thoughts’ might consider our
highest virtues, justice, courage, self-control (1178a9-14):
δευτέρως δ᾽ ὁ κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην ἀρετήν: αἱ γὰρ κατὰ ταύτην ἐνέργειαι
ἀνθρωπικαί. δίκαια γὰρ καὶ ἀνδρεῖα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα τὰ κατὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς
πρὸς ἀλλήλους πράττομεν ἐν συναλλάγμασι καὶ χρείαις καὶ
πράξεσι παντοίαις ἔν τε τοῖς πάθεσι διατηροῦντες τὸ πρέπον
ἑκάστῳ: ταῦτα δ᾽ εἶναι φαίνεται πάντα ἀνθρωπικά.
The life of moral virtue, on the other hand, is happy only in a
secondary degree. For the moral activities are purely human:
Justice, I mean, Courage and the other virtues we display in our
intercourse with our fellows, when we observe what is due to each
in contracts and services and in our various actions, and in our
emotions also; and all of these things seem to be purely human
affairs.
(Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)
The exertions concerning these ἀρεταί, dubbed by Aristotle ἀνθρωπικαί,
are deemed lesser: one can find an εὐδαιμονία in such activity, Aristotle
concedes,76 but set apart from them as clearly superior is the ἀρετή of the
mind (νοῦς). Any requirement to elaborate on a claim of such immense
ethical consequences is dismissed by Aristotle, seemingly on the
does indeed seek thus to play the honest man (ἀπραγμοσύνῃ ἀνδραγαθίζεται); for
by this time the empire you hold is a tyranny, which it may seem wrong (ἄδικον)
to have assumed, but which certainly it is dangerous to let go. Men like these
would soon ruin a state, either here, if they should win others to their views, or if
they should settle in some other land and have an independent state all to
themselves; for men of peace (τὸ γὰρ ἄπραγμον) are not safe unless flanked by
men of action; nor is it expedient in an imperial state but only in a vassal state to
seek safety by submission (οὐδὲ ἐν ἀρχούσῃ πόλει ξυμφέρει, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν ὑπηκόῳ,
ἀσφαλῶς δουλεύειν).’ In the depiction of the ἄπραγμων claiming ἀρετή in
advocating an end to the war, one might see the basis of the ἀρετή that Aristotle
denigrates as secondary for involving no activity, and as such subordinate to the
εὐδαιμονία that he advocates which requires activity; or, focalised by critics in the
5th century, this is Athens’ πολυπραγμοσύνη, whose τέλος of εὐδαιμονία was
nothing other than (as in Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles) κακία.
76
Arist. EN 1178a20-22.
37
‘responsible’ grounds of deeming it ‘greater than the task at hand’.77 Clearly
he is right about the scope of a such a discussion, but ‘the task at hand’,
one might argue, ought not to be undertaken if it necessitates an omission
of a discussion of such great moral consequence.
Instead, Aristotle chooses to shore up his claim by invoking the gods as
exempla (EN 1178b7-24), a rhetorical move which must be recognised
for the textbook sophistry that it is, the equivalent of using Zeus’
treatment of Cronus as justification for beating one’s own father. Aristotle
‘proves’ the superiority and divinity of the pursuit of θεωρία by arguing it
to be ‘what the gods do’.78 The argument proceeds in stages: since to be
just, liberal and courageous are πράξεις ‘small and unworthy of the gods’
and yet the gods are believed to engage in some activity (‘they don’t sleep
continually’), his conclusion, formulated as a question that, as such, once
again lays responsibility for its answer on his readers, begins, ‘what is left
for them to do except θεωρία (τί λείπεται πλὴν θεωρία, 1178b21)?’
Confident his rhetoric has secured the desired answer, Aristotle continues
(1178b21-23):
It follows that the activity of God, transcendent in blessedness, is
the activity of contemplation (ὥστε ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνέργεια,
μακαριότητι διαφέρουσα, θεωρητικὴ ἂν εἴη); and therefore among
human activities that which is most akin to the divine activity of
contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness (καὶ τῶν
ἀνθρωπίνων δὴ ἡ ταύτῃ συγγενεστάτη εὐδαιμονικωτάτη).
(Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)
And concluding from what has proceeded, Aristotle declares, ‘It follows
that εὐδαιμονία would be some kind of θεωρία’ (ὥστ᾽ εἴη ἂν ἡ εὐδαιμονία
θεωρία τις, 1178b32). So runs the argument. One might, however, replace
his rhetorical question with our own: ought we to be comfortable with a
hierarchising of lives (βίοι), of ends (τέλη), of ἀρεταί that leads to the
denigration of such moral virtues as courage, prudence, and above all
justice? Ought we to subordinate these virtues, labelling them as
‘secondary’ and ‘human’, to the aspiration of immortality? This is, of
course, not a question that Aristotle invites, nor is it one exclusively raised
by his account, so much as one belonging to the previous century – but
77
Arist. EN 1178a22-23.
Compare also the sophistic nurse of Euripides’ Hippolytus, who uses the
argument, ‘Zeus does it’, to attempt to persuade that there is nothing wrong with
committing adultery (451-61, 474-75).
78
38
IRWIN
also universal – and answered in the negative by those similarly minded, as
Herodotus’ Solon and the ἀπράγμονες of Pericles’ speech, and indeed
answered by considering the consequences experienced by those who
adopted the ideology underlying such a view. By contrast, the activity
pursued by such men as those to whom Solon awarded the title of most
happy is not ‘theoretic’, nor one that aspired to divine status, although
nevertheless they did – thanks to Herodotus – gain immortality. They are,
instead, the traditional virtues of courage, self-sacrifice for city and family,
and filial and religious piety (and all done on moderate means!).
From the vantage point of Aristotle, the Athens of the empire could
well have looked attractive. He had, after all, never lived during the time
of the empire, had not been on the receiving end of its excesses, 79 nor did
he experience, as Athenians did, the depredations of war and defeat, as
well as the aftermath of the years that immediately followed. Moreover,
he had no doubt read such texts as glorified the Periclean days of Athenian
ἀρχή,80 and was purveying his ‘wisdom’ to students full of nostalgia for
their city’s lost ἀρχή, its εὐδαιμονία about which they had heard so much
and of which they still witnessed the visible signs (cf. Thuc. 1.10.2). Some
of these students, to be sure, were incapable of ‘achieving immortality’
however much Aristotle, channelling Periclean ideology, guided their
θεωρία, but he would find one whose ‘success’ would come from the same
means of attaining immortality used by Periclean Athens, namely the
subordination of the ‘human virtues’ to the ambition of conquest.
To conclude: Aristotle’s views of εὐδαιμονία, his account of the origins
of πολιτεία as predicated on human need, the means by which humans
transcend their naturally unautarkic state, and his view of φιλία as selfinterest, I would suggest, all need to be examined as a legacy inherited
from fifth-century Athens. Whether Aristotle himself was fully
79
One might say, from Aristotle’s vantage point, Athens had ‘lived’ long enough
(cf. EN 1101a12-13) after the misfortunes of the end of the AthenoPeloponnesian wars and her ἀρχή to warrant the label εὐδαίμων; of course,
another reversal lay in store for them, ironically at the hands of a student of
Aristotle.
80
And indeed such texts left out the brutality: see, for instance, the inadequacy of
Thucydides’ handling of the treatment of the Aeginetans (explicitly noted in
antiquity, Dion. Hal. Thuc. 14 and 15), violently expelled from their homes (Ael.
VH 2.9) twice: first, clinically, as simply the ‘pus of the Piraeus’ (a metaphor of
Pericles of which Aristotle speaks with approval, Rhet. 1411a15-16), and then ‘as
birds having hidden themselves away’ (Plut. Comp. Nic. and Crass. 4.4-5) in their
new homes of Cythera and Thyrea.
39
committed to the values he presents in the Nicomachean Ethics, or writing
as a metic seeking to attract students belonging to a πόλις still committed
to these values, must remain an open question. In this article, the aim has
been above all to demonstrate the degree to which Herodotus’ Solon
λόγος is no relic of archaic Greece, but a sophisticated reflection of critical
contemporary debates on the definition of εὐδαιμονία and the legitimacy
and consequences of its pursuit. I hope, however, at least to have begun to
reveal the need to re-evaluate the nature of the εὐδαιμονία that Aristotle
outlines for his readers, to suggest that Aristotle’s dubious achievement in
the Nicomachean Ethics, if not also elsewhere, lies in his having been able
to divorce his discussion from the historical and ideological context in
which its ideas originated, to tidy up – curb the excesses of – the earlier
debate for those who came and will come after. And finally, I want also to
suggest – perhaps warn – that the implicit belief underlying Aristotle’s
account in the utility of a reined-in version of the political and moral
philosophy that circulated in imperial Athens may be fundamentally and
morally flawed. As Herodotus’ Solon said, one must ‘look to the end of
every matter’, and that would include looking to the acts that Athens
committed while embracing such an ideology and how acting on it worked
out for her in the end.
Herodotus’ Solon is a figure who travels around engaged in θεωρία,
whose conclusions are vastly at odds with those which Aristotle has
chosen to promulgate. Solon implicitly argues that there is one τέλος of a
human life – its τελευτή – and those human lives that he chose as the best
and brightest ended in the selfless practice of virtue – whether defending
one’s city with one’s own person, or displaying filial and religious piety.
Εὐδαιμονία cannot be predicated of a man while alive; moreover, from a
divine (θεῖον) perspective on man the most divine human life is not, pace
those who first promulgated the view of Aristotle in Book 10 of the
Ethics, one dedicated to θεωρία, but exists only in death. And rather than
exhort readers to engage in such θεωρία as ascribes to the idea of the
existence of a relatively superlative autarkic state for a human life or a
city, an activity which inevitably invites one to believe in the possibility of
attaining the τέλος of αὐτάρκεια, Herodotus, through his Solon, advises the
opposite. The most ethical, and secure because empirically grounded,
would be to forgo the temptation to use the concept in relation to
humanity, except in the context of an absolute and categorical denial of
the possibility of its human attainment.
40
IRWIN
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THE HAPPINESS OF SOPHOCLES’ AJAX
Clive Chandler
University of Cape Town
Madness makes great theatre, particularly madness which involves
delusion. This is no surprise if the tragic effect is owed in some part to an
inequality in the distribution of knowledge: some characters know things
that others do not. In the surviving examples of tragedy there are a
number of plays that feature a main character who suffers from delusions
arising from a divinely-induced bout of madness. Most conspicuous,
perhaps, are Pentheus and Heracles in Euripides’ Bacchae and Heracles, and
Ajax in Sophocles’ play.1 In the Heracles and Ajax, both eponymous
characters engage in acts of extreme violence while suffering from
delusions that the targets of their aggression are someone, or something,
else. Heracles murders his wife and three children in his own house, yet
believes he is travelling all the way to Argos from Thebes and killing his
enemy Eurystheus and his children. In the Greek encampment outside
Troy, Ajax attacks and kills a number of livestock, along with the men
stationed to protect and manage them, and takes others back to his tent to
slaughter and even torture, all the while believing that he is perpetrating
these actions upon the Atreidae and particularly Odysseus in revenge for
not being awarded the arms of Achilles. In both plays, the gods are the
cause of the delusions which are the principal characteristics of these spells
of madness (Hera via Iris and Lyssa for Heracles, Athena for Ajax).
Predictably, the reaction of other characters, and presumably even the
audience of the plays, is complex: fascination, anxiety, horror, pity,
revulsion, perhaps even amusement. The madness in both cases is seen as

I am grateful to the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions.
We know that Aeschylus devoted a trilogy to the judgement of arms and Ajax’s
suicide, but it is unclear from surviving references and fragments whether the hero
appeared mad on stage; POxy. 2256 fr. 71.12, at least as restored by the editors,
may preserve an allusion in the phrase ο]ὐκ ἰσο̣[ρ]ρ̣[όπ]ω̣ι φρενί, though the
context, such as it is, points to lack of fairness in allocating the arms to Odysseus;
but ascription to a specific play, such as Aeschylus’ Armorum iudicio is highly
speculative. Arist. Poet. 1455b34-1456a1 cites plays about Ajax and Ixion as
representatives of the second (the so-called παθητική) of the four forms of
tragedy.
1
43
an affliction of the φρένες, and thus is categorisable as a disease.2 Even the
sufferers themselves describe it as such once they recover.3 Yet, in the
descriptions of the madness of both Heracles and Ajax, and in the case of
Ajax, whom Sophocles actually presents on stage while mad, there are
unambiguous indications that the heroes are actually enjoying themselves
while performing their tasks.4 Tecmessa is quite specific on this point
when describing how she observed Ajax in his madness:
ἀνὴρ ἐκεῖνος, ἡνίκ’ ἦν ἐν τῇ νόσῳ,
αὐτὸς μὲν ἥδεθ’ οἷσιν εἴχετ’ ἐν κακοῖς,
ἡμᾶς δὲ τοὺς φρονοῦντας ἠνία ξυνών·
That man, when he was in the midst of the illness, for his part
actually enjoyed the evils in which he was being held, but it was
distressing for us, the ones with our senses, to be with him;
(271-73)
It would be a mistake to assume that the enjoyment which Heracles and
Ajax clearly derive from their hideously violent activities is itself a
symptom of madness. In Euripides’ play there is no evidence in the text
that Heracles finds the prospect of murdering Eurystheus and his children
the act of a madman, or an utterly unconscionable deed. On the contrary,
we are left to assume that if Heracles had achieved the slaughter of
Eurystheus and his family, it would have constituted another testimony to
his heroism and prowess as a warrior. Even more explicitly, in Sophocles’
play Ajax had already conceived the plan to murder and torture the
Argive commanders while he was still perfectly in his right mind, so to
speak. Though we may find the delight which he takes in describing his
assumed murderous accomplishments psychotic, or at least ‘ghoulish’,5
2
Athena says she urged Ajax on μανιάσιν νόσοις (59), and promises Odysseus
δείξω δὲ καὶ σοὶ τήνδε περιφανῆ νόσον (66); cf. Tecmessa ἐν τῇ νόσῳ (271), ὡς
ἔληξε κἀνέπνευσε τῆς νόσου (274). Collinge 1962:50 goes so far as to offer a
diagnosis: ‘Ajax’s total behaviour looks like a classic example of the manicdepressive disorder.’
3
Cf. Tecmessa’s account of Ajax’s anguish on recovery at 259 (νῦν φρόνιμος νέον
ἄλγος ἔχει), 275 (λύπῃ πᾶς ἐλήλαται κακῇ), and extensively in lines 305-27.
4
The Chorus’ neat oxymoronic phrase νοσῶν εὐφραίνεται (280) captures the
paradox; see also Tecmessa’s description of him at 303: συντιθεὶς γέλων πολύν.
5
So Finglass 2011:154; see also Stanford 1979:62: ‘Note that Athena was not the
cause of Ajax’s mad rage against the Greek commanders.’
44
CHANDLER
there is no evidence that he would find it so. His actions are only
misdirected, through the agency of the goddess Athena.
At least, while in the throes of their delusions, Heracles and Ajax are
quite happy performing their activities. While one may legitimately use
the adjective ‘happy’ in modern English in this context, from a Greek
perspective it would seem perverse to allocate them the description
εὐδαίμονες. No one in the plays, least of all Heracles or Ajax themselves,
describes the madmen as such. The ghastly consequences of their mad
actions might be thought sufficient to disqualify them from consideration
for happiness anyway. Yet both Ajax and Heracles were unaware, at the
time, of those consequences, so in the strict sense the consequences are
irrelevant to the experience of the agents while mad. Of course, if the
concept of disease is paramount in this context (and the cause of the
disease is not important here),6 then there is no way that the sufferers can
be regarded as happy, even if they appear to be experiencing enjoyment in
the midst of their delusion. So too, if the φρένες regulate our sensations,
responses and behaviours – in short, our grip on the world and how we
navigate through it – any condition which compromises the efficiency of
this organ is to be viewed as highly undesirable. Finally, it would seem
paradoxical to apply the adjective εὐδαίμων to somebody who is so clearly
the target of divine displeasure and whose true objectives are so spitefully
frustrated. Common sense should insist, then, that it would be absurd to
describe Heracles and Ajax as happy for as long as they are confined to
their delusions. Yet common sense is not always adequate.
Since εὐδαιμονία (‘happiness’) forms a fundamental topic in many
Greek philosophical discussions of practical ethics, the grounds upon
which happiness can be denied to Heracles and Ajax can be investigated
more rigorously by reference to Aristotle’s discussions in his ethical works
of what constitutes happiness, particularly since he tends to offer a review
of more general Greek opinions about happiness, and how happiness is to
be distinguished from other feelings of well-being. That being said, he does
not regard the opinions of everyone as worth taking seriously: those of
children, sick people and madmen are explicitly excluded from
consideration in the Eudemian Ethics as superfluous to the issue:
6
Ajax’s affliction is explicitly labelled a νόσος even by the goddess who caused it
(66); Holmes 2008: esp. 237-52 offers a reconsideration of the symptomatology
of Heracles’ madness and its relation to medical discourse.
45
πάσας μὲν οὖν τὰς δόξας ἐπισκοπεῖν, ὅσας ἔχουσί τινες περὶ αὐτῆς,
περίεργον (πολλὰ γὰρ φαίνεται καὶ τοῖς παιδαρίοις καὶ τοῖς
κάμνουσι καὶ παραφρονοῦσι, περὶ ὧν ἂν οὐθεὶς νοῦν ἔχων
διαπορήσειεν)·
So it is superfluous to examine all opinions that people have about
it (children, the sick, the insane have many views, but no one who
has sense would engage in discussion over those)
(1214b28-31);
In the Nicomachean Ethics, happiness (εὐδαιμονία) is acknowledged as the
supreme good, that for which all other goods are chosen, and consequently
all other choices which a person makes are subordinate to this:
τοιοῦτον δ’ ἡ εὐδαιμονία μάλιστ’ εἶναι δοκεῖ· ταύτην γὰρ αἱρούμεθα
ἀεὶ δι’ αὐτὴν καὶ οὐδέποτε δι’ ἄλλο, τιμὴν δὲ καὶ ἡδονὴν καὶ νοῦν
καὶ πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν αἱρούμεθα μὲν καὶ δι’ αὐτά (μηθενὸς γὰρ
ἀποβαίνοντος ἑλοίμεθ’ ἂν ἕκαστον αὐτῶν), αἱρούμεθα δὲ καὶ τῆς
εὐδαιμονίας χάριν, διὰ τούτων ὑπολαμβάνοντες εὐδαιμονήσειν.
Such is the kind of thing happiness most seems to be. For we
always choose this on account of itself and never on account of
something else, while honour and pleasure and intelligence and
every virtue we choose both on account of them (for even if
nothing resulted from them we would choose each one of them)
but we choose them for the sake of happiness too, assuming that
we shall be happy by means of these things.
(1097a34-b5)
One notes that honour and pleasure, two things that concern Sophocles’
mad Ajax, though they can be objects in themselves, are still viewed as
potentially subordinate to the goal of happiness itself. Aristotle suggests
that to make the identification of εὐδαιμονία meaningful (ἐναργέστερον,
1097b23) human happiness must be assessed in relation to the function of
a human life. What makes human life distinctive (τὸ ἴδιον, 1097b34),
different from that of plants and animals (1097b33-1098a3), is to be
sought in the way that the part of us that makes us unique, that is, λόγος,
is deployed in activity.7 The function of a human, alone of creatures, is
7
Arist. EN 1098a3-7: λείπεται δὴ πρακτική τις τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος· τούτου δὲ τὸ
μὲν ὡς ἐπιπειθὲς λόγῳ, τὸ δ’ ὡς ἔχον καὶ διανοούμενον. διττῶς δὲ καὶ ταύτης
λεγομένης τὴν κατ’ ἐνέργειαν θετέον· κυριώτερον γὰρ αὕτη δοκεῖ λέγεσθαι (‘what
is left then is a life that activates the part which has reason; and of this part, there
is the one as obeying reason, the other as having it and doing the thinking. Since
46
CHANDLER
activity of soul in accordance with reason or not without reason (ἐστὶν
ἔργον ἀνθρώπου ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια κατὰ λόγον ἢ μὴ ἄνευ λόγου, 1098a7-8).
Human activity, since it is inevitably an activity of the soul performed in
accordance with λόγος, can never avoid an ethical dimension: actions are
either those of a good man or of one who is not good. The proper
performance of this function is ultimately what constitutes εὐδαιμονία.
This, of course, will have categorical and moral implications for what can
count as happiness. If happiness can only be conceptualised in connection
with the activity of a human soul performed with reason, there are a
number of consequences, some of which Aristotle makes explicit. General
feelings of well-being are insufficiently specific to humans to qualify as
‘happiness’ in the strict sense of the word. It perhaps comes as no surprise
then to discover that animals, which do not have a soul equipped with
λόγος, cannot be described as happy. And a commitment to the
prescription for human function outlined above will also result in the
formal exclusion of children from happiness too. While, it seems, children
have the potential to be happy, they must await maturity before happiness
can be properly activated:
εἰκότως οὖν οὔτε βοῦν οὔτε ἵππον οὔτε ἄλλο τῶν ζῴων οὐδὲν
εὔδαιμον λέγομεν· οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν οἷόν τε κοινωνῆσαι τοιαύτης
ἐνεργείας. διὰ ταύτην δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν οὐδὲ παῖς εὐδαίμων ἐστίν·
οὔπω γὰρ πρακτικὸς τῶν τοιούτων διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν· οἱ δὲ
λεγόμενοι διὰ τὴν ἐλπίδα μακαρίζονται.
So it is reasonable then that we can call neither an ox nor a horse
nor any other animal happy. For no one of them is able to share in
this kind of activity. For this reason neither is a child happy; for it is
not yet able to engage in these kinds of activities owing to its
immaturity; rather, those said to be happy are labelled blessed
because of the expectation we have of them.
(Arist. EN 1099b32-1100a4)
There is also the consideration of duration. Although Aristotle
acknowledges that the question is amenable to debate, he seems to feel
that happiness is an inappropriate term to apply to activities of limited
duration:
life too is spoken of in two ways, the life as activity must be assumed; for this
seems to be the more proper usage of the term.’)
47
τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθὸν ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια γίνεται κατ’ ἀρετήν, εἰ δὲ
πλείους αἱ ἀρεταί, κατὰ τὴν ἀρίστην καὶ τελειοτάτην. ἔτι δ’ ἐν βίῳ
τελείῳ. μία γὰρ χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ, οὐδὲ μία ἡμέρα· οὕτω δὲ
οὐδὲ μακάριον καὶ εὐδαίμονα μία ἡμέρα οὐδ’ ὀλίγος χρόνος.
The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and
if the virtues are more than one, in accordance with the best and
most complete. One should add ‘in a complete life’. For one
swallow does not make a spring, nor one day. Therefore neither
one day nor a short period makes one blessed and happy.
(Arist. EN 1098a16-20)
No doubt, Aristotle needs to acknowledge the view associated with Solon
(Hdt. 1.32-33, and EN 1100a10-13) that it is unwise to label anyone
happy until they’re dead, but at the same time he is concerned to impose
some sort of limit on this. Happiness cannot be postponed indefinitely out
of fear of what will happen in the future. The entire question is usefully
summarised by Aristotle thus:
τί οὖν κωλύει λέγειν εὐδαίμονα τὸν κατ’ ἀρετὴν τελείαν ἐνεργοῦντα καὶ
τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀγαθοῖς ἱκανῶς κεχορηγημένον μὴ τὸν τυχόντα χρόνον ἀλλὰ
τέλειον βίον; ἢ προσθετέον καὶ βιωσόμενον οὕτω καὶ τελευτήσοντα κατὰ
λόγον; ἐπειδὴ τὸ μέλλον ἀφανὲς ἡμῖν ἐστίν, τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν δὲ τέλος
καὶ τέλειον τίθεμεν πάντῃ πάντως. εἰ δ’ οὕτω, μακαρίους ἐροῦμεν τῶν
ζώντων οἷς ὑπάρχει καὶ ὑπάρξει τὰ λεχθέντα, μακαρίους δ’ ἀνθρώπους.
καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον διωρίσθω.
So what prevents us from saying that man is happy who acts in
accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with
external goods not for a random period but for a complete life? Or
should we add he will live so and die in accordance with reason? Since
the future is invisible to us, we place happiness as the goal and complete
in every way. And if so, we shall term ‘blessed’ those of the living to
whom what has been said applies and will apply, and men blessed. Let
that be the definition for these matters so far.
(Arist. EN 1101a 14-21)
The discussion which Aristotle devotes to the question of εὐδαιμονία in
the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics serves to illuminate some of the
assumptions which an intellectualist perspective, informed more broadly
by common opinions, brings to what constitutes happiness. Most
prominent are the involvement of λόγος, the entailment of ἀρετή, and the
notion that happiness is most properly a prolonged state of activity rather
48
CHANDLER
than a fleeting feeling of well-being, exhilaration or contentment. Aristotle
gives priority to the peculiar cognitive aspects of the human animal, both
with respect to its proper function and the happiness which is a
consequence of that proper functioning. Of particular interest, in my view,
is the differentiation of happiness from a human subject’s own sense of
well-being. In a sense, εὐδαιμονία is not up to us. By that I mean that we,
as individuals, are not necessarily qualified to determine of our own accord
whether we are happy or not.
Aristotle also offers a sort of appendix, which may strike the modern
reader as a little odd. In his effort to accommodate a variety of common
beliefs, Aristotle devotes space to the question of whether the happiness
of the dead is affected by the misfortunes of their descendants.8 The
notion is curious if one reflects on the extent to which the dead are
capable of performing the function of a human as defined earlier by
Aristotle. Though Aristotle is cautious in committing himself to a belief
that the dead are affected in any way by the fortunes of the living, 9 the
investigation indirectly raises some interesting questions with respect to
happiness. Aristotle’s phrasing does not make it clear how the dead are
imagined to be affected by the misfortunes or successes of their living
friends and descendants. It is possible that Aristotle is leaving open the
possibility that living people reassess their opinion of the deceased in the
light of the unfolding destinies of their loved ones. On this understanding,
the deceased would not necessarily be aware of the fortunes of their living
relatives, or even sentient in any way at all. But the most obvious way in
which they could be affected is if they are to some degree sentient and
received information about the living. Perhaps the most famous illustration
of this sort of scenario is that offered in Book 11 of the Odyssey. Once the
shade of Achilles has heard about his son’s success at Troy, he strides
across the meadow of asphodel in joy (γηθοσύνη).10 The dead hero is
8
Arist. EN 1101a22-b9.
Arist. EN 1101b1-5: ἔοικε γὰρ ἐκ τούτων εἰ καὶ διικνεῖται πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὁτιοῦν,
εἴτ’ ἀγαθὸν εἴτε τοὐναντίον, ἀφαυρόν τι καὶ μικρὸν ἢ ἁπλῶς ἢ ἐκείνοις εἶναι, εἰ δὲ
μή, τοσοῦτόν γε καὶ τοιοῦτον ὥστε μὴ ποιεῖν εὐδαίμονας τοὺς μὴ ὄντας μηδὲ τοὺς
ὄντας ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸ μακάριον (‘for it seems from these considerations that even
if something or other does reach them, whether good or the opposite, it is
something ineffectual and small either generally or as far as they are concerned,
and if not, that it is of such a size and such a quality as to not make happy those
who are not or remove their blessedness.’)
10
Hom. Od. 11.538-40: ὣς ἐφάμην, ψυχὴ δὲ ποδώκεος Αἰακίδαο / φοίτα μακρὰ
βιβᾶσα κατ’ ἀσφοδελὸν λειμῶνα / γηθοσύνη, ὅ οἱ υἱὸν ἔφην ἀριδείκετον εἶναι.
9
49
considerably happier than he was when he began his conversation with
Odysseus. Presumably, the converse is possible too, in theory, that a visitor
to the land of the dead may bring news of some disaster, and the shade be
adversely affected. But whatever the case, the consideration of the
happiness of the dead introduces the role which awareness plays in the
state of happiness. It is, in theory, possible to remain happy if one does not
have the information that would dispel the happiness.
To return to the Ajax: after Athena has summoned Ajax from his hut
to interrogate him on what he has done, while Odysseus looks on unseen
by the deranged hero, the Ithacan confesses to feelings of pity for his
enemy and draws a lesson from his example:
ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο πλὴν
εἴδωλ’, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἢ κούφην σκιάν.
I see that all we who live are nothing other than images, or an
insubstantial shadow.
(Soph. Aj. 125-26)
One of the same terms is used by Tecmessa when she describes how Ajax
spoke to the figments of his delusion (σκιᾷ τινι, 301) believing them to be
men. Yet contemplation of the grotesque spectacle of the deluded Ajax
has led Odysseus to compare all living mortals to the shades of the dead,
and the implication of this insight is that everything we perceive as fixed
and certain about anyone is transitory and insubstantial. From the
perspective of the gods, all mortals are at risk of believing something to be
true when it is merely an illusion, and thus (potentially) where an
individual believes he is happy, he may be deluded.
Other philosophical schools offer refinements or alternatives to the
kind of understanding we find in Aristotle. Yet, with one or two possible
exceptions, while the means to happiness are made available to the human
agent, the assessment of the happiness remains objective. The human agent
does not become the sole arbiter of his own happiness. In fact, the
madman even seems to have been useful as a tool in polemical arguments
about happiness. In a Peripatetic evaluation of the Stoic claim that virtue is
sufficient for happiness, for example, Alexander of Aphrodisias draws
attention to the absurdity of taking virtue as self-sufficient by taking as
examples madmen and other persons whose cognitive functions are
adversely affected by various afflictions:
50
CHANDLER
εἰ οἷόν τε τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχοντα καὶ ἐν ληθάργῳ καὶ ἐν μελαγχολίᾳ
καὶ ἐν σκοτώσει11 καὶ ἐν παρακοπῇ γενέσθαι, ἐν οἷς ὄντα ἀδύνατον
κατ’ ἀρετὴν ἐνεργεῖν, οὐκ αὐτάρκης ἡ ἀρετὴ πρὸς τὰς οἰκείας
ἐνεργείας. πῶς γὰρ οἷόν τε λέγειν τὸν παρακόπτοντα καὶ δεσμῶν
δεόμενον διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τῆς ἐκ τῶν φίλων βοηθείας φρονίμως
ἐνεργεῖν τότε μὴ βουλομένους θέσιν φυλάττειν;
If it is possible for one having virtue to fall into a state of lethargy,
or melancholia, or vertigo or insanity, conditions in which it is
impossible for the sufferer to act in accordance with virtue, then
virtue is not sufficient for its own proper execution. For how is it
possible to say that the insane man and one who needs to be
restrained because of this and requires assistance from friends is
acting sensibly, without then wishing to maintain the position?
(Alex. Aphr. Mantissa 161.16-21)
And again:
ἔτι εἰ τὸν μὲν τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχοντα ἐνδέχεται μαίνεσθαι καὶ νοσεῖν,
εὐδαιμονεῖν δὲ τὸν μαινόμενον, ὅτε μαίνεται, ἢ τὸν νοσοῦντα ἢ τὸν
κοιμώμενον οὐδεὶς ἂν εἴποι, οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὸ εὐδαιμονεῖν ἐν τῷ τὴν
ἀρετὴν ἔχειν.
Further, if it is possible for the man who has virtue to be mad or
sick, but no one would say that the madman is happy at the time
that he is mad, or likewise the sick man, or the sleeping man, then
it would not be that happiness lies in the possession of virtue.
(Alex. Aphr. Mantissa 165.23-26)
Madness, like sickness and sleep, amounts to a suspension of the condition
of happiness. Yet this objective perspective dismisses the sensation of the
subject as relevant in any way to the assessment of the subject’s happiness.
An examination which takes seriously the subjective experiences of
Heracles and Ajax, and explains the positive feelings which the heroes
enjoy even while deranged, requires perhaps a different approach. If we
accept that Heracles and Ajax, within the limitations of the objectives
they have while deranged, are engaged in purposeful action, that their
actions are performed in accordance with a particular kind of prowess,
that is, they exhibit excellence (ἀρετή) in their performance, and that they
derive a sense of pleasure, exhilaration and achievement from actions so
11
Cf. Soph. Aj. 85: σκοτώσω βλέφαρα καὶ δεδορκότα.
51
performed, then a paradigm for this kind of activity is available. Aristotle
can be found to recognise a connection between pleasure and activity,
where pleasure completes the activity as an end which supervenes upon
the activity,
τελειοῖ δὲ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἡ ἡδονὴ οὐχ ὡς ἡ ἕξις ἐνυπάρχουσα, ἀλλ’
ὡς ἐπιγινόμενόν τι τέλος, οἷον τοῖς ἀκμαίοις ἡ ὥρα.
Pleasure completes the activity not as a state that already exists
within it but as an end which supervenes upon it, like beauty in
men who are in their prime.
(Arist. EN 1174b31-33)
Furthermore, since life itself is an activity (ἡ δὲ ζωὴ ἐνέργειά τις ἐστί,
1175a13), each individual follows his or her own preferences in the kinds
of activities undertaken and the pleasures which attend upon them: the
musician deploys his ears in hearing melodies, the lover of learning his
thought in thinking about the objects of his investigations, and so on
(1175a13-15). Although Aristotle does not include the warrior among his
illustrations, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he, too, would derive
the specific pleasure proper to the activity undertaken, particularly if the
activity in question were executed with excellence and success. Yet an
additional complication is encountered in Aristotle’s distinction between
good and bad activities and corresponding good and bad pleasures:
διαφερουσῶν δὲ τῶν ἐνεργειῶν ἐπιεικείᾳ καὶ φαυλότητι, καὶ τῶν
μὲν αἱρετῶν οὐσῶν τῶν δὲ φευκτῶν τῶν δ’ οὐδετέρων, ὁμοίως
ἔχουσι καὶ αἱ ἡδοναί· καθ’ ἑκάστην γὰρ ἐνέργειαν οἰκεία ἡδονὴ
ἔστιν. ἡ μὲν οὖν τῇ σπουδαίᾳ οἰκεία ἐπιεικής, ἡ δὲ τῇ φαύλῃ
μοχθηρά· καὶ γὰρ αἱ ἐπιθυμίαι τῶν μὲν καλῶν ἐπαινεταί, τῶν δ’
αἰσχρῶν ψεκταί.
Since activities differ in terms of virtuousness and meanness, and
some are worthy of choice, others to be avoided, and still others
neither, the same holds for pleasures too. There is a pleasure proper
to every activity. Thus the virtuous pleasure is proper to the noble
activity, the unsound pleasure to the mean activity; for the desires
for fine things are to be praised, while the desires for shameful
things are to be censured.
(Arist. EN 1175b 24-29)
Where would the warrior’s activity be best placed? Clearly, a temporarily
insane warrior could not be classified as deriving a virtuous pleasure from a
52
CHANDLER
noble activity. In her explanation to Odysseus, Athena boasts that she
frustrated Ajax’s purpose and frames this in an interesting language which
acknowledges the hero’s exhilaration:
ἐγώ σφ’ ἀπείργω, δυσφόρους ἐπ’ ὄμμασι
γνώμας βαλοῦσα, τῆς ἀνηκέστου χαρᾶς.
It was I who held him back, casting grievous fancies upon his eyes,
from his incurable joy.
(Soph. Aj. 51-52)
Some editors have wanted to emend the word χαρᾶς to φορᾶς (‘headlong
rush’) or φθορᾶς (‘act of destruction’).12 In his recent commentary on this
play, Finglass maintains the transmitted text but interprets the word as a
compressed rendering of ‘the act which would bring him joy’.13 While this
is true, the word also resonates with the exhilaration that a warrior
experiences in the Iliad when engaged in combat. The key term here is
χάρμη, which is equated with χαρά by the ancient scholiasts, grammarians
and lexicographers, and usually understood by us in the specific sense of
‘joy/lust of battle’, or sometimes ‘battle’ itself.14 The noun occurs 22 times
in the Iliad, most noticeably often in the formula μνήσαντο δὲ χάρμης
(4.222; 8.252; 14.441; 15.380) or its variation οὔ πω λήθετο χάρμης
(12.203, 393) at the end of the hexameter, which serves to secure its
status as one of the defining features of the warrior-hero. There is also the
compound adjective μενεχάρμης which combines the notions of
exhilaration and warrior spirit encapsulated in the noun μένος. A long
recognised illustration of this adrenaline-fuelled condition is offered by a
passage which involves Ajax specifically:
τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη Τελαμώνιος Αἴας·
οὕτω νῦν καὶ ἐμοὶ περὶ δούρατι χεῖρες ἄαπτοι
μαιμῶσιν, καί μοι μένος ὤρορε, νέρθε δὲ ποσσὶν
12
φορᾶς attributed to Reiske by Jebb 1896:19; φθορᾶς: Rauchenstein 1873.
Finglass 2011:154 n. 6. Jebb 1896:19 n. 13, however, connects the genitive
χαρᾶς with γνώμας βαλοῦσα: ‘I cast upon his eyes the tyrannous fancies of his
baneful joy.’
14
E.g. Hsch χ 203,1 χάρμη· ἡ μετὰ χαρᾶς μάχη, Etymologicum Gudianum μ p. 396,
line 2 χάρμη δὲ ἡ μάχη, ἤτοι κατὰ ἐναντιότητα, ἡ χαρὰν ἐμποιοῦσα τοῖς νικῶσι, χ
p. 562, line 52 <Χάρμη>, ἡ μάχη· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε δηλοῖ ἡ λέξις, καὶ τὸ χαίρειν τῇ
μάχῃ, παρὰ τὸ χαράσσω· τὴν γὰρ χαρὰν, ὡς φησὶ καὶ Ἀριστίδης.
13
53
ἔσσυμαι ἀμφοτέροισι· μενοινώω δὲ καὶ οἶος
Ἕκτορι Πριαμίδῃ ἄμοτον μεμαῶτι μάχεσθαι.
ὣς οἳ μὲν τοιαῦτα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀγόρευον
χάρμῃ γηθόσυνοι, τήν σφιν θεὸς ἔμβαλε θυμῷ·
And in reply to him (that is, Ajax son of Oileus), Ajax son of
Telamon said, ‘Now my invincible hands, too, quiver in eagerness
for the spear, my spirit is up, I feel my legs are bursting for the
sprint. I’m dying to fight furious Hector, Priam’s son, in violent
single combat.’ Thus they spoke to one another, carried high by the
exhilaration of combat which the god cast into their spirits.
(Hom. Il. 13.76-82)
The warrior experiences χάρμη as both an interior feeling and as
something intensely physical. As Latacz has noted, only psychic and
cognitive powers can be cast into the θυμός (or φρένες, καρδίη) in
Homer.15 Yet the source of the pleasure anticipated is intensely physical.
Ajax relishes the joy which will come from action, not from reflection.
When Athena tells Odysseus of Ajax’s deluded attack (Soph. Aj. 5558),
ἔνθ’ εἰσπεσὼν ἔκειρε πολύκερων φόνον
κύκλῳ ῥαχίζων, κἀδόκει μὲν ἔσθ' ὅτε
δισσοὺς Ἀτρείδας αὐτόχειρ κτείνειν ἔχων,
ὅτ’ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλον ἐμπίτνων στρατηλατῶν
then, falling upon them he sheared through and slaughtered many
horned animals all around him, slicing through their spines, and
there were times he imagined he had the two Atreidae in his grip
and was killing them with his own hand, and other times when he
thought he was attacking another member of the high command
she becomes the narrator of a compressed and perverted aristeia, one not
rendered in the language normally associated with warrior combat in
Homeric epic, but one which succeeds in conveying the physical violence
of copious butchery16 and the perpetrator’s consciousness of his actions,
particularly through the graphic references to the actual feeling of gripping
Menelaus and Agamemnon. After she has conversed with Ajax himself
15
Latacz 1966:21-23, who notes the connection between the intensity of χάρμη
and the more neutral μένος.
16
Garvie 1998:129 points out that the verb ῥαχίζω was used at Aeschylus
Persians 426 of the Greeks’ killing of the Persians.
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CHANDLER
with Odysseus looking on, she gets Odysseus to acknowledge that Ajax
was a most effective warrior.17
The reason Ajax and Heracles enjoy their bloodshed is because it is a
firmly established aspect of the epic warrior’s very make-up. Killing, it
could be argued, is the warrior’s supreme ἔργον. The tragedy for both
these characters is that the exhilaration they experience when performing
the actions which epic warriors are best fitted for, is out of its proper
context. While they exult in the physical experience of committing
violence, their delusion as to the actual targets of their actions disqualifies
them from being classified as engaged in heroic activity. And the warrior
does not have the final say on whether his own actions are ‘heroic’ anyway.
The ultimate umpires of that are one’s peers, as illustrated so clearly by the
judgement which did not favour Ajax in the allocation of Achilles’ arms.
Within the broadly normative framework offered by Aristotle, and
because of the condescension with which the sane regard the mad, Ajax
cannot be termed ‘happy’ even if he experiences pleasure while engaged in
his actions.
Bibliography
Collinge, N.E. 1962. ‘Medical terms and clinical attitudes in the tragedians.’
BICS 9:43-55.
Finglass, P.J. 2011. Sophocles Ajax, Edited with Translation and
Commentary. Cambridge.
Garvie, A.F. 1998. Sophocles. Ajax. Warminster, UK.
Holmes, B. 2008. ‘Euripides’ Heracles in the flesh.’ ClAnt 27:231-81.
Jebb, R.C. 1896. Sophocles. The Plays and Fragments. Part 7. The Ajax.
Cambridge.
Latacz, J. 1966. Zum Wortfeld ‘Freude’ in der Sprache Homers. Heidelberg.
Rauchenstein, R. 1873. ‘Zu Sophocles’ Aias’. Jahrbücher für classische
Philologie 19:581-88.
Stanford, W.B. [1963] 1979. Sophocles Ajax. New York.
17
At 119-21, Athena asks τούτου τίς ἄν σοι τἀνδρὸς ἢ προνούστερος / ἢ δρᾶν
ἀμείνων ηὑρέθη τὰ καίρια; Odysseus replies, ἐγὼ μὲν οὐδέν’ οἶδ’.
GRIEF AND CHEERFULNESS IN EARLY GREEK
MEDICAL WRITINGS
Chiara Thumiger
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
I should begin by distinguishing between two senses in which ‘happiness’
could be understood in ancient Greek discussions. On the one hand, we
find a transitory, emotional happiness which we may call ‘cheerfulness’: the
momentary enjoyment of life’s pleasures, of health and external goods, and
the corresponding euthymic emotions. On the other hand, there is a
broader conception of happiness, often designated by the term εὐδαιμονία,
which comprises the fulfilment of chosen values and the pursuit of a good
life, and which, being ‘inner’ in nature, has its source in the soul of man
rather than in external contingencies.1 Happiness in the latter,
eudaimonistic sense is central to philosophical discussions from early on,
and prudential and existential reflections on the notion occur in various
genres and authors of Greek literature (tragedy, the lyric poets,
Herodotus). The former sense, relating to the enjoyment of life’s pleasures
– from wealth to success to biological experiences like food, sex, the
interaction with one’s environment, the enjoyment of youth, the
procreation of offspring – occurs equally early in transmitted documents of
early Greek culture.
What was the contribution of ancient medical discourses to these
cultural and philosophical considerations? It is well known that medical
texts from the post-Hellenistic era, such as the Roman encyclopaedic text
De Medicina, first-century AD nosology (Aretaeus, Anonymus Parisinus)
and Galen in particular, would integrate into medical discourse ethical and
spiritual models of well-being and mental health by elaborating versions of
psychiatry which emphasise values, self-realisation and the care of the soul.
This trend is taken to an unprecedented level in Galen’s psychological
writings, and scholarship is increasingly turning its attention to this aspect,

I would like to thank Hynek Bartoš and Philip van der Eijk for their comments
on earlier drafts of this paper; Wei Chang and Stavros Kouloumentas for useful
discussions; Giulia Ecca for her help with the Greek references; and Philip Bosman
for his invitation to a wonderful conference. I also wish to thank the Alexander
von Humboldt Stiftung for its generous support of my research project.
1
Using Kahn’s expression, 1985:26.
56
THUMIGER
especially after the recent discovery of Galen’s letter on ‘not suffering’, De
Indolentia. The moral qualities of the individual and his/her control over
external circumstances – negative passions such as anger, but also excessive
discomfort – are, in some Galenic writings at least, part and parcel of
therapeutic procedures considered to fall within the domain of medicine.2
When we turn our attention to early medical writings, more precisely,
the fifth- and early fourth-century texts of the so-called Corpus
Hippocraticum,3 we find altogether different terms of discussion. The sense
of happiness we defined above as ‘cheerfulness’, together with its opposite,
are integrated into the medical discourse as objective external indicators of
health, or lack thereof, within pathological and dietetic discussions. As far
as the broader view of happiness is concerned, no trace exists of an
internally generated εὐδαιμονία which promotes either the harmony
between the individual as ethical subject and a set of values, or a person’s
spiritual actualisation. The only form in which happiness beyond present
enjoyment is contemplated, is that of ‘health’ (ὑγίεια) which refers to the
soundness of the individual’s biological functions and is, as such, externally
and objectively observable.
In fact, the Hippocratic texts, for all their variety, do not give moral
and psychological subjectivity (that is, the dimension in which the greater
εὐδαιμονία is experienced) any independence apart from the physiology of
the body, and restrict its observation to the transient context of illness.
Scholars have long since noted the easy transition in these texts from the
bodily (with our distinction) to the mental sphere, and the impossibility of
2
Galen discusses the vices of the soul in his psychological writings Quod animi
mores corporis temperamenta sequantur, De animi cuiuslibet peccatorum dignotione
et curatione, and De indolentia; see the recent translation and commentary by
Singer 2013. The contrast between the strictly medical, i.e. biological and
physiological account of the soul’s inclinations and dispositions as stated in the
Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur, and the engagement with
philosophical training as instrument of self-improvement, described in great detail
in De animi cuiuslibet peccatorum dignotione et curatione (with reference to the
much-despised vice of anger) and in De indolentia, appears irreducible; see
Hankinson 2006 on the dual nature of Galen’s contribution; see also Gill 2010
especially on the Stoic influence on this aspect of Galenic thought; Singer 2013b.
3
I shall, for the sake of convenience, use the designation ‘Hippocratic’ for the
fifth- and early fourth-century medical texts forming part of the Corpus
Hippocraticum; see, however, Van der Eijk (forthcoming) for a discussion of the
term ‘Hippocratic’ and its accompanying difficulties.
57
separating physiological from psychological pathology:4 mental life and
psychological distress are notably conceptualised in an objective,
externalised way.5 The concept of ‘health’ and its actualisation emerging
from these texts should be translated with ‘flourishing’ rather than
‘happiness’. Flourishing differs from the common understanding of
happiness precisely for its being an objective rather than a subjective
datum: it does not primarily refer to a sense of well-being registered by the
individual and emanating from an inner spiritual source, but to the correct
working of one’s functions, assessed from an external point of view.6
In this paper, I want to look back and away from the well-known later
developments – the doctrine of Galen, the self-fashioned ‘philosopher
doctor’ – and place our focus on the medical sources which preceded him,
in order to answer the following question: if not in an ethical and
subjective sense, how do the Hippocratic doctors deal with euthymic
emotions and their opposites as part of a patient’s condition within an
overarching physiological account?
‘Happiness’ as health and flourishing
We should begin by clarifying briefly the views vis-à-vis health and its
preservation offered by the medical texts of the 5th to the early 4th
centuries BC. In the works of these so-called Hippocratic authors, the
concept of health is characterised by three key elements. Firstly, health
corresponds to a balance, the symmetry of different factors within the
4
See Pigeaud 1980; Singer 1992; Gundert 2000.
Wittern 1991, comparing madness in literary texts and the Hippocratic sources,
calls this the exclusion of ‘psychological conflict’ from the Hippocratics’ range of
causes for mental disorders, i.e. the exclusion of subjective mental or spiritual
suffering.
6
The distinctions described here mirror to some extent current reflections on the
definition of health, which comprise a biomedical view (health as physiologically
sound functioning, defined negatively as the absence of disease) and a more
humanistic view that includes social and spiritual aspects of personal life (health
as a sense of fulfilment and accomplishment inclusive of psychological and social
aspects). See the WHO’s 1946 definition of health as a ‘state of complete physical,
mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity’,
preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the
International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June 1946, signed on 22 July
1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health
Organization, no. 2, p. 100), implemented on 7 April 1948 and unamended since.
5
58
THUMIGER
human individual.7 These factors themselves vary greatly: they can be the
basic elements constituting the universe (that is, air, earth, fire and water)8
or different qualities like hot, cold, dry and wet, or tastes such as acid,
salty, astringent and others.9 Also, symmetry could mean the due balance
of the humours found in the human body (considered by some to be
yellow bile, phlegm, blood and black bile, and by others only two or three
of these), as famously stated in the Nature of Man 4.10 Others thought in
terms of the factors affecting the individual which had to be in balance, for
7
For an introduction to various theories on the principles and substances
composing the human body, see Klibansky et al. 1992:39-54.
8
As mentioned polemically by the author of Nat. Hom. 1 (Jouanna 164.5-8 = L.
6.32.4–6): οὔτε γὰρ τὸ πάμπαν ἠέρα λέγω τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, οὔτε πῦρ, οὔτε
ὕδωρ, οὔτε γῆν, οὔτ’ ἄλλο οὐδὲν ὅ τι μὴ φανερόν ἐστιν ἐνεὸν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ·
ἀλλὰ τοῖσι βουλομένοισι ταῦτα λέγειν παρίημι (‘for I do not say that a man is air,
or fire, or water, or earth, or anything else that is not an obvious constituent of a
man; such accounts I leave to those who care to give them’); see also Vict. 1.32
and 1.35 (Joly-Byl 148.3-150.10; 150.29-156.18 = L. 6.506.14-510.23; 6.512.20522.16) for a theory of different types of bodies and of ψυχαί as based on
different blends of fire and water.
9
As in Vet. med. 14.4 (Jouanna 136.10-14 = L. 1.602.9-13): ἔνι γὰρ ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ
καὶ ἁλμυρὸν καὶ πικρὸν καὶ γλυκὺ καὶ ὀξὺ καὶ στρυφνὸν καὶ πλαδαρὸν καὶ ἄλλα
μυρία παντοίας δυνάμιας ἔχοντα πλῆθός τε καὶ ἰσχύν· ταῦτα μὲν μεμιγμένα καὶ
κεκρημένα ἀλλήλοισιν οὔτε φανερά ἐστιν οὔτε λυπεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὅταν δέ τι
τούτων ἀποκριθῇ καὶ αὐτὸ ἐφ’ ἑωυτοῦ γένηται, τότε καὶ φανερόν ἐστι καὶ λυπεῖ
τὸν ἄνθρωπον (‘For there is in man the bitter and the salt, the sweet and the acid,
the sour and the insipid, and a multitude of other things having all sorts of powers
both as regards quantity and strength. These, when all mixed and mingled up with
one another, are not apparent, neither do they hurt a man; but when any of them
is separate, and stands by itself, then it becomes perceptible, and hurts a man’).
10
Nat. Hom. 4 (Jouanna 172.13-174.3 = L. 6.40; tr. W.H. Jones 1931): τὸ δὲ
σῶμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔχει ἐν ἑωυτῷ αἷμα καὶ φλέγμα καὶ χολὴν ξανθήν καὶ
μέλαιναν, καὶ ταῦτα ἐστιν αὐτῷ ἡ φύσις τοῦ σώματος, καὶ διὰ ταῦτα ἀλγεῖ καὶ
ὑγιαίνει. ὑγιαίνει μὲν οὖν μάλιστα, ὅταν μετρίως ἔχῃ ταῦτα τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα
δυνάμιος καὶ τοῦ πλήθεος, καὶ μάλιστα μεμιγμένα ᾖ· ἀλγεῖ δ’ ὅταν τι τούτων
ἔλασσον ἢ πλέον χωρισθῇ ἐν τῷ σώματι καὶ μὴ κεκρημένον ᾖ τοῖσι πᾶσιν (‘the
body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up
the nature of his body, and through these he feels pain and enjoys health. Now he
enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one
another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly
mingled. Pain is felt when one of these elements is in defect or in excess, or is
isolated in the body without being compounded with all the others’).
59
example, the food and drink taken into the body on the one hand, and the
amount of exercise practiced by the body on the other.11
Whereas the actual components at work in the body could vary, the
opinion regarding their mutual relationship was clear and widely shared:
they had to be balanced, none overpowering the others, as in this famous
definition of health and disease traditionally attributed to Alcmaeon,
which extends a political metaphor:
Ἀ. τῆς μὲν ὑγείας εἶναι συνεκτικὴν τὴν ἰσονομίαν τῶν δυνάμεων,
ὑγροῦ, ξηροῦ, ψυχροῦ, θερμοῦ, πικροῦ, γλυκέος καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν,
τὴν δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς μοναρχίαν νόσου ποιητικήν· φθοροποιὸν γὰρ
ἑκατέρου μοναρχίαν.
Alcmaeon says that health is the result of isonomia of the powers –
the wet, the dry, the cold, the hot, the bitter, the sweet, and so on,
while predominance of one over the others produces disease. For
(he says) predominance of either is destructive.
(24 B4 DK)
The second point is that health is achieved through, and in a sense
equals, the practice of a regimen.12 The notion of regimen, δίαιτα,
encompassed one’s lifestyle in the broad sense; that is, not only habits of
consuming food and drink and the kinds of beverages and nutriments
consumed, but also sleeping, bathing, exercising, sexual habits, as well as
data about other daily activities like one’s profession and the type of
practices it entailed. A person’s regimen was of the utmost importance,
since each of the various aspects it involved had its effect on the body and
particularly on the ‘mixture’ (κρᾶσις) of the factors on which health
11
E.g. at Vict. 3.69, (Joly-Byl 200.30-202.2 = L. 6.606.5-9): ἔστι δὲ προδιάγνωσις
μὲν πρὸ τοῦ κάμνειν, διάγνωσις δὲ τῶν σωμάτων τί πέπονθε, πότερον τὸ σιτίον
κρατεῖ τοὺς πόνους ἢ οἱ πόνοι τὰ σιτία ἢ μετρίως ἔχει πρὸς ἄλληλα. ἀπὸ μὲν γὰρ
τοῦ κρατεῖσθαι ὁποτερονοῦν νοῦσοι ἐγγίνονται· ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ ἰσάζειν πρὸς ἄλληλα
ὑγιείη πρόσεστιν (‘[the regimen I have discovered] comprises prognosis before
illness and diagnosis of what is the matter with the body, whether food
overpowers exercise, whether exercise overpowers food, of whether the two are
duly proportioned. For it is from the overpowering of one or the other that
diseases arise, while from their being evenly balanced comes good health’). Cf. also
Vict. 1.2 (Joly-Byl 122.22-126.4 = L. 6.468.6-472.11).
12
On the concept of regime, its history and medical specificity, see Bartoš
(forthcoming); overviews of the concept of health from early sources to Galen are
offered by Wöhrle 1990, Jouanna 2012, and the essays in King 2005.
60
THUMIGER
depended. Thus, by controlling the regimen, both doctor and patient,
aware of the physiological effects of a brief or a long period of sleep, or of
a certain type of bath or nutriment, could manipulate the patient’s body –
that is, the humours, elements or qualities in it – in order to help cure it or
to keep it healthy. Regimen is often in the background of Hippocratic
writings – whether nosological, or patient-based – but also specifically the
subject of the dedicated treatises Regimen, Regimen in Health, and Regimen
in Acute Diseases. It is also the subject of the book On Matters of Health to
Pleistarchus by the important fourth-century physician Diocles, of whose
work only fragmentary evidence remains.13
Thirdly, health is determined by the quality of the interaction between
the individual and his or her environment (intended as geographical
location, season and weather conditions), and so are disease and cure, as it
is most evident in the constitutions (καταστάσεις) of different
communities and locations found in the books of Epidemics 1 and 3, or in
the data gathered in Airs Waters Places, whose stated topic is precisely the
environmental component of the medical discipline:
ἰητρικὴν ὅστις βούλεται ὀρθῶς ζητεῖν, τάδε χρὴ ποιεῖν· πρῶτον μὲν
ἐνθυμεῖσθαι τὰς ὥρας τοῦ ἔτεος, ὅ τι δύναται ἀπεργάζεσθαι ἑκάστη·
οὐ γὰρ ἐοίκασιν ἀλλήλῃσιν οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ πολὺ διαφέρουσιν αὐταί
τε ἑωυτέων καὶ ἐν τῇσι μεταβολῇσιν· ἔπειτα δὲ τὰ πνεύματα τὰ
θερμά τε καὶ τὰ ψυχρά, μάλιστα μὲν τὰ κοινὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν,
ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐν ἑκάστῃ χώρῃ ἐπιχώρια ἐόντα. δεῖ δὲ καὶ τῶν
ὑδάτων ἐνθυμεῖσθαι τὰς δυνάμιας· ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν τῷ στόματι
διαφέρουσι καὶ ἐν τῷ σταθμῷ, οὕτω καὶ ἡ δύναμις διαφέρει πολὺ
ἑκάστου.
Whoever wishes to pursue properly the art of medicine must
proceed thus. First he ought to consider what effects each season of
the year can produce; for the seasons are not at all alike, but differ
widely both in themselves and at their changes; the next point is
the hot winds and the cold, especially those that are universal, but
also those who are peculiar to each particular region. He must also
consider the properties of the waters; for all these differ in taste
13
See also the ᾿Επιστολὴ προφυλακτικὴ πρὸς ᾿Αντίγονον. Van der Eijk 2001:xxxxxxii provides a list of dietetic works by Diocles.
61
and weight, so that the property of each is far different from that
of any other.14
The above three determinants of health are notably objective aspects:
symmetry, a general principle (although to be adapted to each individual);
regimen, the practical lifestyle that determines and in a sense constitutes
health, and actual environment. This does not imply neglect to consider
the specifics and the ethos of each individual patient. On the contrary,
there is no such thing as one fixed ‘correct regimen’. Rather, the correct
regimen is dependent on a wide range of factors: gender, age, climate and
the land in which one lived and in which one was born, the season, even
one’s habits and one’s physiological constitution.15 But they, nonetheless,
exclude the subjective experience of health, and with it the sense of
personal fulfilment as an indicator of health.
Grief and cheerfulness
With this view of human health as background, we can better approach
the topic of cheerfulness (and its opposite) as part of individual
physiology. While the Hippocratic texts contain a great deal of
information about mental health, its assessment is made difficult by the
impossibility to extrapolate mental information from the physiological
discussion. The two aspects are indissolubly intertwined, with the result
that the discussion appears, again, to be largely objectified. In addition, as
to be expected from the largely clinical contexts in which they are
mentioned, emphasis lies on the negative emotions or moods that appear
in pathological circumstances16 rather than on the positive.17
14
Aer. 1.1-2: Jouanna 186.1-187.4 = L. 2.12.2-10. Cf. very similar remarks in Vict.
1.2 (Joly-Byl 124.11-14 = L. 6.470.6-10) on the key variables of age, winds and
geographical location.
15
Cf. Salubr. 2 = Nat. Hom. 17 (Jouanna 208.18-20 = L. 6.76.1-5): δεῖ οὖν πρὸς
τὴν ἡλικίην καὶ τὴν ὥρην καὶ τὰ εἴδεα τὰ διαιτήματα ποιεῖσθαι ἐναντιούμενον
τοῖσι καθισταμένοισι καὶ θάλπεσι καὶ χειμῶσιν· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μάλιστα ὑγιαίνοιεν
(‘So in fixing regimen pay attention to age, season, and constitutions, and
counteract the prevailing heat or cold. For in this way will the best health be
enjoyed’).
16
The concept of ‘mood’ in current psychology indicates a continuous underlying
state as opposed to transient emotion. Mood includes states such as depression,
elation, anger and anxiety, and may be seen as the more pervasive, sustained
62
THUMIGER
The negative emotions of sadness, grief and hopelessness feature for the
most part in patient cases: the emotions of λύπη (‘pain’ or ‘grief’); δυσελπίς
(‘hopelessness’) and ἀνελπίζω (‘I feel desperate’); a πικρός (‘bitter’) or a
σκυθρωπός (‘dark’) disposition; silences or refusal to talk; despondency or
low mood (ἀθυμία, δυσθυμία, forms of δυσφορεῖν); and signs of distress
such as screams, tears and laughter.18 Let us explore more closely some
examples of how these feature in the medical discussions and patient
reports of the Hippocratic corpus.
Grief as cause of pathology
The Hippocratic doctors discuss patients whose illness is, at least in part,
caused by emotional suffering. In case 11 at Epid. 3.17 (Kühlewein 241.49 = L. 3.134. 2-6), for example, we have the case of ‘a woman of gloomy
temperament’ who suffered ‘a grief with a reason for it’ (δυσάνιος ἐκ
λύπης μετὰ προφάσιος). At nightfall she presented with fears, much
rambling, depression and slight feverishness, and many spasms in the
morning (ἀρχομένης νυκτὸς φόβοι, λόγοι πολλοὶ, δυσθυμίη, πυρέτιον
λεπτόν. πρωὶ σπασμοὶ πολλοί). The physiological condition is inseparable
from the mental aspect – fever and spasms accompany mental symptoms –
but the case has an important emotional or existential cause: a λύπη which
resulted from something that happened in her past. Similarly, at Epid. 3.17,
case 15 (Kühlewein 243.26-244.5 = L. 3.142.6-10), we read that
ἐν Θάσῳ Δεάλκους γυναῖκα, ἣ κατέκειτο ἐπὶ τοῦ λείου, πυρετὸς
φρικώδης, ὀξὺς ἐκ λύπης ἔλαβεν. ἐξ ἀρχῆς δὲ περιεστέλλετο, καὶ
διὰ τέλεος αἰεὶ σιγῶσα ἐψηλάφα, ἔτιλλεν, ἔγλυφεν, ἐτριχολόγει,
δάκρυα καὶ πάλιν γέλως, οὐκ ἐκοιμᾶτο· ἀπὸ κοιλίης ἐρεθισμῷ,
οὐδὲν διῄει.
In Thasos the wife of Delearces, who lay sick on the plain, was
seized after a grief with an acute fever with shivering. From the
emotional ‘climate’ in contrast to affect, which refers to more fluctuating changes
in emotional ‘weather’ (paraphrasing from Cohen 2003:31).
17
These aspects of the Hippocratic sources have not received extensive scholarly
attention; some general consideration in Di Benedetto 1986:35-43 (on fear
especially), Singer 1992:135, Gundert 2000:25-30 and Pigeaud 1980. Recent
scholarship on the emotions has largely bypassed the medical material.
18
Cf. Ciani 1983:14 and Di Benedetto 1986:45-47 for disturbances pertaining to a
‘depressive’ spectrum.
63
beginning she would wrap herself up, and throughout, without
speaking a word, she would fumble, pluck, scratch, pick hairs,
weep and then laugh, but she did not sleep; though stimulated, the
bowels passed nothing.
This patient displays signs of mentally pathological behaviour typical in
these patient cases; for her, too, the origin of her fever and her condition
overall is an unspecific grief (λύπη). Her mental suffering takes the form of
compulsive movements (floccillation, the plucking and picking that
characterises patients of phrenitis and other mental cases in our texts), lack
of sleep and δάκρυα καὶ πάλιν γέλως (tears and laughters, uncontrolled
and unmotivated, we are led to think). Consideration of the woman’s
emotions focuses on the external and the visible – ‘tears and laughters’:
while recognised as relevant in the report, the physician’s attention goes to
the external manifestation of the emotion.
The term λύπη, which in Greek medicine is a general term for pain and
physical suffering, here refers more specifically to grief and sorrow.19 In
Acut. (spur.) 40 (Joly 87.11-12 = L. 2.476.5-7), dealing with cases of
weakened and suffering bodies, we find a distinction between cases to be
cured with hellebore and those which are not, as they are caused by drink,
sexual excesses, grief, worries and troubled sleep (μήτε ὑπὸ ποτῶν, μήτε
ὑπὸ ἀφροδισίων, μήτε ὑπὸ λύπης, μήτε ὑπὸ φροντίδων, μήτε ὑπὸ
ἀγρυπνιῶν). The latter group are considered apart since they resist
pharmacological therapy. Among them, λύπη should be understood as
grief caused by personal reasons rather than by an unspecified δυσθυμία,
(‘despondency’); in the same group we find worries and troubled sleep.
We read further that such cases require specific therapy (πρὸς τοῦτο
ποιεῖσθαι τὴν θεραπείην) rather than adopting the ἑλλεβορίζειν (hellebore
drinking) under discussion. Again, the doctor acknowledges the weight of
emotional suffering on the patient’s health, at the same time maintaining a
physiological frame of interpretation: he is observing a sign, not analysing
the psychology of the patient as we would see it.
19
Hum. 9 (L. 5.490.1-6) speaks of aspects τῆς ψυχῆς stemming from the character
of the individual, ἐκ τῶν ἠθέων: φιλοπονίη ψυχῆς, ἢ ζητέων, ἢ μελετέων, ἢ ὁρέων,
ἢ λέγων, ἢ εἴ τι ἄλλο, which include ‘grievances, excessive passion, desires’ (οἷον
λῦπαι, δυσοργησίαι, ἐπιθυμίαι), as well as ‘pains that occur by chance to the soul’
(τὰ ἀπὸ συγκυρίης λυπήματα γνώμης), i.e. ‘either through sight or through
hearing’ (ἢ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων, ἢ διὰ τῆς ἀκοῆς): the grief is suffered under specific
circumstances, whether experienced directly or just witnessed.
64
THUMIGER
Dysphoria as sign of pathology20
In most cases the acute and temporary nature of the negative emotion
seems clear: sadness, hopelessness and despondency appear to be signs
within a larger pathological picture. For example, at Epid. 3.17, case 14
(Kühlewein 243. 16-20 = L. 3.140.18-21), we encounter a female patient
who has just given birth, and will die on the seventeenth day of her illness.
She is described as displaying dysthymic signs, ‘silent, sad and unwilling to
obey’ (σιγῶσα δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπὴ καὶ οὐ πειθομένη) and soon after begins
to talk deliriously (πολλὰ παρέλεγε). In the discussion in Epid. 1.18
(Kühlewein 194.21-22 = L. 2.652.3) φόβοι (‘fears’) and δυσθυμίαι
(‘despondency’) are recognised as among the various mental symptoms of
phrenitics, and Mul. 2.174 bis (L. 8.356.2-5) depicts a typology of a
patient who ‘is depressed and restless in her mind’ (δυσθυμέει τε καὶ
αἰολᾶται τῇ γνώμῃ), and later ‘seems to be dying’ (δοκεέι θανεῖσθαι). Fear,
desperation and anguish are typical symptoms of the ill, often mentioned
in the plural, which suggests that these are episodes and signs of distress
being reported on, rather than a deeper, continuous psychological state.21
Not only illness, but also dietetic factors can cause the patient to present
with symptoms of this kind. Acut. 42 (Joly 54.4-5 = L. 2.312.6-7)
describes patients who suffer from pathological conditions due to a too
rapid change of diet (from fasting to gruel). Various of the conditions are
mental in nature and are described in dysphoric terms: ‘they become
peevish, bitter, and deranged’ (περίλυποί δὲ καὶ πικροὶ γίνονται καὶ
παραφρονέουσι).
20
I borrow here the terminology of mood from current psychiatry: dysthymia and
euthymia are the two opposite poles of sustained negative and positive moods
respectively. The terms dysphoria and euphoria indicate symptoms of greater
mental disturbances, acute by comparison. These definitions require further
qualification and discussion, but they offer useful terminology to organise the
evidence under discussion.
21
See also Epid. 3.1 case 6 (Kühlewein 221.1-2 = L. 3.52.7-8): the patient shows
signs of mental disturbance, and is described as ‘silent, and would not converse at
all. She felt depressed and hopeless’ (σιγῶσα, οὐδὲν διελέγετο. δυσθυμίη,
ἀνελπίστως ἑωυτῆς εἶχεν); a similar association of general mental disturbance with
φόβοι and δυσθυμίαι at Epid. 3.17 case 11 (Kühlewein 241.8 = L. 3.134.5).
65
All the instances seen so far have an important common characteristic:
despite being emotional experiences, they all remain features of the more
general physiological description. Likewise, δυσθυμίη appears in contexts
of mental disturbance, but also as a consequence of physiological changes.
The author of Ancient Medicine, for instance, recognises δυσθυμίη
(‘depression’) and δυσεργείη (‘listlessness’) as pathological signs when
someone accustomed to having lunch begins to miss his meals (Vet. med.
10.4: Jouanna 131.3-4 = L. 1.592.17-18).
Dysthymia: negative emotions as ‘diseases’ or syndromes
We have seen that consideration of emotional states in early medical texts
occurs mainly within contexts of acute disease and temporary affection.
But sometimes, sadness and grief are also contemplated as more enduring
experiences. In a passage at Loc. Hom. 39 (Jouanna 69.1-3 = L. 6.328), a
pharmacological cure (mandrake root) is advised for people characterised
by emotional distress, ‘badly disposed, ill and wanting to hang themselves’
(ἀνιωμένους καὶ νοσέοντας καὶ ἀπάγχεσθαι βουλομένους). The physicians
seem to identify here a specific group of patients with a definite, longlasting negative mood – the closest we get in these texts to the
categorisation of what we would call ‘psychiatric patients’. The element of
an enduring mental condition seems also to be present in Coac. 472
(Potter 220.28-30 = L. 5.690), where ‘depressions and avoidance of others
with silence’ (αἱ μετὰ σιγῆς ἀθυμίαι καὶ ἀπανθρωπίαι) are linked to whitephlegmatic patients. In this case the authors seem to describe not a mere
emotion, but rather a syndrome, we could say, of low mood and
intentional isolation from others that can be an aggravating factor.22
The most prominent example is perhaps offered by Aph. 6.23
(Magdelaine 453.1-2 = L. 4.568.11-12), which famously associates
pathologically long-lasting fear and sadness with melancholic suffering: ‘if
fear or despondency lasts for a long time, this is melancholic’ (ἢν φόβος ἢ
δυσθυμίη πουλὺν χρόνον ἔχουσα διατελῇ, μελαγχολικὸν τὸ τοιοῦτον).23
Apart from the passage’s reference to melancholy and its importance for a
22
For ἀθυμεῖν see also Mul. 1.8 (L. 8.36.6) and Mul. 2.154 (L. 8.328.20); at Mul.
2.177 (L. 8.360.5), a patient ‘is affected by suffocation, and wishes to die’
(πνίγεται, καὶ θανεῖν ἐρᾶται).
23
ἀθυμία is used to the same effect, as in Epid. 3.17 case 2 (Kühlewein 235.5-6 =
L. 3.112.10-2), the female patient with melancholic traits (τὰ περὶ τὴν γνώμην
μελαγχολικά) is ἀπόσιτος, ἄθυμος, ἄγρυπνος.
66
THUMIGER
history of melancholy as a mental disease, the aphorism is interesting for its
reference to the πουλὺν χρόνον, the long duration of a distress of a mental,
psychological nature. An actual case of this pathology is described in
Epidemics 5-7, that of a certain Parmeniscus (Epid. 5.84: Jouanna 39. 1-3 =
L. 5.252.5-6; Epid. 7.89: Jouanna 103. 6-8 = L. 5.446.7-8). Parmeniscus is
the closest approximation in the Hippocratic testimony to what nowadays
would be labelled as a bipolar mood disorder. The symptoms and moods,
as well as the chronic and resilient character of the ailment, are unique in
the texts under consideration. In the shorter version of the case (Epid.
5.84), we read that ‘Parmeniscus had previously been visited by
depressions and a desire to end his life, but then again by cheerfulness’
(Παρμενίσκῳ καὶ πρότερον ἐνέπιπτον ἀθυμίαι καὶ ἀπαλλαγῆς βίου
ἐπιθυμίη, ὁτὲ δὲ πάλιν εὐθυμίη). This shorter summary includes as key
elements the alternating moods, the desire to die, and the periodic
character of the suffering, suggested by καὶ πρότερον and the use of the
imperfect: this is the only example of such a patient in these sources. At
Epid. 7.89 (Jouanna 103.6-18 = L. 5.446.7-17) we find the extended
report:
Παρμενίσκῳ καὶ πρότερον ἐνέπιπτον ἀθυμίαι καὶ ἵμερος
ἀπαλλαγῆς βίου, ὁτὲ δὲ πάλιν εὐθυμίη. Ἐν Ὀλύνθῳ δέ ποτε
φθινοπώρου ἄφωνος κατέκειτο ἡσυχίην ἔχων, βραχύ τι ὅσον
ἄρχεσθαι ἐπιχειρέων προσειπεῖν· ἤδη δὲ τι καὶ διελέχθη καὶ πάλιν
ἄφωνος. ὕπνοι ἐνῆσαν, ὁτὲ δὲ ἀγρυπνίη· καὶ ῥιπτασμὸς μετὰ σιγῆς
καὶ ἀλυσμὸς καὶ χεὶρ πρὸς ὑποχόνδρια ὡς ὀδυνωμένῳ, ὁτὲ δὲ
ἀποστραφεὶς ἔκειτο ἡσυχίην ἄγων· ἀπύρετος δὲ διὰ τέλεoς καὶ
εὔπνοος· ἔφη δ’ ὕστερον ἐπιγινώσκειν τοὺς ἐσιόντας. πιεῖν ὁτὲ μὲν
ἡμέρης ὅλης καὶ νυκτὸς διδόντων οὐκ ἤθελεν, ὁτὲ δὲ ἐξαίφνης τὸν
στάμνον ἁρπάσας τοῦ ὕδατος ἐξέπιεν· οὖρον παχὺ ὡς ὑποζυγίου.
περὶ τεσσαρεσκαιδεκά ἀνῆκεν.
Parmeniscus had previously been visited by depressions and a
desire to end his life, but then again by cheerfulness. Once in
Olynthus, in the fall, he took to his bed, voiceless. He kept still,
hardly attempting to begin speaking. At times he said something,
and again voiceless. Sleep came on, and periodically wakefulness,
and tossing silently, and delirium, and his hand went to his
hypochondria as though he was in pain. And at times he turned
away and lay still. He was without fever until the end and
breathing easily. He later said that he recognized people who came
in. At times for a whole day and night when they offered water to
drink he did not want it, but at times he would suddenly seize the
67
water cooler and drink it down. His urine was thick like a mule’s.
He was cured about the fourteenth day.
It is worthwhile quoting the case in full, since it illustrates how a mental
condition, in this case specifically a depressive mood disorder, presents in
abnormal behaviour: lack of speech, confinement in bed, irregular patterns
of sleep, refusal to interact (ἀποστραφεὶς, ἔκειτο ἡσυχίην ἄγων). General
mental disturbance is registered (ἀλυσμός, ‘wandering’, is a stock word for
mental disturbance in these texts) as well as alternating states of
forgetfulness and an inability to recognise those around him (ἔφη δὲ
ὕστερον ἐπιγινώσκειν τοὺς ἐσιόντας). The illness is described as recurring
periodically, and its cause seems to be at the mental, psychological end.
We should, however, note how even the predominantly behavioural and
psychological notes on Parmeniscus’ condition are interspersed with
physiological observations, without any indication that they might belong
to different categories (‘his urine thick like a mule’s’, etc.).
Euthymia and physiology
In pathological and clinical discussions, negative emotions and moods are
naturally of greater relevance than a good mood, a sense of fulfilment, or
good cheer. The counterparts to sadness, depression and other negative
feelings register only when they have a pathological aspect, or when they
are part of a pathological picture, never as a desideratum or as a healthy
state to be nurtured. In a theoretical exposition of encephalocentrism
(Morb. Sacr. 14.1, Jouanna 25.13-5 = L. 6.386.16), εὐφροσύνη features
alongside ‘pleasures’, ‘laughters’ and ‘jokes’ as among the areas of human
experience controlled by the brain: ‘pleasures, joys, laughters and jests, as
well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and sobs’ (καὶ ἡδοναὶ γίνονται καὶ
εὐφροσύναι καὶ γέλωτες καὶ παιδιαὶ ἢ ἐντεῦθεν, ὅθεν καὶ λῦπαι καὶ ἀνίαι
καὶ δυσφροσύναι καὶ κλαυθμοί). At Prorrh. 2.4 (Potter 226.22-23; 228.1415 = L. 9.16.4-5; 16.20-21) we read about the role of exercise in making
happier a patient who suffers from debilitation following a meagre diet or
excessive drink (εὐθυμότερος ἐν τῇ ταλαιπωρίῃ); drunkenness may also
play a part, ‘more cheerful unless his head is disturbed by something’
(εὐθυμότερος, ἢν μή τι αὐτῷ ἡ κεφαλὴ ἀνιῷτο). Epid. 6.5.5 (ManettiRoselli 108.8-110.3 = L. 5.316.6-7) may serve as illustration of the
physiological approach when it is claimed that ‘contentment releases the
heart’ (ἡ δ’ εὐθυμίη ἀφίει καρδίην). The claim is set in opposition to the ill
effects of ὀξυθυμία, so that the ‘contentment’ referred to emerges as more
68
THUMIGER
a lack of aggressiveness and distress than a positive feeling of
accomplishment or joy. In a similar contrastive way the term was used in
the case of Parmeniscus, quoted above, to describe his optimistic phases,
‘and then again in good spirits’ (ὁτὲ δὲ πάλιν εὐθυμίη).
In none of the instances surveyed are the human emotions and moods
of cheerfulness and grief viewed as having ethical or eudaimonistic
dimensions. Flat. 14.3 (Jouanna 122.7-10 = L. 6.112.6-8) exemplifies this
tendency. Here the effects of wine are said to be capable of inducing a
hopeful disposition in the individual:
… μεταπίπτουσιν αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇσι ψυχῇσι φρονήματα, καὶ
γίνονται τῶν μὲν παρεόντων κακῶν ἐπιλήσμονες, τῶν δὲ
μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν εὐέλπιδες.
… one’s mind changes and the thoughts in one’s mind, and
forgetfulness of the present evils come about, and hopes for good
things to come.
The passage contains a double view, namely (in negative terms) the
absence or the removal of pre-existing worries, and a (positive) happy,
hopeful mood. The experience is attributed a temporarily, externally
induced quality – only as long as the effect of wine endures.
Euphoria as sign of pathology
Even more extreme and foreign to eudaimonistic programmes are the
instances in which physicians identify a type of manic joy or euphoria of a
pathological kind (resembling the signs of what one might nowadays label
‘mood disorders’) marked by restlessness, excessive talk and unmotivated
fits of laughter.24 Laughter is never a sign of joy or heightened happiness in
our sources; in fact, laughter is never seen as something positive. At
Epid.1.27, case 2 (Kühlewein 203.23-204.1 = L. 2.686.6-7), a patient with
several mental symptoms is described as having ‘many words, laughter,
singing; could not be restrained’ (λόγοι πολλοὶ, γέλως, ᾠδή, κατέχειν οὐκ
ἠδύνατο). We already mentioned similar symptoms with the woman at
Epid. 3.17, case 15 (Kühlewein 244.3-4 = L. 3.142.9), whose disease came
about ἐκ λύπης, ‘out of a grief’, and who alternated tears and laughter
24
See Halliwell’s 1991:280 opposition between ‘playful laughter’ and
‘consequential laughter’ as corresponding to γελοῖα and σπουδαῖα.
69
(δάκρυα καὶ πάλιν γέλως). At Epid. 5.95 (Jouanna 42.5 = L. 5.254.19) and
7.121 (Jouanna 116.19 = L. 5.466.14), a man hit by a catapult presented
with ‘uproarious laughter’ (γέλως ἦν περὶ αὐτὸν θορυβώδης). At Gland.
12.2 (Jouanna 119.25-26 = L. 8.568.3), damage to the brain causes mental
disturbance in the patient who displays ‘grinning laughter and grotesque
visions’ (σεσηρόσι μειδιήμασι καὶ ἀλλοκότοισι φαντάσμασιν). Neither the
emotions, nor the expressions of cheer and joy are integrated into an
affirmative image of happiness as stemming from the inner person: they
are solely registered when relevant to the illnesses discussed, or (more
rarely) in illustration of a physiological condition.
Conclusions
If we, in summary, reflect on the surveyed material, it should be noted,
firstly, that the fifth- and early fourth-century medical texts are certainly
not unconcerned with psychology: many acute observations are made with
subtlety and precision, and aspects of emotions and mood contribute to an
important degree to the state of health of patients, sometimes as the cause
(or concurrent cause) of an illness, sometimes as a symptom or a
behavioural consequence of an illness. On the other hand, when compared
to the explicitly ethical quality of the Galenic psychological writings, it is
immediately evident that these earlier authors have much more restricted
horizons as far as reflections on human happiness are concerned. Like in
Galen, the interdependence between mental, psychological and
physiological aspects of pathology is firmly established; unlike Galen,
however, the pursuit of happiness by way of practising virtue, ethical
accomplishment and the eradication of moral flaws remains entirely absent
from the scope of the medical τέχνη, the aims of which remain
subordinated to the agenda articulated in De Arte 3.2 (Jouanna 226.13227.1 = L. 6.4.16-6.1):
τὸ δὴ πάμπαν ἀπαλλάσσειν τῶν νοσεόντων τοὺς καμάτους καὶ τῶν
νοσημάτων τὰς σφοδρότητας ἀμβλύνειν, καὶ τὸ μὴ ἐγχειρεῖν τοῖσι
κεκρατημένοισιν ὑπὸ τῶν νοσημάτων, εἰδότας ὅτι πάντα ταῦτα
δύναται ἰητρική.
to do away with the sufferings of the sick, to lessen the violence of
their diseases, and to refuse to treat those who are overmastered by
their diseases, realising that those are all the powers of medicine.
70
THUMIGER
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ANTISTHENES AND THE SHORT ROUTE TO HAPPINESS
Susan Prince
University of Cincinnati, Ohio
This paper attempts to untangle the major snarl in the tradition of the
Cynic ‘short cut’ (ἡ σύντομος ὁδός) to happiness in Hellenistic and
Imperial texts, and to clarify the role of Antisthenes, first-generation
disciple of Socrates, senior contemporary of Plato, and likely teacher of
Diogenes of Sinope, in fashioning the image of the Cynic short cut, one of
the more paradoxical ancient proposals for the route to happiness. In
addition, it aims to illuminate the range of senses in which the ‘short cut’
could have been understood or promoted by Antisthenes in his historical
situation, namely Athens of the period between Socrates’ death and his
own (399 to c. 365 BCE). These senses are primarily ethical, but social and
logical as well.
The fictional letters attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, datable to some
550 years after Antisthenes’ lifetime, credit Antisthenes with formulating
the Cynic short cut in a coherent allegorical image of the possible roads to
happiness.1 Although it is generally accepted that these letters preserve
genuine Cynic thought from its formative period (the 4th and 3rd
centuries BCE),2 their late date also renders them susceptible to be
dismissed as rhetorical expansions of, or even generated during, the later
Hellenistic period. At best, they would have been distorted from whatever
form they originally had, and thus discontinuous with the Classical period
and unsuitable for backward projection. More generally, it is not obvious
that any strand in Cynicism from the Imperial period can simply be
attributed to Antisthenes. Diogenes Laertius (approximately contemporary
with the writing of the fictional letters of Diogenes) notes the Cynic ‘short
cut’ to virtue in order to contrast it with the Stoics’ long road of education;
he names Antisthenes three times for intellectual influence on the Cynics,
1
Emeljanow 1965 argues, in a very brief article, that the treatment of the short
cut in Ps.-Diog. Ep. 12, 30, 37 and 44 shows the Antisthenean origin of the
metaphor.
2
See, conveniently, Malherbe 1977:2-3. The fundamental arguments were made
by Capelle 1896, with Von Fritz 1926 subsequently dismissing any value of the
letters beyond overlaps with Diogenes Laertius; scholarship has since largely
ignored the letters.
PRINCE
74
but does not attribute the short cut to him.3 According to another
Diogenes Laertius passage, the Cynic short cut was fashioned by the Stoic
Apollonius of Seleucia in the 2nd century BCE as a way to reconcile
Stoicism with Cynicism while retaining the difference between them.4
Meanwhile, the story of Heracles at the crossroads, in Xenophon’s
Memorabilia 2.1.21-34 (told by Socrates who cites Prodicus), is widely
recognised as the principle source for Imperial-period imagery of the short
and long routes to happiness.5 In Xenophon’s version of the story, as in
most of the earlier and later versions, the correct road is markedly long and
hard, and the short route, the road of pleasure, is renounced as the wrong
road. Nevertheless, some kind of relationship between Antisthenes and
this Choice of Heracles has long been suspected, for mainly three reasons:
(1) because the hero is Heracles, about whose education in virtue
Antisthenes wrote famous, but now lost fictions;6 (2) because the story is
addressed by Socrates to his hedonist associate Aristippus, the likely
opponent of Antisthenes on the choice between a life of pleasure and the
practice of a certain ‘kingly art’ of self-mastery (βασιλικὴ τέχνη, Mem.
3
Diog. Laert. 6.104, from the concluding overview of common Cynic doctrine in
6.103-05. Because Antisthenes is repeatedly cited, Giannantoni includes the
complete passage among the testimonia for Antisthenes in Socratis et Socraticorum
Reliquiae (hereafter cited as SSR), VA 135. Brancacci 1992:4068 n. 70 argues that
Diogenes Laertius himself devised this assimilation of Antisthenes to the Cynics as
part of his assertion that Cynicism is a ‘school’ (αἵρεσις), but nonetheless
attributes the short cut to Antisthenes.
4
Diog. Laert. 7.121. Goulet-Cazé 1986:22-24 and n. 22 credits coinage of the
term to Apollonius but the motif itself, on the basis of the Cynic epistles, to
Antisthenes and Diogenes; in 2003:109-11 she is primarily concerned with the
Stoics’ use of Cynicism and credits the short cut fully to Apollonius.
5
Alpers 1912 is still cited as the major study of this question. In addition to
Emanjalow 1965 and Goulet-Cazé 1986, see also Sansone 2004:125 with n. 1;
Brancacci 1992:4068-69 n. 70. Höistad 1948:150-79 (on Dio Chrys. Or. 1) rejects
Prodicus as the primary source and proposes a Cynic tradition descending from
Antisthenes – see following note. Xenophon’s predecessors begin with Hes. Op.
286-92 and include also Simonides and possibly the Pythagoreans and Parmenides.
Cribiore 2007:76 n. 18 proposes that ‘the pattern was probably inspired by the
judgment of Paris’. Resonances elsewhere in Xenophon, Plato and Isocrates show
that the motif was productive in Socratic and post-Socratic discourse beyond its
use in Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-34.
6
SSR VA 92-99, and the three titles in the fourth and tenth tomoi of Antisthenes’
book catalogue, Diog. Laert. 6.16 and 18 = SSR VA 41.
75
2.1.17),7 whose value the story is meant to demonstrate; and (3) because
there are at least two intertextual resonances between Xenophon’s passage
and evidence surviving from Antisthenes.8 This relationship between
Antisthenes and Xenophon’s Choice of Heracles turns out to be central for
the case that Antisthenes discussed the short road to happiness.
But, if Antisthenes advocated for the short road, we encounter our
tangle: the story of Heracles clearly cannot derive from Antisthenes,
precisely because the long road is recommended and the short road
derided and dismissed. Rather, there is more likely a polemical relationship
between Xenophon’s version of the story9 and the teaching of Antisthenes.
Unlike Xenophon and the fictional lady Virtue, Antisthenes did not rank
traditional élite status and benefaction to society among the highest human
values: in the sympathetic account of the short cut, these are precisely
what get discarded when one takes the short road.
For greater clarity on the two views of the short cut, the Cynic epistles
offer the clearest evidence. In Letter 30 of Ps.-Diogenes (c. 200 CE),
Antisthenes is attributed with pointing out the short route to happiness. 10
The letter is worth quoting at length for its relevance to the topic of this
paper:
7
On Antisthenes’ likely connections to the kingly art, see Höistad 1948:22-102
and Brancacci 1990:80-83.
8
The clearest resonances are Xen. Mem. 2.1.5 (from the frame dialogue between
Socrates and Aristippus) with SSR VA 60, and Xen. Mem. 2.1.31 with SSR VA
112; see Gigon 1956:22. More recent commentators on Xenophon hesitate to
recognise this relationship, in consideration of the loss of Antisthenes’ writings:
Bevilacqua 2010:77 n. 356, in critique of Dorion 2000:LII-LV, is willing to admit
comparison of theme but – following Giannantoni 1990:4:214 – warns against
direct dependence. Both commentators mention Antisthenes generally at 2.1.5,
but neither at 2.1.31. Joël 1901:125-206 and 284-332 argues in detail that
Xenophon’s story was really written by Antisthenes, with Höistad 1948:152
arguing against Joël.
9
The majority of critics read Xenophon at face value, i.e. most of the content and
probably some of the phrasing is Prodicus’; contra both Joël 1901 who holds
Prodicus as a fiction in this passage, and Sansone 2004 who argues that the text
was composed by the historical Prodicus.
10
Ps.-Diog. Ep. 30 is the first of a set of 10 longer letters containing passages of
dialogue. On organising the 50 transmitted letters in sets based on shared features
and assignable to single composers, see Emanjalow 1967:1-10, and Malherbe
1977:14-19. Texts cited from Hercher 1873, with changes suggested by
Emenjalow 1967.
PRINCE
Ἧκον, ὦ πάτερ, Ἀθήναζε, καὶ πυθόμενος τὸν Σωκράτους
ἑταῖρον εὐδαιμονίαν διδάσκειν, εἰσῆλθον παρ’ αὐτόν. ὃ δὲ ἐτύγχανε
τότε σχολάζων περὶ ταῖν ὁδοῖν ταῖν φερούσαιν <ἐπ’ αὐτήν>, ἔλεγε
δὲ αὐτὰς εἶναι δύο καὶ οὐ πολλάς, καὶ τὴν μὲν σύντομον, τὴν δὲ
πολλήν· ἐξεῖναι οὖν ἑκάστῳ ὁποτέραν βούλοιτο βαδίζειν. κἀγὼ
ταῦτα ἀκούσας τότε μὲν κατεσίγησα, τῇ δὲ ἑξῆς, ἐπειδὴ πάλιν
εἰσιόντων ἡμῶν παρ’ αὐτὸν περὶ ταῖν ὁδοῖν παρεκάλεσα αὐτὸν
ἐπιδεῖξαι ἡμῖν, καὶ ὃς μάλ’ ἑτοίμως ἀπαναστὰς τῶν θάκων ἦγεν
ἡμᾶς εἰς ἄστυ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν. καὶ ἐπεὶ
ἀγχοῦ ἐγενόμεθα, ἐπιδείκνυσιν ἡμῖν δύο τινὲ ὁδὼ ἀναφερούσα, τὴν
μὲν ὀλίγην προσάντη τε καὶ δύσκολον, τὴν δὲ πολλὴν λείαν τε καὶ
ῥᾳδίαν καθιστάς. ἅμα γάρ ‘αἱ μὲν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν’ εἶπε ‘φέρουσαι
ὁδοί εἰσιν αὗται, αἱ δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν τοιαῦται· αἱρεῖσθε δὲ
ἕκαστος ἣν ἐθέλετε, ξεναγήσω δ’ ἐγώ.’ τότε οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τῆς ὁδοῦ
τὸ δύσκολον καὶ πρόσαντες καταπλαγέντες ὑποκατεκλίνησαν καὶ
τὴν μακρὰν καὶ λείαν παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν διάγειν, ἐγὼ δὲ κρείττων
γενόμενος τῶν χαλεπῶν τὴν προσάντη καὶ δύσκολον· ἐπὶ γὰρ
εὐδαιμονίαν ἐπειγομένῳ κἂν διὰ πυρὸς ἢ ξιφῶν βαδιστέον εἶναι.
I arrived, father, in Athens, and when I learned that the
companion of Socrates was teaching happiness, I went to him. He
happened to be teaching at the time about the two roads leading to
it, and he said that the roads are two and not many, and that one is
a short cut and the other long: and so it is up to each person which
of them he wishes to tread. And I, when I heard this, was quiet
then, but on the next day, when we went back to him, when I
appealed to him to demonstrate for us his point about the two
roads, he very agreeably stood from his seat and led us to the city
and through it straight to the Acropolis. And when we got close, he
showed us two paths leading up, rendering the short one as steep
and difficult and the long one as smooth and easy. And
simultaneously he said, ‘The roads leading to the Acropolis are
these, and the roads leading to happiness are similar. Choose, each
of you, the one he wishes, and I shall be your tour guide.’ Then the
others, startled at the difficult and steep quality of the road, gave
up and bid him to lead by the long and smooth road, but I stood up
to the challenge and chose the steep and difficult road. For to one
in pursuit of happiness, it is necessary to walk, even if through fire
and swords.11
11
Ps.-Diog. Ep. 30.1-2 (Hercher 1873); cf. Prince 2015:399-402.
76
77
Newly arrived in Athens, Diogenes reports to his father that he has found
a teacher of happiness. On first encounter, this teacher (not named here,
but in the overlapping Letter 37 identified as Antisthenes) throws out a
puzzle: just as there are two paths to the Acropolis, one long and smooth
and another short and steep, so are there two paths to happiness. Diogenes
does not know quite what to make of the puzzle, but he returns the next
day to ask for a demonstration. He learns that each tourist, or perhaps
pilgrim, is invited to make his own choice between the paths, and
Antisthenes is happy to lead by either way. Diogenes chooses the short and
rigorous path, and this is the turning point in his life: the conclusion of the
letter features Antisthenes endowing Diogenes with the Cynic costume of
double cloak, wallet, simple eating utensils and a staff, so achieving his
conversion to Cynicism.12
As Emeljanow has shown, this allegory with both paths leading to the
same place of happiness, is a more coherent geographical image than the
versions in Hesiod and Xenophon where the long hard and the short easy
paths cannot have the same endpoint: Virtue is the destination of a long
path, and those tempted by an apparent short route (either a practical
deception or a literary foil), are misguided and will arrive at neither Virtue
nor true happiness. This is also the gist of most other Imperial resonances
of the story, which implicitly or explicitly advocate for the long path.
The fictional Antisthenes’ advocacy of a short path is underlined in
Letter 37 of Ps.-Diogenes.13 Diogenes writes now of a luxurious banquet
hosted by a friend and of his protest that the situation is at odds with the
simple food and drink of his normal diet, to which he has been habituated
through his education at the hands of Antisthenes:
<…> τοιαῦτα ἐγὼ παρὰ Ἀντισθένει παιδευόμενος ἔμαθον ἐσθίειν
καὶ πίνειν, οὐχ ὡς φαῦλα ἀλλ’ ὡς κρείττονα τῶν ἑτέρων καὶ
μᾶλλον δυνάμενα ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ εὑρίσκεσθαι τῇ φερούσῃ ἐπ’
εὐδαιμονίαν, ἣν δὴ πάντων τιμιωτάτην χρημάτων θετέον. ἐν τόπῳ
ὀχυρωτάτῳ καὶ ἀποκρημνοτάτῳ τραχεῖαν ἱδρύσασθαι. ταύτην οὖν
τὴν ὁδὸν διὰ τὸ δύσκολον μόλις μίαν ὁδὸν προσάντη καὶ ἂν
δύνασθαι γυμνὸν ἕκαστον ἀναβῆναι, καὶ οὐχ ὅτι φέροντά τι σὺν
ἑαυτῷ καὶ βαρούμενον μόγῳ καὶ δεσμοῖς περισωθῆναι, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ
12
Cf. similar motifs in Ps.-Crates, Ep. 6 and 13: the σύντομος ὅδος is attributed
directly to Diogenes in Ep. 13, but Ep. 6, citing from Ps.-Diog. Ep. 30, credits
Antisthenes with starting this mode of living well (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) or practicing this
sort of philosophy (τὸ ὧδε φιλοσοφεῖν).
PRINCE
78
τῶν ἀναγκαίων τι μετιόντα, ποιῆσαι δ’ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ τροφὴν μὲν πόαν
ἢ κάρδαμα, πόμα δὲ εὐπαλὲς ὕδωρ. μάλιστα δ’ ὅπῃ δέοι τοῦ ῥᾷστα
βαδίσαι, γυμναστέον ἐσθίειν μὲν κάρδαμον, πίνειν δὲ ὕδωρ,
ἀμπέχεσθαι δὲ τρίβωνα κοῦφον <…>.
<…> These are the sorts of things I learned to eat and drink under
the tutelage of Antisthenes, [and to see] them not as meager, but as
better than other things and more able to be found on the road
leading to happiness, which of course must be posited as the most
valuable of all. [He said that]14 in a place very secure and full of
cliffs, one road, steep and rough, is set out. And this road, because
of its difficulty, each man could scarcely climb naked, not to
mention survive when carrying something with him and weighed
down by distress and bonds, nor when chasing after one of the
necessary things; but he can create as his nourishment on the road
the grass or the cresses, and as his drink the common water. And
foremost where one would need to proceed most easily, one must
exercise in eating cress and drinking water and dressing in a light
cloak <…>.
Here only one path leads to happiness, and Diogenes explains more fully
how the ascetic lifestyle he adopted in Letter 30 relates to climbing this
steep path. One must be ‘naked’ (γυμνόν), lest either of two problems
deter. Firstly, the fully clothed traveller is weighed down by distress and
bonds (βαρούμενον μόγῳ καὶ δεσμοῖς), that is, ailments of a life
committed to things that enslave. In fourth-century Socratic discourse, not
least the dialogue between Socrates and Aristippus framing the choice of
Heracles in Xen. Mem. 2.1.4-6 and 10-11, these are characterised as bodily
appetites gratified without limit, such that they control the ethical subject
and not vice versa. One might assume that if the fully clothed traveller
were to try ascending this rugged mountain, he would need to take the
long and gradual route of Letter 30 where he can lug along all his baggage.
Secondly, the unprepared traveller has to chase after the ‘necessary
things’ (τῶν ἀναγκαίων τι μετιόντα), primarily nourishment and drink. If
one cannot find nourishment from the grass, cresses and water on the road
14
An apparent anacoluthon between the colon ending at θετέον and the
accusative construction that follows has inspired despairing statements from
editors: see Nihard 1914:261-63 (who complained also about repetition of
content); Emeljanow 1967:183-85; Malherbe 1977:156. If the clauses concerned
are understood as Diogenes’ citation of what Antisthenes said, in indirect
discourse, the problems of both syntax and redundancy disappear.
79
(τροφὴν μὲν πόαν ἢ κάρδαμα, πόμα δὲ εὐπαλὲς ὕδωρ), that is, what is
present and available, one must go off track to find them, and this
obviously deters progress. We will see that both problems, having too
much baggage on the one hand, and having to cope with few available
resources on the other, have parallels in the best surviving version of
Antisthenes’ presentation of his own happiness. Should one ask why
Diogenes so readily chooses and permanently prefers the short, steep
route, the answer must be something to the effect that less time getting to
happiness implies more time being there. In addition, Diogenes in Letter
30 is aware of possessing some superiority of power or strength (ἐγὼ δὲ
κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν χαλεπῶν) and is eager to take up the challenge
that sets himself apart.
This competitive spirit is related to the Cynic display referred to and
often ridiculed in hostile sources.15 In these, the necessary long road and
the attractive short road cannot lead to the same destination. The secondcentury Galen represents in his text On the Diagnosis and Cure of Errors of
the Soul 3.12 a straightforward version of the resistance to the Cynic short
cut:
καὶ γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι σύντομον ἐπ’ ἀρετὴν ὁδὸν εἶναί φασι τὸ
σφέτερον ἐπιτήδευμα. τινὲς δὲ αὐτῶν ἐλέγχοντες οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀρετήν,
ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀρετῆς ἐπ’ εὐδαιμονίαν ὁδὸν εἶναι φάσκουσι τὴν κυνικὴν
φιλοσοφίαν. ἀλλ’ ἕτεροί γ’ ἀληθέστερον αὐτῶν ἀποφαινόμενοι
σύντομον ἐπ’ ἀλαζονείαν ὁδὸν εἶναί φασι δι<ὰ τὴν> ἀμαθῆ τῶν
τοιούτων ἀνθρώπων τόλμαν. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ Κυνικοὶ πάντες, οὕς γε
δὴ τεθέαμαι κατὰ τὸν ἐμαυτοῦ βίον, οὕτω καὶ τῶν φιλοσοφεῖν
ἐπαγγελλομένων ἔνιοι φεύγειν ὁμολογοῦσι τὴν ἐν τῇ λογικῇ
θεωρίᾳ γυμνασίαν.
And indeed also they say that their way of life is a shortcut road to
virtue. But some of them, refuting this, claim that the Cynic
philosophy is not a road to virtue, but a road to happiness through
virtue. Yet others of them, declaring their opinions more truthfully,
say that it is a shortcut road to charlatanry, because of the ignorant
boldness of such people. Well, in the same way as all the Cynics
agree (at least those I have seen in the course of my life), likewise
also some of those who proclaim that they philosophize agree that
15
Competitive spirit is critical to Cynic performance from every perspective.
Bosman 2006:101 shows that Diogenes’ antics, even from a sympathetic
perspective, always involve ἀγών.
PRINCE
80
they shun exercise in logical theory.16
Galen uses the trademark σύντομος ὁδός which is, in fact, absent from the
Ps.-Diogenic letters. In calling the Cynic route charlatanry (ἐπ’
ἀλαζονείαν), a mode of show-off with the self-serving purpose of gaining
attention or attacking others, or even with no purpose at all, Galen echoes
other critics of the Cynics who accuse them of vapid antics.17 Most
modern scholarship, as well, characterises Cynic freedom as negative
freedom, freedom from social constraint or convention without any
justifying positive freedom, freedom for a definite goal such as reaching the
mountain top of happiness.18
For the historical Antisthenes’ positive conception of happiness and the
road to getting there, one must turn to the text most likely to present his
own account, namely his speech on the wealth of his soul in Xenophon’s
Symposium (4.34-44 = SSR VA 82). Antisthenes here explains the nature
of his happiness and not the road that got him there, but we might from
this text be able to deduce more about his proposed road. Antisthenes’
speech is set as his contribution to the party game, a cycle of speeches
explaining what each guest values most. Antisthenes’ riddling answer in
the previous chapter of the text (Sym. 3.8) was his wealth. Since he was
not wealthy in land or money, the other diners asked what his ‘wealth’
referred to, and he explains that he has wealth of the soul. Antisthenes
presents this as an original metaphor, although it was surely commonplace
in Socratic literature by the date of Xenophon’s composition in the late
360s.19
Antisthenes’ whole speech is important to his conception of happiness,
16
Text cited from De Boer 1937.
Cf. Luc. Vit. auc. 11 (Diogenes speaking): Ἀλλὰ ῥᾷστά γε, ὦ οὗτος, καὶ πᾶσιν
εὐχερῆ μετελθεῖν· οὐ γάρ σοι δεήσει παιδείας καὶ λόγων καὶ λήρων, ἀλλ’
ἐπίτομος αὕτη σοι πρὸς δόξαν ἡ ὁδός (‘But at all events it is easy, man, and no
trouble for all to follow; for you will not need education and doctrine and drivel,
but this road is a short cut to fame’, tr. Harmon 1913).
18
Examples of this characterisation are collected in Montiglio 2005:181-84 and n.
3. This tradition is countered by Höistad 1948:15-16 (who traces it to Gomperz
1915), where he sets out the framework for his whole book. See also Moles 1983
for a positive conception of Cynic cosmopolitanism. Moles 2000: esp. 431,
emphasises that Cynic freedom must be negative in literal political terms, but it
creates space for exercising moral strength, the content of real Cynic freedom.
19
On the dating of the Symposium and various aspects of its overall structure, see
Huß 1999.
17
81
but we may stress three main points. Firstly, although Antisthenes frames
his choice of lifestyle in the negative, as an alternative or solution to the
corrupted tyrannical lifestyle he sees around him (Sym. 4.35 and especially
4.36), there is in the end a positive goal: leisure and contemplation (4.44).
We will return to this point last. Secondly, in the core of his argument
(4.37-38), the measure of ‘enough’, that is, fulfilment of bodily appetite
and desire, is unproblematically given:
περίεστί μοι καὶ ἐσθίοντι ἄχρι τοῦ μὴ πεινῆν ἀφικέσθαι καὶ
πίνοντι μέχρι τοῦ μὴ διψῆν καὶ ἀμφιέννυσθαι ὥστε ἕξω μὲν μηδὲν
μᾶλλον Καλλίου τούτου τοῦ πλουσιωτάτου ῥιγοῦν.
[I]t is possible for me to eat to the point of not being hungry, and
drink to the point of not being thirsty, and get dressed in such a
way that outdoors I shiver no more than the very wealthy Callias
here.
(Xen. Sym. 37)
Simultaneously, however, this limit is a matter of perception (38):
ἐπειδάν γε μὴν ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ γένωμαι, πάνυ μὲν ἀλεεινοὶ χιτῶνες οἱ
τοῖχοί μοι δοκοῦσιν εἶναι.
And when I am in my house, the walls seem to me to be very
warm undergarments.
In fact, his minimal fulfilments of needs of the body seem even too
pleasant (4.39). Although it is a truism in modern terms that the
experience of pleasure is always subjective, Antisthenes uses this repeated
emphasis on his peculiar and deliberately trained way of experiencing
pleasure to show that the objective circumstances for ‘well-being’
determine neither pleasure nor the happiness extended from pleasure. An
objective assessment of Antisthenes’ well-being from the tyrant’s (here
Callias’) perspective, or even that of most average people, would find him
lacking. But, because being pleasant is a predicate that seems to be true of,
among other things, his bedding, not something that is true in itself, the
response is up to him. In this way, his subjective experience is an
appearance, not something that could be known, as in the very different
PRINCE
82
account of the Cyrenaics.20 In contrast to this subjective pleasure in the
fulfilment of bodily needs, which takes on objective limits (‘enough’) only
as identified through Antisthenes’ reasoning, the wealth of the soul that
Antisthenes gains from Socrates at the end of the picture (4.43) escapes
objective measure:
Σωκράτης τε γὰρ οὗτος παρ’ οὗ ἐγὼ τοῦτον ἐκτησάμην οὔτ’ ἀριθμῷ
οὔτε σταθμῷ ἐπήρκει μοι, ἀλλ’ ὁπόσον ἐδυνάμην φέρεσθαι
τοσοῦτόν μοι παρεδίδου.
Socrates here, from whom I have acquired so much, supplied me
neither by number nor by weight, but however much I could carry
off, that much he granted me.
Its total volume is again relative to the subject, here not figured as an
appearance but an objectively real package of well-being, something that
can be carried.
Thirdly, the key to the lifestyle of Antisthenes is not minimalisation of
pleasure or its satisfactions in itself, but the ability to make use of what is
available. So in 4.38, ‘what is available’ suffices as his sexual partners (οὕτω
μοι τὸ παρὸν ἀρκεῖ). In 4.40, any job available will satisfy his financial
needs (οὐδὲν οὕτως ὁρῶ φαῦλον ἔργον ὁποῖον οὐκ ἀρκοῦσαν ἂν τροφὴν
ἐμοὶ παρέχοι). In 4.41, pleasure in general can be provided right from his
soul (ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς ταμιεύομαι). When he encounters Thasian wine (4.41),
a luxury good,21 he does not resist or reject it, but he enjoys it. What he
has not done is go out of his way or expend toil or risk to get the wine. He
has also not cluttered his field of decision-making by rejecting it, but his
whole set of attitudes is organised to invest all his effort, so to speak, on
his most splendid possession, namely leisure (4.44) and the positive
content of that. Neither the baggage of bonds to desire nor the pursuit of
what is necessary prevents Antisthenes from becoming a traveller on the
steep road of Ps.-Diogenes’ Letter 37. What is missing in this speech is an
account of the road itself and a full description of the state of happiness.
But comparison to other passages might allow us to fill in these missing
pieces.
20
Diog. Laert. 2.86-90. Although current scholarship tends to attribute these
views to Aristippus the younger (cf. Tsouna 1998:129 n. 18), it is not implausible
that an epistemological issue lies at the heart of the polarised positions of
Antisthenes and Aristippus the Elder on the topic of pleasure.
21
See Huß 1999:284-85.
83
Let us consider, first, what Antisthenes’ speech does say about the
positive goals of his self-discipline: ‘And furthermore, you see that the
most splendid possession, leisure, is always my possession’ (καὶ μὴν καὶ τὸ
ἁβρότατόν γε κτῆμα, τὴν σχολὴν ἀεὶ ὁρᾶτέ μοι παροῦσαν, 4.44). When
Antisthenes maximises σχολή (‘free time’), the result is that he can ‘behold
the things worth beholding and hear the things worth hearing, and, what I
value for most, I can spend the day at leisure with Socrates’ (ὥστε καὶ
θεᾶσθαι τἀ ἀξιοθέατα καἰ ἀκούειν τα ἀξιάκουστα καἰ ὃ πλείστου ἐγὼ
τιμῶμαι, Σωκράτωι σχολάζων συνδιημερεύειν, Xen. Sym. 4.44).
Antisthenes says no more about which things are worth beholding or
worth hearing, but this activity is at the centre of his lifestyle, just as
gazing on the Forms is at the centre of the lifestyle in Plato’s philosophy.22
Given that Antisthenes does not recognise the Platonic Forms,23 one might
ask which visions and sounds at the core of his happiness could be the
nearest equivalent to Diotima’s central lesson on his terms. These cannot
be aesthetic in the commonplace sense, because Xenophon’s text overall
rejects aesthetic beauty, represented by the beautiful body of the athlete
Autolycus (Sym. 1.9) in favour of some Socratic ‘fine and good’ (Sym. 8.3,
8.11); Antisthenes’ speech contributes centrally to this message. Within
the frame of Antisthenes’ speech, and what we otherwise know about his
values, these pleasures must be hearing the logoi of Socrates or seeing,
through the mind’s eye, objects such as the actions in Homeric poetry or
on the Athenian stage.24 In later discourse such as Themistius’ On Virtue,
this kind of highest vision consists in seeing the divine things that reside
above the human, on the one hand, and seeing the lush vegetation of the
beautiful meadow at the top of the road to happiness.25 Whatever the
22
Represented most clearly in the lesson of Diotima at the heart of his own
Symposium, 210e2-211a1.
23
The clearest surviving evidence for this dispute between Antisthenes and Plato
is collected in SSR VA 149.
24
See SSR VA 12; Antisthenes’ pursuit of Socrates’ company and attraction to his
discourse (according to the account in the Gnom. Vat. and in Jerome), and
evidence of his interest in Homeric actions in VA 53-54, 187-92. For Antisthenes
and Socrates as co-spectators of tragedy (in anecdote), see VA 16.
25
Them. De virt. fol. 32a (Mach 1974) (= SSR VA 96): perfectus enim vir non eris,
priusquam ea, quae hominibus sublimiora sunt, didiceris. si ista disces, tunc humana
quoque disces … (‘for you will not be a perfect man until you have learned the
things that are more exalted than humans. If you learn these, then you will also
learn human matters.’ At fol. 26a, the ‘broad and open field’ at the top of the
difficult path discovered by Socrates, trodden by Antisthenes, Diogenes and
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exact content of this experience, it is this experience that constitutes the
goal of freedom according to Antisthenes. Both these key concepts, leisure
and contemplation, are also central to Plato’s conception of happiness and
the philosophical life, as a short excerpt from the Theaetetus demonstrates.
I do not propose that these Platonic texts necessarily refer to Antisthenes,
only that they show a common Socratic background to these core
components of happiness. Arguably, Diotima’s destination of love differs
from Antisthenes’ central experience in only two respects: the nature of its
content, being Forms, and the length of the ascent, being long.26
In the Theaetetus, a text that famously has no explicit commitment to
the theory of Forms, Socrates in the course of a long digression (171d177c) praises the philosophical life, and especially its leisure, by contrast to
the lifestyle of the man of affairs and law courts, the forensic man. There is
no dominant language of roads in this passage, but there is a culminating
distinction of two ways or τρόποι (175d7-176a1) for spending leisure. As
Socrates describes the inferior way, that of the forensic man, he shows
how this man performs the appearance but not the real way of the
philosopher (175b8-176a1). I am not committed to the possibility that
Plato is taking a subtle and ornery dig at Antisthenes in this passage, but
others have pointed in this, indeed attractive, direction.27 Plato implies that
this non-philosopher rises from particular to general only with effort and
insufficiency (175b8-d2); that his favourite topics are justice, kingship and
human happiness (same passage); that he knows how to make a bed and
season food, activities disgraceful to the real philosopher;28 and that he
Crates, and begun but rejected by Chrysippus, Zeno and Cleanthes, is described:
quae via primo ingressu difficilis et aspera est; sed paulo post ambulantibus campus
planus atque apertus subest; in ea <via> et tranquillitas et sudum et pax insunt;
alimenta, quibus eam ambulantibus opus est, terra sponte sua germinanda curat …
(‘this road is difficult and harsh on first approach; but a little bit later a broad and
open field appears to those who walk; on this road are tranquility, peace and a
clear blue sky; the earth by its own accord takes care of sprouting the food needed
by those who walk it.’ The text is preserved only in Syriac and has been rendered
in Latin by R. Mach in Themistii Orationes v. 3 (Leipzig: Teubner 1974).
26
Brancacci 1993:43 also compares Diotima’s vision to the activity at the core of
Antisthenes’ leisure.
27
Zeller 1888:289 n. 2 pointed to the Thracian women who appear in this
passage (175d5) as a clue to Antisthenes; see SSR VA 1-3. Plato mentions
Thracian women nowhere else in his corpus.
28
Theaet. 175e1-4; compare Antisthenes’ pride in his luxurious bed at Xen. Sym.
4.38.
85
lacks the upbringing necessary for true freedom and leisure.29 Whether or
not Plato is thinking about Antisthenes in particular, the importance of
leisure,30 along with the implication that leisure is rightfully devoted to
discussing the kinds of topic the Socratics discussed, is common to this
passage and Antisthenes’ exposition of the wealth of his soul in
Xenophon’s Symposium.
Antisthenes, in his speech, presents the life of happiness he is already
practicing, not the path to getting there. Although the account overlaps
with Ps.-Diogenes’ Letter 37 in two significant ways, it does not tell us
whether the path is long or short, let alone how the path is conceived:
Antisthenes seems only to celebrate his achieved state of happiness. But an
odd passage in Aelius Aristides which cites Antisthenes might shed light
on this question. Here Aristides, amid his Sacred Tales, is recounting his
recovery from illness through his communication with Asclepius.31 Alexia
Petsalis-Diomidis has shown that Aristides regularly evokes healing
practices in this text from the authority of ancient books.32 She also
mentions that a portrait of Antisthenes was displayed on the sacred way of
second-century Pergamon leading from the city to the precinct of
Asclepius, the setting of Aristides’ Sacred Tales.33 It thus seems plausible
that Aristides is indeed quoting Antisthenes. In the book, Aristides tells us,
a god appeared advising the athlete in training to drink water and to
abstain from wine, because in such a way he would attain victory (ταῦτα
δὴ πάντα ὁ θεὸς συλλογισάμενος καὶ ὁρῶν τὸ ῥεῦμα ἄρδην φερόμενον
προσέταξεν ὕδωρ πίνειν, οἴνου δὲ ἀπέχεσθαι, εἴ τι δεῖται νικῆσαι, Sacred
Tales 3.31). Aristides, in his own right, then follows the advice given by
the god to the aspiring victor of Antisthenes’ text, and his path to
abstinence is tracked out in detail.34 First, it seems, he immediately stops
drinking wine, and drinks water instead, in obedience to the god and in
29
The philosopher is the one raised in real freedom and leisure; cf. Theaet. 175d8e1.
30
From the list of Plato’s most outstanding treatments of σχολή that could
plausibly be relevant to Antisthenes’ climax in Sym. 4.44 (Huß 1999:287-88), this
is the most clearly framed and most developed.
31
Sacred Tales 3.30-33 = SSR VA 197. The text is cited from the edition of Keil
1898.
32
Petsalis-Diomidis 2010:267-69.
33
See Petsalis-Diomidis 2010:174-79.
34
Sacred Tales 3.32. This section of the Aristides passage is elided in SSR,
although the reference to Antisthenes and the second reference to his book
follows in §33.
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disobedience to his own personal inclinations. Then start the phases of
training. Once the god is satisfied that Aristides can abstain, he
reintroduces the wine, in a small daily ration that is only for the day, the
‘kingly half-portion’ (ἡμίνα βασιλική). He continues:
ἐχρώμην τούτῳ καὶ οὕτως ἤρκει ὡς οὐκ ἤρκει πρότερον τὸ
διπλάσιον, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ φειδομένῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ δεδιέναι μὴ ἐπιλείπῃ
περιῆν. οὐ μὴν τοῦτό γε ἐποιούμην ἐξαίρετον εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν,
ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔδει τῷ μέτρῳ στέργειν.
‘I consumed this’, he continues, ‘and it was sufficient to such a
degree as double the amount previously had not been sufficient:
and there were times when it was even left over, since I was
sparing out of fear that it might run out. However, I did not set this
aside for the next day, but it was necessary to be content anew
with the portion [for that day].’
(Sacred Tales 3.32)
Finally, the god, as if testing Aristides’ achievement of virtue, allows him
to drink to indulgence (ἀφίησιν ἤδη πίνειν πρὸς ἐξουσίαν), since it is also
part of virtue to use what is ready or available, and foolish are those who
cannot (μάταιοι τῶν ἀνθρώπων εἶεν ὅσοι τῶν ἱκανῶν εὐποροῦντες μὴ
τολμῶσιν ἐλευθέρως χρῆσθαι, Sacred Tales 3.32). In the end, Aristides is
able to follow his regimen and not be lured into excess, because he has
fixed his habits.
Although it is not impossible that Aristides has introduced this method
for what looks like the defeat of an addiction from his own imagination
and not from Antisthenes’ book, the passage occurs between the two
references to the book, and the story does not follow Aristides’ typical
patterns. The vocabulary in this passage seems appropriate to Antisthenes
and even overlaps at points with the speech reported by Xenophon.35 The
Sacred Tales refers very rarely to wine and never to drunkenness or
addiction: of the merely six references to wine in the entire work, three
occur in this passage and one just before.36 In so far as this passage presents
35
Consider especially ἡμίνα βασιλική, μέτρον, and all vocabulary in the last clause
quoted. In addition, the concluding sentence (3.33) reports a longing for τὴν
ταμιείαν τὴν τότε: in Sym. 4.41 Antisthenes manages his transactions in pleasure
from the shop of his soul, ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς ταμιεύομαι.
36
Apart from the present passage, the word οἶνος is related to a medicine or
treatment in Sacred Tales 1.26 and 3.26, both close in context to the present
87
a path to virtue, it is quite different from the other images of the path to
virtue in the tradition: none discusses the dishabituation from wine. But,
possibly, this passage makes sense in the context of the short cut. The
abrupt change of attitude to the wine at the beginning of the process,
where it is removed completely and then reintroduced, rather than
reduced gradually, could perhaps be understood as a version of the short
cut.
Let us turn now from this exploration of Antisthenes’ ethical short cut
to two other plausible areas of application. These are both related more
narrowly to education and not happiness, but, of course, in ancient
philosophy education was equated to the route to happiness. As we turn
now from consideration of Antisthenes’ views on ethical virtue and its
achievement to the language of the long road in the discourse about
Athenian education, let us remember that this was based in rhetoric, that
is, techniques and topics in language, and that Antisthenes was a notable
contributor in this field. His catalogue of books shows an extended series
of nine or more titles devoted to topics comparable to Plato’s Cratylus,
Theaetetus and Sophist;37 another extended series of eighteen titles was
devoted to topics in poetry and Homer,38 which, to judge from relics
surviving in the Homeric scholia, involved complicated and aggressive
interpretations of Homer’s terminology and the ethical behaviour of his
characters.39 In light of this broader scope of Antisthenes’ interests, let us
note two further ways in which the short road of Antisthenes can arguably
be conceived.
A second way is related to knowledge and truth: that is, the
Antisthenean understanding of truth might be a short cut, and his brand of
education might, as Galen and Diogenes Laertius imply through the
contrast to the Stoics, omit the long course of exercise in logic but seek
access to the truth more directly, in some non-systematic form, perhaps
even in the poems of Homer. In other words, the very sense of the ‘short
passage, and once (4.34) sailors arrive on the scene heavy with wine. Μέθυ and
derivatives do not occur in Sacred Tales. A survey of Aristides’ complete works
shows similarly low use of these words.
37
These are in the sixth and seventh τόμοι of Antisthenes’ book catalogue; Diog.
Laert. 6.16-17 = SSR VA 41.
38
These are in the eighth and ninth τόμοι of the catalogue; Diog. Laert. 6.17-18 =
SSR VA 41.
39
See SSR VA 187-92, but especially 189 (the epithets of the Cyclopes) and 191
(the strength of Nestor).
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cut’ attributed by Goulet-Cazé to Apollonius of Seleucia might be closely
faithful to Antisthenes, whose distinction would, obviously, be not from
the Stoics, but from the technical advocates of his own day: Plato, who
was developing the longer route of philosophy; perhaps Isocrates, who was
developing the longer, if not quite so long, route of rhetoric; and every
teacher who advocated for a special intellectual τέχνη learned through an
extended course of study. We shall return to this possibility in conclusion.
A third way is that Antisthenes’ brand of education, in so far as it was
short and therefore inexpensive in economic terms,40 might have been
targeted to a type of person not addressed by traditional educational
models, that is, non-aristocrats, persons like the craftsmen who appear
now and then in Plato’s dialogues as a model audience for Socrates. This
type, most notably in the person of Simon the Shoemaker, appears with
much more frequency in later discourse about the Socratics, especially that
influenced by the Cynics.41
This third sense is likely to supply the key to the interpretation of
Xenophon’s story of Heracles at the crossroads as a response to or subtle
statement about Antisthenes. A preliminary general point about Xenophon’s relationship to the writings and doctrines of Antisthenes is in order.
In a tradition going back to the 19th century, it is often assumed that if
Xenophon used material from Antisthenes (or anyone else) to compose
his own text, this took the form of cut-and-paste quotation, adapted only
crudely to the scrapbook Xenophon was assembling, sometimes betraying
itself through phrasing never fully adapted to the new context.42 The more
plausible picture, however, is that Xenophon interacts with texts by
Antisthenes (or anyone else), sometimes to endorse them, but sometimes
to parody them or make a joke:43 he admired Antisthenes’ ascetic ethics
40
The main evidence for this traditional opinion is in SSR VA 169, an anecdote
from Diogenes Laertius, and VA 170, a passage from Isocrates where Antisthenes
is not named. Despite the bad evidence, the point is plausible as well as consistent
with e.g. SSR VA 83 and the rest of Xenophon’s Symposium.
41
See the comprehensive treatment of Sellars 2003.
42
E.g. Gigon 1956 detects what he considers breaks in thought or unmotivated
statements in the framing dialogue of Mem. 2.1, and attributes these to
Xenophon’s not quite competent redaction of his source material. There are
occasions when such an explanation may be necessary (e.g. Mem. 2.1.30, where
Virtue addresses Vice as though she is a man), but this should not be applied
unnecessarily.
43
The most compelling cases of parody with respect to Antisthenes are Sym. 8.46 (= SSR VA 14) and Mem. 3.4, on which see Prince 2015:262-69.
89
and, in the case of Heracles, he shares with Antisthenes the view that
achieving happiness is difficult and entails the rejection of indulgence in
immediate pleasure. But quite often, especially in the Symposium,
Xenophon also subtly criticises Antisthenes, there, according to my overall
reading, for his failure to actually succeed Socrates in the mission to
become a teacher for Athens who would effectively steer it toward unity
and success.44 In the case of Heracles at the crossroads, one of Xenophon’s
points must be to correct Antisthenes for his omission of many
benefactory civic goals Xenophon considers important from his
programme for personal ethical success. The speech of virtue to Heracles
(Xen. Mem. 2.1.27-28), is jarring for its list of noble activities Heracles
must prepare for through long hard work:
For of the things that are good and fine (ἀγαθῶν καὶ καλῶν), the
gods have given nothing to humans without toil and application
(ἄνευ πόνου καὶ ἐπιμελείας), and if you want the gods to be kind
to you, you must serve the gods, and if you want to be loved by
your friends, you must do good service to your friends. and if you
want to be honoured by any city, you must help the city, and if
you expect to be admired by all of Greece for your virtue, you
must try to benefit Greece, and if you want the earth to bear
limitless fruits for you, you must serve the earth, and if you think
you should become wealthy from livestock, you must take care of
the livestock, and if you strive to expand through war, and you
want to be able to free your friends and subdue your enemies, you
must learn the arts of war, and these from those who know, and
you must practice how to use them. If you want to be able in your
body, you must accustom your body to serve under your mind and
you must exercise with labours and sweat (τῇ γνώμῃ ὑπηρετεῖν
ἐθιστέον τὸ σῶμα καὶ γυμναστέον σὺν πόνοις καὶ ἱδρῶτι).
Serving the gods, helping the city, cultivating large amounts of land,
imperialism through war, are all practices Antisthenes variously rejects in
the surviving testimonia.45 It is only the concluding statement of Virtue
44
This criticism, I think, is embedded especially in the μαστροπός passage, Sym.
8.56-64 (= SSR VA 13). Although Xenophon’s Symposium is laden with irony
showing that this mission failed even in Socrates’ hands, his Athenian audience
seems to bear the blame; the Memorabilia praises Socratic teaching for what it did
achieve.
45
On serving the gods: see, especially SSR VA 182, albeit about Cybele. But
Antisthenes probably rejected the conventional Olympian gods also (SSR VA
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that fits with Antisthenes’ notably private and individualist cultivation of
virtue on the personal scale.46
When the second woman, Vice, addresses Heracles (Mem. 2.1.29), she
tempts him to a more attractive path to joy or happiness:
And Vice, interrupting, said (as Prodicus tells us), ‘Are you aware,
Heracles, how difficult and long (χαλεπὴν καὶ μακρὰν ) is the road
to joy (τὰς εὐφροσύνας) that this woman describes to you? I will
lead you on an easy and short road to happiness (ῥᾳδίαν καὶ
βραχεῖαν ὁδὸν ἐπὶ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν).’
If the short, albeit difficult, road was known to the audience, Xenophon
delivers a joke here, a harmless one given the overall message of the story,
against Antisthenes that the audience will enjoy: Socrates reminds us that
it is Prodicus’ story he is telling, and he makes the short road the corrupt
road of pleasure, the very road Antisthenes adamantly opposes. In another
version of the story, we might imagine, the subject heroically chose the
short road, for which he needed to ditch his baggage and his social
aspirations, and aim straight for Virtue. Elsewhere in the Memorabilia
(2.6.39), Xenophon’s Socrates indeed advocates a short cut route to his
difficult pupil Critobulus, and this is a sort of road that Antisthenes would
have agreed with, the short cut road to seeming good through the most
efficient behaviour of being good.47 That there was a background contest
between Antisthenes and Prodicus over the question whether the road is
long or short is not suggested in Classical evidence (we do hear from
Plato’s Socrates in Cratylus 384b2-c1 that Prodicus himself offered a very
long and expensive course on the use of names in addition to the
publically accessible ones). But again we find some enticing discussion in
179-81). On helping the city: see, especially SSR VA 70. On cultivating land: see,
especially SSR VA 82 (the passage from Plutarch). For imperialism there is no
direct evidence, but on war see SSR VA 74.
46
See SSR VA 163.
47
Xen. Mem. 2.6.39: ἀλλὰ συμτομωτάτη τε καὶ ἀσφαλεστάτη καὶ καλλίστη ὁδός,
ὦ Κριτόβουλε, ὅ τι ἂν βούλῃ δοκεῖν ἀγαθὸς εἶναι, τοῦτο καὶ γενέσθαι ἀγαθὸν
πειρᾶσθαι (‘Nay, Critobulus, if you want to be thought good at anything, you
must try to be so; that is the quickest, the surest, the best way’, tr. Marchant
1921). Joël 1901, reading the whole episode as Antisthenean, picked up on this
evidence for Antisthenes’ advocacy of the short cut. See also Brancacci 1992:4068
n. 70, who counts it as primary evidence for Antisthenes’ connection to the short
cut.
91
the Pseudo-Socratic epistles of Imperial times.
Ps.-Aristippus Letters 9 and 13 are from a series of the so-called
‘Socratic Epistles’ dealing mostly with flattery to the Sicilian tyrants and
residents in their court.48 In Letter 13, Aristippus writes to Simon the
Shoemaker to advise him that he makes the wrong choice in preferring
Antisthenes’ values to those of Prodicus:
Οὐκ ἐγώ σε κωμῳδῶ, ἀλλὰ Φαίδων, λέγων γεγονέναι σε κρείσσω
καὶ σοφώτερον Προδίκω τῶ Κείω, ὃς ἔφα ἀπελέγξαι σε αὐτὸν περὶ
τὸ ἐγκώμιον τὸ εἰς τὸν Ἡρακλέα γενόμενον αὐτῷ.
It is not I who mocks you, but Phaedo, when he says that you are
more excellent and wiser than Prodicus of Ceos. And he [Phaedo]
said you refuted him [Prodicus] about the Encomium, the one he
has for Heracles.
In Letter 9, Aristippus writes to Antisthenes to chide him about their
relative comforts in life:
πέμψω δέ σοι τῶν θέρμων τὼς μεγάλως τε καὶ λευκώς, ἵν’ ἔχῃς
μετὰ τὸ ἐπιδείξασθαι τὸν Ἡρακλέα τοῖς νέοις ὑποτρώγειν.
And I will send you some large white beans, so that you can have
them to eat after you perform your Heracles for the youth.
In the second passage, Aristippus teases Antisthenes for his failure to court
clients who could finance a decent lifestyle for him. Both passages are from
larger contexts, but the relevance here is their suggestions that the
Heracles pieces of Prodicus and Antisthenes stood in rivalry as
advertisements for a curriculum to audiences of Athenians, either wealthy
or poor.49 It is unlikely that such details were invented for the occasion of
these fictional epistles, since they come up by the way and are not the
main focus in either case.
The long road is indeed the road most commonly promoted by most
élite Athenian teachers, and it is plausible that Antisthenes could have
distinguished himself in this Athenian market by promoting the short
route: he was probably the only one. Both Isocrates and Plato favour the
long over the short in the way that matches the preference in Hesiod and
48
49
Texts are in Köhler 1928 and useful discussion in Sykutris 1933.
See Döring 1997, who cites earlier studies.
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the later versions of Lucian, Galen and others. In his Letter to Demonicus
18-19, Isocrates exhorts his pupil to the long route: ‘Do not hesitate to go
the long road (μακρὰν ὁδὸν πορεύεσθαι) towards those proclaiming to
teach something useful.’ Plato in Phaedrus (274a) implicitly praises the
long road in education for rhetoric, which involves first learning some
philosophical technicalities such as the method of collection and division:
‘Do not be surprised if the road around is long (εἰ μακρὰ ἡ περίοδος).’
Let us consider finally, and briefly, the short cut involving modes of
discourse, a topic on which Antisthenes wrote so much. Abbreviated or
concise speech is apparently the oldest metaphorical use of the ‘short cut’
term, whose original application (for example, in Herodotus, Hist. 4.136)
was geographical, especially for situations of military advance. All three
tragedians used adverbial forms of ‘short cut’ in connection with discourse
(for example, λέξομεν δὲ συντόμως, Aesch. Eu. 585). From this
background in the tragedians, it is plausible that the term σύντομος as first
used in intellectual circles referred to discourse and was from there
extended to ethics. Some passages in the later rhetorical tradition suggest
that the σύντομος λόγος also had a special Cynic flavour, which we might
connect to Antisthenes because of his interest in the topic of educational
curriculum, also consistently evoked in these passages. From Diogenes
Laertius 6.31 we learn that the sons of Xeniades benefited from the short
cut at the service of their teacher Diogenes:
κατεῖχον δ’ οἱ παῖδες πολλὰ ποιητῶν καὶ συγγραγέων καὶ τῶν
αὐτοῦ Διογένους πᾶσάν τε ἔφοδον σύντομον πρὸς τὸ
εὐμνημόνευτον ἐπήσκει.
The boys mastered many [sayings/thoughts] of the poets and prose
writers, and works of Diogenes himself, and he exercised them in
every short cut path toward what was readily remembered.
Here the application is to lessons in discourse, poetry rather than logic or
any systematic or extended curriculum, but the term is a short cut route,
ἔφοδος σύντομος. This would be a fitting succession to Antisthenes’
presumed preference for teaching from Homer over systematic teaching,
for example, in the method of collection and division that Plato’s Socrates
locates at the foundation of philosophical rhetoric.50 In a passage from
50
It remains controversial what kind of curriculum Antisthenes taught. Whereas
Brancacci 1990 reconstructs a ‘study of names’ (Arr. Epict. Diss. 1.17.10-12 = SSR
93
Diodorus Siculus (33.7.7), attributed by scholars to Posidonius, the Iberian
war king Virianthus is admired for his σύντομος λόγος, which he
developed not from the ἐγκύκλειος παιδεία, but from training in virtue:
this is aphoristic style. Like the lessons offered by Diogenes of Sinope, his
virtue in speaking was related to what was memorable (τοῦ δὲ ἀκούσαντος
ἀπομνημόνευμα). The connection with Galen’s comment on the Cynics,
meanwhile, where assumption of the σύντομος ὁδός entails rejection of
the ἐγκύκλειος παιδεία, and with Apollonius of Seleucia’s distinction
between the Stoics and the Cynics, is clear. Although it is unlikely that
Posidonius depends on Antisthenes for his figuring of Virianthus’ Cynic
education, this shows a use of the ‘short cut’ motif in distinguishing Cynic
intellectual style, beyond the short ethical route to virtue through simple
living, so well explained by Goulet-Cazé. Finally, a set of definitions of
technical rhetorical terms from Late Antiquity51 uses the phrase λόγος
σύντομος to classify both aphorism and definition: although this usage
could be merely a survival of the commonplace metaphor for abbreviated
speech evident in the tragedians and used ever since, the connection to the
‘revelatory’ (δηλωτικός) function of the true λόγος σύντομος recalls
Antisthenes’ famous definition of λόγος as ‘the formulation revealing what
it was or is to be’.52 The passage occurs amid a set of definitions modelled
on the opening of Aristotle’s Topics; Antisthenes’ account of λόγος is also
discussed by Alexander of Aphrodisias in commentary on the definition of
terms in the opening of Aristotle’s Topics.53 Combined with other
coincidences between this passage and Antisthenes’ attested interests –
definition of the human being and the narrative text of the Odyssey54 –
and in consideration of the connections to the passages on Diogenes of
VA 160) that is somewhat formal and logical, and based in definitions, I argue
that Antisthenes denied the possibility of definition (Aristot. Met. 1043b23-28 =
SSR VA 150) and studied names in a way related to natural language, etymology
and poetic usage. Details of this reconstruction can be found in Prince 2015:46264, 475-81, 488-94, 597-622 (treating SSR VA 150, 151, 152, 187).
51
Troilus of Sidon, Preface to Hermogenes’ Art of Rhetoric 50 (c. 5th century CE).
52
DL 6.3 = SSR VA 151.
53
SSR VA 151.
54
Definition of the human being is the example behind SSR VA 150, 152, 153, as
demonstrated by Aristotle’s context for VA 150 and the Late Antique
commentators’ discussions under VA 150 and 152. See further, Prince 2015:47072, 507-08, 512-16. Antisthenes’ surviving passages on the Odyssey (SSR VA
187-90) are foremost about lexical matters, but issues of narrative strategy are
implied in VA 189.
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Sinope’s curriculum – for the sons of Xeniades, via poetry, and Virianthus’
style of speech, via aphorism – this text could point to Antisthenes’
concept of a λόγος σύντομος in distinction from the λόγος μακρός that he
or his characters complain of repeatedly in surviving evidence. Antisthenes
accuses it against Plato in a traditional anecdote; the character Ajax accuses
it against Odysseus in the fictional speeches of the Judgment of the Arms;
and Aristotle distinguishes it from the Antistheneans’ conception of ideal
λόγος in his report of their objections to Academic definition.55
To concude: it is difficult to prove rigorously anything about
Antisthenes, but the evidence suggests that he advocated for the short
route to happiness in three senses. Firstly and most importantly,
Antisthenes’ route was short in the ethical sense requiring a decisive
commitment to a life of leisure free of distractions and burdens, and free
for the maximal engagement in some kind of activity at the high end of
human nature or competence. Secondly, it probably concerned educational
style, the frame for both an ethical and a language-based strategy that
could be started and mastered quickly, perhaps even by the adult learner,
by design without requiring the long road normally expected in the more
traditionalist circles of fourth-century Athenian education. Thirdly, it
probably concerned language and discourse not rooted in systematic logic
or method, yet revealing nature, in pointed opposition to the philosophical
method used by Plato and Aristotle. The short cut strategy was to find
truth not by syllogism and logic, but by reading and criticising Homer or
other great texts. The evidence for Antisthenes’ reading of Homer is
fragmentary and complicated, but the remains do include clever leaps of
reasoning. Possibly daring and executing such a short cut was the hard
part.56
Bibliography
Alpers, J. 1912. Hercules in Bivio. Dissertation, University of Göttingen.
Bevilacqua, F. 2010. Memorabili di Senofonte. Torino.
55
Gnom. Vat. 13 = SSR VA 30; Ajax §8 = SSR VA 53; Aristot. Met. 1043b25-26
= SSR VA 150.
56
I would like to thank Philip Bosman for the opportunity to speak at the UNISA
XIII colloquium in October 2012, and for the many helpful comments offered by
the audience on that occasion. Thank you also to the anonymous referees for Acta
Classica whose suggestions have helped me clarify my style and argument.
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e stoismo.’ ANRW 2.36.6:4049-75.
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HORACE ON HAPPINESS
Suzanne Sharland
University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban)
Informally appointed the happiness guru of antiquity by popular
sentiment, the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus devotes a substantial
portion of his works to questions of personal fortune and individual
contentment.1 Yet Horace is also a very sophisticated writer who
constantly keeps his audiences on their toes and is often joking when he
seems to be serious, and earnest when he appears light-hearted. As he
suggests to his audience in his first satire, there is nothing to prevent one
telling the truth while laughing: ridentem dicere verum, / quid vetat? (Sat.
1.1.24-25).2 A reader may be forgiven, however, for thinking that one of
Horace’s aims in much of his poetry is to probe the extent of his
audience’s gullibility.3
So what does Horace actually say about happiness, and can we trust
him? It is the purpose of this paper to survey a few of Horace’s poetical
treatments of and advice about human happiness. Given that so many
Horatian aphorisms on happiness are regularly taken out of context, it will
be necessary to consider the poem in which each statement occurs, the
1
Enter the words ‘happiness’ or ‘contentment’ on any Internet search engine, and
you are bound, sooner, or later, to come upon a quote from Horace. However,
most of the Horatian aphorisms listed among the quotable quotes are given in
isolation and taken entirely out of context.
2
On the other hand, in that same poem (Sat. 1.1.69-70), Horace warns his
addressees that we may just be able to recognise ourselves in his cautionary tales:
mutato nomine, de te / fabula narrator (‘Change the name and the story is told
about you!’).
3
This is particularly true of Horace’s hexametric poetry. In Sat. 1.4, for example,
Horace discusses the idea that the genre in which he is writing is not poetry, but
something closer to conversational prose (sermoni propiora, Sat. 1.4.42), but all the
while he is writing in flawless dactylic hexameters. Eventually, he promises to
return to the discussion of whether or not satire is poetry ‘another time’ (alias,
Sat. 1.4.63), an event for which we are still waiting. At the start of his first book
of Epistles, he announces that he is putting aside his poetry ‘and other such
nonsense’ for the pursuit of philosophy: nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono;
/ quid verum atque decens, curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum; Epist. 1.1.10-11). That
a collection of new poems in hexameter verse follows should not surprise us –
that is, if we think that this kind of writing is poetry.
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genre in which Horace is writing, and the persona of the speaker. As
important as what Horace says is the person to whom he says it: the
addressee is a significant part of the context of his statements on happiness
and the virtue that is its ancient prerequisite.4 To simplify things, I have
subdivided the contexts in which Horace treats issues of human happiness
into the utopian, the moralising, the sympotic, the political, and so on,
although in practice many of these categories overlap.
The utopian context
In his first epode, Horace promises to accompany Maecenas to war, to
travel to far locations with him, and, although he doubts that he will be
able to help him much, he maintains that he will worry less if he is with
his patron. The final few lines discuss the needs of the farm given to
Horace by Maecenas, by way of gratitude perhaps, or to suggest that
Horace (who does not really wish to go to war) is needed elsewhere. Since
rural scenes are evoked in these last few lines of Epode 1, the audience
does not find it strange when at the start of Epode 2, a voice continues to
praise the countryside and discuss the livelihood of the farm. But we are in
for a surprise5 when, in the final four lines of Epode 2, we discover that
this speaker is not Horace, but the quoted words of the money-lender or
‘loan-shark’ Alfius (Mr ‘A’), day-dreaming about life in the country. The
usurer Alfius, however, finds it impossible to make his fantasies a reality,
but returns almost at once to his habit of raking in loans and lending them
out again at interest:
haec ubi locutus faenerator Alfius,
iam iam futurus rusticus,
omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam,
4
Although the ancient Greek word eudaimonia is usually translated as ‘happiness’,
‘human well-being’ is perhaps a more accurate translation. Horace’s approach
owes a great deal to ancient philosophers’ conceptions of happiness, such as
Aristotle’s eudaimonia and Epicurus’ ataraxia (calm in the face of external
troubles), but he tailors his advice to the philosophical preferences of his
addressees.
5
An ancient audience may not have been as surprised at the ending of Epode 2 as
a modern one: to Mankin 1995:63, Alfius’ speech is ‘riddled throughout with
distortions and downright errors’ which are absent when Horace is praising the
country elsewhere; Watson 2003:80 more cautiously claims that Alfius’ lopsided
view of the country reveals him as an ‘armchair rustic’.
99
quaerit Kalendis ponere.
When Mr ‘A’ the loan-shark said all this, just now on the point of
becoming a rustic, he called all his money in at midmonth, seeking
to place it out again at month-end.
(Epod. 2.67-70)
Alfius calls blessed or fortunate (beatus ille) the old-time farmer who
works his father’s fields with his own oxen (paterna rura bubus exercet suis,
Epod. 2.3). There are intimations of a Golden Age in Alfius’ account,6
since the loan-shark attributes this happy position to ‘the people of old’ or
‘the early race of mortals’ (ut prisca gens mortalium, Epod. 2.2), striking a
distinctly antediluvian note. Given the historical realities of the period of
the civil wars, however, when many had lost their family estates, livestock
and possessions, such a situation had begun to look more and more like a
utopian ideal.7 Alfius also imagines, appropriately, that the fantasy farmer
will have no debt (solutus omni faenore, Epod. 2.4), with faenore in the
fourth line picked up by faenerator in the fourth last line of the poem: as a
loan-shark, Alfius would be all too familiar with the effects of too much
debt and crippling interest on his customers. Perhaps, in retrospect, solutus
omni faenore could also literally apply to Alfius who imagines himself
living the simple, honest country life, freed from his constant calculations
involving monetary interest (faenus). But, ultimately, a contemporary
farmer without any problems and for whom everything goes perfectly is a
practical impossibility, the product of Alfius’ lively imagination. Alfius
may be aware of this anomaly, either consciously or subconsciously,
because in the end he chooses to remain in the world of urban moneymaking.
The moralising context
Alfius of the second epode, in fact, has much in common with the group
of targets introduced at the start of Horace’s first satire. Horace initially
6
The utopian aspects of Alfius’ speech have much in common with Epode 16,
where the impractical suggestion is made that, in order to escape the civil wars,
the Romans should go off to the Isles of the Blessed: arva, beata / petamus arva,
divites et insulas (Epod. 16.41-42); see discussion in Thom 2000:41 nn. 14 and 15.
7
See Lindo 1968:207; Watson 2003:81. Mankin 1995:63 observes that, as a
financier, Alfius may even have been one who stood to benefit from the land
confiscations.
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poses the question to Maecenas as to why no one lives content with the
lot that either rational choice (the Stoic option) has given him, or chance
(the Epicurean side of the equation)8 has thrown in his path, but instead
praises those who follow different modes of life (Sat. 1.1.1-3). Four
exempla of professionals suffering from the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome are
then advanced according to what seems to have been the standard practice
of Hellenistic moralising on mempsimoiria (dissatisfaction with one’s lot): a
soldier, with his limbs worn out by lengthy military service, praises the life
of a merchant, while the merchant who is being tossed about in a gale at
sea, idealises what he imagines is the decisive life of battle that the soldier
enjoys. Woken up by a client first thing in the morning, the city lawyer
praises the life of a farmer, while the country-dweller who has stood bail
for someone and consequently is being dragged into the city to appear in
court, shouts out that city folks alone are happy (solos felices viventis
clamat in urbe, Sat. 1.1.12).9
Kirk Freudenburg has suggested that Horace’s speaker bungles the
usually straightforward exempla of Hellenistic moralising, and argues that
this was part of Horace’s elaborate characterisation of his persona as a
buffoon or doctor ineptus who cannot get anything right.10 However, if one
compares Horace’s dissatisfied professionals to the surviving exempla in
the later Greek texts of pseudo-Hippocrates11 and Maximus of Tyre,12 it is
8
Freudenburg 1993:11.
Like Alfius’ beatitude at Epode 2.1 (Beatus ille, ‘Happy the man’), the first lines
of Satires 1.1 abound in synonyms for the Greek makarizei (‘He calls blessed’):
contentus (Sat. 1.1.3), laudet (1.1.3), fortunati (1.1.4), laeta (1.1.8), laudat (1.1.9),
felices (1.1.12) and beatis (1.1.19) many of which, particularly beatus and
fortunatus, could encompass financial and circumstantial as well as emotional wellbeing.
10
Freudenburg 1993:23-24.
11
Ps.-Hp. Epist. 17 treats mempsimoiria at length. After considering a number of
examples of ironic inconsistency resulting from restless dissatisfaction, the author
tackles dissatisfaction as a result of one’s profession or position in life: leaders and
kings call the life of the common man blessed, while the common man aspires to
kingship. In a second set of examples, the politician calls the lot of the craftsman
blessed, specifically because it is ‘without danger’, whereas the craftsman praises
the politician for his capability and freedom.
12
Horace’s pairs of exempla are paralleled at Max. Tyr. Diss. 21.1, both probably
inspired by earlier Hellenistic moralising; see Fiske 1920:220 who argues for a
common source rather than Maximus’ dependency on Horace; Lejay 1911:8
claims the similarities bear witness to ‘la profonde influence d’Horace sur les
9
101
clear that Horace’s examples are much more detailed and animated, and
that he has added a contemporary Roman flavour, particularly obvious in
the second pair of mutually envying types of people. It is transparent, right
from the start, that the pairs are deluded, and the recipe for their failure to
actually change their modes of existence, if given the chance, is built into
the exempla: the merchant is heard praising the quick outcome of the
soldier’s battles, when we have just met a soldier whose extensive career
has resulted in painful long-term physical suffering; the soldier calls the
merchant fortunate, but two lines below this we witness just what peril
his pursuit of financial fortune entails; the city lawyer who is woken up
early to practice law, and the country bumpkin who falls foul of the law,
both envy each other for what they, patently deluded, imagine is a
charmed life. Naturally, their complaints are made just at that moment,
moreover, when each person’s way of life is at its most exacting, when
they are in physical pain, mortal danger, grossly inconvenienced or in
trouble with the law.
However, should these people be given the opportunity to swap
positions with their counterparts, they, like Alfius the loan-shark, would
refuse. In the course of his first satire, Horace eventually links dissatisfaction to greed: people, he explains, are stuck in the rat race because they
are trying to build up a nest egg for their old age (Sat. 1.1.29-32). This is
why they will not give up their chosen professions. They will tell you this
if you ask them. Of course, this could be the bottom line for Alfius too: he
keeps on acting as a loan-shark because of greed. This issue is taken up
again in Horace’s first ode, also addressed to Maecenas, where the poet
reviews many of the themes and preoccupations of his previous poetry. As
part of a priamel construction leading up to Horace’s confession that what
makes him happy is writing lyric poetry, he mentions inter alios those who
rejoice in competitive chariot racing (Carm. 1.1.3-6), those who entertain
political ambition (1.1.7-8), and those who love sweeping up and storing
in private barns all the grain from Libya’s threshing floors (1.1.9-10). Most
of the pursuits which Horace rejects here are those which attracted
moralistes qui l’ont suivi’. After some general statements on human dissatisfaction
(paralleling the generalising question at the start of Sat. 1.1), Maximus
demonstrates with two sets of exempla: farmers and city-dwellers, and soldiers
and civilians. While Maximus’ variation of the verbs is closer to Horace than Ps.Hippocrates, and his exempla are not merely reproduced, like the Greek passage
they remain nothing more than neat opposites, in contrast to Horace who has to
great effect gone beyond a mere reproduction of the tradition.
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censure in the Satires. He also talks about a peasant farmer who, like
Alfius’ fantasy, delights in cleaving his father’s fields (patrios … agros,
1.1.11-12) with a mattock, and will never, not for any amount of money,
be persuaded to become a sailor (1.1.11-14). By contrast, the fearful
merchant who is caught in a gale at sea, suddenly develops enthusiasm for
the quiet countryside around his hometown (luctantem Icariis fluctibus
Africum / mercator metuens otium et oppidi / laudat rura sui, 1.1.15-17a);
however, we hear that he is soon rebuilding his shattered boat, since he is
not, as Horace explains, used to putting up with poverty (mox reficit rates
/ quassas, indocilis pauperiem pati, 1.1.17b-18). Once again, as in Satires
1.1, greed – the endless pursuit of wealth over every sea – prevents the
merchant from changing his lifestyle.
The Satires and Epodes merely show us, by drawing on negative
examples of individuals in the manner of Horace’s father’s instructions to
his son (see Sat. 1.4.105-126a), how not to pursue happiness. It is up to
the greater subtlety and sophistication of the odes to point the way to
human well-being (eudaimonia), although, as always with Horace, we
should pay close attention to the contexts in which his apparent
statements on happiness occur. A moralising or philosophising tendency,
which is part of the sympotic context, characterises many of Horace’s
odes. There is a distinctly Epicurean slant to many of Horace’s musings
(although not all aspects are purely Epicurean). There is the inevitable
warning to the addressee that life is short, that fortune is cruel, and that
there is no way for anyone to escape his or her fate, or add any years onto
their allotted lifespan, no matter how rich or powerful they may be: the
corollary is that one must enjoy life while one can and not worry about the
future. Enjoying one’s life involves having a symposium, drinking, perhaps
even neat wine in the tradition of Alcaeus when particularly desperate,
decorating oneself or others with flowers in a beautiful location (the locus
amoenus), and of course, engaging in erotic pursuits.
The sympotic context
Two well-known examples of this approach to human happiness or wellbeing occur in Horace’s first book of odes, quite close to one another. In
the famous Soracte Ode (1.9),13 the poet paints a gorgeous picture of
Mount Soracte, north of Rome, covered in deep snow:
13
Concern about the rapid changes in the weather and the scenery of Carm. 1.9
has made it one of the most written about of Horatian poems. Scholars seem
103
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus
silvae laborantes, geluque
flumina constiterint acuto:
You see how Soracte stands glistening white with deep snow, and
the struggling trees can barely support their burden, and the rivers
are stopped by sharp ice:
(Carm. 1.9.1-4).
By contrast, Horace then shifts the focus inside and instructs someone – in
the eighth line we discover it is Thaliarchus – to pile wood on the fire, and
pour some four-year-old neat wine from a Sabine two-eared jar (5-8).
Some attention has been given to the identity of Thaliarchus, whose Greek
name means ‘ruler of the festivities’, and who is possibly a pais kalos or
puer delicatus, given that Greek names are most unusual for male
addressees, but standard for all the women in Horace’s lyric poetry.
Horace’s ordering of Thaliarchus to do things may suggest that he is a slave
or servant.14 The scene is expressly not the usual venue for a symposium,
the summery locus amoenus; yet the contrast of the bitter cold outside and
the inside of the house warmed by the fire is one of the cosiest images in
Latin poetry, and encourages a delicious sense of well-being and snugness.
Thaliarchus is instructed, as we enter the two middle stanzas of the
poem and the speaker waxes philosophical, to leave all else to the gods
(permitte divis cetera, 9), being assured that they alone can calm winter
storms.15 Horace then advises his addressee not to try to find out about the
future, but to chalk up to profit from whatever day Fate gives him (quid
divided as to how literally or figuratively to take the poem, and there seems also
to be a pressing need to identify the season of the year during which the ode is
supposed to take place. It is beyond the scope or intentions of this paper to
address all these concerns.
14
See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970:117, 121. Davis 2007:210-11, on the other hand,
sees ‘Thaliarchus’ simply as the title given to the friend of high social status who
has been appointed magister bibendi at their drinking-party.
15
Consternation has arisen among scholars because the cold but calm image of
Soracte in the first stanza is followed in the third by images of vicious storms
shaking the trees (10-12). Yet the cold weather, the fire and the wine are all
present in what remains of Horace’s Greek source, Alc. 338: cf. Nisbet and
Hubbard 1970:116.
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sit futurum cras fuge quaerere et / quem Fors dierum cumque dabit lucro /
appone, 13-15a). In almost the same breath (and certainly the same
stanza), Thaliarchus is then advised not to reject love and dancing while he
is still a boy (15b-16), with a warning going into the next stanza that
someday he will be grey, and by implication, old (17-18a).16 The flow
from thoughts of fate, mortality and age to those of love is entirely natural.
The rest of the poem is devoted to the erotic, with the description of
wonderfully furtive love assignations (18b-20), and a sketch of a charming
and rather coquettish girl who hides, laughs and only pretends resistance
(21-24). Whether she is a love object for Horace or Thaliarchus or both,
or whether both Thaliarchus (who is still a puer, 16) and the girl are love
objects for Horace, is perhaps solely up to our imagination. An attractive
suggestion is that this girl is someone from Horace’s past and that it is the
memory of her that occupies his mind.17 In spite of his warning to
Thaliarchus not to concern himself with the future, the aging Horace ends
up dwelling on his own past.18 For the young, happiness entails
contemplating the present, Horace seems to be saying, but for the old it
comprises reliving the past.
Another warning not to worry about the future features two poems
later, in Carm. 1.11, where one of Horace’s most famous phrases carpe
diem (‘seize the day’ or, more literally, ‘pluck the day’) occurs. Here
Horace addresses a girl called Leuconoe,19 who is anxious or curious about
16
In ancient Greek poetry, old age is conventionally inappropriate for love affairs;
cf. Mimn. fr. 1; Hor. Ep. 1.6.65-66. Likewise dancing, as a demanding physical
activity, is only seemly with the young, usually of lower social status.
17
See Catlow 1976:79; Fitzwilliam 2000:4. If the scene is a recollection, it
explains why Horace is vague about whether he snatched the love-token from the
girl’s arm or finger, and also why the weather, so cold in the first stanza, seems to
have warmed up in the memory of his own past summers.
18
But see Moritz 1976:174-75, who counters Catlow’s image of the aging Horace
with a depiction of a younger man still intent on the erotic.
19
‘Leuconoe’ literally means ‘white mind’ in Greek, or less literally ‘clear mind’,
‘pure mind’, even ‘blank mind’ – a ‘dumb blonde’? Many mythological heroines
have names beginning with ‘Leuc-‘ (‘white’) and thus the term must originally
stress the attractiveness of this colouring (Nisbet and Hubbard 1970:73; Marsilio
2010:119). However, the colour white may also associate Leuconoe with death,
which is appropriate given her pressing need to know her fate (Lee 1964:120;
Marsilio 2010:117). Smith 1919 associates Leuconoe, given her interest in
horoscopes, with the Athenian astronomer Meton who came from the deme
Leuconoe and is thus sometimes called ‘Leuconoeus’. Carrubba and Fratantuono
105
the future and is gullibly (or desperately?) dabbling in astrology to try to
find out how long her allotted lifespan is (or perhaps, how long a relationship will last):20
Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptare numeros.
You should not ask – for to know is impious – what end the gods
have given me and you, Leuconoe, nor should you meddle with
Babylonian horoscopes.
(Carm. 1.11.1-3).21
Horace advises Leuconoe to accept whatever the future holds, whether
Jupiter has assigned them more winters or whether this will be their last
2003:134 suggest a link to the island of Leucas (which has tall limestone cliffs)
where Octavian built a temple to Apollo to commemorate Actium: Leuconoe
thus means ‘she who has the mind of Apollo’ or ‘she who thinks like Apollo’.
However, it is hard to see how the new regime could possibly benefit (which
would presumably be the intention of this reference) by being associated with this
woman who, Horace implies, is essentially misguided in her attempts to foresee
the future. Leuconoe is also using foreign aids (Babylonios … /… numeros, 1-2) to
divine the future, and not Apollo. More recently, Maria Marsilio has seen the
enigmatically named Leuconoe as the focal point in Carm. 1.11, noting that
‘Horace has cleverly embedded several of the major themes … in the very name
Leuconoe’ (2010:120). Marsilio observes not only issues of death, the erotic, and
prophecy all coinciding in this poem, but also references to Horace’s literary ideals
and poetic aesthetics.
20
Santirocco 1986:44 suggests that Leuconoe’s dabbling in astrology reveals that
she is in love with Horace. Anderson 1993:118 n. 6, on the other hand, claims
that Leuconoe’s recourse to divination indicates that she is prudently cautious
about getting involved with Horace.
21
In response to Fernandez Corte 2000, who highlights Carm. 1.10 as the
conclusion to a distinct group of ten poems in which Horace played around
innovatively with many poetic metres, Konstan 2001:17-18 suggests a metaliterary reading for the start of Carm. 1.11: the ‘end’ (finem, 2) Leuconoe is told
not to seek may be interpreted as Horace telling the reader not to expect an end
to his odes after ten poems, as in many other Augustan collections, including his
own first book of satires. Carm. 1.10 is thus not an ending, but a pivot or turning
point. In response to Konstan, Fernandez Corte apparently further suggested that
when Leuconoe is told not to play with ‘numbers’, this may be a joke about not
fooling around with poetic metres, as the virtuoso Horace himself had done in his
first ten odes (Konstan 2001:18).
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(3-6). Instead, Horace instructs her to be wise, strain the wine, and reduce
her hope for something lengthy to a brief extent of time: sapias, vina
liques, et spatio brevi / spem longam reseces (6-7). The final lines 7-8 pick
up a sense of urgency: dum loquimur, fugerit invida / aetas: carpe diem,
quam minimum credula postero (‘While we are speaking, envious time will
have flown past: pluck the day, trusting as little as possible to the future’).
Not only is Leuconoe’s name associated with the colour white, and
thus possibly with death, but images and associations of snow and winter
seem to have drifted onto her from Mount Soracte in Carm. 1.9, just two
poems away: although it is a common trope to use seasons or months to
stand for whole years in a person’s life,22 Leuconoe’s lifespan (or
relationship span, perhaps?) is counted, rather chillingly, not in years but in
winters.23 As with Thaliarchus in 1.9, Leuconoe’s Greek name strongly
suggests her as a love object for Horace, perhaps even a slave or servant.
She may, alternatively, be a freedwoman or even, if her name is a
pseudonym, someone of high social status indulging, like many, in weird
astrological obsessions.24 The advice Horace gives Leuconoe likewise
echoes the precepts the poet gave Thaliarchus in Carm. 1.9, where he
advised him not to worry about the future, but to concentrate on the
pleasures of love and dancing while he was still young. Yet Horace’s
message to Leuconoe is all the more urgent and desperate, an impression
that is encouraged by the far shorter length of 1.11, which is eight lines in
contrast to 1.9’s more leisurely twenty-four. The urgency of Horace’s
22
Cf. Ep.1.20.27, where Horace says he has completed forty-four Decembers.
Lee 1964:122.
24
The island of Leucas, with which Leuconoe may be connected (Carrubba and
Fratantuono 2003), was also, according to one tradition, where the poetess
Sappho was alleged to have committed suicide, jumping from the cliff-face due to
unrequited love, a connection perhaps invented to link her with Apollo, god of
poetry (Strabo, Geogr. 10.2.9 quotes a fragment of Menander’s Leukadia to this
effect; see discussion by Marsilio 2010:120). Kutzko (2006:406) observes that
Varro of Atax called his mistress Leucadia and later elegiac mistresses (e.g.
Lycoris, Delia, Cynthia) often have names associated with Apollo’s cult.
Leuconoe’s name thus places her squarely in this tradition, with the emphasis on
‘white’ stressing the fairness usually admired in these love objects. Could Horace’s
image of the waves battering the shore (Carm. 1.11.5-6a) – while primarily
suggesting the unrelenting passage of time – also hint that Leuconoe, like Sappho,
suffers from unrequited love and thus may be equally self-destructive, likewise
casting herself off the cliffs and onto the shore?
23
107
Epicurean carpe diem seems designed to get Leuconoe into bed.25 Nevertheless, the exhortation, advising Leuconoe (and us) to live in the moment
and to pluck the day or the opportunity as one would a flower,26 is
universally understood as a memorable and persuasive prescription for
happiness irrespective of its original context.
The political context
Some of Horace’s odes which contain iconic statements or advice about
happiness are addressed to those who are politically controversial, if the
identifications of the addressees are correct. In such cases, Horace’s
precepts on happiness would seem to be specifically tailored to his named
addressees rather than designed as ‘one-size-fits-all’ sayings for general
human edification. For example, Dellius, addressed in Carm. 2.3, is
possibly the Quintus Dellius who indulged in sensual delights at
Cleopatra’s court.27 Dellius, who was later pardoned for his Antonian
allegiances by Octavian/Augustus and included in Maecenas’ circle, is
warned in Carm. 2.3 to keep a steady mind or attitude in difficult
circumstances and likewise to keep it tempered and away from excessive
joy (Aequam memento rebus in arduis / servare mentem, 1-2). Before
Dellius supported Antony, he had been a supporter of Cassius, and prior
to that, of Dolabella. In all, he changed political allegiances four times,
with the result that, as Seneca the Elder records, Valerius Messalla
Corvinus dubbed Dellius the ‘circus-rider’ or ‘horse-changer’ of the civil
wars (desultor bellorum civilium, Suas. 1.7).28 Since both Seneca the Elder
and Valerius Messalla Corvinus (the addressee of Carm. 3.21) were
contemporaries of Horace, I would suggest that Horace’s reference ‘to
keeping a balanced perspective’ may in fact be a pun. Aequus meant ‘flat’,
25
See Anderson 1996:4, who comments that ‘the speaker of this carpe diem
routine is arguing for his own amatory advantage: he wants her to forget about the
future and prudence and instead let him make love to her.’
26
The verb carpere (‘to pluck’) may recall the innocent Persephone/Proserpina
plucking flowers just before she is seized and abducted by Hades; cf. Ov. Met.
5.392-93: quo dum Proserpina luco / ludit et aut violas aut candida lilia carpit.
Persephone and Leuconoe are both innocent and mentally distracted, not noticing
the potential erotic interest and evil intent they are arousing in the onlookers
Hades/Horace. I thank Elizabeth Irwin for alerting me to this potential parallel.
27
Plut. Ant. 59.4, where Dellius even criticises the queen’s wine choice and
instead recommends to her Falernian wine, mentioned here in Carm. 2.3.8.
28
See discussion in Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:51-52.
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‘level’ or ‘even’ before it acquired the derived associations of ‘fair’,
‘equitable’ or ‘contented’. After all, one needs a steady balance when
changing horses.29
Although Nisbet and Hubbard comment that in Carm. 2.3 it looks as
though Horace is ‘recommending hedonism to a hedonist’,30 the poet’s
precepts in the first four lines would be entirely acceptable to most
philosophical schools. Dellius is warned not to overindulge his emotions,
or at least, to keep them on an even keel. Even though he indulges in
pleasures, it will make no difference in the end. Addressed as moriture
Delli (‘Dellius, you who are going to die’) at line 4, he is told that like all
humans, whether rich or poor, he will sooner or later end up among the
dead. There is an ominous sadness and desperation in the fourth stanza,
where, having located a shady locus amoenus with a running stream,
Dellius is told:
huc vina et unguenta et nimium brevis
flores amoenae ferre iube rosae,
dum res et aetas et sororum
fila trium patiuntur atra.
Tell them to bring the wine, the fragrant oils,
and the all-too-short-lived flowers of the lovely rose,
while your age and means and the black threads
of the three sisters [that is, the Fates] permit.
(Carm. 2.3.13-16)
Horace is not encouraging hedonism so much as demonstrating how
pointless it all is and, ultimately, how useless are Dellius’ large estate and
his heaped-up wealth, which will go to his heir. Death is the great leveller,
all our names are in the urn, and in the end, we all go into an everlasting
exile (in aeternum / exsilium, 27-28) – even Dellius, the ultimate escapeartiste and circus-trickster who used all his cunning to ‘back the right
horse’ and thus survive the civil wars.
Even more politically controversial is Licinius of Carm. 2.10 (Rectius
vives), who may or may not be the Licinius Murena, brother-in-law of
Maecenas, who was accused of plotting, in association with Fannius
29
Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:52 likewise comment that ‘in his political circus-act
Dellius must have prided himself on his inner balance and resilience.’
30
Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:52.
109
Caepio, against Augustus in 23 or 22 BCE,31 and executed after attempting
to escape.32 Horace uses the Aristotelian idea of the mean,33 which he
terms the ‘Golden Mean’ (aurea mediocritas) here for the first time:
auream quisquis mediocritatem
diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
sordibus tecti, caret invidenda
sobrius aula.
Whoever loves the Golden Mean,
safely escapes the squalor of a shabby hovel,
soberly escapes the enviable mansion.
(Carm. 2.10.5-8)
If this is indeed Maecenas’ brother-in-law and not some other Licinius, it
may be noteworthy that Licinius Murena or Terentius Varro Murena, as
he is variously called, being in origin a Licinius Murena who was adopted
by the family of the Terentii Varrones,34 was patron to a leading
contemporary Peripatetic philosopher, Athenaeus of Seleucia,35 which
could explain Horace’s use of Aristotle. Athenaeus apparently fled with
Licinius Murena when the latter was tipped off by his adopted sister
Terentia, wife of the well-placed and for once not-so-taciturn Maecenas,36
about the accusations of conspiracy against him. Athenaeus was
apprehended together with his patron, but was later pardoned by
Augustus as having had no part in the plot.37
31
On the controversy over the dates and related issues, see Atkinson 1960;
Stockton 1965; Bauman 1966; Swan 1967; Jameson 1969; Levick 1975; Watkins
1985.
32
D.C. 54.3.5.
33
The idea of the ‘mean’ had previously appeared in Horace’s Satires, where he
had often admonished his audiences that there were certain means or limits to
virtue; see e.g. 1.1.106-07, est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines, / quos ultra
citraque nequit consistere rectum (‘Things have a proper measure, there are in other
words definite limits, beyond or short of which the right course can’t lie’); 1.2.24,
dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt (‘In avoiding one fault, fools rush to the
opposite extreme’); and 1.2.28a, nil medium est (‘There’s no happy medium’).
34
See Treggiari 1973:254-57.
35
Str. 14.5.4; Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:152-53.
36
Suet. Aug. 66.3.
37
Str. 14.5.4.
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It is generally assumed that Books 1-3 of the Odes were published prior
to Licinius’ disgrace.38 This factor is used to date the publication of the
poems, since it is thought that the ever-editing Callimachean Horace
would have been unlikely to leave a poem sympathetic towards one of the
regime’s enemies in his poetry collection.39 But it does sound like there is a
bit of a warning in this poem, a premonition that here was one person
who had a tendency to go just a little too far, who one day could go to
extremes. This may explain why ultimately Horace allowed this
cautionary poem to remain in his earlier collection of odes. The ship-ofstate metaphor in the first and last stanzas is both poignant and ironic,
given that, prior to his downfall, Licinius was set to be consul. The images
in the third stanza of this poem are commonplaces – the tall pine is more
often tossed by the winds, the highest towers fall more heavily, and
lighting strikes the mountain summit (2.10.9-12) – yet their focus on what
stands out above the rest suggests that Horace’s addressee is someone of
high social position and even greater ambition, a ‘tall poppy’,40 as it were.
The slight Muse and modest lifestyle
Echoes of many of Horace’s previous thoughts on happiness recur in
Carm. 2.16 (Otium divos), the ‘tranquillity ode’, which opens with the
image of a man caught in a sudden storm on the open Aegean asking the
gods for otium, translatable here as ‘peace’, ‘peace of mind’, ‘rest’, ‘respite’,
‘tranquillity’ or more accurately, ataraxia, the Epicurean ideal of calm in
the face of external troubles. Warring tribes are also heard praying for
otium, and then we discover that the poem is addressed to Grosphus (line
7), identified as Pompeius Grosphus, a wealthy Sicilian landowner,41 who
is told that peace cannot be bought with jewels or purple or gold (non
gemmis neque purpura ve- / nale neque auro, 7-8). Nor can political
ambition assure us of peace of mind, says Horace, painting a picture of
worries fluttering around pannelled ceilings (curas laqueata circum / tecta
38
Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:157 suggest that Hor. Carm. 2.10 be dated to an
‘intermediate stage’ in Licinius Murena’s downfall, after he had fallen foul of
Octavian/Augustus, but before he was convicted of conspiracy and condemned to
death.
39
See Nisbet 2007:14.
40
See Liv. 1.54.
41
See Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:252-53.
111
volantis, 11-12).42 Sounding a little like Alfius the loan-shark, who
envisages the happy farmer ploughing his ancestral fields, Horace asserts
that the man lives well on little, whose father’s salt-cellar shines on his
modest table, and fear and loathsome greed do not deprive him of his easy
sleep (vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum / splendet in mensa tenui salinum /
nec levis somnos timor aut cupido / sordidus aufert, 13-16).
The poet voices a strongly Epicurean rejection of political ambition and
the wealth associated with it as being too stressful and taxing to assure us
of a peaceful (and thus happy) existence. In the last stanza, Horace
contrasts his fortunes with those of the wealthy Grosphus:
mihi parva rura et
spiritum Graiae tenuem Camenae
Parca non mendax dedit et malignum
spernere vulgus.
To me honest Fate has given a small farm and the slight breath of a
Greek Camena and has allowed me to despise the envious mob.
(Carm. 2.16.37-40)
Adjectives meaning ‘small’, ‘light’ and ‘slight’ recur here: the tenuis spiritus
(‘slight breath’) of the Greek muse, echoing the tenuis mensa earlier in the
poem (14), suggests that the Callimachean virtue of the light, small text is
reflected in the slight, modest lifestyle Horace upholds.43 The recipe for
happiness is clear: both the poet’s modest lifestyle and his ‘modest’ variety
of poetry make him happy.44
Similar contrasts between wealth and jaded luxurious living, on the one
hand, and the simple, honest and happy lifestyle, on the other, which
Horace identifies as his own, occur in a number of other odes, notably
2.18 (Non ebur neque aureum), 3.1 (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo), and
3.24 (Intactis opulentior). The ivory and gold which decorate the ceilings of
the rich man’s house do not appear in Horace’s simple abode, we hear at
the start of Carm. 2.18; instead Horace describes himself as being
sufficiently happy or blessed with his singular Sabine farm – ‘singular’ both
42
Harrison 2010:57 notes that, although the Sapphic metre of this poem and the
repetition of the word otium recall Cat. 51.13-16, the theme of the vanity of
human riches is reminiscent rather of Lucr. 2.20-39, where we also find a
reference to panelled and gilded rafters: laqueata aurataque templa, DRN 2.28.
43
See Call. Aet. fr. 1.21-24 Pfeiffer.
44
See Mette 2009:54-55.
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in number and in its unsurpassed uniqueness: satis beatus unicis Sabinis
(14).
Similar ideas had occurred in another poem about the gift of the Sabine
farm, Sat. 2.6, where we find out that among the topics discussed by
Horace and his friends and guests late at night when they are being
entertained in Sabinis, is the philosophical question of whether it is
through wealth or through virtue that people are blessed or happy
(utrumne / divitiis homines an sint virtute beati, 73b-74).
This is followed by the tale of the town mouse and the country mouse
which Horace terms an anilis fabella, (an ‘old wives’ tale’, 77-78) and
which he places in the mouth of his rustic Sabine neighbour Cervius.
Cervius uses this tale to illustrate a point (ex re, 78) and to correct the
impression that wealth is the ideal state for humans to live in. If someone
praises Arellius’ wealth, being ignorant of its accompanying worries,
Cervius begins to tell this story. Unimpressed by his rustic host’s
impoverished lifestyle on the edge of a precipitous cliff and by his meagre
diet,45 the Epicurean-inspired (and apparently rhetorically trained) town
mouse cautions the rusticus mus that life is short and must be enjoyed
while it lasts. ‘Trust me, take to the road (carpe viam, 93), with me as your
comrade,’ counsels the urbanus mus (echoed later, of course, by the carpe
diem of Carm. 1.11),46 ‘since all earthly creatures have mortal lives as their
lot, there is no escape from death for large or small; therefore, my good
fellow, while you still can, live happily in pleasant circumstances (in rebus
iucundis vive beatus, 96); live mindful of how short your life really is (vive
memor, quam sis aevi brevis, 97).’47
Convinced by this speech, the country mouse bounds off happily to the
city with the town mouse, and the two sneak through the walls of the city
at night. They set foot in a rich man’s house where crimson coverings shine
on ivory couches (super lectos … eburnos, 103) and where leftovers from
the previous night’s feast are stacked up in baskets. The town mouse plays
host like a house-born slave (verniliter, 108) and the country mouse acts
the part of the happy guest (laetum convivam, 111), until suddenly the
loud rattling of doors shakes them from their couches in fright, and they
45
This is similar to the tenuis victus so celebrated by that other ‘country cousin’
Ofellus, whom Horace recalls from his boyhood in Sat. 2.2.
46
Harrison 2007:237 notes that, since Horace was already composing some of the
odes in the 30s, this may be a deliberate mockery of the carpe diem idea of many
of the sympotic poems.
47
West 1974:74 terms the town mouse ‘a fashionable Pseudo-Epicurean’.
113
scamper, petrified, across the whole length of the room, as the house
begins to ring with the barking of huge Molossian hounds (111b-15a). The
chastened (and rather fickle) country mouse then promptly bids farewell
to his urban acquaintance, assuring him that his woodland and his cave,
safe from such attacks, will be a comfort to him with his meagre diet of
vetch (tenui … ervo, 117).
How not to be happy
Finally, let us take what we have seen so far of Horace’s ideas on happiness
and general human well-being and apply them to a most unusual poem.
Overall, if we can take him at all seriously, it seems that Horace is
essentially an eclectic philosopher with strong Epicurean leanings,48 who
tends to apply different varieties of philosophy to different addressees as
he finds appropriate. On the whole, Horace seems to identify living
modestly and contentedly as the key to happiness, while the pursuit of
wealth, indulgence in excessive luxury, worry about the future, and
political ambition are targeted as things that stand in the way of human
happiness. In Ep. 1.6, Horace addresses someone called Numicius and
advises him that in order to be happy and to stay happy, he should adopt
the Pythagorean precept ‘marvel at nothing’ or ‘let nothing surprise you’,
which the poet translates into Latin as nil admirari:49
Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici,
solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum.
The one and only thing that is able to make and maintain a happy
man, Numicius, is: let nothing surprise you.
(Ep. 1.6.1-2)
48
See Moles 2002:157.
Plut. Mor. 44B gives Pythagoras’ precept as mēden thaumazein (‘Don’t be
amazed at anything’). If a real person, Numicius’ identity is unknown, so we
cannot establish the relevance of Pythagorean doctrine to him; cf. Mayer
1994:143. Musurillo 1974:194 suggests the relatively obscure quaestor and
tribune of the plebs P. Numicius Pica Caesianus. De Pretis 2004:54 n. 25) suggests
a pun on nummus (money). Ov. Met. 14.599 identifies Numicius as the name of
the god associated with the river Numicus in Latium where Aeneas is supposed to
have died; cf. Liv. 1.2. Ov. Met. 14.600-08 has Venus order this river god to wash
all the mortal parts of Aeneas away and anoint him with nectar and ambrosia so
that he can become the god Indiges.
49
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In Ep. 1.6 the speaker constantly encourages the addressee to do things
which are the opposite of those that Horace normally prescribes for
happiness. Numicius is exhorted to go and feast his eyes on silver and
antique marble and bronze artworks, and to marvel at jewels and the
colours of Tyrian dye (i nunc, argentum et marmor vetus aeraque et artis /
suspice, cum gemmis Tyrios mirare colores, 17-18). That this is tongue-incheek on Horace’s part should be plain from the fact that he is telling his
addressee to admire the Tyrian cloth and other precious things, whereas at
the beginning of Epistle 1.6 he expressed the precept of admiring or being
surprised at nothing. Furthermore, the speaker encourages his addressee to
engage enthusiastically in competitive political manoeuvring, snobbery and
vanity: ‘Revel in the fact that thousands of eyes are fixed on you when you
speak. Be busy – off to the forum early, not back home until late, so that
Mutus does not haul in a bigger harvest than you from his wife’s estates
(shameful thing, for a man of lower birth than you) and thereby win the
chance to be the one who’s marvelled at by you, when it’s you who should
be marvelled at by him’ (19-23; tr. Bovie 1959:180). The addressee is also
encouraged to be greedy, to be competitive in business, and to increase his
pile of wealth constantly (32-35).50
‘Queen Money’, the addressee is assured, will bring him a wife with a
dowry, loyalty, friends, good birth and good looks, and the goddesses
Persuasion and Venus will beautify the man who has lots of money: scilicet
uxorem cum dote fidemque et amicos / et genus et formam regina Pecunia
donat / ac bene nummatum decorat Suadela Venusque (36-38). If money
alone makes him happy and keeps him that way, the addressee is told, he
should seek it first and omit it last (46b-48). He is also urged to flatter and
suck up to those in power (49-55). Then, the addressee is told that if he
who lives well dines well, he should follow his gullet (eamus / quo ducit
gula, 56-57) and go ‘fishing’ and ‘hunting’ first thing in the morning, like
Gargilius the glutton, who sent his slaves to the market place armed with
nets and spears which they lugged through the crowds to show off a store
bought boar loaded on a mule (56-61). Next, the speaker and addressee
are pictured ill-advisedly getting into a bath after having gorged and stuffed
themselves full of food (61-62), a sure-fire recipe for a heart attack, as we
50
Competitive ambition and constant greed for more were the very vices taken to
task in Hor. Sat. 1.1.
115
know from later satirical sources such as Juvenal.51 In fact, they are
appropriately linked to ‘the Ithacan Ulysses’ wicked crew’ (remigium
vitiosum Ithacensis Ulixei, 63), for whom, we are told, forbidden pleasure
was more alluring than their fatherland (cui potior patria fuit interdicta
voluptas, 64).52
In the last few lines, the speaker adds a kind of postscript by referring
to the Greek lyric poet Mimnermus’ idea that without erotic love, life is
not worth living at all (fr. 1). The speaker, however, adds laughter (‘jokes’)
to love and wishes that the addressee could live and flourish with both
these joys:
si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore iocisque
nil est iucundum, vivas in amore iocisque.
If, as Mimnermus warned, without love and laughter, there is no
joy in life (lit. nothing is pleasant), may you live in love and
laughter (65-66).
In the final two lines, the speaker suggests that should his addressee have
better advice, he should go ahead and impart it; if not, he should follow
the foregoing precepts. The reference to laughter in the final few lines of
this poem is, I think, an indication of how Horace would like us to read
Ep. 1.6. If we have not already figured it out (and we should have), this
poem is a joke from beginning to end. Either we can see the speaker as a
doctor ineptus, the foolish instructor figure, who appears in much of
Horace’s hexametric poetry, or we can see the poet himself as speaker
being entirely ironic or even sarcastic.53 Although, at the start of his first
book of epistles, Horace assured his audience that he was putting aside his
poems and all the rest of his ludicra and involving himself completely in
51
Hor. Ep. 1.6.61-62: crudi tumidique lavemur, / quid decet, quid non, obliti
(‘While gorged with undigested food, let us bathe, forgetful of what is or is not
seemly’). Cf. Juv. Sat. 1.142-44: poena tamen praesens, cum tu deponis amictus /
turgidus et crudum pavonem in balnea portas. / hinc subitae mortes atque intestata
senectus (‘Nevertheless the punishment is at hand, when you take off your clothes,
swollen with food, and you haul undigested peacock into the baths. This is where
sudden death and intestate old age come from’).
52
This may refer to the episode of the Lotus-eaters (Hom. Od. 9.82-102) or to
that of the cattle of Helios (Od. 12.260-419); see Mayer 1994:155.
53
Recently, it has been suggested that Horace’s persona in the Epistles be viewed
as a ‘liar’ (Maric 2012); I, however, would prefer to see him as a Joker.
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philosophy,54 it is abundantly obvious that he has both continued to write
poems and to test his audience as much as ever. He challenges us,
however, as the phrase ridentem dicere verum would suggest, to find the
truth hidden within the laughter.
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54
Hor. Ep. 1.1.10-11.
117
Lee, M.O. 1964. ‘Horace Odes 1.11: The lady whose name was Leu.’ Arion
3:117-24.
Lejay, P. [1911] 1966. Oeuvres d’Horace. Hildesheim.
Levick, B. 1975. ‘Primus, Murena and Fides: Notes on Cassius Dio Liv. 3.’
G&R 22:156-63.
Lindo, L.I. 1968. ‘Horace’s second epode.’ CPh 63:206-08.
Mankin, D. 1995. Horace Epodes. Cambridge.
Maric, L. 2012. ‘Horace, the liar persona and the poetry of dissimulatio:
The case of Epistles 1.’ Akroterion 57:53-77.
Marsilio, M.S. 2010. ‘Two Notes on Horace Odes 1.11.’ QUCC 96:117-23.
Mayer, R. 1994. Horace Epistles Book 1. Cambridge.
Mette, H.J. 2009 ‘“Slender genre” and “slender table” in Horace.’ In M.
Lowrie (ed.), Horace: Odes and Epodes. Oxford Readings in Classical
Studies, 50-55. Oxford (= 1961 ‘“genus tenue” und “mensa tenuis” bei
Horaz.’ MH 18:136-39).
Moles, J. 2002. ‘Poetry, philosophy, politics and play.’ In A.J. Woodman
and D.C. Feeney (edd.), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace,
141-57. Cambridge.
Moritz, L.A. 1976. ‘Snow and spring: Horace’s Soracte ode again.’ G&R
23.2:169-76.
Musurillo, H. 1974. ‘A formula for happiness: Horace Epist. 1.6 to
Numicius.’ CW 67:193-204.
Nisbet, R.G.M. 2007. ‘Horace: Life and chronology.’ In Harrison 2007:721.
Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M. 1970. A Commentary on Horace: Odes
Book 1. Oxford.
Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M. 1978. A Commentary on Horace: Odes
Book 2. Oxford.
Santirocco, M.S. 1986. Unity and Design in Horace’s Odes. Chapel Hill,
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SHARLAND
Watson, L.C. 2003. A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes. Oxford.
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67-80. Cambridge.
GIVING: SOME TIPS FOR HAPPINESS
FROM LATE ANTIQUITY
Pauline Allen
Australian Catholic University and University of Pretoria
Over the past three decades there has been an intense scholarly
concentration on the problematic of poverty and riches in Christian late
antiquity and the possibilities of achieving happiness, whether eternal or
temporary, for both the poor and the rich. Mostly, the topic has been
considered in a top-down model, whereby the authoritative pronouncements of prominent bishops in their preaching, letter-writing and
theological works on poverty and riches (and on almsgiving as a route to
happiness for both rich and poor) have been taken as normative.1 In this
paper, it is my intention to contrast this approach with a bottom-up
model, by looking at the everyday problems expressed by ‘little people’ in
their struggles either to divest themselves of money or to acquire it. In
particular, I shall study two works from the question-and-answer genre
(erotapokriseis), one a collection of letters posted in sixth-century Palestine
to two ‘Old Men’ with queries pertaining to happiness, and the other a
volume of questions and answers preserved in the works of a monk from
Mt Sinai in the 7th century. In both these works the merits and mechanics
of almsgiving as a means to happiness, especially of the eternal variety, are
treated in some detail.
The scholarly debate so far, in nuce
There are at least three main different recent approaches to poverty and
the poor in Christian late antiquity, and several others in between. The
first was advocated by Michael de Vinne in his 1995 dissertation,2 and
subsequently by Peter Brown (2002). According to this view, in late
antiquity the poor increased in visibility, and bishops were the agents of
1
This situation is of course not confined to the topic of almsgiving. For example,
our picture of slavery in the late-antique world is derived from the viewpoint of
slaveholders; see Harper 2011:16-23.
2
De Vinne 1995. For an extensive literature review of the topic of poverty and
the poor in this period see Allen and Sitzler 2009:15-21. See also the studies in
Leemans et al. 2011.
120
ALLEN
this change, which in some scholarly circles was seen as a shift from civic
evergetism to a ‘love for the poor model’.3 The second approach is that of
Richard Finn in his book on Christian almsgiving during this period.4 Finn
argues against the overwhelming influence of Christianity on evergetism,
maintaining that episcopal authority evolved not simply from patronage of
the poor in its discourse on almsgiving, but encompassed a variety of
factors that made its construction considerably more complex. A third and
most recent approach has been to consider Christian, and in particular
episcopal discourse, from the point of view of rhetoric, whereby the poor
and the concept of poverty are idealised, spiritualised but relegated to a
distance, a technique in evidence in such disparate late-antique bishops as
John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo and Leo I of Rome.5 Whichever of
these three main approaches one adopts, the ancient evidence comes
principally from the preaching or writing of the late-antique bishop or
from hagiographical works about him – a man, we remember, who,
particularly in the Greek- and Latin-speaking areas of the empire, was
usually well-educated, not uncommonly of curial class, of a theological
temperament, and with some philosophical training, albeit mostly
eclectic.6 It follows that most insights we gain about a bishop’s view of
poverty, the poor and almsgiving, come through a top-down prism, where
the poor are predominantly the vehicle for the donating rich to reach
eternal happiness in heaven, and the call to almsgiving itself is often a
means of rallying both rich and poor in a community to a common
purpose, and therefore to ecclesial unity.
The letters and sermons of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), simply
because of their bulk, provide a great deal of information on how bishops
argued for almsgiving amongst both the rich and poor in their
congregation, and to a lesser extent manipulated the addressees of their
letters. Let Augustine speak for himself to his congregation:
Si daretur pauperibus laturariis? Nosti enim et vides quia quibus das
in terra ambulant. Quod das in caelum portant, et cum portaverint
3
See particularly Patlagean 1977; also discussion in Van Nuffelen 2011.
Finn 2006a. See also his chapter in Atkins and Osborne 2006b:130-61; and the
essays in Frenkel and Lev 2009: esp. 15-121.
5
See Allen, Neil and Mayer (edd.) 2009:69-118 (on Chrysostom), 119-70 (on
Augustine), 171-208 (on Leo).
6
On the social contexts of the bishop in Late Antiquity, see e.g. Sterk 2004:13-92
(Basil of Caesarea); Rapp 2005:172-207.
4
121
ad caelum, non quod das hoc recipis. Pro terrenis enim caelestia
accepturus es, pro mortalibus immortalia, pro temporalibus
sempiterna.
Suppose you gave it [alms] to the poor as porters. You know, after
all, your eyes tell you that those you give alms to on earth can
walk. Well, what you give them they carry to heaven, and you
don’t get back merely what you give. In exchange for the goods of
earth, you see, you are going to receive those of heaven, for mortal
things immortal ones, for temporal things everlasting ones. 7
This sermon in its entirety depicts the shrewdness of giving alms to the
poor, and elsewhere in Augustine’s works almsgiving is portrayed (in his
words) as ‘a kind of mercantile loan or investment. You lend or invest
here, you get paid back with interest there’ (Quasi fenus traiectitium facis.
Hic das, ibi recipis).8 The promise of a credit-worthy God is an incentive
to embark on the route to heavenly happiness.
A further strategy to the giving of alms, the presentation of a
spiritualised poverty and the promotion of ecclesial unity, all of which are
stages on the route to eternal happiness, can be seen in passages such as the
following:
Nescio quomodo, fratres mei, animus eius qui porrigit pauperi, velut
communi humanitati atque informitati compatitur, quando ponitur
manus habentis in manum indigentis. Quamvis ille det, ille accipiat,
coniunguntur minister et cui ministratur.
I don’t know how it is, my brothers and sisters, but the spirit of the
person who actually hands something to a poor man experiences a
kind of sympathy with common humanity and infirmity, when the
hand of the one who has is actually placed in the hand of the one
who is in need. Although the one is giving, the other receiving, the
one being attended to and the one attending are being joined in a
real relationship.9
For his part John Chrysostom (d. 407) idealises poverty as
χωρίον γὰρ ἐστιν ἄσυλον, λιμὴν γαληνὸς, ἀσφάλεια διηωεκὴς,
τρυφὴ κινδύνων ἀπηλλαγμένη, ἡδονὴ εἱλικρινὴς, βίος ἀτάραχος,
7
Sermo 107A.2 NBA 30/2 (Rome 1983) 340; tr. Hill 1992:120.
Sermo 42.2 NBA 29 (Rome 1979) 746; tr. Hill 1990:235.
9
Sermo 259.5 NBA 32/2 (Rome 1984) 840; tr. Hill 1993:181.
8
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ALLEN
ζωὴ ἀκύμαντος, εὐπορία ἀκαταμάχητος, φιλοσοφίας μήτηρ, χαλινὸς
ἀπονοίας, ἀναίρεσις κολάσεως, ῥίζα ταπεινοφροσύνης.
a place of asylum, a peaceful harbour, perpetual security, luxury
free of risk, pure pleasure, a life without waves of disturbance,
impregnable abundance, mother of philosophy, a bridle to
10
arrogance, removal of punishment, root of humility.
Like other Greek writers in Christian antiquity, John does not use the
word εὐδαιμονία when speaking of happiness, no doubt because the
concept was personified as a pagan divinity.11
In much of the discourse on poverty from Christian bishops the Stoic
idea of ‘indifferents’, that things are not intrinsically either good or evil, but
that it is their use that is determinative for happiness, is also never far from
the surface.
From the majority of works of bishops we have the impression that the
poor are an anonymous mass, invoked as examples to encourage
almsgiving. This is the paradigm I will try to turn on its head by examining
from the bottom up how the late-antique discourse on poverty, wealth,
and eternal happiness was perceived by what we might call ordinary
people. Of course, there were various motivations in early Christianity for
giving to the poor, for example a social obligation, a divine commandment,
or the hope of redemption for one’s sins, but the expectation of happiness
in the next world was perhaps the most powerful motive for disbursing
one’s material goods.
To illustrate the nexus between almsgiving and eternal happiness, as I
said, I am drawing on two collections of letters, one from the 6th century,
the other from the seventh, belonging to the erotapokriseis or questionand-answer genre, which is related to, but distinct from, the dialogue in
Classical antiquity.12 In this genre we are shown the actual concerns of the
questioners, which is what makes the material unique.
10
Cum Saturninus et Aurelianus (CPG 4393); PG 52, 416.23-28; tr. Mayer
2009:105.
11
Christian writers generally preferred the word χαρά, as can be seen from Lampe
1994:1512-13 s.v.
12
See further Grillmeier 1987:77-78; Jacob 2004; Bussières 2013.
123
Barsanuphios and John13
These two monks, advanced in the spiritual life (hence their title ‘Old
Men’), lived in a monastery near Gaza, a region characterised by a
thorough-going monastic culture in which spiritual guidance was exercised
in seclusion – hence the ‘posting’ of letters by the questioners and the
postal replies. From these two monks we have 848 mostly short letters in
which they reply to questions from monastics (about two-thirds of the
total), lay people (about one-quarter) and bishops (about fifty letters).14
The letters of their correspondents are preserved as well, and possibly all
the questions and answers were dictated to a scribe. In general, John
responded to matters of a practical nature and Barsanuphios to those of a
spiritual nature.15 What is useful for my purpose is that, unlike in much
other monastic literature, rather than dealing exclusively with the spiritual
ascent and future eternal happiness of monks, this work also reveals the
concerns of ordinary lay people about finding the correct route to
everlasting happiness in the next world, and even to serenity in the
present, whether they are rich, poor or in between.
To begin with, I present some examples of these letters to give their
flavour:
Φιλόχριστός τις ἠρώτησε τὸν ἄλλον Γέροντα, Ἰωάννην· Παρακαλῶ
σε Πάτερ, τοῦτό μοι σαφηνίσαι, ἵνα πληρωθεὶς χαρᾶς ἀπέλθω.
Ἐπειδὴ λογισμὸν ἔχω ποιῆσαι εὐποιΐαν ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων μοι, τί
συμφέρει; Ἵνα κατὰ μικρὸν ποιήσω ἢ ἐφάπαξ;
A Christ-loving layperson asked the οther Old Man, John: ‘I
implore you, father, clarify this for me, too, so that I may depart
joyfully. Since my thought tells me to offer some alms from my
possessions, what is more beneficial for me to do? Should I give
things away gradually, or should I give them away all at once?’16
13
Text in Neyt and De Angelis-Noah 2001; English translation in Chryssavgis
2006-2007: vols. 113-14, with literature. For background see Hevelone-Harper
2002, with literature and esp. 95-96 on ‘Property and charity’; Bitton-Ashkelony
and Kofsky 2006, esp. 82-106.
14
For the breakdown see Chryssavgis 2006:9.
15
See further Chryssavgis 2006:6.
16
Ep. 617; SC 468, 38.1-5; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:207.
124
ALLEN
John’s advice is that everyone should give according to their capacity, but
that the ever-present threat of death should goad everyone to act
generously:
Ποιήσωμεν δὲ τὴν δύναμιν κατὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν ἡμῶν, καὶ ἀγαθός
ἐστιν ὁ τῶν ἁπάντων Δεσπότης τοῦ εἰσαγαγεῖν ἡμᾶς μετὰ τῶν
φρονίμων παρθένων εἰς τὸν νυμφῶνα αὑτοῦ εἰς τὴν χαρὰν τὴν
ἀνεκλάλητον σὺν Χριστῷ.
Let us do our best according to our weakness, and the Master of all
is good; he shall lead us with the wise virgins into his weddingchamber and into the ineffable joy that is with Christ. 17
Another query, supposedly anonymous, comes from a layman who has
been overdoing his almsgiving:
Ἐάν τις συναρπαγεὶς ἀδιακρίτως ἀναλώσῃ εἰς εὐποιΐαν τὰ τῆς
χρείας αὑτοῦ καὶ μεταμεληθῇ, πῶς ὀφείλει ἑαυτὸν παραμυθεῖσθαι,
ἵνα μὴ τῇ διαβολικῇ λύπῃ καταποθῇ;
If someone is solicited on all sides to spend all of one’s possessions
in almsgiving, and then the same person regrets doing so, how can
one be consoled in order not to be consumed by such demonic
sorrow?18
The answer is that the over-zealous donor should blame himself for his
lack of discernment and console himself with the fact that, since he spent
all his money on a good cause, God will look after him. The letters of the
Old Men are firm on the point that excess does not lead to happiness, 19
and that the destitute person, when asked for alms, should not think of
borrowing in order to give.20 This last situation seems to have exercised
those seeking advice, for there is another long question and answer on the
subject:
Σαφήνισόν μοι καὶ τοῦτο, κύριε ἀββᾶ, ὁ μὴ ἔχων πόθεν δοῦναι,
πῶς γίνεται συμμέτοχος τῆς εὐλογίας τῆς ῥηθείσης ὑπὸ τοῦ
17
Ep. 617; SC 468, 40.28-32; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:208.
Ep. 624; SC 468, 48.1-4; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:211.
19
E.g. Ep. 621; SC 468, 44-47; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:209-10.
20
Ep. 620; SC 468, 42-45; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:209.
18
125
Σωτῆρος πρὸς τοὺς ἐκ δεξιῶν αὑτοῦ· ‘Δεῦτε οἱ εὐλογημένοι τοῦ
Πατρός μου, κληρονομήσατε τὴν ἑτοιμασμένην ὑμῖν βασιλείαν …’
Abba sir, clarify this for me as well. How is it possible for
someone who has nothing to give to become a partaker of the
blessing expressed by the Saviour to those on his right: ‘Come, you
that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you …’21
The Old Man explains that these words are addressed to those who have
money and give to the poor without vainglory, whereas those who have
nothing to offer in terms of almsgiving can become poor in spirit (cf. Matt.
5:3) in order to inherit, with the saints, the kingdom of heaven. Likewise,
those who endure reproach, persecution, and so on, will rejoice greatly at
their heavenly reward. Behind much of this kind of rhetoric lies the text of
Matthew 25:31-46, where saving the poor is equated with serving Christ.
There is considerable evidence in this correspondence about the
devolution of almsgiving, which could give rise to embezzlement or other
problems.22 It seems to have been standard practice for people to give
money to monks on the understanding that they would distribute it to the
poor, a practice that is called into question by one monastic. Abba John
replies that it is impossible to expect those who have renounced their own
possessions to manage the possessions of others,23 but the monk hints at
further problems in another letter:
Ἐὰν οὖν φιλονεικήσῃ ὁ παρέχων ὅτι Ἐὰν μὴ λάβῃς καὶ διαδώσῃς,
οὐδὲν παρέχω, ἆρα ἀφήσω τὸν πτωγὸν θλιβόμενον ἀπὸ πείνης;
If the one who is proposing this insists by saying: ‘If you do not
accept the money and distribute it [to the poor], then I will offer
nothing’, should I allow the poor to suffer hunger?24
John’s reply is that it is not up to the monk to be distracted by activities of
this sort, and the owner of the property should distribute the alms himself.
From another letter it appears that donors give money not only to monks
for distribution, but also to the poor for further disbursement. The
etiquette of the situation is the topic of the following letter:
21
Ep. 627; SC 468, 50.1-5; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:212.
Cf. Epp. 618, 619, 629, 632, 633, 634.
23
Ep. 618; SC 468, 40-41; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:208.
24
Ep. 619; SC 468, 42.1-3; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:208-09.
22
126
ALLEN
Ἐὰν ὁ παρέρχων τινὶ χρήματα διαδοῦναι εἴτε Πατράσιν εἴτε
πρωχοῖς εἴπῃ αὐτῷ ἐν φανερῷ τόπῳ παρασχεῖν, εὑρίσκονται δέ
τινες πλήσιον πάνυ ἐνδεεῖς, μὴ ἄτοπόν ἐστι κἀκείνοις μεταδοῦναι;
If someone gives another person some money to distribute,
whether to the fathers or to the poor, conveying this to him in an
open place where there are also certain poor people around, is it
inappropriate to offer these poor people some of the money as
well?25
Further queries about caritative etiquette concern which of two poor
people should be privileged by a donor who does not have enough money
for both (response: the more vulnerable poor person should be
preferred),26 and whether one should give to beggars in public, while other
poor people are invisible, being too embarrassed to beg, or ill at home.
Answer:
Πάντας τοὺς φανερῶς λαμβάνοντες ἔχε ἐν μιᾷ τάξει, εἰ μή τις ἐν
αὐτοῖς ἐστιν ἔχων ἀσθένειαν καὶ πάθος, τούτῳ γὰρ δεῖ προσθεῖναι
μικρόν. Τοὺς δὲ ἐρυθριῶντας φανερῶς καὶ δημοσίᾳ λαμβάνειν, καὶ
τοὺς ἐν ἀσθενείαις κατακειμένους, ἔχε ἐν ἑτέρᾳ τάξει, παρέχων
αὐτοῖς περισσὸν κατὰ τὴν χρείαν αὐτῶν, καὶ καθὼς ἔχει ἡ χείρ σου
καὶ εὑρίσκει.
You should regard all those who openly receive alms as being in
one category, unless there is one among them who is vulnerable
and afflicted; for you should give a little more to that person. Those
who are embarrassed about receiving openly and publicly, as well
as those who are ill, should be regarded as being in a different
category; and you should give these people more than they require,
according to whatever you are carrying at the time or can find. 27
There is a related question about what to give to the poor who go from
house to house begging. John advises giving whatever comes to hand: a
piece of bread, some undiluted wine (presumably to show that the donor
is not stingy enough to mix it with water), two small coins, or a bit more
money.28 Other queries come from people who admit they are sluggish
25
Ep. 631; SC 468, 58.1-5; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:215.
Ep. 625; SC 468, 48-49; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:211.
27
Ep. 630; SC 468, 58.7-13; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:215.
28
Ep. 635; SC 468, 62-63; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:217.
26
127
almsgivers, have doubts about the practice, or do not enjoy giving at all.29
Since in much literature on the topic of almsgiving the practice was linked
with forgiveness,30 some people perhaps queried the treatment of a poor
person in a lawsuit: ‘What does it mean when it says: “You shall not be
partial to the poor in a lawsuit”?’ (Τί ἐστιν ὃ λέγει· Μὴ ἐλεήσῃς πτωχὸν ἐν
κρίσει; Exodus 23:13).31 Abba John hedges his bets by saying that a judge
must judge fairly and not violate justice; on the other hand, ‘to entreat the
adversary of a poor person to be compassionate is not wrong’ (Τὸ δὲ
παρακαλέσαι τὸν αὐτοῦ ἀντίδικον ποιῆσαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ ἔλεος, οὐκ ἔστιν
ἄδικον).32 Throughout the letters dealing with almsgiving we find the
underlying principle that, even if it is sometimes painful and requires
careful discernment, the practice of giving is a necessary route for
achieving the individual’s happiness in heaven.
Anastasios of Sinai33
We know next to nothing about the monk-priest Anastasios except that
he was probably born in Cyprus c. 630, was a prolific writer on spiritual
and theological matters, and that he was still writing on Sinai in 700 CE. It
seems that his answers to various questions probably posed by pious
churchgoers were collected either by him or his disciples shortly before or
shortly after his death, and some of his questioners may have been in Egypt
and Syria/Palestine, where he travelled.34 From the resulting collection we
have several questions and answers on almsgiving (44, 45, 58, 83, 92) and
on property and wealth (41, 44, 45, 55), from which Anastasios emerges
as a compassionate man.35
As in the correspondence of Barsanuphios and John, here too we find a
question about the proportion of one’s financial resources that should be
spent in alms. Avoiding specifics, Anastasios answers that, if pagans and
others used to kill their sons and daughters as offerings to the gods, there is
29
Ep. 626; SC 468, 50-51; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:211-12. Ep. 623; SC 468, 46-49;
tr. Chryssavgis 2007:210-11.
30
For the relationship between almsgiving and forgiving, for example in
Augustine, see Swift 2001.
31
Ep. 651; SC 468, 82.1-2; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:225-26.
32
Ep. 651; SC 468, 84-85; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:225-26.
33
Text in Richard and Munitiz 2006. English translation in Munitiz 2011.
34
See the evidence of Anastasios’ travels assembled in Munitiz 2011:10-11.
35
See e.g. the use of the word πτωχός in Quaes. 32.21.24; 81.23; 87.16; 88.59,
and his respect for one who is πτωχοτρόφος (Quaes. 43.6-7; 89.10). I owe this
observation to Dr Joseph Munitiz, SJ (communication dated 22 November 2012).
128
ALLEN
no excuse for Christians: ‘Even if we were to offer our own flesh to God,
we would have done nothing commensurate with the gifts He has given
us’ (Ὅτε γὰρ καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν σάρκα ἡμῶν προσενέγκωμεν τῷ Θεῷ, οὐδὲν
ἄξιον τῶν δωρεῶν ὧν ἐχαρίσατο ἡμῖν πεποιήκαμεν).36 Since we know that
after his departure from Cyprus Anastasios held the position of infirmarian
in the monastery on Mount Sinai, we may suppose a rural or even desert
environment for his questioners because Arabs, whom he calls barbarians,
are mentioned frequently. To the question, ‘Where is it expedient to offer
money: to a church or to the poor and needy?’, he replies that while
Christ’s words in Matthew 25:34 (‘Come you blessed of my father’)
definitely refer to the poor and other disadvantaged groups, there needs to
be some flexibility according to circumstances in different places. Thus
one should give to churches that are poor, but not to wealthy churches, as
we can never be sure where their contents will end up.37 Many churches,
maintains Anastasios, ‘which insatiably collected funds, and failed to
administer them well, were later plundered by barbarians.’38 Elsewhere, in
answering a question about human infertility, Anastasios speaks of rich
people who are unable to have children, whereas the destitute Arabs in
the desert, who have barely enough to eat, have an abundance of
offspring.39 There is possibly also an Arab background to the comment
that Anastasios knew of somebody who helped a whole people, and gave
instructions to many persons, and because of this received funds from
many and used them for the poor and the ransom of prisoners.40 The
ransom of prisoners, a very prevalent practice among bishops in the 5th to
the 7th centuries, was considered an obligatory act of mercy and therefore
a meritorious route to eternal happiness.41
The problems of sluggish almsgiving, as in Barsanuphios and John, and
of the divide between rich and poor are also addressed by Anastasios in
reply to a question about a wealthy person who cannot retire from the
world but ‘enjoys a wealthy table, a variety of foods, and bathing facilities’
(ἀπολαύων πλουσίας τραπέζης καὶ ἐδεσμάτων διαφόρων καὶ βαλανείων) –
how can someone like that live without reproach and obtain the
36
Quaes. 55; Richard and Munitiz 2006:107.6-8; tr. Munitiz 2011:169.
Quaes. 58; Richard and Munitiz 2006:109.1-2; tr. Munitiz 2011:171.
38
Quaes. 58; Richard and Munitiz 2006:109.10-11; tr. Munitiz 2011:171.
39
Quaes. 81; Richard and Munitiz 2006:132-33; tr. Munitiz 2011:196.
40
Quaes. 32; Richard and Munitiz 2006:84; tr. Munitiz 2011:134, who thinks
there may be a hint of the autobiographical here.
41
See e.g. Klingshirn 1985.
37
129
forgiveness of sins so necessary for eternal happiness? Anastasios replies
that wealth in itself is not wrong, for some influential or wealthy people in
the Old Testament saved themselves by almsgiving, but his contemporaries who see their family and fellow Christians living in the desert and
do not send money to help them should count their blessings (perhaps
their relatives and co-religionaries are prisoners of the Arabs). When, for
example, they sit down to a decent meal, get into bed, go to the
bathhouse, the church, or market-place they should weep for themselves.
They have firmly shut the gate to eternal happiness on themselves if they
think that God intended them to lead their comfortable lifestyle, because
otherwise he would have given it to the poor person.42
The centrality of almsgiving to salvation and eternal happiness can be
seen in an anecdote related by Anastasios, who has just written about
rubbing a soul clean with almsgiving:
Καὶ Ζήνωνος γὰρ τοῦ βασιλέως φθείραντός τινα κόρην παρθένον
καὶ ἀπολύσαντος ταύτην, κατεπροσήρχετο τοῦ βασιλέως ἡ μήτηρ
τῆς κόρης πρὸς τὴν ἁγίαν Θεοτόκον, καὶ φαίνεται αὐτῇ ἡ Παρθένος
λέγουσα· Πίστευσόν μοι γύναι· πολλάκις ἠθέλησα ἀνταποδοῦναι
τῷ Ζήνωνι, ἀλλ’ ἡ χεὶρ αὐτοῦ διὰ τῆς ἐλεημοσύνης κωλύει με.
The Emperor Zeno [471-491 CE] had deflowered some young
maiden and then abandoned her. The mother of the girl was
praying in supplication against the Emperor to the holy Theotokos;
then the holy Virgin appeared to her saying, ‘Believe me, woman, I
have frequently desired to pay back that Zeno, but his hand stops
me by the alms it gives.’43
The inclusion of this story in Anastasios’ reply is all the more
remarkable because he would have considered Zeno not only immoral, but
also heretical because of his legislation against the Council of Chalcedon
(451 CE), to whose decisions Anastasios subscribed over two centuries
later. These factors point to the centrality of almsgiving in the happiness
trail.
Concomitant with the status of almsgiving as a route to eternal
happiness is the question of the connection between wealth and
criminality. For example, one pious soul asks Anastasios if income from
unjust acts that is given as alms is acceptable to God. The measured, if
initially somewhat Delphic reply, is that ‘there are thefts and there is
42
43
Quaes. 88; Richard and Munitiz 2006:140.3-4; tr. Munitiz 2011:213.
Quaes. 41; Richard and Munitiz 2006:95.35-40; tr. Munitiz 2011:148.
130
ALLEN
injustice’ (ἔστι κλέμματα καὶ ἀδικία):44 stealing church revenue is different
from stealing what comes from the land and sea of unbelievers, just as
harassing peasants and poor people on the one hand, and ripping off the
wealthy on the other, are different.
Everything comes down to intentionality – an overriding consideration
in ancient Christian literature on almsgiving, wealth and poverty – and if
someone cannot abstain from some injustice it is better for them to
disburse for good purposes their money so gained. On the other hand, ‘the
money derived from injustice to the peasants and the poor is quite
unacceptable to God and bears a curse’ (μέντοιγε τὰ ἀπὸ ἀδικίας πτωγῶν
καὶ γεωργῶν ὑπάρχοντα ἀπρόσδεκτα τῷ Θεῷ καὶ κεκατηραμένα
ὑπάρχουσιν).45 Clearly, then, not a route to eternal happiness. Along the
same lines is a question regarding whether someone who is rich has been
made rich by God. Definitely not, replies Anastasios, because nobody who
has amassed riches ‘from wars, bloodshed, and thefts, and perjuries’ can say
that, but only those who have become rich by sinless means. In reply to a
query about the meaning of ‘the mammon of iniquity’ (Luke 16:9),
Anastasios explains that this term designates all the wealth we may have
over and above our strict needs. So if someone possesses enough to be able
to feed and save a person who is being destroyed by hunger, or debt, or
imprisonment, and chooses not to save that person, it is quite certain that
such a one will be justly condemned as a swindler and a murderer.46 No
route to happiness there either. Similarly, loveless almsgiving cancels itself
out, as we see from the following question:
Πῶς ψωμίζει τις πάντα τὰ ὑπάρχοντα αὐτοῦ ἐκτὸς ἀγάπης;
ΑΠΟΚΡΙΣΙΣ. Εἰσί τινες τῶν ἀνθρώπων δοκοῦντες μὲν ποιεῖν
πολλὰς ἐλεημοσύνας, ὑπάρχουσι δὲ μισάδελφοι, λοίδοροι,
ὑπερήφανοι, ἄδικοι, μνησίκακοι, φθονεροί, καὶ διὰ τῶν τοιούτων
παθῶν ἀνόνητος λοιπὸν γίνεται ἡ ἐλεημοσύνη αὐτῶν.
44
Quaes. 44; Richard and Munitiz 2006:98.1; tr. Munitiz 2011:156.
Quaes. 44; Richard and Munitiz 2006:98.11-12; tr. Munitiz 2011:156.
46
Quaes. 83; Richard and Munitiz 2006:137; tr. Munitiz 2011:200. In another
collection of Anastasios’ Questions and Answers we find the sentiment that ‘almost
all the wealth of those who are rich and in positions of government comes from
injustice – usury, confiscations, enforced gifts, robberies’ (ὅλος σχεδὸν ὁ πλοῦτος
τῶν πλουσίων καὶ ἀρχόντων ἐξ ἀδικίας, καὶ τόκων, καὶ ἁρπαγῶν, καὶ
δωροληψιῶν, καὶ κλοπῶν ἐστι); Quaes. 83; Richard and Munitiz 2006:190.7-9; tr.
Munitiz 2011:201.
45
131
How can someone bestow all one’s possessions for food without
love?
ANSWER: There are some persons who appear to give many alms,
but they are haters of their fellow men, calumniators, proud,
unjust, resentful and envious. Thus, because of all these vices, their
almsgiving becomes worthless.47
This kind of showy almsgiving is also denounced by the bishop-preachers.
Concluding observations
There is much work still to be done in the question-and-answer genre, and
in this paper I have been able only to deal with two roughly comparable
collections in Greek, although the genre was popular (and somewhat
elastically conceived) in the Latin-speaking world, in Syriac literature, and
is found in Byzantium down to the time of Patriarch Photios at the end of
the 9th century. A detailed investigation of other collections will shed light
on how representative the letters to and from Barsanuphios, John and
Anastasios are regarding attitudes to almsgiving as a route to happiness.48
It was my intention in this paper to demonstrate the merits of hearing
from ‘ordinary’ people, as opposed to episcopal homilists, letter-writers
and theologians regarding concerns about poverty, wealth and almsgiving.
Like the homilists, whose pronouncements on these subjects I have
deliberately not entertained in detail here, the laypeople who consulted
Barsanuphios, John and Anastasios are often worried about how wealth
can impede happiness. They are also exercised about how much one
should give in alms and whether disposing of ill-gotten gains by giving will
redound to the eternal credit of the almsgiver or not. With regard to the
amount to be given, the Old Men, like the homilists, stress the importance
of intentionality and the fact that nobody is expected to give more than
they can. The letters to the Old Men are more instructive than homiletic
works regarding the mechanics and etiquette of almsgiving, and the role
expected from the monk in disbursing funds illustrates a development
from previous centuries when monks gave to the poor from their own
daily labour.49 The homilists’ rhetorical exploitation of the theme that the
humble rich person is better off than the proud poor person is not so
47
Quaes. 92; Richard and Munitiz 2006:147.5-8; tr. Munitiz 2011:219.
See the incisive online assessment of the status quaestionis of the genre and its
definition by Papaconstantinou 2005.
49
See Finn 2006a:92-93.
48
132
ALLEN
obvious in the literature under consideration here, although a certain
jealous divide between rich and poor is in evidence, as in a query
presented to Abba John about the ‘haves’ in a family not acknowledging
their relationship with their ‘have-nots’ in order to keep up appearances.50
While such a divide is also presented by the homilists in order to goad
their congregations to increased giving, the predicament of this family
strikes one as being concrete and realistic. In general, there is nothing from
the questioners’ side or that of the holy men who offer the responses to
indicate that they are spiritualising poverty or riches. On the contrary, the
questions are of a concrete, practical nature and so are the responses.
Similarly, we encounter no philosophising about ‘indifferents’, which is
so common in homiletic literature. Although it would be misleading to
differentiate between homiletic literature and these more popular corpora
on the rhetoric versus reality model; all in all I suggest that for the people
who consulted Barsanuphios, John and Anastasios, almsgiving was
perceived in practical terms as a pre-eminent, if sometimes difficult and
painful, strategy for embarking and remaining on the route to eternal
happiness.
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