The Advent of Pluralism: Diversity and Conflict in the Age of Sophocles

OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS Published under the supervision of a Committee of the Faculty of Classics in the University...

Author: Lauren J. Apfel

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OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS Published under the supervision of a Committee of the Faculty of Classics in the University of Oxford

The aim of the Oxford Classical Monograph series (which replaces the Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the best theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophy examined by the Faculty Board of Classics.

The Advent of Pluralism Diversity and Conﬂict in the Age of Sophocles

LAUREN J. APFEL

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With ofﬁces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Lauren J. Apfel 2011 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2010943360 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–960062–5 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To my mother

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Preface The ancient Greek world displays a striking philosophical tendency towards unity: the Parmenidean Way to Truth, the Platonic Form, the Aristotelian Mean. Much of subsequent Western theory has been a product of this desire for uniformity and coherence. We need only think of history’s major thought-movements—monotheistic religion, for example, or Enlightenment rationalism—to get a sense of how enduring an impact these notions have had. Within the last halfcentury or so, however, monism has come under sustained attack. With seeds in the thought of early twentieth-century pragmatists such as James Dewey and William James, the idea of pluralism emerged most passionately in the writings of Isaiah Berlin. It has gained inﬂuence as a serious ethical position in recent years as scholars such as Bernard Williams, John Kekes, John Gray, and George Crowder have developed Berlin’s historical interest into a fully articulated theoretical stance. In 2010, it seems, philosophy has ﬁnally caught up with the reality that values and perspectives on truth are plural, that conﬂict between them is endemic. But ours is not the ﬁrst age of pluralism. The philosophy of the ancient Greek world may have been predominantly monist, the legacy of Plato overshadowing, but there was a moment in the midto-late ﬁfth century bce when men not only accepted diversity, but recognized the fact that irresolvable conﬂict is an unexcisable element of humanity. Taken separately, the works of Protagoras, Herodotus, and Sophocles each exhibit proclivities remarkably in tune with modern thinking. The man-measure statement, the Egyptian logos, Antigone, for instance—each of these speaks in its own way to ideas of difference and moral collision. But it is when they are taken together that we may begin seriously to ask ourselves whether a ‘pluralist’ current of thought existed in antiquity. The majority of the pluralism under examination is concerned with values, ethical viewpoints, cultural systems, and the conﬂicts between them. I call this moral pluralism. But related issues such as the multiplicity of truth also come into play. This I refer to as truth pluralism. Protagoras’ homo mensura assertion, for example, is concerned with ontological issues, as is Herodotus’ inclusion of

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numerous source-citations. So too, the lack of resolution at the end of several of Sophocles’ tragedies can be taken as a reﬂection of the fact that, for Sophocles, truth was not something singular or immutable. The two pluralisms work together to paint an overall picture. Belief that there is more than one concept of justice or more than one correct burial practice has implications for truth, when those two variants are couched in competing ethical arguments that must be weighed against one another. The question of whose opinion is ‘true’—one man-measurer’s or another’s, the Greeks’ or the Callatiae’s, Antigone’s or Creon’s—is not a straightforward one, because the question of whose ethical stance is ‘right’ is equally complex. In the historical section of the book a more embracing pluralism of method and approach is addressed: this I call methodological pluralism. This species of pluralism is similarly supplementary, joining with moral and truth pluralism to solidify our understanding of Herodotus. The Advent of Pluralism offers an exploration of how diversity and conﬂict featured in pre-Platonic Classical Greek thought in the spheres of philosophy, history, and tragedy. It provides an in-depth analysis of three authors, contending that each displays, in more than one way, a pluralist perspective. In doing so, the ambition of the study is to enrich our understanding of a core period of ancient intellectual history, reinforcing scholarly perception of the period, but providing a new explanatory framework in which to view it.

Acknowledgements This monograph is an outgrowth of a University of Oxford DPhil. thesis. My ﬁrst round of thanks go to all of those at Oxford who helped in the successful completion of that enterprise in 2005. I was fortunate during my time there to have been exposed to an array of academics who were able to show me, through their own work, how diverse and interesting Classical scholarship can be. In particular, I thank Armand D’Angour for always encouraging me to think clearly about the big picture and for his friendship. Lesley Brown, Henry Hardy, Gregory Hutchinson, Chris Pelling, and Richard Rutherford each offered useful and much-appreciated comments on draft chapters at various points in the process. Scott Scullion and Paul Cartledge examined the thesis with remarkable thoroughness and insight. I am grateful to them for engaging so seriously with my work and for pointing out avenues of improvement. An extra thank-you is due to Scott Scullion for overseeing the transition from thesis to monograph and for a little suggestion that has gone a long way. In addition to academic debts, I would like to express gratitude of a more personal nature. To Leah for her camaraderie as a perpetual student and for genuinely exciting discussion of all things Classical. To Susan for being my constant companion in the art of writing and always there when needed. To Gillian for being the best big sister. My parents (Mom, Carl, Dad, and Darlene) have made the undertaking possible by generous ﬁnancial contributions through the course of my education. Their continual support has illustrated a respect for the choices I have made, for which I am deeply grateful. Thanks of a more fundamental kind go to my mother, Sharon, to whom this book is dedicated. Without her I can honestly say that I would not be half the person I am today. Then there is my husband, Adam, who has been by my side from the inception of the idea to the ﬁnal, ﬁnal version. He has picked me up when I was down. He has supplied me, in his own writing, with an example of what lucid, rigorous, and stimulating scholarship should

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be. And he has read and edited more drafts—on a subject previously alien to him—than should be humanly allowed. Final thanks go to my two best boys, Oliver and Leo, for being the lights of my life throughout the writing of this book and for taking sufﬁciently long naps to allow for its completion. L.J.A

Contents Note on translations

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I. Introduction: pluralism and the Greeks 1. Pluralism in history 2. The problem of anachronism A. The Greeks and us B. Appropriating the past C. Pluralisms? 3. What is pluralism? A. Plurality and conﬂict B. Incommensurability and loss C. Three concepts of objectivity D. The rejection of an ideal life 4. The one and the many in early Greek thought A. In pre-Socratic philosophy B. From cosmos to anthrōpos C. In Archaic poetry 5. Plato and a tradition of scholarship A. Champions of the sophists B. The relevance of Plato C. Broad aims

1 1 3 3 5 7 8 10 12 17 23 24 25 29 31 34 35 38 41

PART ONE: PROTAGORAS II. Pluralism and Protagoras: the plurality of truth 1. Two paradigm shifts 2. The many measures of alētheia A. Three features of the homo mensura B. What is man the measure of? 3. The many sides of logos A. The two-logoi principle B. Implications for truth C. A wider inﬂuence

45 45 47 47 48 52 52 54 56

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Contents 4. Protagorean ‘-ism’s: objectivity and conﬂict A. Which ‘-ism’? B. Protagoras on conﬂict C. Protagoras on decision-making 5. Conclusion

III. Plato’s Protagoras: the plurality of value in the sophistic age 1. Dramatic introduction A. What is a sophist? B. Foreigners and cultural pluralism C. The one and the many: Socrates and the sophists 2. The Great Speech A. Progress and the diversity of nomoi B. Education and democracy: the rule of the many 3. The unity of virtue(s) 4. Hedonism, Commensurability, and the metrikē technē A. A common currency and a technē of deliberation B. Socrates’ argument C. Protagoras on incommensurability D. Socrates and a science of ethics 5. The poem of Simonides 6. Conclusion

57 57 66 70 76 79 79 79 81 83 85 86 91 93 99 99 102 104 107 109 111

PART TWO: HERODOTUS IV. Pluralism and history 1. How can history be pluralist? A. Cultural pluralism: diversity and incommensurability B. Methodological and truth pluralism: history as science? C. Other types of historical pluralism: causal and moral 2. A man of multiple inﬂuences A. Herodotus and his predecessors: Ionian historiē B. Herodotus and Protagoras: the sophistic background C. Herodotus and Sophocles: poetic parallels D. Herodotus and Thucydides: illumination by contrast 3. Thucydides: monism and method A. History and science B. Authorial reduction

115 115 117 121 123 125 125 129 134 135 138 138 152

Contents V. Pluralism in the Histories 1. Herodotus’ approach to history A. Variety and method B. Subject matter C. Source, voice, truth D. Causation E. Conclusion 2. Herodotus on moral dilemma A. From reasons to choices B. Thucydides on dilemma 3. Herodotus on moral disagreement A. Cultural pluralism B. Conﬂicts of culture

xiii 160 160 160 161 165 172 178 179 179 186 191 191 198

PART THREE: SOPHOCLES VI. Pluralism and tragedy 1. Pluralism and tragic conﬂict 2. Homer on conﬂict and incommensurability A. Homer’s Agamemnon B. A ‘heroic code’? C. Three Homeric dilemmas D. A Homeric disagreement E. Weak pluralism: Homer versus Plato 3. Tragedy and tragic conﬂict A. Tragedy as meta-ethics B. The tragic moment: epic versus tragedy

209 209 213 214 216 219 225 228 234 234 236

VII. Ajax: moral certainty 1. Sophocles and Homer 2. Ajax: heroism and monism A. Beyond Achilles B. Ajax’s dilemma: a monistic approach C. Deception and irony D. Conclusion 3. From dilemma to disagreement A. Antilogiai: Sophocles and Protagoras B. Incommensurability and irresolution in Sophocles

240 240 243 244 244 247 256 257 257 259

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C. Ajax versus Odysseus D. Monism versus pluralism? 4. Ajax and the other plays

261 269 272

VIII. Antigone and Electra: moral conﬂict 1. Antigone: three conﬂicts A. Antigone’s dilemma B. Antigone versus Creon C. Monism versus pluralism (again) 2. Electra: three more conﬂicts A. Two dilemmas B. The disagreement C. The ending D. A pluralist ending?

274 274 274 279 283 287 287 296 303 309

IX. Philoctetes: moral complexity 1. Odysseus A. Odysseus as villain? B. Odysseus in the prologue: a Homeric hero and a Homeric end C. Odysseus and Neoptolemus: a Homeric conﬂict 2. Philoctetes and the monism of hatred A. Philoctetes: an Achilles-styled hero B. Philoctetes and Odysseus: a second Homeric conﬂict C. Philoctetes’ (mis)use of heroic language D. Philoctetes’ dilemma 3. Neoptolemus: A break from heroism A. Neoptolemus as the son of Achilles B. Neoptolemus as the agent of Odysseus C. Neoptolemus’ dilemma D. Neoptolemus’ disagreements 4. Heracles: conclusion versus resolution

311 312 312

Bibliography Index

349 375

314 320 323 323 327 329 333 334 335 336 338 341 345

Note on translations All translations of Protagoras, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Sophocles are my own. Translations of other authors are as indicated in the footnotes.

Whether the world is one or many is among the oldest questions of philosophy. (John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism) So the message from the ancient world, through the writers who have mediated it to us, seems to endorse the claims made upon the basis of more modern investigations. Conﬂict is natural, continuing, and inescapable. (A. Geoffrey Woodhead, ‘Conﬂict and Ancient Society’) Perhaps the greatest irony in the historiography of Greek ethical thought is that the very feature that its . . . admirers have most prized as ‘Classical’, namely, its supposed harmonization of human goods, is to be found most fully developed philosophically not in the Classical period but in Hellenistic times instead. (Nicholas White, Individual and Conﬂict in Greek Ethics)

I Introduction: pluralism and the Greeks 1. PLURALISM IN HISTORY To chart the course of pluralism is not a straightforward task. Isaiah Berlin devoted much of his career as a historian of ideas to chronicling and combating the hegemony in Western theory of pluralism’s great rival, monism. But what we know about the development of pluralism itself—that is to say, which thinkers and which ages can safely or ﬁrmly be placed in the pluralist ‘camp’—lacks a comparable certainty. In this way, Berlin sought to draw attention to pluralism as it featured in history: the rare and ﬂeeting challenger to the giant of monism, the David to monism’s Goliath. By focusing on the relationship between monism and pluralism and, more particularly, on the disproportionate prevalence of monism in comparison with pluralism, Berlin was able not only to illustrate the uniqueness of the pluralist perspective but to underline the normative importance in identifying it. From the birth of philosophical speculation over two-and-a-half millennia ago, he tells us, there emerged a thought-pattern which was to dominate the way people would conceive of themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. It was a thought-pattern which would become an unparalleled intellectual and spiritual driving-force. Central to this pattern is the idea that there exists a single and harmonious order to the universe—a ‘cosmic jigsaw puzzle’—that it is the goal of human affairs somehow to reﬂect. Berlin recognized that this idea and the broader outlook it inspired rested on three fundamental assumptions: that to all genuine questions there is only one answer—this is truth; that true answers to such questions are, in principle, knowable; and that these true answers cannot clash

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with one another.1 On the matter of whether such questions could be answered, in practice, by imperfect men (who were, at different times, too weak, too ignorant or too wicked to do so), of the right place to look for those answers (in sacred texts, in the laboratory, in the pure heart of a simple man), and of the proper method for discovering them (through prayer, rational calculation, or deep self-reﬂection), there was certainly disagreement through the ages.2 But on the key issue of the singularity of truth and the existence of an ideal man and an ideal society, Western history had exhibited a striking conformity of belief.3 Interrupting the long march of monism, however, Berlin was able to perceive pockets of resistance to this popular notion that truth, ethics, and knowledge were one thing and one thing only. On his view, it was a notion ‘that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question’.4 Machiavelli, for instance, understood the fundamental irreconcilability of Christian and pagan conceptions of virtue;5 Vico and Herder both believed in the inexhaustible diversity and incommensurability of cultures;6 and there were ﬂickers of doubt from other sources as well: Montaigne, Montesquieu, and J. S. Mill, to name a few.7 The heretic ﬁre of pluralism also burned among the ancient Greeks.8 In fact, Berlin often drew examples from their world. And while he was not a professional classicist,9 he did see that the roots of monism lie in Ionian physics,10 that Plato was, in his words, ‘the ﬁrst coherent systematic monist’,11 and that, in between the staunch monism of the pre-Socratics, on the one hand, and of 1

Berlin 1990: 5–6, 24–5, 183, 209; 2000: 5–7; 2002: 290–4. See e.g. Berlin 1998: 425–6. 3 This point is made in some detail by Parekh, ‘Moral Philosophy and its Antipluralist Bias’, in Archard 1996. The importance of ‘the one’ and of unity more generally was (and is) a prominent feature of Eastern philosophy and religion as well. See Arber 1957: ch. 1 and O’Keefe in Archard 1996. 4 Berlin 1990: 68. 5 See Berlin 1998: ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’. 6 See, among others, Berlin 1990: ‘Giambattista Vico and Cultural History’ and 1998: ‘Herder and the Enlightenment’. 7 See Berlin 1979: ‘Montesquieu’ and 1969: ‘John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life’. 8 Berlin has described (Jahanbegloo 2000: 56) heresy as the ‘mother of pluralism’. For the idea of a Greek ‘orthodoxy’, see sec. 4 below. 9 Although he did have some classical training: cf. Ignatieff 1998: 47–8. 10 Berlin often describes the entire tendency toward monism as the ‘Ionian fallacy’. See Galipeau 1994: 16. 11 Jahanbegloo 2000: 56. 2

Introduction

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Plato, on the other, there existed a hint, a glimmer of opposition. But Berlin himself was never to explore the matter further. He knew that there existed the potential to ﬁnd a current of pluralism in ﬁfthcentury Greece, in the sophists, in the tragedians, and in Herodotus, but he left the depth and reach of that current unassessed.12 This is my starting point: the handful of tantalizing allusions made by Berlin to the possibility of Classical pluralism.13

2. THE PROBLEM OF ANACHRONISM

A. The Greeks and us To search for the seeds of a modern outlook in the soil of the ancient world is open to objections, two of which I want to address here. In responding to these putative objections, I hope to provide further justiﬁcation for positing a two-way relationship between pluralism and Greek thought. The ﬁrst objection is that of anachronism. It has two dimensions. One is the charge that pluralism is a modern invention and, as such, is not only irrelevant to antiquity but its application to it is maliciously unhistorical. That is to say, in claiming that certain of the Greeks were pluralists or had pluralist intellectual tendencies, we are foisting our own conceptions and vocabulary onto the past. The ancient world, it might be argued, had no word for pluralism, no explicit expressions for it—or its components—as a category of thought. On this view, contemporary theories are, at best, unhelpful to classical studies and, at worst, detrimental because they are misleading. It is true that modern philosophy has created the labels for the schism between monism and pluralism, and all that it entails. This does not mean, however, that the divide did not exist or was not a 12 On the sophists, see Berlin 1990: 30, 71, 210 and 1998: 244, where he mentions Protagoras explicitly. Cf. Gray 1995: 41. On tragedy, see Berlin 1990: 185 and 1998: 426, where he mentions Sophocles. On Herodotus, see Jahanbegloo 2000: 80 and cf. Berlin 1998: 437, where Herodotus is assigned fox status in Berlin’s essay ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’, which made famous the Archilochus dichotomy. 13 It is worthwhile to note that Berlin himself has commented (1996: 169) on how the lack (as well as the source) of our evidence concerning certain facets of ancient thought, the sophists in particular, is an obstacle to knowing ‘how much systematic opposition to the outlook of Plato and Aristotle existed during the preceding one hundred years’. Cf. Berlin 2002: 298.

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subject of interest before we gave it a name: ‘Pluralism is not a new phenomenon, nor indeed one that separates contemporary western societies from others, now or in the past. What is new is the development and spread of pluralism in the world of ideas.’14 What, then, of the conspicuous absence of Greek words denoting pluralism? As classicists have themselves pointed out, it is inadequate to investigate Greek morality by simply listing and analysing the relevant terms.15 To understand the ethical lives of any people preserved in narrative, a lexical activity such as this must always be supplemented by a study of the descriptions of actions and attitudes. Exclusive attention to vocabulary at the expense of the actual ways in which the Greeks practised and thought about their morality has led to an unfortunate consequence: it has caused those who concern themselves with it ‘to underrate the early Greeks’ comprehension not only of intellectual but of moral processes’.16 We may not be able to comb ancient Greek texts for words associated with pluralism in order to substantiate our claim that the doctrine existed there. But we can do so, I believe, by reading the texts with sensitivity, concentrating not merely on the ethical words employed but on the ways in which the authors treat and characterize value and value conﬂict.17 Furthermore, while it may no longer be necessary to labour the point that the Greeks are an integral part of our cultural heritage, we must continue to remind ourselves of the ramiﬁcations of that ancestry. The most relevant (for our purposes) is that so much of the way we think about the world, the distinctions we draw in it and the questions we ask of it, are derived from the Greeks.18 Of course there are, and will always be, profound differences between the ancients and the moderns. But the source of those differences is not a shift in our basic ethical concepts and categories.19 These have remained, for the most part, remarkably stable.20 Not only is it fair to say that the 14

Baghramian and Ingram 2000: 1. Cf. Kekes 1993: 12. See e.g. Lloyd-Jones 1971: passim; Dover 1974: 46–50; Williams 1993: passim. For a detailed condemnation of this ‘lexical method’, see Gaskin 1990: 2–6. 16 Lloyd-Jones 1971: 158. Cf. 2–3. 17 See ibid. 31. 18 On Greek distinctions as a pervasive feature of modern philosophy, cf. Rorty 1989: xvi–xxii. 19 See Williams 1993: 7–8. 20 On the inheritance of concepts and categories, see e.g. Berlin 1998: 81–8. The signiﬁcance of this so-called ‘common horizon’ of values will be discussed below in sec. 3.C. 15

Introduction

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late twentieth century/early twenty-ﬁrst century has a strong connection with the Greek past generally, but, in virtue of our relationship to Platonic philosophy, we can insist that we have a special connection with the Greeks of the ﬁfth century bce particularly. We share with the ﬁfth-century thinkers, with some of its sophists, tragedians, and ethnographers, a perspective about morality and about reality which allows each the full complexity and plurality it deserves: ‘We are uniquely related to those who, from the ﬁfth century and earlier, have left us traces of a consciousness that had not yet been touched by Plato’s . . . attempt to make our ethical relations to the world fully intelligible.’21 As Hugh Lloyd-Jones aptly captures it, ‘the Greeks before Plato were in the fortunate position . . . of being free from the belief that there is only one answer to every ethical question’.22 The terms ‘monism’ and ‘pluralism’, then, may be the products of contemporary academia, but the rivalry between the one and the many is one of philosophy’s most ancient questions.23 It is what William James described as ‘an ancient problem’24 and Berlin an ancient antagonism.25 We will see below how this rivalry was already at work in both pre-Socratic philosophy and the Archaic poetical tradition.

B. Appropriating the past The second dimension of anachronism is a more general nervousness about the danger inherent in ‘appropriating the past’. We have just noted that modern philosophy is still very much shaped by its ancient origins; that many of our ethical concepts, categories, questions, and distinctions, whether linguistic equivalents can be found or not, are inherited from the Greeks.26 The relationship runs in both directions: 21

Williams 1993: 166. Lloyd-Jones 2003: 72 (cf. 50). Interestingly, Lloyd-Jones invokes Berlin’s pluralism in making this distinction between pre- and post-Platonic Greek thought. 23 Cf. Kekes’s sentiment, chosen as one of the epigraphs to this chapter. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy maintains (1999: 714) that ‘the philosophical consequences of pluralism were addressed by Greek antiquity in the preoccupation with the problem of the one and the many’. 24 James 1907: 129. 25 Berlin 1990: 46. 26 For the opposite viewpoint, cf. Foucault’s famous remark that ‘we are much less Greeks than we believe’ (contra Shelley). For acknowledgment of and reaction to the 22

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not only are we the product of antiquity, but antiquity is still relevant to us. Recent scholarship has done much to actualize this sentiment: ‘barriers between the ancient and the modern world have become more permeable, the archaic past has become a more frequent interlocutor of the modern (or postmodern) present.’27 And yet, the breaking of barriers is not enough. ‘It is too late’, Bernard Williams explains, ‘to assume that the Greek past must be interesting just because it is “ours”. We need a reason, not so much for saying that the historical study of the Greeks bears a special relation to the way in which modern societies can understand themselves—so much is obvious enough—but rather that this dimension of self-understanding should be important.’28 For Williams, the point of resurfacing the Greek past is to see in what ways our ideas are wrong. But we must be cautious in this enterprise: to acknowledge that the Greeks are not merely relevant to us but are positively, prescriptively useful, does not grant a free ticket to manipulate them at our whim. It does not allow us to ransack their experience by either bringing to it a list of contemporary questions and demanding answers, nor by applying unreﬂectively its lessons to contemporary problems.29 I agree that the Greeks are valuable to us in their capacity as both catalyst and vehicle for understanding and self-criticism.30 But my purpose here has limits. I am not, as Christopher Rocco conceives of his project, attempting to re-appropriate the past by means of the (somewhat frightful-sounding) strategy of ‘conceptual displacement’, that is, ‘a forced mapping of the Greek concepts onto our modern (or postmodern) context’.31 Mine is the opposite programme of illuminating the Greek origin and context of concepts which modernity has put on the intellectual agenda—an exercise in the history of ideas. It is, as Williams, describes his, ‘a philosophical description of an historical reality’.32 That being said, it would be disingenuous to

recent tendency in classical, as well as philosophical, scholarship of distancing the contemporary condition from that of ancient Greece, see Lloyd-Jones 1971: 156; Williams 1993: 4 ff.; Rocco 1998: 1–2. 27 Rocco 1998: 3. 28 Williams 1993: 3–4. 29 Euben 1986: 6. 30 Cf. Lloyd-Jones 1971: 156. 31 Rocco 1998: 28. 32 Williams 1993: 4. He continues: ‘What is to be recovered and compared with our kinds of ethical thought is an historical formation, certain ideas of the Greeks; but the

Introduction

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insist that my work here has no normative motivation. History always teaches us something and, for this reason, the identiﬁcation of examples of pluralism, especially in light of their relative rarity, is at once descriptive and evaluative.33

C. Pluralisms? The second potential objection, which requires clariﬁcation more than justiﬁcation, is the true observation that pluralism itself is not one thing. In Berlin’s writings, pluralism is only rarely articulated explicitly or rigorously. Such statements, when they do occur, are frustratingly brief and oftentimes vague.34 This is because he chose to write about pluralism in terms of its conceptual and historical relationship with monism, to promote it through those past minds he recognized as its adherents—Machiavelli, Vico, Herder (among others)—and the disparate ways in which they expressed pluralism’s core sentiments.35 The exercise of working out the details of pluralism and of tracing its implications in order to shape it into a coherent philosophical theory has been bequeathed to Berlin’s successors. Accordingly, pluralism has taken several different directions and, as ever with philosophical positions, has undergone a fair amount of comparison is philosophical, because it has to lay bare certain structures of thought and experience and, above all, ask questions about their value to us.’ 33 A subsidiary, normative motivation is to set right faulty views of history that consider pluralism or the existence of irresolvable moral conﬂict as elements of a distinctively modern plight. This belief, known as the ‘disintegration thesis’, is increasingly common. Cf. MacIntyre 1981; Larmore 1987: 23–6; Baghramian and Ingram 2000: ch. 5. A third motivation is to contribute to the tradition of casting a positive light on a thought-pattern in antiquity (and group of thinkers: the sophists) that has been and continues to be underestimated. See sec. 5 below. 34 See e.g. Berlin 2000: ‘My Intellectual Path’, esp. 11–14. 35 Berlin’s interest in historical ﬁgures with pluralist leanings—as opposed to philosophers with academic interest in the theory of pluralism—means that, for him, the ﬁrst pluralists were not necessarily strict philosophers (however we want to understand that category), but poets, politicians, essayists, and historians. This tendency helps to justify why we are searching for the antecedents of a largely ethical position in literary sources. The fact that we are doing so can be explained by two further reasons: ﬁrst, by the nature of moral philosophy—its susceptibility to literary treatment in contrast with other philosophical inquiries such as metaphysics or logic; and, secondly, by the nature of the historical period in which we are working—in Classical Greece, poetry is considered one of the proper avenues for expressing moral sentiment. I will touch upon this issue further at VI.3.A.

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internal fracture. While this ‘problem’ is by no means insurmountable, it does highlight my responsibility both to remark at the outset that the pluralism I present here is not universally accepted in all its facets and to alert the reader along the way to any contentious points of interpretation. Moreover, it should be noticed that many of the debates that have been raging around pluralism (and, indeed, Berlin’s pluralism) are disputes about its consequences, particularly on the political and international fronts, rather than its tenets, and it is only the latter with which this study is concerned.36

3. WHAT IS PLURALISM? The pluralism I am concerned with here is developed from Berlin’s scattered (and unsystematic) thoughts on the matter.37 It is broad enough to be understood and applied without recourse to technical philosophical knowledge. Indeed, Berlin once located the root of pluralism in a ‘stress on differences and not on similarities’,38 and he did, at times, speak of pluralism as an umbrella term for a host of ‘-isms’ which have, historically, stood opposed to monism.39 So too pluralism is not conﬁned, in his writing, to one sphere of inquiry, but can touch upon, among others, morality, truth, literary criticism, and methodology.40 This breadth of deﬁnition is especially important 36 One of Berlin’s most pressing legacies is how, if at all, it is possible to reconcile his strong commitments to both pluralism and liberalism. Three of the best recent attempts are Riley 2001, Galston 2002, and Crowder 2004: ch. 6 in particular. See further Gray 2000 and Crowder 2007. 37 Berlin’s pluralism has been most systematically elaborated by Galipeau 1994, Gray 1995, and Crowder 2004. For further philosophical examinations of pluralism that are expressly inﬂuenced Berlin, see Williams 1981; Lukes 1989; Kekes 1993. For other lucid expositions of aspects of the theory, see Nagel 1979; Taylor 1982; Wolf 1992; Richardson 1994; Stocker 1990; Crowder 2002: ch. 3. For the sake of convenience, the version of pluralism I am going to outline in this deﬁnitional section will be restricted to moral pluralism, i.e. pluralism of values. This is the pluralism the book at large will be primarily concerned with, although other pluralisms, concerning truth and method, will also be discussed. 38 Jahanbegloo 2000: 80. 39 Berlin 1990: 45–8, 87, 213–16 and 1998: 69–71. 40 The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy deﬁnes (1998: 7. 463) pluralism as ‘a broad term, applicable to any doctrine which maintains that there are ultimately many things, or many kinds of things; in both these senses it is opposed to “monism” ’.

Introduction

9

when dealing with cultures that are less theoretically sophisticated than ours and in which it is only natural that the response to monism would be itself broad and undifferentiated. It allows us to make sense of a thought-pattern that is consonant with pluralism but which does not share all of its modern, technical aspects. And yet, in Berlin’s work, pluralism is often sharply reﬁned enough to encompass deﬁnitive features as well as to demarcate itself from rival theories.41 In this way, there is more to pluralism than the acceptance and celebration of difference. I will be using and attributing both of these senses of pluralism in my discussion of Protagoras, Sophocles, and Herodotus. Part of the interest of the book lies in how far past ‘umbrella pluralism’ these ﬁfth-century Greeks were able to move. In one of those infrequent instances where he treats us to an express deﬁnition of pluralism, Berlin describes it thus: ‘The belief not merely in the multiplicity, but in the incommensurability, of the values of different cultures and societies, and, in addition, in the incompatibility of equally valid ideals, together with the implied revolutionary corollary that the classical notions of an ideal man and of an ideal society are intrinsically incoherent and meaningless.’42 He elaborates the deﬁnition elsewhere: There are many objective ends, ultimate values, some incompatible with others, pursued by different societies at different times, or by different groups in the same society, by entire classes or churches or races, or by particular individuals within them, any one of which may ﬁnd itself subject to conﬂicting claims of uncombinable, yet equally ultimate and objective, ends. Incompatible these ends may be; but their variety cannot be unlimited, for the nature of men, however various and subject to change, must possess some generic character if it is to be called human at all.43

Taken together, these statements provide a springboard from which we can examine the four main tenets of the pluralism in question (adumbrated respectively in the following four sections): plurality and conﬂict, incommensurability, objectivity, and the rejection of an ideal life. The remainder of this section sets out more precisely 41 Pluralism’s relationship to other meta-ethical theories, particularly relativism, will be discussed below in sec. 3.C as well as at II.4, IV.1.A, and V.3.A. 42 Berlin 1998: 368. 43 Berlin 1990: 79–80.

10

Introduction

what these ideas mean and, in doing so, explains how pluralism manages to navigate between monism on the one hand, and relativism on the other. The aim here is twofold. First it is to introduce the reader to the building-blocks and assumptions of the species of pluralism that is the focus of the book. And secondly, it is to provide a toolbox, as it were, of technical terms associated with this pluralism from which the reader can draw in order to make sense of all that follows. Pluralism’s special relationship with history and tragedy will be addressed at the beginning of the parts on Herodotus and Sophocles respectively.

A. Plurality and conﬂict Pluralism has two main descriptive features. The ﬁrst is, as its name implies, the belief in a plurality of values. There are many, many values in the world and these cannot be reduced to or derived from a single, master value: justice is justice and not a variety or manifestation of wisdom, as Socrates might want us to think, or pleasure, as Bentham would.44 This qualiﬁcation—let us call it ‘irreducibility’—is profoundly important, as the recognition of a plurality of values is not the exclusive province of pluralists. Monists can agree with pluralists that goods come in numbers, but disagree about the signiﬁcance and implications of that recognition, maintaining that such a plurality is merely apparent or, perhaps, the result of some human deﬁciency. Values, on this view, can always, in principle, be reduced: cashed out into a common currency, ranked into a hierarchy, or related to one another as inter-entailing parts of a single whole, ordered by an overarching procedural rule. In this way, even those monists who admit to an ostensible moral plurality can still manage to render it trivial by eliminating serious moral conﬂict between the values in question. Whatever the chosen strategy of ethical simpliﬁcation, the theme that unites all brands of monism is the belief that moral conﬂict is an obstacle to be overcome, a problem to be solved. Pluralists, on the other hand, understand it as an irremediable fact of the human condition: not simply a consequence of the scarcity of

44 There is also a plurality of types of value. See Nagel 1979; Kekes 1993: 18–19; Crowder 2002: 46–7.

Introduction

11

resources or the brevity of human life, but at times a deep and true reﬂection of the intrinsic nature of the values themselves. The second descriptive feature of pluralism, then, is the belief that conﬂict is an inevitable by-product of the irreducible plurality of values. In other words, because of the ethical complexity of our lives—the reality that many goods will present themselves to us in such a way that their multiplicity cannot be diluted—certain of the values that we cherish and pursue will be unrealizable together. They will be uncombinable in a single human life or society. Some goods will completely preclude others. Courage may leave no room for moderation or for prudence. Others may crowd each other out: more of one good may mean less of another.45 Greater equality may mean less freedom; a stricter stance on justice often translates into a loss of mercy; spontaneity sometimes decreases efﬁciency. Incompatibility between values is not the only level on which pluralism can occur. It can affect whole moral schemes or complexes. This holds true within a single culture: the life of an artist cannot always be combined with that of a dutiful family man. And it also holds across cultures, both spatially and temporally: the warrior of Homer’s Iliad and his values of honour and glory cannot be combined with the meekness of a New Testament Christian. In both instances, the one’s virtue can be considered the other’s vice. Furthermore, incompatibility is also possible for species within a single value, as Berlin’s famous essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ illustrates. Liberty there is not a monolithic value but one which can, conceptually, embody different and clashing features. Negative freedom, for example, means an absence of external impediments, whereas positive freedom means, among other things, a capacity for self-mastery. Manifestations of the one can compete with those of the other: we need only think, to take one instance, of the fraught relationship between freedom of privacy and freedom of information. The different levels on which conﬂict can operate will be especially important in my discussion of Sophocles, whose plays revolve around multiple types of moral struggle: over the meaning of a single value, within a character (dilemmas), between characters (disagreements), between the cultural schemes different characters may represent.

45 On these two kinds of conﬂict between values, ‘opposition’ and ‘incompatibility’, see Dworkin, Lilla, and Silvers 2001: 106 ff.

12

Introduction

B. Incommensurability and loss Pluralism, then, recognizes that the plurality of values renders moral conﬂict unavoidable. More accurately, it attributes the unavoidability of conﬂicts to the nature of certain values.46 That is, pluralism understands that the irreducible plurality of values will, on occasion, create collisions between values which are not only incompatible with one another but which are incommensurable as well. As this concept of incommensurability is both elusive and cardinal to a proper understanding of pluralism, we need now to examine it more thoroughly and to do so by focusing on how it further demarcates pluralism from monism. Let us start with the straightforward observation that conﬂicts permeate our lives and that these conﬂicts generate the opportunity for, even the necessity of, decision-making. To take a classic example (think of Neoptolemus in Philoctetes), I believe in the ideals of both loyalty and friendship, but I can surely conjure up a situation in which the two are uncomfortably pitted against one another, a situation in which, in choosing one, the other would be wholly and irreconcilably excluded. I cannot, for instance, betray a friend in the course of being loyal to some other person or cause and, in some sense, not forgo the value I ascribe to friendship (or, at any rate, to that particular friendship). The conﬂict here is one in which the alternatives on offer are incompatible. It is a reality that there are certain situations where friendship can be maintained only at the expense of loyalty, liberty can be actualized only at the expense of equality, efﬁciency can be achieved only at the expense of spontaneity. I cannot realize both of the values I consider important, and so I must choose. With this choice comes the possibility that I will lose something in the process and that the loss will be irreversible. This last point ushers in the concept of incommensurability.47 Certainly, alternatives can be incompatible yet not incommensurably 46

See Kekes 1993: 29–30. It should be noted that the unavoidability of moral conﬂict is not only a result of the nature of the values themselves but of the nature of human life: that is, the fact that people possess possibilities, imagination, and adequate freedom and the fact that they are restricted by, for example, the laws of physics and the actions of other people. On these different sources of value conﬂict, cf. Crowder 2002: 55–6. 47 The basic idea of incommensurability in the sense that I am using it here is that there are some things so different that they cannot be determinately measured against one another nor can they be universally ranked. The mark of incommensurability is

Introduction

13

so: coffee and tea are both hot and caffeinated beverages and I can rank them in respect of my preference or of their abilities to fulﬁl either one of these roles (if we understand that my choice is predicated on these two criteria alone). Similarly, alternatives can be incommensurable but not incompatibly so: patriotism and spelunking (to use one philosopher’s example) are too different to measure against one another yet there may be no obstacle to my enjoying them both.48 And again, alternatives can be incompatible and incommensurable yet insigniﬁcantly so. On any given afternoon, I can either go to the cinema or I can go for a walk in the country, but I may not, for argument’s sake, have the time to do both. The interesting and, in terms of how it precludes resolution, relevant situation exists when there is a clash between values which are both incompatible and incommensurable—our clash between loyalty and friendship, for example. This sort of clash becomes serious and difﬁcult from a moral point of view because ‘the values about whose ranking reasonable people disagree may also be values that reasonable people want to realize but cannot because the values totally or proportionately exclude each other’.49 The conﬂict, then, between incompatible and incommensurable ethical claims takes on a special nature. It becomes both singularly insoluble and potentially tragic and it does so for two distinct yet interrelated reasons. The ﬁrst reason is that, for many pluralists, ‘reasonable’ comparisons among incommensurable values are problematic. Perhaps the seminal feature of the concept of incommensurability is that it allows for no unique and determinate rational resolution to value conﬂict.50 We will return to this idea in the following section. Here, however, we should concentrate not on the incomparability (rational or irrational) of incommensurable values—which is a more controversial claim—but on what Raz calls (1996: 326) a breakdown in transitivity, that is, a situation in which it can be said of two options that ‘1) neither is better than the other, and 2) there is (or could be) another option which is better than one but not better than the other’. See Gray 1995: 51 for instructive, non-philosophical examples of how incommensurability works. For further discussion of this difﬁcult topic, see Richardson 1994; Chang 1997; Crowder 2002: 49–54. Crowder enumerates (69–73) several reasons why we should accept the ‘truth’ of incommensurability. 48 Kekes 1993: 22. 49 Ibid. 57. 50 For an instructive account of indeterminate versus determinate decision-making, see Seung and Bonevac 1992. Wolf 1992 (esp. 788–92) is also very helpful on the importance of indeterminacy for pluralism.

14

Introduction

their unrankability.51 What exactly does it mean for values to be unrankable and therefore incommensurable and what bearing does this have on the solubility of their clashes? ‘The idea expressed by incommensurability’, John Kekes explains, is that two or more values are incommensurable if and only if: 1. there is not some one type of highest value or combination of values in terms of which all other values can be evaluated by considering how closely they approximate it (for instance, happiness is not such); and 2. there is not some medium in terms of which all the different types of values can be expressed and ranked without any signiﬁcant aspects left out, thus allowing for the intersubstitutivity of different types of values (for instance, not all values can be expressed and ranked in terms of preference satisfaction); and 3. there is not some one principle or some principles that can provide an order of precedence among all values and be acceptable to all reasonable people (for instance, duties do not always take precedence over the general welfare and vice versa).52 If I could successfully employ any one of this triad of ranking devices, I would be rendering the values amongst which I was choosing commensurable. It would no longer be possible to say of them, absolutely, that neither is better than the other. And if values are commensurable, there will always be a way of deciding between them ‘correctly’, even in moments of conﬂict: we would not struggle to choose between ten units of pleasure and 100 hundred units, if maximizing pleasure was our goal; or between friendship and loyalty if both could be gauged quantitatively by reference to how much they contributed to our honour, and this was our primary motivating force. The important point is that in thinking that we are choosing, with the aid and power of measurement, the best available option, we would be less affected by missing out on a ‘worse’ alternative. As Kekes describes it: ‘If values were not incompatible and incommensurable, then all conﬂicts among values should have a decisive resolution, because reasonable people would recognize that the higher of the 51 For this distinction, see Stocker 1990: passim, esp. 175–80, and Crowder 2002: 49–53. 52 Kekes 1993: 56. See Williams 1981: 77–80 for a similar, although not identical, categorization.

Introduction

15

conﬂicting values is better and should be preferred. But, then, it would be unreasonable to feel a sense of loss or regret on account of having missed out on the lesser value.’53 In other words, we would be ignoring, minimizing, or mitigating the radical and tragic element inherent in certain of our moral choices. This leads to the second and connected reason that the conﬂict between incompatible and incommensurable values is special: it is potentially tragic. Loss, and not merely loss of a trivial variety, becomes inevitable.54 We noticed above how, in selecting coffee as my only morning beverage, I miss out on having tea. We must also notice that the intrinsic nature of the alternatives in question makes the loss I would experience insigniﬁcant for one of two reasons: either because I acknowledge the decision is a relatively trivial one or because I perceive the commensurability of the alternatives. If the options between which I am choosing are commensurable, there are only two possible relationships between them: they are approximately equal or one is better than the other.55 In this way, I can either assess the tea and coffee as being of roughly equal worth or I can give precedence to one over the other based on any number of rational factors (hotness, caffeine content, taste)—both are instances in which the loss is minimized. When we consider the decision, however, between going to the cinema or taking a walk, we realize that, because these options are incommensurable, the sense of loss would somehow be greater. Not being able to rank uniquely the alternatives against each other crystallizes the fact that we are losing something as opposed to merely missing out: we are unable to console ourselves with the fact that one option was a better version of the other. When this sort of conﬂict occurs between moral claims, the loss becomes even more profound. For in making this type of decision, we are compelled to sacriﬁce important values. What is at stake is not fresh air and exercise or the stimulation of a good ﬁlm, but fundamental norms with which we balance our lives and structure our relationships. Of course, we do not want to exaggerate the ‘tragicness’ of our everyday ethical choices. All I am suggesting is that the decisions 53

Kekes 1993: 57. Cf. also Richardson 1994. For the argument, though, that monism can accommodate regret of this sort, see Hurka 1996. 54 On the idea of feelings of loss and/or regret as a mark of genuine moral conﬂict or dilemma, see Williams 1973: ‘Ethical Consistency’. On tragic choices, see Barry 1984, particularly 303–9 and Richardson 1994: 111–18. 55 See Raz 1986: 324 ff.

16

Introduction

we make between incompatible and incommensurable options will always, to some degree, be tragic. For they will always, to some degree, be radical as opposed to authoritatively rational and will always involve some degree of loss.56 The magnitude of those ‘some degree’ qualiﬁers is what separates pedestrian decision-making amongst incommensurables from decision-making of a truly tragic proportion. And it is in this sort of disproportionately extreme choice, a keystone of tragic drama, that the real nature and implications of incommensurability begin to emerge most clearly. For in tragic drama, we see how circumstances dictate that a choice must be made where both alternatives are horrible, where both involve substantial loss, where whatever a person chooses he will have done something that has irreparably damaged one of the projects or relationships which shape his life. We realize all too clearly in these situations that the inability of reason to mark the single ‘right’ decision compounded with the loss of important values in making that decision ensure that, while the conﬂict can be closed, it will never be wholly resolved. What the concept of incommensurability does for us is to establish ‘conceptual room for the notion of doing evil or wronging another without either failure to perform a better action or a justiﬁcation for the action which shows that it is all right in the circumstances’.57 It is worthwhile to mention before moving on that there is a variant of pluralism which does not embrace the full import of incommensurability. This weak, or benign, form of pluralism accepts that goods are irreducibly diverse and uncombinable, as well as acknowledges that conﬂicts between such goods may generate regret and/or loss. What it denies, however—and this is what signiﬁcantly distinguishes it from its stronger cousin—is that these conﬂicts are rationally irresolvable.58 To clarify with an example, weak pluralism allows that in choosing friendship to my sick friend over loyalty to the Greek cause (à la Neoptolemus), there might be something lost, but the decision is nonetheless ‘correct’. The controversial role of rationality in decision-making between incommensurables will be addressed in the following section. The notion of weak pluralism more generally will return in my discussions of Homer (VI.2.E) and Antigone (VIII.1.C). 56 For the difference and signiﬁcance of radical decision-making versus rational, see Riley 2000 and Crowder 2004: 138–41. 57 Raz 1986: 362. 58 Gray 2000: 88.

Introduction

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C. Three concepts of objectivity The acceptance of an irreducible multiplicity of values and the attendant fact that these values will, at times, be incommensurable and conﬂict with one another in a way that excludes a single right resolution is what separates pluralism from monism. It remains to be seen how pluralism distinguishes itself from relativism.59 Perhaps the most salient means by which pluralism accomplishes this is through its commitment to objectivity.60 There are three ways in which objectivity features in pluralistic thought, each of which drives a wedge between pluralism and relativism. The ﬁrst is that pluralism understands value conﬂict to be a real (that is, an objective) and knowable feature of our moral existence. The vital difference between pluralism and other meta-ethical theories such as relativism, subjectivism, or scepticism, John Gray maintains, is ‘in Berlin’s claim that we know that the conﬂicts between ultimate values are genuine: that they are conﬂicts among goods that are irreducible and incommensurable. We have knowledge of moral reality, such that to afﬁrm otherwise is to falsify it.’61 Utilitarians or Kantians may try to clean up the mess of value collision by subordinating what our own phenomenological experience tells us is the case to the niceties of theory. But for pluralists such as Berlin, that we are often faced with choices between equally compelling ends, some of which must be sacriﬁced for others, is a reality that cannot be ignored without radically altering our conception of the human condition.62 As Williams incisively puts it, ‘insofar as it is features of our moral experience that draw us towards ideas of the objectivity of ethics, the experience of moral conﬂict is precisely one that conveys such an idea. That there is nothing that one decently, honourably, adequately, can do seems a kind of truth as ﬁrmly independent of the will or inclination as anything in morality.’63 In other words, if values were not objective but a mere matter of preference or subjective desire,

59 Berlin remarks lucidly on the difference at 1990: 80. Two of the clearest and most penetrating explications of the distinction are Wolf 1992 and Crowder 2004: 114–23. 60 This commitment, however, is a contentious issue amongst pluralists. Cf. Baghramian and Ingram 2000: 3. 61 Gray 1995: 62. Original emphasis. 62 Berlin 1969: 168. 63 Williams 1981: 75. Original emphasis.

18

Introduction

then conﬂicts would not be experienced in the pathetic and tragic ways we know they are in fact experienced: we would feel somehow differently about their resolution, as if we were exempt from the pull of the other alternative.64 But this, as we saw above, is often and unfortunately not the case. The second concept of objectivity at work in pluralism is the belief that there exists a universal content to morality. For most pluralists, this is an anthropological fact.65 What it means is that there is a set or ‘core’ of ‘primary’ or ‘common’ values that all people, everywhere would recognize as contributing to human ﬂourishing, goods such as nutrition, shelter, or child-care; there is a ‘horizon’ beyond which behaviour is no longer recognizably human.66 So too, there are culturally consistent concepts and categories ‘in terms of which we deﬁne men—such notions as society, freedom, sense of time and change, suffering, happiness, productivity, good and bad, right and wrong, choice, effort, truth, illusion (to take them wholly at random) . . . ’.67 According to Berlin, these are not matters of induction or hypothesis, and to think of someone as a human being is ipso facto to bring all these notions into play.68 Morality possesses this universal content only in a highly generalized sense. Primary values, for instance, may be applied differently in different contexts. We may

64 Galipeau 1994: 70. The reality of this dual pull is the life-blood of tragic conﬂict and will be addressed below in respect of Sophocles. See Williams 1973: ‘Ethical Consistency’, for the ways in which emotions such as regret and remorse are indicative of genuine moral conﬂict. 65 On the ‘fact’ of this universal content, see Berlin 1969: liii. Kekes suggests (1993: 39 n. 1) for those ‘who like to have evidence for the obvious’ two sources of further proof for the notion of cultural commonality. More ‘evidence’ and bibliography are supplied by Crowder 2002: 64–9. For a discussion of the philosophical issues surrounding how exactly to specify the common content to morality and the conclusion that it is ‘neither a priori in the full Kantian sense nor an empirical generalization of supposedly universal substantive moral norms, but something in between these two things’, see Gray 1995: 65–70. Cf. also Galipeau 1994: 117 and Riley 2000: 146–50. Crowder usefully teases apart (2004: 132–4) Berlin’s notions of a ‘human horizon’ and a ‘central core’ of morality. Crowder and Hardy offer (2007: 293–7) a schematic drawing of the interrelationship between the two, which Berlin himself accepted as correct, and discuss the various points of contention surrounding it. 66 Cf. Berlin 1969: xxxi, 169 and Crowder 2002: 45–6. Kekes offers (1993: 39–44) a useful account of the universal aspects of morality, enumerating what he considers the primary values as ‘goods of the self ’, ‘goods of intimacy’, and ‘goods of the social order’. 67 Berlin 1998: 83. 68 Ibid. 83.

Introduction

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all agree that small children need to be looked after, but disagree about by whom and in what manner this should take place. Moreover, these values, concepts, and categories are not immutable, but gradually evolve and shift with time. This is why we can only ever describe them as almost universal: there always remains the possibility that our experience will prove them wrong, and this is a possibility that must always be allowed for.69 Because of the existence of this universal content to morality, value pluralism recognizes that diversity is restricted by a conception of humanity and human nature.70 The consequence is that human beings, by nature of their ‘humanness’, have, in principle, a minimum degree of insight into one another’s behaviour. They are able to understand how and why other human beings could pursue certain values, even if the way in which they pursue them is different. This is one of history’s greatest lessons: if there were no common ground between us and the ancient Greeks, for example, how could we even comprehend their existence: what motivated them, what shamed them, what angered them? In many cases, we understand them because we can see the ways in which they are similar to us. And yet, we are also able to grasp how they are different from us and why; to see that in their circumstances, their climate, the values which they chose to pursue were genuine and intelligible ends for people so situated. As Berlin remarks, ‘I am not blind to what the Greeks valued—their values may not be mine, but I can grasp what it would be like to live by their light, I can admire and respect them, and even imagine myself as pursuing them, although I do not—and do not wish to, and perhaps could not if I wished’.71 We may not make animal sacriﬁces to the gods or perform infanticide, but we can see why the Greek relationship to religion and family may have called for and condoned such practices. Intercommunication between cultures in time and space is possible, then, because much of what makes men human is common to them.72 This fact renders cross-cultural evaluation possible. It allows us to 69 On the ‘almost’ universal horizon, see Galipeau 1994: 114 and Gray 1995: 64. Cf. Berlin 1990: 204–5 and Crowder 2002: 48. 70 On Berlin’s conception of human nature as opposed to a rationalist version of it, see Galipeau 1994: ch. 3. Cf. Berlin 1990: 203–4. We will return to the idea of human nature in our examination of Thucydides (IV.3.A below). 71 Berlin 1990: 11. 72 Berlin 1998: 9.

20

Introduction

hold universally human moral attitudes towards other cultures and speciﬁc practices. It allows us to draw a line between what is tolerable and what is not, a posture which relativism—at least in its stronger form—denies. ‘One can reject a culture because one ﬁnds it morally or aesthetically repellent, but, on this view, only if one can understand how and why it could, nevertheless, be acceptable to a recognisably human society.’73 In terms of ‘secondary’ values or values that are not necessarily shared by all communities or traditions, something extra is required for trans-historical and trans-national evaluation: imagination.74 The power of imagination, of historical insight and of good practical judgement, is a key pluralist doctrine. On Berlin’s view, if people are ‘sufﬁciently imaginative’, if they ‘try hard enough’, they can contrive to understand alien worlds.75 With a certain amount of intellectual effort and empathy we can get under the skin of another culture, we can come to know its ‘centre of gravity’: the hopes and fears, foods and rituals, myths and metaphors that deﬁne it.76 Once we understand a culture, we can examine its practices critically. This process of imaginative entrance into another world will prove important in our discussions of Herodotus and Sophocles: the ability to present sympathetically a different culture, be it ethnic or moral, is, in certain contexts, one potential mark of an author’s pluralism. These two concepts of objectivity help prevent pluralism from dissolving into the weaker meta-ethical theory of relativism. In addition, there is a third concept of objectivity that further distinguishes the two positions. This is concerned with their respective relationships to conﬂict. We saw above how clashes between values which are incompatible and incommensurable are resistant to what we described as a unique and determinate resolution, how reason, as an overarching arbiter, is powerless to pick out a universally right decision or orchestrate a single authoritative ordering of priority. And yet, in the face of practical moral dilemmas, it will almost always be necessary to choose: ‘people cannot simply remain paralysed in the 73 Berlin 1990: 87. On the notion that understanding allows for moral judgement, cf. Galipeau 1994: 64. 74 For a good description of Berlin’s theory of ‘imaginative interpretation’ as derived from Vico and Herder, see Galipeau 1994: 14–36. 75 Berlin 1990: 70. Cf. Wolf 1992: 791 and Crowder 2004: 119–23. 76 For this expression, borrowed from Herder, see Berlin 1998: 8, 254, 403, 410, 412 and 2000: 9.

Introduction

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face of tragic conﬂicts of values, even though the conﬂicts cannot be genuinely resolved by rationally comparing and ranking the values’.77 Even not to choose at all is to make a choice of some description. For pluralists, the fact that a uniquely right decision cannot be arrived at is not to say that objectivity and rationality have been removed from the equation altogether.78 The question then arises, how do pluralists deal with conﬂict conclusion (as opposed to resolution)?79 The answer harks back to the limited yet positive role rationality can play in decision-making, to what it can legitimately do (as opposed to what it cannot).80 For pluralists, it is possible in a particular case at a speciﬁc time for there to be, all things considered, reasons for deciding between competing alternatives in one way rather than another.81 It is possible for a contextually derived, objectively ‘better’ course of action to exist although, importantly, not an abstract or universal ‘best’—a view, as we shall see, shared by Protagoras (II.4.C below) and Herodotus (V.1. C below). Certain facts and values in the speciﬁc instance may be given more emphasis than others, may possess more stringency, weight, or pull on the agent. As Berlin says, ‘[t]he concrete situation is almost everything’.82 We may decide, for instance, to take a walk rather than go to the cinema because our concern on the day is with exercise or because we generally value good health.83 But this does

77

Riley 2000: 133. Cf. Nagel 1979: 134. See the excellent discussion of this issue by Wolf 1992. The distinction between conclusion and resolution will be addressed further below in respect of tragedy (VII.3.B, VIII.2.C, and IX.4). 80 How active or decisive a role rationality is allowed to play in moral conﬂicts between incommensurables is a contentious issue amongst pluralists. There is even disagreement concerning Berlin’s own view on whether such conﬂicts can ever be rationally resolved. Riley explores (2000: 129) the question well, concluding: ‘I believe that it is more typical of Berlin to claim that conﬂicts of incommensurable values cannot be rationally resolved.’ See further Kekes 1993: 60 n. 5, Gray 1995: 135, and Riley 2001. Crowder, on the other hand, believes (2004: 139) that this ‘strong view of incommensurability is neither Berlin’s only view nor his best’. 81 Cf. Nagel 1979: 134–5; Richardson 1994; Larmore 1996: 157; Dworkin, Lilla, and Silvers 2001: 118–19; Crowder 2002: 56–64. Berlin sets out how context-driven decision-making can work on the larger political stage in his essay ‘Political Judgement’ (to be found in Berlin 1996). 82 Berlin 1998: 15. 83 On this type of decision-making, see the Introduction to Chang 1997, and Crowder 2002: 56–64. 78 79

22

Introduction

not mean, if we chose to go to the cinema instead, that we would be making a wrong decision from the point of view of rationality. It means rather that our choice is indeterminate: that is to say, ‘it is reasonable to conclude that A is better than B, that A is worse than B, and that A and B are of equal value’.84 Indeed, Berlin himself, in an article co-written with Bernard Williams, called it ‘obviously false’ that ‘reason has nothing to say (i.e. that there is nothing reasonable to be said) about which [of two conﬂicting values] should prevail over the other’.85 And yet, it is important to reiterate what including reason and objectivity in an ethical dilemma does not mean. It does not mean that the agent has become exempt from one of the moral claims and it does not mean, therefore, that he will be spared the loss, remorse, and/or regret which not fulﬁlling that claim will necessarily engender in him.86 Moreover, the use of reason and the emergence of an allthings-considered better choice does not mean that the same choice should always be made in similar circumstances. Nor does it mean that some choices will not remain painfully irresolvable despite our best intentions. In the face of disquieting ethical conﬂict, all we can hope for is to exercise our practical reason in the most satisfactory way possible. We must consider our options carefully and deliberate with due attention to the reality and complexity of each individual scenario. ‘Collisions, even if they cannot be avoided, can be softened. Claims can be balanced, compromises can be reached: in concrete situations not every claim is of equal force . . . Priorities, never ﬁnal and absolute, must be established.’87 It is worthwhile to point out that, in essence, Berlin is here eliciting the ancient norms of sōphrosunē (‘moderation’), and phronēsis (‘prudent judgement’): what Claude Galipeau describes as his ‘minimal moral invocations’.88

84 Seung and Bonevac 1992: 802. Riley neatly illustrates (2001: 286–8) how ‘tragic pluralism gives rise to rational indeterminacy’. 85 Berlin and Williams 1994: 307. 86 See Williams 1981: 79. 87 Berlin 1990: 17. 88 Galipeau 1994: 66. On pluralism and phronēsis in Aristotle, see Nussbaum 1986: part 3, Crowder 2002: 58–9 and 2004: 141.

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D. The rejection of an ideal life To be sure, relativism counters much of what any form of monism espouses: it certainly does damage to the assumption that there is but one morality or one best way to live. And yet, unlike pluralism, it never challenges the coherence of such propositions. For pluralists, however, the multiplicity and diversity of ends together with the inevitability that these will, on occasion, conﬂict in such a way as to necessitate loss means that the belief in the existence of an ideal world (where all the things we cherish must coexist) is not only impossible but both false and incoherent. Everything we know about our moral experience, what values are and how they relate to one another, speaks against the possibility of an absolutely harmonious life in which conﬂicts and contradictions between them have no place. As Berlin puts it, ‘that we cannot have everything is a necessary, not a contingent, truth’.89 Or, as Herodotus’ Solon puts it (1.32.8): a Æ ı ÆFÆ ıººÆ E ¼Łæø K Æ I Æ KØ (‘It is impossible for a human being to lay hold of everything’). We have now examined more closely the four elements of pluralism. Each of these will help us in the chapters that follow to understand more accurately what Classical pluralism might have looked like. The concept of incommensurability will, for instance, illuminate the tragic conﬂict at the heart of Sophoclean tragedy, making sense of how a character can be in a situation where a better decision is made, but loss and a sense of wrongdoing are still strongly experienced. So too, it will come into play in our discussion of the Socratic advocacy of a unity of virtues. The three faces of objectivity will help us see how Protagoras can argue legitimately for a plurality of virtues and an orthotatos logos (‘most correct argument’); how Herodotus can recognize diversity and make cross-cultural evaluations. The rejection of a best life will explain how Homeric heroes can achieve everything they have striven for and still suffer sadness and remorse at what they have failed to do. But, as we noticed earlier, the identiﬁcation of pluralism in antiquity does not have to concern ‘technical’ features such as these. In fact, the idea of pluralism emerged as something far more vague: the notion of ‘the many’.

89

Berlin 1969: 170. Cf. p. li.

24

Introduction 4. THE ONE AND THE MANY IN EARLY GREEK THOUGHT

Anachronism has the potential to be the most difﬁcult obstacle in our attempt to locate the concept of pluralism in the realm of Classical Greek thought. In section 2 we took steps to combat this charge by drawing attention to the mutual relationship between modern philosophy and its ancient counterpart. But perhaps the best, not to mention easiest, way to undermine such an accusation is to illustrate that pluralism itself existed in the sixth and ﬁfth centuries bce. This is not to say that it existed in its precise modern guise, but rather in the form of ‘the many’ as opposed to ‘the one’. It is the argument here that the contrast between the one and the many—a contrast which, as we noticed earlier, is among the oldest philosophical oppositions—is but the most stripped and unsophisticated incarnation of the monism-versus-pluralism debate.90 In fact, it is fair to assert that this rivalry played an essential role in the development of ancient Greek cosmology, metaphysics, and ethics and, consequently, in the development of Western philosophy as a whole. It is, as one scholar describes it, ‘the Ariadne’s thread running through all Greek physical speculation’.91 The aim of this section is to trace brieﬂy the evolution of the one-versus-many antithesis from the pre-Socratics onwards in order to prepare us for the ensuing discussion of the three ﬁfthcentury authors under investigation, Protagoras, Herodotus, and Sophocles.92

90 Aristotle’s inquiries provide sound evidence that the one- versus- many antithesis was a hot topic in Greek philosophy. He wrote a book entitled Concerning Opposites, in which every opposition between terms was reduced in some way to the opposition between the ‘one’ and ‘many’ (see Aristotle Metaphysics 1004a2). Cf. Stokes 1971: 9 and 267 n. 14 on the title. Signiﬁcant portions of his Metaphysics are devoted to analysing the concepts of unity and plurality (particularly books ˜ and ). See further Harper 1989. 91 Lloyd 1975: 150. 92 In the interests of space, this task is necessarily going to be both syncopated and simpliﬁed. Many of the issues surrounding the pre-Socratics are highly controversial due to the nature of the source material. For more detailed analyses of the topics broached, I direct the reader to the studies that have contributed most to my interpretation here: Hussey 1972; Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999; Long 1999.

Introduction

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A. In pre-Socratic philosophy If ascribing pluralism to ancient thought is potentially problematic, let us start with a less controversial assertion: antiquity was the birthplace of monism. After all, few would deny that Plato is at least a deserving candidate for Berlin’s title for him, ‘the ﬁrst coherent systematic monist’.93 But the idea that ‘being’ is both singular and immutable—the idea, that is, that reality is one as opposed to many— ﬁnds its roots even earlier than Plato, in the thought of the so-called pre-Socratic philosophers, men who were chronologically in the position to inﬂuence our proposed pluralists.94 In fact, it is standard in discussions of early Greek philosophy to use the categories of monist and pluralist as identifying marks: most textbooks and articles employ the terms to distinguish thinkers such as Parmenides from those such as Democritus. One of the more recent collections of essays dedicated to the subject, comprising studies written by the most acclaimed scholars in the ﬁeld, is peppered with sentences that treat the distinction as commonplace.95 Of Heraclitus, Edward Hussey writes: ‘he tries to overcome the systematic problems that dogged the Milesian enterprise: those of monism and pluralism.’96 On lines 34–41 of DK28 B8, David Sedley comments: ‘My own preference is for viewing this as the place where Parmenides corroborates monism, the thesis which later tradition strongly associated with him.’97 And Daniel W. Graham can note in respect of Empedocles and Anaxagoras that, ‘between the early Ionians and the pluralists, a major shift

93 Jahanbegloo 2000: 56. For other references by historians of philosophy to Plato’s monism, see MacIntyre 1981: 142; Gray 1995: 39; Gray 2000: 4. For classicists who have argued along the same lines see, among others, White 1976 and Nussbaum 1986. For a qualiﬁcation of this view, cf. Saxonhouse 1992: part 2. 94 On monism in the pre-Socratics, see Farrar 1988: 38–43; Finkelberg 1989; Saxonhouse 1992: 23–49; Seaford 2004: ch. 9–12. On the unfortunate yet somewhat unavoidable choice of the label ‘pre-Socratics’, see Long 1999: 5–10. For the thesis that the terms ‘one’ and ‘many’ have multiple meanings and implications of which the preSocratics were themselves generally unaware, see Stokes 1971. 95 The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, ed. by A.A. Long (1999). See also ‘monism’ and ‘pluralism’ in the indices of, among others, Stokes 1971; Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999; Barnes 2000. 96 Long 1999: 89. My emphasis. 97 Ibid. 119–20. My emphasis. DK references are to H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragment der Vorsokratiker, 7th edn., 1954.

26

Introduction

has taken place’.98 This fact of terminology may, in and of itself, allay our fears of anachronism. It remains to be seen, however, what these labels mean in such a context and what bearing they have on the contemporary concept of pluralism outlined above. The idea of monism can be traced as far back as the ancient Ionian physicists, the earliest Western philosophers we know of.99 It is after these pioneers that Berlin coined his famous expression, the ‘Ionian fallacy’, his catch-phrase for what was, to his mind, the unforgivable mistake of monism that has coloured so much of the Western tradition of ethical reﬂection.100 Men such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes put forward what is known as a material monism.101 That is to say, they each posited that the universe originated from a single element (water, the undeﬁned, and air, respectively) and, most likely in the case of Anaximander and Anaximenes, that everything in the cosmos consists of that element: ÆØÅ . . . ÆEæ ª ªg ÆØ æı, Æ b ŒÆd ÆPe c Œ ØÅ çØ ŒÆd ¼ Øæ çÅØ u æ KŒ E, PŒ I æØ b u æ KŒ E Iººa ‰æØÅ, IæÆ ºªø ÆP (‘Anaximenes, a companion of Anaximander, also says, like him, that the underlying nature is one and inﬁnite, but not undeﬁned as Anaximander said but deﬁnite, for he identiﬁes it as air’).102 In the case of Thales, while it is relatively safe to say that he believed the earth arose from water, it is more speculative to pronounce with any certainty that he believed all things to be water.103 Furthermore, all three men considered their ﬁrst principle (or primary material) to be somehow divine. In this respect, the radical monotheism of Xenophanes merits mention here as well. A precursor to monists such as Parmenides and Melissus in this respect, Xenophanes is said to be the ‘ﬁrst of these to postulate a unity’ (æH ø Æ).104 His monism consisted in the belief that there

98

Ibid. 171. My emphasis. Active not much earlier than the beginning of the sixth century. See Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999: 76, 81–2. 100 See Galipeau 1994: 16, 50. For speciﬁcation of the pre-Socratics as monists and monism as an ancient invention, see Berlin 2000: 6–7. 101 Cf. Aristotle De Caelo 303b10–13; Metaphysics 983b6–28; De Sélincourt 1962: 335. 102 KRS (¼ the system of numbering in Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999) 140. Text and translation from this edition. 103 KRS 85. 104 KRS 164. 99

Introduction

27

existed only one god, who was immobile and, perhaps, identiﬁable with the whole world.105 The theme of monism forms the backbone of Heraclitus’ thought as well. Like Anaximander and Anaximenes, Heraclitus avowed that there must be a unity underlying the diversity of the phenomenal world. Like them, he posited some element to ﬁll this role. And like them, he was convinced that the divine was to be found in this principle: ‘Like the Milesians and Xenophanes, he believes there is a single, all-powerful deity in control of the universe . . . ’106 Through his belief in the unity of opposites, ﬁre as the primary element, and the all-encompassing, singular logos of whom ‘the many’ are ignorant,107 Heraclitus argued that a coherent and unitary understanding of a cosmos in which things are ostensibly plural could be achieved; that, in the end, all things are one: PŒ KF Iººa F º ªı IŒÆ ›ºª E ç KØ £ Æ r ÆØ (‘Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all things are one’).108 As Hussey describes his aim, ‘[h]e is concerned . . . to work out a way in which the universe can be a true unity, while leaving room for the diversity of the perceptible world’.109 Of these early monists, it is perhaps Parmenides of Elea who is the most inﬂuential. He brought to prominence one of philosophy’s most penetrating cosmological/ontological questions: ‘is ultimate reality one or many?’ Not only did this question set the terms of the immediately ensuing debate, but it would prove to challenge subsequent thinkers down through modern times.110 As G. E. R. Lloyd remarks, ‘[t]he history of late ﬁfth-century speculative thought is 105 On the idea of a single god, cf. KRS 170–2. For the god’s coextension with the world, that is, the idea that the whole of existence was one divine thing (e £

r ÆØ . . . e Ł ), see KRS 174 and KRS 165 (Simplicius paraphrasing Theophrastus that Xenophanes believed that ‘the whole of existence was one’: £ e k ŒÆd A). Xenophanes’ belief that the life of the sage is ideal may also be a relevant marker here of his monism (fr. 2 Campbell, particularly lines 11–12). Cf. Stokes 1971: 66–79 and Seaford 2004: 211. 106 Hussey 1972: 35. See KRS 204. 107 For his castigation of ‘the many’ as generally ignorant, see DK22 B2, B17, B49, B57, B104. 108 KRS 196. For commentators who see in Heraclitus’ opposites a statement of change and for argument against this reading, see Saxonhouse 1992: 33–4, esp. n. 25. 109 Hussey 1972: 42. For a broader, more ethical, example of Heraclitus’ monism, see DK22 B29. 110 Plato, for one, was deeply affected by Parmenides’ thought—Plato who is a fundamental stepping-stone in the evolution of Western philosophy.

28

Introduction

largely one of the controversy between those who supported Parmenides and those who resisted his conclusions’.111 Parmenides’ own answer to such an inquiry was that the nature of reality was one, an answer which some of his contemporaries were more than happy to accept.112 Melissus and Zeno, for example, carried on the Parmenidean torch, each in his own way. Zeno, also hailing from Elea, is said to have launched a series of arguments against the notion that there are many things.113 Similarly, Melissus is bracketed with Parmenides as one of ‘the two great exponents of the Eleatic world-view which denies . . . plurality’.114 Writing in a different style from his spiritual predecessor, Melissus is concerned to advocate monism in a way more in line with the Ionian cosmologists. From arguing that reality is inﬁnite, he deduces that it is one ( N ªaæ <¼ Øæ> YÅ, £

YÅ ¼, ‘for if it were , it would be one’), and so naming the Eleatic subject ‘the one’.115 Others, however, were less happy to accept Parmenidean monism without qualiﬁcation.116 To these thinkers, everyday experience testiﬁed to the fact that the world was diverse and changing. Ultimate reality may be one, they conceded, but how can we reconcile this with what we see, when what we see is many?117 Amongst the preSocratics, this dilemma—how to square the singularity of reality with Lloyd 1979: 39. Barnes calls (2000: 155) Parmenides’ inﬂuence ‘all-pervasive’. KRS 297. For the view that this fragment should indeed be understood to mean that reality is one, see Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999: 251. For a different interpretation, which contends that ‘Parmenides does not expressly argue for monism’, see Graham at Long 1999: 166, 179 n. 19 (with further references). Curd clariﬁes (2004: xviii–xxi, 65–75) the different varieties of monism that have been ascribed to Parmenides, arguing that a correct interpretation sees him not as a numerical monist but as a predicational monist. 113 See KRS 314. For the view that Plato interprets Zeno as supporting Parmenidean monism, cf. McKirahan at Long 1999: 135. 114 Sedley at Long 1999: 113. For Parmenides and Melissus as proponents of the ‘one’, cf. Plato, Theaetetus 180e2–4. 115 KRS 531. For the idea that Melissus is here arguing for a Parmenidean conclusion (monism) from a premise (unlimited extension) that Parmenides rejected, see Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999: 395. Curd argues (2004: 206–16) that it is Melissus, and not Parmenides, who is a true numerical monist. She links (pp. 222–8) this monism with that of Diogenes of Apollonia. 116 This reaction is described as a ‘pluralist revolution’ by Finkelberg 1989: 269. 117 The existence of an ultimate unity is important. It is hard to know for certain to what extent the so-called pluralists clung to the idea of an underlying or original unity. That some in all probability did so (cf. Stokes 1971: 249) demonstrates that this early form of pluralism was quite different from its later counterpart which, as we shall see, rejects monism root and branch. 111 112

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the diversity of phenomena—engendered a range of ‘pluralist’ philosophical solutions including the ‘atomism’ of Leucippus and Democritus and the ‘qualitative pluralism’ of Empedocles and Anaxagoras.118 Empedocles suggested that there were four elements—earth, water, air, and ﬁre—and that these are able to mix and separate through the cosmic forces of love and strife.119 Anaxagoras posited a plurality of constituents as well, not elements but observable stuffs and properties.120 For the atomists, however, the primary things were not observable at all, as they were for both Anaxagoras and Empedocles. They were physical entities which changed not by mixing and separation but through the formation and dissolution of aggregates.121 Each of these pluralisms, Philip Wheelwright explains, ‘postulated a plurality of certain entities which persist unchanged in their intrinsic nature but which by their changing relations produce the ﬂuctuating manifold which is ever present in experience . . . The elements which Empedocles and Anaxagoras postulate were distinguished from one another qualitatively, the atomists’ were not.’122 Each challenged, in its own way, the Eleatic notion that reality was one.

B. From cosmos to anthrōpos But to what extent and to what end? To be sure, in Archaic Greece a division existed between monism and pluralism in respect of the physical nature of the world. Some claimed the earth was composed of a single element or that one element was primary or that the cosmos was indeed one. Others professed that it consisted of multiple and interchanging forces. This is all well and good. But what, in the end, does it have to do with the modern, moral and ideological, rift 118

On these responses, see Plato, Sophist 242c10–243a5 and Aristotle, Physics 184b18–22. 119 Four elements: KRS 346; Cosmic cycle: KRS 348, 349. 120 KRS 467, with which cf. Parmenides at KRS 296. 121 KRS 545. Cf. Cartledge 1998: 11–15 and Taylor at Long 1999: 182. 122 Wheelwright 1966: 176–7. For the idea that Leucippus postulated an inﬁnite plurality of Eleatic ones, see Lloyd 1970: 46. So too Curd 2004: 214: ‘The Pluralists and the Atomists attempted to make inquiry into the nature of things consistent with Eleatic arguments about what-is. Anaxagorean chrêmata, Empedoclean roots, and the atoms all satisﬁed requirements for what-is formulated ﬁrst by Parmenides, and then by Zeno. These theories . . . share a commitment to the predicational monism of Parmenides . . . ’

30

Introduction

between monism and pluralism and its core question of the existence and implications of value conﬂict? The answer may be that, as the ﬁfth century progressed, a shift in focus occurred from things heavenly to things earthly and a new intellectual backdrop emerged against which the monism/pluralism dichotomy could play itself out. It is my contention that this is what happened: the schism between monism and pluralism that deﬁned the debate in cosmology and natural science in the sixth and early ﬁfth century began, by the middle of the ﬁfth century, to pervade the sphere of human affairs and to manifest itself in the pages of the more socially oriented ﬁelds of moral philosophy, history, and tragedy.123 The thinkers of this era were touched by the arguments of their scientiﬁcally minded predecessors—sometimes arguing with them on their own terms. This we know with a good deal of certainty: ancient sources tell us that Protagoras attacked the (Eleatic) notion that Being is one and that Gorgias turned Parmenides’ principle on its head by arguing that ‘what is not’ is what actually exists.124 But for the most part, these thinkers responded to such ideas by altering the terms of the debate, by adjusting the focus of the inquiry out of the clouds and back onto the perceptible world—a world which at least some of the physical philosophers had sought to ignore altogether.125 In this way, the new intellectual climate of the mid-ﬁfth century, with its emphasis on human senses and human affairs, was able to produce patterns of thought more closely in tune with modernity’s version of pluralism— that is to say, pluralism concerning morality and truth—than the physically oriented investigations of the pre-Socratics would ever be either able or interested to. That a pluralism in respect of ethics and truth was possible, indeed that it did evolve, in the distinct ethical atmosphere of the ﬁfth century will be the subject of the remaining chapters.

123

The relationship between pre-Socratic monism and the sophists, particularly Protagoreanism, is a much-discussed subject. See e.g. Guthrie 1971: 3–6, 47, 181 n. 3; Hussey 1972: 107–8; Farrar 1988: esp. 38–47; Kerferd 1981: passim; De Romilly 1998: passim. Rankin (1983: ch. 5) is particularly illuminating. 124 DK80 B2, DK82 B3. The lesser sophist Lycophron is also said to have been concerned with the question of the one and the many in its more metaphysical shape. See Aristotle, Physics 185b26–8 and cf. Rankin 1983: 75–6. 125 Cf. Saxonhouse 1992: 47. Some of the pre-Socratics were interested in moral matters such as justice and equality, but on a more cosmic scale. See Vlastos 1947.

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C. In Archaic poetry During the time in which the pre-Socratics were contemplating the cosmos, Greek poets were already turning their attention to questions of truth and morality.126 How did the ‘one versus many’ opposition manifest itself in this domain? The ﬁrst thing to notice is that the opposition was nowhere near as explicitly addressed. For thinkers such as Hesiod and Archilochus, the one and the many were not inherited categories around which to organize ideas in the same way they were for, say, Melissus and Empedocles; the antithesis between the one and the many was not, for them, the framework requisite for making a meaningful intellectual contribution. And yet this is not to say that notions of the one versus the many—or of monism versus pluralism—did not play some role in early Greek didactic and lyric poetry. There are two, albeit subtle, ways in which it did. The ﬁrst is to do with the idea of truth—or alētheia—which was prominent in the Archaic age.127 Truth at this time was heavily imbued with a mythical and religious signiﬁcance. It has been contended that it had little meaning detached from such supernatural contexts, as it was inextricably bound up with memory and with sung speech and as it was contrasted with oblivion or lēthē.128 Alētheia was, in this way, the province of certain types of people who had privileged access to it: of poets who invoke it from the omniscient Muses;129 of

126 Homer, of course, was no stranger to this area of thought. His attitude toward these topics will be addressed at VI.2 below. Pratt sites (1993: ch. 1) Iliad 2.484–7 and Odyssey 8.487–91 as key passages typically marshalled as evidence that ‘archaic poetry is fundamentally committed to truth (aletheia)’ (p. 11). Her conclusion (p. 53), however, is that ‘belief in a connection between poetry and truth could have at most been only partial in the archaic world’. 127 For a discussion of the notions of ‘truth’ or ‘true’ in early Greek thought, see Adkins 1972; Starr 1979; Cole 1983; Pratt 1993; Williams 2002: 271–7. 128 See Detienne 1996: esp. ch. 2 and 3. For criticism, cf. Adkins 1972; Hesk 2000: 145–51; Williams 2002: 272. 129 Though, of course, these poets did not have to speak the truth: they were equally apprised of falsehoods (cf. Odyssey 8.485–538, Hesiod Theogony 26–8, Pindar, fr. 205 Race). Illustrative of the belief that the poet possesses a special access to truth is the ancient literary device priamel (e.g. Tyrtaeus 9, Sappho 16). That this is related to the one and the many, cf. Stokes 1971: 87 and Seaford 2004: 301 n. 36. So too the ‘revisionism’ (i.e. the effort to replace false versions of as story with a true one) to be found in poems such as the Homeric Hymn to Dionysius 1–7 and Stesichorus 192 (for Herodotus and this kind of revisionism, see Marincola 2006: 21–2). All references to lyric poetry are to Campbell 1997 unless otherwise stated.

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diviners who can access it through oracles or other prophetic means; and of kings who rule according to it. In poetry, Hesiod claims access to truth both for his Muses, who possess the ability IºÅŁÆ ªÅæÆŁÆØ (‘to utter true things’) predicated on their knowledge of K Æ K Æ æ K Æ (‘the things that are, the things that will be and the things that were’), as well as for himself.130 For Pindar, ‘Alētheia is a power he calls “Zeus’ daughter,” one that he invokes, together with the Muse, when he is “remembering.” For Bacchylides, Alētheia is “the fellow citizen of the gods,” the only one allowed to share the life of the immortals . . . [whose] function is identical with memory.’131 In prophesy, truth is a similarly central (and limited) concept. The bee-women in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, assigned to Hermes by Apollo, speak truth.132 So too do the mantics Nereus, Teiresias, Cassandra, and the oracles of Ismenion and Olympia.133 Prophetic knowledge of this type is also associated with the administration of justice, a king’s pronouncement of themistes (‘decrees’, ‘prerogatives’):134 ‘In religious thought a distinction does not exist between the domains of justice and truth.’135 Nowhere is it expressly stated that the ‘truth’ referred to in these contexts is singular. And yet, it is very difﬁcult to see how it could be otherwise. That alētheia is ‘one’ seems to operate as an underlying assumption: the privileged men who draw upon it to perform a 130 Hesiod Theogony 28, 38 and Works and Days 1 ff., 661–2, 765–8, 818, 824. For the blended relationship of muse and poet, cf. the Homeric invocations at Iliad 1.1–9, 2.761 ff., 5.703 ff., 8.273 ff., 11.218 ff., 11.299 ff., 14.508 ff., 16.112 ff., 16.692 ff. and Odyssey 1.1 ff., where the Muses’ ‘response’ to the invocation merges with the poetic voice. On the relationship between the Muses and poetic truth, see further Pratt 1993: 47–52 and Finkelberg 1998: ch. 3. 131 Detienne 1996: 49. On Pindar and Bacchylides on truth, see Olympian 10.3–4 (cf. also Olympian 4.17–18; 6.20–1; 7.20–1; 13.52; Pythian 1.86–7; fr. 205); Bacchylides 5.187, 13.202–4, fr. 57 Campbell. Pratt comments (1993: 115) that ‘Pindar and Bacchylides, more explicitly than any of their poetic predecessors, make claims to truth in their poetry’. For Pindar as an interpreter of oracles for which there is a ‘determinate meaning, a right interpretation’ to be discovered, see Ledbetter 2003: 62–8. 132 Homeric Hymn to Hermes 561. 133 See Hesiod, Theogony 233–6; Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 298–9, 356, 369; Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 1254–7, 1276–80; Pindar, Pythian 11.6; Olympian 8.1–3. 134 Cf. Nereus’ dual role: Hesiod, Theogony 233–6. For the jumbled relationship between divination and justice, see Theognis 543–6 Campbell. On themistes and prophets, see Pindar, Pythian 4.54 and Paean 9.41. 135 Detienne 1996: 55.

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variety of social functions—be it poet, prophet, or king—are never, so far as we can tell, given conﬂicting accounts of its subject matter. What they learn and what they pass on, through one divine mechanism or another, is never contested as the way things really are. There is truth and there is falsehood and these are clear-cut categories. It is not until truth is seen as in contention with, and then less important than, doxa (‘opinion’) in the thought of poets such as Simonides and, eventually, the sophists that truth as a religious byword gives way to truth as but one reﬂection of reality among many.136 And yet, there is a backlash here as well. Against the Simonidean and sophistic project of debunking a singular, divinely maintained conception of truth, there emerged such types as ‘magi, inspired poets, semilegendary “divine men” . . . the Orphics, the Pythagoreans . . . for whom [truth] was radically differentiated from other levels of reality . . . [and for whom] it increasingly tended to become a religious preﬁguration of Being or even of the One, in that it was irreducibly opposed to whatever was changing, multiform, or double’.137 Moreover, the fact that kings are classed among ‘the masters of truth’ in this era is telling. Whereas we may expect religious truth to be singular and undisputed by its very nature, it is an even more powerful indication of the ‘monism’ of the times that such an attitude extended to the arena of law. The close relationship between justice and truth, their virtual synonymy at this point in history, demonstrates that these two values at least were not conceived of as potentially conﬂicting. The prominent symbolism of the ‘scales of justice’ ﬁts this mould of monism.138 The concept of justice as the outcome of a careful weighing of two obviously commensurable alternatives is a very anti-pluralist understanding of the nature of value. I will return to the signiﬁcance of measurement for pluralism when I address the Protagoras below (III.4).

136 Cf. Simonides, fr. 93/598 Page: e Œ E ŒÆd a ºŁ ØÆ ØAÆØ (‘seeming overpowers truth’). On which, see Hesk 2000: 147 and n. 24. Cf. also Empedocles’ sentiment at DK31 B114. It has been argued that Pindar too contributed to this effort to dethrone truth, as, for example, in the reconstituted Tantalus myth of Olympian 1 and the questioning of Odysseus as deserving recipient of Achilles’ arms at Nemean 7.20–7, but see Ledbetter 2003: 69–74. 137 Detienne 1996: 205 n. 73. For the Pythagoreans, for instance, ‘mind and reality were one’: F b ŒÆd PÆ º ª e . Alexander of Aphrodisias commenting upon Aristotle, Metaphysics 985b30. See Burkert 1972: 467. 138 See Homeric Hymn to Hermes 324 (Cf. Iliad 8.69, 19.223 ff., 22.209).

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The second way in which monism and pluralism make their presence felt in early Greek poetry has to do with norms of behaviour. As I will discuss at some length in Chapter VI, the so-called ‘heroic code’ to be found in the epics of Homer was a deeply venerated and established system of morals. This code offered a rather rigid conception of how it was appropriate for a hero to act and for what it was appropriate for him to strive. It offered a model that some poets were pleased to adopt, poets such as Callinus and Tyrtaeus, whose verses were infused with an Iliadic spirit.139 And yet, in other lyric poets we ﬁnd this system of ethics challenged, and the idea that there is only one legitimate response to a given moral situation overtly toyed with. No longer are we regaled solely with images of warriors who prize honour over death, who esteem courage above all else, and who stand up and ﬁght no matter what.140 For Archilochus’ soldier, if he drops his shield in cowardly ﬂight it makes no difference: he can get an equally good one another time.141 Similarly, Archilochus questions the traditional importance of the wealth amassed by kings, a standard source of honour for men such as Agamemnon and Achilles, as well as the signiﬁcance of their beauty and stature.142 While this response to Homer and the heroic code more generally is not directly connected with ‘the one and the many’, it does speak to pluralism in a larger sense: by arguing, albeit implicitly, for the existence of multiple reactions to similar ethical scenarios. It will always be unclear whether poets such as Archilochus thought both sets of reactions—that of dying in battle and that of running away—were valid and how they would view instances of conﬂict between them. The fact remains, however, that they wrote poetry that expressly clashed with what was, for them, a ﬁrmly entrenched morality.

5. PLATO AND A TRADITION OF SCHOLARSHIP Thus far we have described some of the monistic tendencies of early Greek thought and some of the reactions to them. We should now 139

Callinus 1; Tyrtaeus 9. See Tyrtaeus 9.13–14 (on courage); 9.25–34 (on a hero’s death and glory; cf. Archilochus 64). 141 Archilochus 6, with which contrast Tyrtaeus 8.17–20. 142 Archilochus 22, 60. 140

Introduction

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focus attention on what opposition there was to pluralism in the Classical period, the period under investigation in the remainder of the book. This opposition is most pronounced in the ﬁgure of Socrates, whose philosophy is brought to life, of course, by the archmonist Plato. By illuminating the rivals of Classical pluralism I will strengthen my contention that it existed as a discrete way of thinking. For if it did not, it is hard to see what—and whom—Socrates and Plato were arguing so vehemently against. Before we approach the philosophical relevance of Socrates and Plato, however, I want to address brieﬂy the intellectual tradition into which this monograph may be seen as ﬁtting—a topic which is intimately bound up with history’s varying conceptions and reputations of Plato.

A. Champions of the sophists Pluralism has only recently entered the vanguard of theoretical thinking.143 It is not by coincidence, I believe, that another philosophical trend has emerged (or re-emerged) since the mid-twentieth century. This is a novel or, at any rate, a renewed interest in the period which scholars have dubbed the ﬁfth-century Greek ‘enlightenment’ or ‘revolution’. The period is described as an enlightened one because of the fresh emphasis on the power of reason in examining the way of things, and as a revolution because of the new-found willingness to challenge the conventional norms dictating men’s behaviour. At the forefront of this intellectual fervour stood the sophists or, as G. B. Kerferd more sweepingly referred to their ideas, the sophistic movement.144 And it is in respect of this group—a group that has, historically, been given little intellectual credit and which has often been dismissed as a cabal of charlatans, immoralists, and masters of the obvious—that the new line of thinking has taken shape.145 Whereas much of Greek philosophical scholarship in the past focused 143 It was indeed Berlin himself, perhaps inspired by thinkers such as William James, who brought it to prominence, ﬁrst drawing attention to the importance of the contrast between ‘the one and the many’ on 31 October 1958 in the eponymous ﬁnal section of his Oxford inaugural lecture ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (to be found in Berlin 1969 and 2002). 144 Kerferd 1981. 145 The tradition of dismissing the sophists as worthwhile thinkers begins with Aristotle, Metaphysics I.

36

Introduction

on Plato and Aristotle alone, commentators have now begun to turn serious attention to their forerunners: whom were Plato and Aristotle writing against? What kind of ideas were they challenging? While the sophists have been afforded a respectable position in the history of philosophy since the nineteenth century in the work of Hegel (Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1833–6) and in George Grote’s enduring History of Greece (1st edition 1846–56), perhaps their most emotionally potent twentieth-century revival came from the ﬁrst volume of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, published in the immediate wake of the Second World War.146 There are two salient points to make about this study. The ﬁrst is that Popper’s stance in it was anti-Platonic. And the second is that his aim was political. What Popper offered in the Open Society was a defence of those men (Pericles, Protagoras, Democritus, etc . . . .) whom he labelled the ‘Great Generation’ and ‘which lived in Athens just before, and during the Peloponnesian War’.147 Men who should be praised, in his view, because they ‘formulated the doctrine that human institutions of language, custom, and law are not of the magical character of taboos but man-made, not natural but conventional insisting, at the same time, that we are responsible for them’; because they ‘developed the fundamental tenets of anti-slavery, and of anti-nationalism, i.e. the creed of the universal empire of men’; and because they ‘taught the lesson that we must have faith in human reason but at the same time beware of dogmatism’.148 His interest in this group was an interest in the presence of a more tolerant and humanitarian temper coursing through ancient Greece, and it was an interest that was, no doubt, spurred by the atrocities he witnessed in totalitarianism. In this way, Popper’s anti-Platonism was a product of his times. It was an offshoot of his distrust of and disgust with utopian planning, the recent attempts at which he watched, before his eyes, transform into gross destruction of human life. By contrasting what he perceived as the values of the ‘Great Generation’—egalitarianism, contestatory democracy, openness in government, individualism— with what he perceived as the straitjacket of Platonic doctrine, Popper not only engaged in classical exegesis but made a resonant and contemporary point. 146 147 148

First published in 1945 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. Popper 1999: 185. Ibid.

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In this, Popper was not alone. Following on was Eric A. Havelock, whose The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics was written in the midst of the Cold War.149 Havelock’s project was self-described as a ‘restitution’.150 He set out to recover from the great lost and found of history the Greek liberals, the otherwise ‘forgotten men’;151 and to champion them, because, unlike Plato, they believed that the citystate ‘can never be viewed as unique, or indeed as ideal’. Because they saw that ‘[j]ustice and law can never be placed above or beyond men to regulate them by divine or metaphysical ﬁat; on the contrary, they are responses to all-too-human needs; they are patently evolved by trial and error, and remain only imperfect approximations of our wants’.152 And because they realized that ‘[t]he kind of knowledge required to make political and moral choices cannot be derived from a priori forms or changeless principles; it must be drawn empirically from an historical process which is always changing, and applied pragmatically and partially in given situations as they arise’.153 As with Popper, Havelock’s work on antiquity was imbued with a contemporary message: he pointedly described America and Russia as facing one another like two ‘Platonic systems of complete and mutual intolerance’.154 Of course, there are others who ﬁt into this ‘tradition’.155 Some have simply contributed expository accounts of sophistic philosophy, not necessarily using the sophists as fodder for modern morals, but rather arguing for their signiﬁcance as thinkers by devoting booklength studies to their work and ideas, as, for example, Nestle (1954), Untersteiner (1971), Guthrie (1969), Kerferd (1981), and De Romilly (1998). Others, more along the lines of Popper and Havelock, have written as theorists or historians of ideas, tracing and monitoring the metamorphoses of contemporary themes (for example, democracy, progress, rationalism, scepticism) in their hands.156

149

150 Published in 1957 by Jonathan Cape. Havelock 1957: 9. 152 153 154 Ibid. 10. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 9. 155 I use this word to denote a general approach to the sophists, not necessarily a ‘school of thought’. For an excellent synopsis of the history of scholarship concerning the sophists, see Kerferd 1981: ch. 2. Cf. Guthrie 1971: 10–13 and Schiappa 2003: 3–12. 156 Democracy, see Farrar 1988; progress, see Edelstein 1967 and Dodds 1973: 1–25; rationalism, see Solmsen 1975; scepticism, see Groarke 1990. 151

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Introduction

B. The relevance of Plato It is now time to say a few more words about Plato himself and the effects of his appointment as ambassador for the otherwise diverse ﬁeld of ancient Greek philosophy.157 In any discussion of the sophists or of the intellectual currents of ﬁfth-century thought, he is always and necessarily looming large in the background (or foreground, as it were): it is no secret that he was a great enemy of sophistic thought and that theirs were the doctrines against which the substance of his philosophy was more often than not directed.158 Volume 1 of Popper’s Open Society was perceptively subtitled ‘The Spell of Plato’. Plato, it seems, has no less than bewitched the European imagination. Overstated as it was, A. N. Whitehead’s resonating claim that the whole of European philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato held enough truth to make it stick.159 For in the history of European philosophy both Plato’s presence and his legacy have been virtually insuperable. And, what is more arresting, throughout the narrative of Western thought Plato has undoubtedly played the protagonist. As W. K. C. Guthrie points out, ‘until comparatively recently the prevailing view . . . was that in his quarrel with the sophists Plato was right’.160 The Platonic doctrine of Forms, the postulation and adulation of an ideal, timeless, and unaltering world existing beyond mere phenomena, has obviously both spoken to and answered deep metaphysical needs not only in his contemporaries but in his followers. Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, Christianity, Humanism, and Enlightenment rationalism have all clung in distinct ways to the notion, as Berlin once remarked, that ‘One is good,

157 On the mistakenly perceived homogeneity of ancient Greek philosophy, see White 2002: ch. 1. 158 See e.g. the sentiments expressed at White 1976: 221 and Guthrie 1971: 9, both of whom contend that Plato’s philosophy is best understood by reference to what it opposes, that is to say, Protagoreanism. For Plato’s theories as a direct response to the sophists, especially Protagoras, see Wheelwright 1966: 239 (on Socrates); Kerferd 1981: 66–7; De Romilly 1998: 99. On Plato and the sophists as offering two different and contrasting world-views, see Guthrie 1971: 4, 9 and De Romilly 1998: 44. For the argument, however, that Plato’s hostility to the sophists need not be predicated on their relativism, see Bett 1989: 140, 168–9. On this point, cf. also Lloyd 1987: 92 n. 152. 159 Whitehead 1978: 39. 160 Guthrie 1971: 10. Cf. also Lane 2001: 54, who puts this viewpoint in the context of Nietzsche’s attack on Platonism.

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Many—diversity—is bad, since the truth is One and only error is multiple’.161 But this is not so anymore. In recent times Plato has been the object of much castigation—assailed as a totalitarian, a reactionary, even an eugenicist. The emotional climate following the Second World War and the Nazi party’s self-described goal to produce guardians of the highest Platonic order has inevitably compelled classical and modern scholars alike to take a second and more critical look at Platonic thought: as he became Popper’s eponymous ‘enemy’, he became, for once, the villain—a fact which helps to explain the resurgence of interest noted above in the predecessors he so notoriously slanders. Another of those scholars, who links this excursus back to the notion of pluralism, was Berlin himself. As a historian of ideas, Berlin was interested in the evolution of concepts and categories through time. His own advocacy of pluralism spawned from a staunch disavowal of the monism that, to his mind, had dangerously and paradoxically dominated the political theory of a world manifestly its opposite. For Berlin, Plato was, if not the actual progenitor of monism, the thinker whose work was most responsible for its proliferation. By rediscovering the opponents of Plato, is it not then likely we can rediscover the original opponents of monism? The complicated terrain of Plato’s ethical philosophy is not to be traversed here. I am taking it for granted that a monism in respect of ethics and metaphysics can be, without too much controversy, assigned to him.162 A disciple of the monist Parmenides, Plato’s present relevance is that he was a self-confessed enemy of both sophism and,

161

Berlin 1990: 208. To simplify the matter, Plato’s monism exists on three levels. His philosophy seeks to excise conﬂict on each of the plains in which it can strike. In respect of conﬂict within a single value (to take an example from the sphere of morality), the search for singular and comprehensive deﬁnitions for virtues such as justice and piety, as exempliﬁed by the early ‘Socratic’ dialogues, serves to minimize the potential clash between rivalling species of a single value; as does the existence of a Form of justice or piety with which to compare and assess their manifestations. In terms of inter-value conﬂict, the theory of the unity of virtues works to eliminate the potential for justice and piety to clash with one another by positing that all such virtues are mutually entailing. And on the level of conﬂict between whole value systems, Plato unabashedly professes that the life of a philosopher is ideal. Perhaps the infamously difﬁcult ‘Form of the Good’ from which all other Forms derive belongs in this category as well. 162

40

Introduction

to some degree, tragedy.163 Though he was largely active after our subjects, he is important for two reasons. First, his animosity towards what they represented was a driving force in his work. In this way, his monism goes some way in supporting their status as pluralists. The fraught relationship and fundamental disagreement between Plato and Protagoras (and Protagoreanism) which we brieﬂy noted above is well documented and will be treated in the following two chapters.164 Plato’s quarrel with poetry, particularly tragic poetry, is similarly well known: ‘he is . . . deeply committed to the view that both within the city and within the person virtue cannot be in conﬂict with virtue. There cannot be rival goods at war with each other. Yet it is just what Plato takes to be impossible which makes tragic drama possible.’165 So too Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet insightfully note that tragedy is incompatible with philosophical truth as Plato understood it. For them, ‘tragic man thus appears to belong to a different logic, one that does not establish such a cut and dried cleavage between the true and the false’, a logic which rejects the idea that, ‘given two contradictory propositions, if one is true the other must necessarily be false’.166 The second reason is that, without ensnaring ourselves in the tangle of issues surrounding Plato’s relationship with Socrates, we can say that many of Plato’s dialogues purport to be, and have good reason to be accepted as, if not transcripts then at least representations of Socratic ideas.167 As Socrates was a contemporary of Protagoras, Herodotus, and Sophocles, the import of the ‘early’ 163

On Parmenides’ inﬂuence on Plato, see Palmer 2002 and Curd 2004: 228–41. Cf. De Sélincourt 1962: 338; Guthrie 1971: 6–7; Stokes 1971: 252; Saxonhouse 1992: 91; De Romilly 1998: 99; Cartledge 1998: 15. 164 The use of the term Protagoreanism allows that Plato was arguing against a broader wave of thought which, though consonant with Protagoras’ own ideas, might have been issued by others. 165 MacIntyre 1981: 142. Cf. also Oudemans and Lardinois 1987: 206–15. Pratt observes (1993: 84) that Plato’s accusations against the poets generally are to do with their slippery relationship to truth: ‘Their multiplicity, their changing form, their poikilia, makes them difﬁcult to hold on to so that we might ﬁnd out the truth.’ 166 Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 29 n. 2. 167 On the question of the relationship between Socratic and Platonic doctrine (and the two men more generally), see the convincing ‘developmentalist’ account given by Vlastos 1991 (critically discussed by Nails 1995: ch. 5 and Nehamas 1999: ch. 4). Cf. also Nails 1995: passim; Taylor 1998: ch. 4; Penner in Kraut 1999 (pace Kahn 1996); Annas 1999; Sedley 2004. Blondell deals with (2002: 115–27) Plato’s more literary characterization of the ﬁgure she calls the ‘elenctic’ Socrates.

Introduction

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dialogues in particular makes it clear that an ethical monism—exempliﬁed, for instance, in his dogged search for unitary moral deﬁnitions—was a plausible philosophical position in the period under question.168 Given that Socrates’ monism is often presented as somewhat radical, or at any rate as going against the grain, it would make sense if its purpose were to challenge existing moral stances he found unﬁt—stances which were conceived of, by both Socrates and Plato, as dangerous to the project of establishing a single and harmonious moral universe. Stances, in other words, such as pluralism.

C. Broad aims Context inevitably inﬂuences interpretation. Popper, Havelock, and Berlin were all writing in the thick of wars against totalitarianism. The goal shaping their work was political, it was pragmatic, and it was prescriptive. But, as we also well know, contexts change. As George Kennedy observes: The disagreement between Plato and the Sophists over rhetoric was not simply an historical contingency, but reﬂects a fundamental cleavage between two irreconcilable ways of viewing the world. There have always been those, especially among philosophers and religious thinkers, who have emphasized goals and absolute standards and have talked much about truth, while there have been many others to whom these concepts seem shadowy or imaginary and who ﬁnd the only certain reality in the process of life and the present moment . . . the difference is not only that between Plato and Gorgias, but between Demosthenes and Isocrates, Virgil and Ovid, Dante and Petrarch, and perhaps Milton and Shakespeare’.169

There is, of course, more than one way to set up or represent this dichotomy of irreconcilable world-views. From the 1930s onward, and particularly since the Second World War, some of those who were interested in vilifying the sophists and their circle interpreted the cleavage as one of liberalism versus totalitarianism (and so Popper

168 On Socratic monism in the form of deﬁnitions, cf. e.g. Plato Euthyphro 6d9 ff., Laches 191e10–11, Meno 71d ff. and Theaetetus 146d4–5; White 1976: ch. 1 and 2; Curd 2004: 234–41. Dancy 2004 is a comprehensive discussion of how Socrates’ theory of deﬁnitions gives way to Plato’s theory of Forms. 169 Kennedy 1963: 15.

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Introduction

and Havelock).170 Others approached it in terms of positivism or empiricism versus idealism (Guthrie). Still others in terms of antirealism versus realism (White, Groarke).171 I write from a different vantage-point, at a time when the failure of the so-called ‘Enlightenment project’ is ﬁnally being digested, when the fate of modernity and the meaning of postmodernity remain up for grabs.172 This is an era which has, over the last four decades or so, been deﬁned by such words as ‘deconstruction’, ‘fragmentation’, ‘diversity’, ‘multiculturalism’, and where the agenda for world politics seems, more and more, the pluralist balance of a modus vivendi. And so, my proposed project is to address Kennedy’s cleavage afresh and to do so in the framework of monism versus pluralism—a framework relevant to the twentyﬁrst century but one which, as this Introduction has aimed to demonstrate, was created by the ancient Greeks themselves. In this way, the book aims to be a concept study in the mould of Popper and Havelock, save that, unlike their projects, it is not directly inspired by current events in world politics. It focuses on three men who can perhaps be described as the (meta-)ethical corollaries to Havelock’s ‘Greek liberals’ or Popper’s ‘Great Generation’, three men who, anticipating Berlin, rejected the search for a single conception of morality, a single notion of truth. Such a project will not only expose the fact that some form of pluralism existed in antiquity and so set right faulty views of history that site Platonic monism as the sole foundation of our philosophical tradition. It will also reafﬁrm the importance of this group of thinkers in the history of philosophy. What remains to be seen is in what speciﬁc ways pluralist ideas of diversity and conﬂict manifested themselves in these authors and how much we can speak of them as constituting a co-ordinated ‘temper’ of thought. 170

So too E. R. Dodds, who describes (1973) the sophistic movement as one of liberalism. 171 For a reworking of these labels with regard to Gorgias, see Consigny 2001: 26–9. 172 On the meaning and signiﬁcance of this failure, see, in particular, MacIntyre 1981: ch. 4–5 and Gray 1995a: ch. 10.

Part One Protagoras

Protagoreanism had to wait twenty-four centuries to be revived with anything like the thoroughness its originator envisaged. (Thomas Cole, ‘The Relativism of Protagoras’) . . . we do not need to ascribe relativism to the Sophists. We may wish to see the Sophists as united by some other type of philosophical outlook . . . (Richard Bett, ‘The Sophists and Relativism’) Can it be that Socrates and the creators of the central Western tradition in ethics and politics who followed him have been mistaken, for more than two millennia, that virtue is not knowledge, nor freedom identiﬁed with either? That despite the fact that it rules the lives of more men than ever before in its long history, not one of the basic assumptions of this famous view is demonstrable, or, perhaps even true? (Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’)

II Pluralism and Protagoras: the plurality of truth 1. TWO PARADIGM SHIFTS If the sophistic movement were to be assigned a deﬁning slogan, perhaps the best choice would be that most famous aphorism of Protagoras (DK80 B1): ø åæÅø æ Kd ¼Łæø, H b Zø ‰ Ø, H b PŒ Zø ‰ PŒ Ø (‘Of all things man is the measure, of the things that are that they are, and of the things that are not that they are not’).1 In many ways, this sentiment captures the animating force of the entire period.2 The sophistic age has often been described as an intellectual ‘revolution’ based on the fact that there occurred a dramatic shift in speculative attention from the nature of the physical world to the nature of human beings, from cosmos to anthrōpos.3 An ancient source tells us that it was Socrates who was responsible for roping philosophy down from the clouds.4 While Cicero has his timing right here, he has erred on the identity of the actor. Protagoras is the man who deserves credit for this

1 Guthrie provides (1971: 188–92) an excellent summary and discussion of scholarly points of contention concerning translation. In this respect, see also Versenyi 1962 and Schiappa 2003: 118–21. 2 Cf. Kerferd 1981: 85–6; De Romilly 1998: 98; Schiappa 2003: 117. 3 See Saxonhouse 1992: 47; De Romilly 1998: 11; Gagarin 2002: 32–3; I.4.B above. It should be noted, however, that the new emphasis on man did not mean that sophistic thinkers ignored questions of physics altogether (Cicero, De Oratore 3.32.127–8; Guthrie 1971: 4 ff.; Kerferd 1981: 13; Jarratt 1991: 42–7). Dodds makes the point (1973: 94) that ‘the ﬁfth century drew, and could draw, no sharp line of distinction between sophistai and phusikoi’. 4 Cicero at Academica 1.15. Cf. also Aristotle, Parts of Animals 64a25–31.

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Protagoras

achievement: it was he who, as one scholar eloquently phrases it, ﬁrst ‘recalled man to himself ’.5 Protagoras’ new-found concern for human affairs was inextricably bound up with another, equally profound and equally radical, paradigm shift in which he also played a leading role: the shift from the one to the many. For in saying that man is the measure, Protagoras was not only redirecting the searchlight of philosophical inquiry from the heavens to the earth, but voicing an opinion in the historically charged debate between monism and pluralism—a debate, as we have seen, that began with the pre-Socratics. Indeed, in saying that man is the measure, Protagoras was asserting that plurality should be given priority over unity. The rise of a more anthropocentric philosophical outlook was signiﬁcant for the development of Protagorean pluralism. In fact, it is plausible to say that the new focus on man was intimately bound with the new focus on the many. Hannah Arendt illuminates the connection best when she writes, in The Human Condition, that ‘men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world’.6 On the face of it, her thesis here is commonsensical, perhaps even banal. But as Arendt herself would point out, it is precisely the apparent simplicity of the statement that makes its implications so arresting. The plurality of men is a brute fact of life that has been ignored or obscured by virtually all of political theory since the work of Protagoras’ most famous opponent. Ever since Plato turned his back on the Athenian democracy and set out his scheme for an ideal city, political philosophers had been writing about politics in a way that systematically ignored the most salient political features of human beings—that they are plural, that each of them is capable of new perspectives and new actions, and that they will not ﬁt a tidy, predictable model unless these political capacities are crushed.7

It is the inescapable reality of human multiplicity, as Arendt explains, which is ‘speciﬁcally the condition of politics—not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam—of all political life’.8 Protagoras, active in the time before Plato’s legacy had spun its 5

6 Versenyi 1962: 184. Arendt 1998: 7. Margaret Canovan, in her Introduction to The Human Condition (Arendt 1998: xii). 8 Arendt 1998: 7. 7

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all-encompassing web, was a thinker who embraced such a reality. It may have been all too easy for his Milesian and Eleatic predecessors to overlook (and dismiss) the fact of plurality when contemplating such abstractions as the structure of the cosmos or the metaphysical identity of ‘being’. But it was much less so for Protagoras when contemplating his fellow men and the polity they lived in. As Sophocles’ Haemon, a character who shares certain democratic and pluralist leanings with Protagoras, is made to say (Antigone 737): ºØ ªaæ PŒ Ł lØ I æ KŁ (‘There is no city which is one man’). We will see below (III.2.B) how the theoretical acceptance of the fact that men are plural had a direct impact upon the sophist’s politics and, more speciﬁcally, upon his views concerning democracy and society. For now, however, we must concentrate on how it shaped Protagoras’ ideas on truth.

2. THE MANY MEASURES OF ALĒTHEIA

A. Three features of the homo mensura To do this, we must consider more carefully the man-measure statement, stripped of any explanatory riders. Again, the doctrine reads: ø åæÅø æ Kd ¼Łæø, H b Zø ‰ Ø, H b PŒ Zø ‰ PŒ Ø (‘Of all things man is the measure, of the things that are that they are, and of the things that are not that they are not’).9 In its simplest form, we can tease out three ideas at work. The ﬁrst is an emphasis on human faculties and the concrete phenomena such faculties can apprehend.10 Although the anthrōpos

9 This is the text quoted by Diogenes Laertius (9.51), Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math 7.60, Pyrrh.1.216, and Plato, Theaetetus 152a2–4 (which has instead of the ﬁrst PŒ). Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1053a35–6 and 1062b12–15. Explanations and elaborations of the fragment, provided by Plato, Aristotle, and Sextus, will be considered in sec. 4 below. 10 Cf. Untersteiner 1954: 48 and Burnyeat 1990: 10. Kerferd (1981: 109), Woodruff (1985: 486–7), and Farrar (1988: 50–2) usefully invoke other Protagorean fragments (DK80 B4, B7 and the ‘new’ fragment preserved by Didymus the Blind) to support phenomenalism as a key aspect of the sophist’s thought. For qualiﬁcation of this ascription, however, see Mansfeld at Kerferd 1981a: 50.

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in question refers to the individual,11 Protagoras is pointedly making man qua human being the measure and, not, as Socrates is made to mock in the Theaetetus, a pig or a baboon.12 The text here, as Jacqueline De Romilly points out, is lively and amusing. ‘But, as used by Protagoras, the reference to “man” was not at all arbitrary. He knew exactly what he was doing when he used it. He was rejecting the transcendent, limiting himself to a world of sensations, opinions and interests—whether individual, collective or general.’13 The second idea in the man-measure fragment is that of plurality. This is nothing more than the rather obvious observation that, as each man is his own judge, perceptions are bound to vary from ‘measure’ to ‘measure’. The ﬁnal and most profound idea entailed by the manmeasure statement is the notion that the perceptions and judgements which men have are not only plural but, in a certain sense, incorrigible. Man, Protagoras tells us, is the measure of what is, of reality or being (H Zø), where the idea of ‘being’ or of ‘what is’ is closely linked with the notion of ‘truth’ or ‘what is true’.14 As Parmenides makes clear, the ‘way of truth’ is the only way of ‘what is’.15

B. What is man the measure of? To understand the full signiﬁcance of the identiﬁcation of being with truth, it is necessary to place the man-measure statement from which it is derived in its historical context. In doing this, two points emerge. 11 For ‘man’ as the ‘individual’ as opposed to the ‘human race’, cf. Kerferd 1981: 86 and Chappell 1995: 334 n. 5. For the view that all of the ancient sources embraced the individual reading, see Levi 1940a: 150 n. 1. That this reading is the prevailing modern opinion, see Lee 2005: 12 n. 11 and 13 n. 13 (though contrast Seaford 2004: 288–9). Schiappa argues (2003: 120, with nn. 13 and 14) that it is best to take the fragment as referring to both man and mankind. As plurality is, for me, a fundamental aspect of the doctrine, I feel that ‘man’ should be interpreted to refer to the individual. 12 Plato, Theaetetus 161c5–6. 13 De Romilly 1998: 102. Cf. Versenyi 1962: 183. Limitation to phenomenal experience was the point of the sophistically styled treatise On Ancient Medicine, where the author eschews abstract theory in favour of the tangible evidence of how a patient feels. Cf. Cole 1972: 28. 14 The polysemy of the Greek verb r ÆØ encourages the identiﬁcation. See Hussey 1972: 83. That Protagoras’ use of it here is philosophical and veridical, see Kahn 1966 and 1981. That the man-measure statement encompasses a predicative use of the verb to be, see Kerferd 1981: 86 and Farrar 1988: 49. 15 KRS 291. For the identiﬁcation of truth and reality in Parmenidean thought, cf. Curd 2004: xix–xx, 34–51 and Lee 2005: 42.

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The ﬁrst is that the nature (and location) of truth was a prominent concern of the time. ‘[O]ne must not overlook the growing importance of truth within the Hellenic world. In literature the transition from poetry to prose had occurred under the stimulus of the quest for truth; in religion the Delphic oracle expounded truth . . . The Pythagoreans, Pindar and Socrates made it their sole aim.’16 And the second is that by opening his own contribution to the debate on truth, that is to say his work ºŁ ØÆ (‘Truth’), with the avowal that man is its measure, Protagoras is ﬂying in the face of at least two distinct intellectual traditions.17 On the one hand, he is writing against the Ionian (meta)physicists who found truth, singular and immutable, etched in the cosmos, but denied it for perceptions: ‘for Protagoras’ great predecessors (Heraclitus, Parmenides) and contemporaries (Empedocles, Anaxagoras), “men” or “mortals” and their “opinions” stand for error and delusion in contrast to the “being”, “reality”, or “truth” of the philosophers. For Protagoras “opinions” or “appearances”, hitherto scorned by philosophy, become the measure of “being” or “truth”.’18 On the other hand, he is pulling away from those poets who found truth eternal revealed in the mists of time.19 What these two strains of thinkers have in common is the ﬁrm belief that being or truth is one. It is this belief, as we will come to see, that Protagoras is seeking to subvert by means of the homo mensura. How do the three main ideas of the man-measure statement take us from Protagorean anthropocentrism to Protagorean pluralism? A full comprehension of the man-measure statement including its context allows us to posit that the plurality of men was something he actively celebrated and linked together with the important notion of truth. For if we couple Protagoras’ recognition that men are plural with his belief that each of those different men is able to grasp ‘what is’, we can legitimately conclude that there are many measures and measurers of 16

Untersteiner 1954: 15. Sextus (Adv. Math. 7.60) and Plato (Theaetetus 161c3–4) both record that Protagoras began his book ºŁ ØÆ or ˚ÆÆ ºº with the man-measure sentence. Diogenes Laertius remarks (9.51) that he began one of his works this way. 18 Vlastos 1956: xii n. 24. On Protagoras’ debt to (though staunch disagreement with) Parmenides and his followers, cf. Guthrie 1971: 4–8, 14–15, 47; Farrar 1988: 47–8; Classen 1989: 14; De Romilly 1998: 13, 96; Schiappa 2003: 121–5; Lee 2005: 42–3. For the contention that Protagoras was not writing speciﬁcally against the Eleatics, however, see Gillespie 1910: 477–8. 19 Cf. Newman 1986: 43–4 and I.4.C above. For the image of truth being unveiled by time, see Pindar, Olympian 10.53–5. 17

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truth. To Protagoras’ mind, because men are plural, truth must be plural as well: Kªg ªæ çÅØ b c IºŁ ØÆ å Ø ‰ ªªæÆçÆ· æ ªaæ ŒÆ H r ÆØ H Zø ŒÆd , ıæ Ø ØÆçæ Ø æ æı ÆPﬁH ø ﬁ , ‹Ø ﬁH b ¼ººÆ Ø ŒÆd çÆ ÆØ, ﬁH b ¼ººÆ I profess that truth is how I have written it: each of us is the measure of what is and what is not, but there are countless differences between men so that different things appear and are one way to one man and another way to another.20

The conclusion that Protagoras believed in the existence of multiple and manifold truths is not just a shot in the dark. Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius, and Sextus Empiricus all support the contention, maintaining that the sophist said that ‘all the things man judges are true’ ( Ø . . . ÆFÆ b Æ . . . IºÅŁB), that ‘all beliefs and appearances are true’ (a ŒFÆ Æ Kd IºÅŁB ŒÆd a çÆØ Æ), that ‘all things are true’ (Æ r ÆØ IºÅŁB), and that ‘all appearances and opinions are true’ (Æ a çÆÆÆ ŒÆd a Æ IºÅŁ E ææå Ø), where ‘things’ and ‘all’ clearly incorporate the notion of plurality.21 So too, the chance survival of a fragment from Protagoras’ work — æd F Z (‘On Being’), preserved by Porphyry (DK80 B2), provides us with the essential evidence that Protagoras wrote against ‘those who “introduced” being as one’: æe f £ e k NªÆ. That is, in opposition to the Eleatic belief that ‘being’ is ‘one’, Protagoras espoused the existence of a plurality of realities, a plurality of truths.22 And so, with G. B. Kerferd, ‘[w]e may infer that Protagoras insisted that that which is is not one but a plurality on all occasions’.23 The man-measure doctrine, then, gives good reason to identify a

20

Plato, Theaetetus 166d1–4, where Plato claims explicitly to be channelling Protagoras’ own arguments. On the authenticity of this defence, cf. Cole 1972: 22 ff.; Kerferd 1981: 105; Burnyeat 1990: 22 n. 30 (contra McDowell 1973: 172–3 and Farrar 1988: 67). 21 Plato, Theaetetus 161d6–7 (cf. 166d1–4 and 167a7–8); Aristotle, Metaphysics 1009a8–9 (cf. 1007b18–23 and 1062b36); Diogenes Laertius 9.51; Sextus, Adv. Math. 7.60. 22 Cf. Dodds 1973: 95. A different tack was taken by Gorgias against the Eleatics in his treatise — æd F c Z (‘On Not Being’): instead of countering the claim that being is one with the claim that being is many, Gorgias sided with not-being. See further Consigny 2001: esp. 65–73. 23 Kerferd 1981: 92 (contra Farrar 1988: 48).

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signiﬁcant kernel of truth pluralism in Protagoras’ thought. It remains to be seen (section 4.B–D below), however, how Protagoras’ model of multiple truths will accommodate the central pluralist notion of conﬂict. All of this may seem the stuff of common sense.24 Men and not man live in the world; men vary from one another, sometimes only slightly, sometimes profoundly; each of these men is bound to have a personalized perspective on all that he experiences, ranging from the trivial objects he beholds to the beliefs he holds most sacred. Yet I shall argue that there is something bold and original—even revolutionary—at work here, and that Protagoras’ attitude represents something considerably more signiﬁcant than common sense. The reason is one that modern pluralists have often relied upon to justify the relevance of their own position. The reason lies in the course of history. As Arendt noted above, had not the majority of post-Platonic philosophy clouded over the ‘truth of pluralism’ (to use a Berlinian phrase) in its blinkered search for something neat and whole beyond the mess of the many, the commonsensical notion of man’s plurality would not have to be so explicitly reasserted and argued for.25 Protagoras is interesting in that he lived before this historical trend was set in motion. But we must remember that he too rode on the coat-tails of an equally monistic tradition, a tradition that was no less than the bedrock of the intellectual world as he knew it.26 In this way, ‘it is Protagoras’ historical position, i.e. that he radicalized and uniﬁed these views in the midst of an opposition to natural philosophy’s search for absolute, unchanging, universal ﬁrst principles and substances, that gives his relativism the status of much needed reform’.27

C. H. Kahn describes Protagoras as ‘a philosopher of common sense’. So too, F. M. Cornford describes him as supporting ‘the naïve realism of common sense’ (quoted at Guthrie 1971: 184 and 190 respectively). 25 For the historical dominance of monism, see I.1.A above. The ‘truth’ of pluralism is something many ethical theorists argue for, to varying degrees. See Crowder 2002: 64–73. 26 See I.4 above. 27 Versenyi 1962: 184. The word ‘relativism’ in this sentence will receive further attention in sec. 4. 24

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Protagoras 3. THE MANY SIDES OF LOGOS

A. The two-logoi principle If ﬁrst place in the contest for most representative catch-phrase of the sophistic movement goes to Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine, second place could easily be awarded to his declaration (DK80 A1): º ªı r ÆØ æd Æe æªÆ IØŒ Øı IºººØ (‘There are two arguments standing opposed to each other on every issue’).28 The two statements are closely bound up with one another.29 For just as the man-measure doctrine relied on the empirical plurality of men to advance the supposition that a plurality of truths exists, the twologoi doctrine draws a similar conclusion from the idea of a plurality of logos, an idea contemporary rhetorical practices were making wide use of. The relationship between the doctrines, and the problems it potentially gives rise to, will be considered more fully in due course (4.C). Protagoras’ two-logoi principle is emblematic of a larger trend in both argumentation and thought. For the relationship between logos and alētheia, ‘word’ and ‘truth’, was of paramount importance in the sophistic period. The emergence of a new brand of rhetoric in the second half of the ﬁfth century challenged old notions of what that relationship was.30 If nothing else, it ushered in the realization that the relationship between ‘speech’ and ‘what is’ is more complicated than it may ﬁrst appear.31 The type of rhetoric in question is the art of antilogy. Simply stated, an antilogy is an opposition of two arguments. Behind this surface deﬁnition, however, lies a more serious philosophical implication. Seneca’s gloss on the Protagorean dictum sheds light: ‘ait de omni re in utramque partem disputari posse ex aequo et de hac ipsa, an omnis res in utramque partem disputabilis sit’ (‘He says that one can argue equally well on either side of any question, including the question itself whether both sides of any

28

Cf. Plato, Sophist 232b and Kerferd 1981: 85. Untersteiner believes (1954: 16) that all of the titles attributed to Protagoras in the catalogue of Diogenes Laertius are contained in two books: ºŁ ØÆ and ØºªÆØ. See also Lee 2005: 25–9. 30 See Kennedy 1963: ch. 3; Guthrie 1971: ch. 8; Schiappa 2003: ch. 3. 31 Kerferd 1981: 78. 29

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question can be argued’).32 The theoretical signiﬁcance of antilogy lies not in its opposition of two arguments, but in its opposition of two arguments of equal weight on an issue or, more broadly, a ‘thing’ or ‘experience’.33 On any given subject, I can make two contrary though equally compelling arguments. I can contend both X and not-X and claim that each of these arguments is right or valid or even true in the sense that it is persuasive and accepted by the speaker (or hearer).34 The ability to make two contrary arguments on a single subject, which will be referred to from here on in as the two-logoi principle or doctrine, is related to two other types of argumentation. The ﬁrst is Protagoras’ claim, parodied rather crassly by Aristophanes in the Clouds,35 to be able ‘to make the weaker argument the stronger’ (e e lø b º ª Œæ ø Ø E).36 If every issue has multiple sides to it, a putatively ‘weaker’ argument, through the ingenuity and openmindedness of the speaker, can be built up into something ‘stronger’.37 This, in turn, is related to a second type of argumentation, the eikos argument or the argument from probability, which is the way ‘par excellence, to make the weaker case the stronger’.38 When there 32 Seneca, Epistle 88.43 (DK80 A20), tr. Sprague 2001: 13. The connection between the Protagorean dictum and the sceptic idea of isostheneia in this respect will be brieﬂy addressed below (4.D). 33 Schiappa delineates (2003: 90–100) these two different ways of interpreting the term pragmata. 34 That Protagoras ‘conceived of the two conﬂicting logoi as a nascent version of the logical form P and not-P’ and entailed a veridical use of the verb einai (‘to be’), see Schiappa 2003: 98–100. 35 For the view that it was Protagoras and not Socrates who was the real target of Aristophanes’ attack here, see ibid. 112–13. 36 DK80 A21. 37 De Romilly makes (1998: 78 n. 8) the important distinction that ‘ “[w]eaker” and “stronger” clearly refer to the persuasive power of each argument. “Stronger” does not mean “the majority opinion”, as is sometimes suggested. Rather, it is a matter of reasoned, dialectical confrontation. On the other hand, nor does the term sharply mean moral superiority (as Aristophanes suggests).’ Schiappa offers (2003: 103–13) both positive and negative interpretations of the fragment, but argues strongly against any pejorative reading. On Protagoras’ intended ambiguity here, cf. Gagarin 2002: 24–6. For a different reading of Protagoras’ intention behind ‘making the worse logos better’, see Cole 1972: 33–5, who interprets it in light of the sophist’s pledge in the Theaetetus to teach men to replace bad appearances with good. 38 Kennedy 1963: 31. On the prevalence of probability (eikos) in sophistic argument, see Gagarin 1997: 13–16. As used by Herodotus, see Lloyd 1975: 162–3. Also relevant here is the importance of kairos (‘the proper time’) for both Protagoras (DK80 A1, A52) and Gorgias. A successful argument will respond and capitalize on the contingencies of the situation.

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are no certainties to be reckoned with and a case stands or falls on probabilities alone, it becomes that much easier to manipulate the weaker argument into something stronger. For it is that much easier to give support to opposite conclusions from probability than it is to do so from concrete evidence.39 Aristotle sketches the paradigmatic example of this phenomenon. The weak man who is accused of assaulting the strong man builds his defence on the improbability of a weak man attacking a strong man. The strong man, however, accused of the same crime, argues that he would never attack a weak man. Why would he do it when everyone would have thought him the most likely suspect?40 Again, we have a situation in which the validity of an argument becomes, in the hands of a talented speaker, something contingent.

B. Implications for truth The implication for truth of Protagoras’ two-logoi principle as well as sophistic rhetoric more generally is evident: it deals a death-blow to any singularly absolutist interpretation of the notion.41 The friction between sophistic rhetoric and truth (in this sense) is best exempliﬁed in the work of Plato, who robustly attacks rhetoric of this kind.42 In fact, the divide between the sophists and Plato on this issue reﬂects the pluralistic tendencies of the former and the monism of the latter.43 For Plato, the offending characteristic of a rhetorical antilogy is the same as that of the phenomenal world generally. It is wellknown that the quality of sensible objects from which Plato most vehemently recoils is their amenability to the compresence of oppo-

39

Antiphon’s Tetralogies are a prime example. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1402a17 ff. Cf. Plato Phaedrus 273b–c. 41 The idea of a singularly absolute truth—by which I mean a truth that can be ascertained uniquely and determinately—is critical. It is possible, as we will see below (4.B), for plural truths to be objectively (and, therefore, in some sense absolutely) true, though not, in instances of conﬂict, absolutely rankable. 42 By ‘of this kind’, I mean antilogy and not eristic. For a thorough analysis of the differences between dialectic, eristic, and antilogy, as well as Plato’s ambiguous relationship with the last term, see Kerferd 1981: ch. 6. For Plato’s critique of sophistic rhetoric, see Poulakos 1995: ch. 3, particularly 99–104; Nehamas 1999: ch. 5; Striker 1996: ch. 1. 43 Cf. Kennedy 1963: 15. 40

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sites (that is, the fact that it is possible, even inevitable, for both X and not-X to be true of the same sensible object at the same time): the stick, for instance, is both long and short depending on the length of what it is being compared with. On Plato’s view, the men who argue X and not-X on the same subject (that is, those who practice antilogicoi logoi) are as mixed up as the phenomenal world itself: º ıH YÆØ çÆØ ª ªÆØ ŒÆd ŒÆÆ ÅŒÆØ Ø ‹Ø h H æÆªø P e P b ªØb P b ÆØ h H º ªø, Iººa Æ a ZÆ I åH u æ K ¯Pæø ﬁ ¼ø Œø æç ÆØ ŒÆd åæ P Æ K P d Ø In the end they think that they are the wisest men because they alone have perceived that there is nothing either genuine or stable in affairs or arguments, but rather that all things are turned up and down like in the Euripus and nothing stays in one place for any time.44

Plato, on the other hand, is the man who is actually wise, for he restricts such mutability to the phenomenal world alone. By creating a realm of Forms beyond human perception from which conﬂict and contradiction have been excised and by making truth reside there, he means to stave off just this unacceptable possibility that ﬂux is the ﬁnal port of call. The consequences for rhetoric of the existence of this realm are clear. To Plato, any species of rhetoric that reﬂects the contradiction of the sensible world as opposed to the singularity of the realm of Forms is anathema. This is why he often contrasts the concept of truth (as he understood it) with the rhetorical technē (‘craft’) of the sophists. If truth exists in the singular sense that Plato imagines, then only this truth must guide activity. Rhetoric, with its potential to present and persuade courses of action contrary to such truth, becomes both less important and more dangerous.45 In the Gorgias, for instance, Plato denounces rhetoric as the superﬁcial attempt to persuade without regard for the truth of one’s case, as opposed to philosophy, which pursues truth by means of dialectic.46 The essential point to notice in the contrast between Platonic and sophistic conceptions of rhetoric is the ramiﬁcation for the concept of truth. For the sophists, the many sides of logos make truth something ﬂexible and plural. For Plato, to say that there are many truths is a

44

Plato, Phaedo 90c1–c6.

45

Kennedy 1963: 14.

46

Gagarin 1997: 14.

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contradiction in terms.47 Edward Schiappa puts the contrast in a slightly different way: while Plato argues from an either/or logic, the sophists (Protagoras in particular) use a both/and logic. To Protagoras ‘experience was rich and variable enough to be capable of multiple—and even inconsistent—accounts’.48

C. A wider inﬂuence Protagoras was not the only practitioner of antilogicoi logoi, as Plato makes clear in the Phaedo, but he was most likely the ﬁrst explicitly to articulate the theory behind it.49 His two-part book entitled ØºªÆØ was presumably a collection of these contra-arguments, with at least some of the text devoted to methodological and theoretical questions.50 It is unsurprising, therefore, that his formulation of the two-logoi principle found expression in the writings of other thinkers of his day. In fact, it has even been convincingly argued that most of the antithetical argumentation found in the literature before 427 bce strongly suggests, in both substance and style, the contemporary inﬂuence of Protagoras’ ØºªÆØ.51 Sophistic tracts such as the Tetralogies of Antiphon, the Dissoi Logoi, Gorgias’ Helen and Palamedes, Prodicus’ ‘Choice of Heracles’, as well as the paired speeches in early tragedy (for example, Ajax, Antigone, Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Medea) and history (Thucydides) exhibit such an inﬂuence.52 More importantly, taken together, they offer evidence that there was a wider intellectual current concerned with how the existence of multiple arguments on a single subject affected the 47 So the aim of the Phaedrus is to save rhetoric from the sophists, to redirect it onto its proper course—the pursuit of a single truth—and away from the multiplicity of probability. See esp. Phaedrus 267a, 272d–273c, 277b–c. 48 Schiappa 2003: 193. 49 Clearly, the practice of pairing speeches existed before and concurrently with Protagoras in the early plays of both Sophocles and Euripides, as well as in comedy and in Zeno (cf. Phaedrus 261d6). Yet it is probable that it was Protagoras who ‘converted it into as it were a method of argument in itself, for which the rest of his teaching paved the way’ (De Romilly 1998: 76). 50 Contrast the view put forward by Lee 2005: 27–9, that Protagoras’ work may have been devoid of any theoretical or philosophical elaboration. 51 Finley 1967: 62 ff. Cf. also Solmsen 1975: 24 ff. 52 We will return to this inﬂuence at V.2.B and VII.3.A below. For the contention that the Dissoi Logoi were strongly inﬂuenced by Protagoras, see Versenyi 1962: 181 n. 7 (caution in seeing too much inﬂuence here is urged by Kerferd 1981: 85).

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notion of truth. In other words, the antilogies found in the orations, tragedies, and histories of the mid-to-late ﬁfth century are both reﬂective of Protagoras’ two-logoi doctrine and signiﬁcant in showing how such a doctrine can lead to an espousal of plural truths.

4. PROTAGOREAN ‘-ISM’S: OBJECTIVITY AND CONFLICT One can readily see the potential danger inherent in the sort of rhetoric and rhetorical exercise antilogy inspired. To the wary critic, it is only a short step from the purposeful paired speeches of Thucydides’ Corcyrean debate to the superﬁcial verbal and logical gymnastics on display in Plato’s Euthydemus. It is precisely the possibility (or, to his mind, the inevitability) of such deterioration that Plato is focusing on when he castigates the sophists for their lack of concern with the truth. And yet, ‘we may begin to suppose that this was because they were not concerned with what he regarded as truth, rather than because they were not concerned with the truth as they saw it’.53 If the notion of singular absolute truth has been seriously challenged by the existence of plural perspectives and plural arguments, what kind of truth remains? What does Kerferd mean by their kind of truth? In particular, is it an objective or relative truth and can it conﬂict with other truths?

A. Which ‘-ism’? The previous sections have argued for the premise that Protagoras accepted, even embraced, the plurality of truth. In isolation, this aspect of his thought is not particularly controversial. The recognition of multiple truths, however, is but one feature of modern pluralism and, as we have seen, such a recognition is compatible with other meta-ethical theories: relativism, for instance, or monism itself. As we recall (I.3), pluralism has two equally, if not more, deﬁning features. First, its avowal that genuine moral conﬂict exists, and secondly, its commitment to objectivity in at least three different senses: that the 53

Kerferd 1981: 67. Original emphasis.

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values men perceive and pursue are themselves objective; that the conﬂict which often arises between these values is an objective facet of our ethical lives; and that there can be objectively better ways to choose between them in instances of collision. Thus far we have not taken into consideration how, if at all, Protagoreanism accommodates either of these pluralistic claims. Perhaps the best way to tackle this issue is to broach one of the most challenging, not to mention divisive, questions involved in a thorough interpretation of the sophist and his legacy: which ‘-ism’ most accurately describes, or rather makes sense of, what we collectively know about him? For it is in deciding this that the Protagorean attitude towards objectivity and conﬂict—crucial for our understanding of his doctrine and yet lamentably lost in the historical record—will come to the forefront. And it is only once we come to grips with these concerns that his relationship to pluralism can properly be assessed. The issues, then, of objectivity and conﬂict take us to the heart of the debate—and here we are entering controversial terrain—about which label is most appropriately ascribed to Protagoras’ meta-ethical position. This is a debate that many commentators on both the sophists and Plato have made important contributions to and, as such, it is worth reviewing here.54 Over the last ﬁfty years or so a host of different philosophical stances have been attributed to Protagoras, some of which are mutually entailing and some of which are not.55 To complicate matters, the names used to categorize these varying stances have at times been used in contrary, overlapping, and misleading ways.56 Furthermore, the disagreement between the ‘-isms’ has hinged on different points of analysis: the nature and status of the chrēmata Protagoras asserts are to be measured, for example, or whether these chrēmata ‘are’ only in relation to each 54

So too, for reasons marshalled in the previous chapter (I.2), I do not think it is necessarily problematic to seek to deﬁne Protagoras’ thought by means of modern bywords. 55 He has been described as, among others, an empiricist, a phenomenalist, a pragmatist, a humanist, a sceptic, a relativist, and a subjectivist. See Schiappa 2003: 15 (with n. 63). 56 Burnyeat 1976a, for instance, uses a deﬁnition of subjectivism that others have taken to mean its opposite, and that Fine calls (2003) infallibilism. Taylor 1991: 61, 83 calls Protagoras a subjectivist, but his deﬁnition, as Fine points out (2003: 138 n. 17), is more akin to relativism (which is also a term that he uses). Glidden writes (1975) of Protagoras as a relativist, but further subdivides this category into subjectivist and objectivist interpretations, as does Kerferd 1981: ch. 9 and Schiappa 2003: 129–30.

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man or in a more absolute sense. In what follows, I will discuss three of the most common and, for present purposes, relevant candidates for Protagoreanism.

Relativism and subjectivism Perhaps the most familiar line of thinking is that Protagoras is a relativist.57 This interpretation is explicitly propounded by, among others, Myles Burnyeat and De Romilly. It is the interpretation best supported by the Platonic corpus.58 Burnyeat, for example, contends that the reading of Protagoras with the best claim to authenticity is that ‘he was a relativist who maintained that every judgment is true for (in relation to) the person whose judgment it is . . . ’.59 Similarly, De Romilly believes that he denied the existence of truth, and describes him as holding a ‘doctrine of relativism’.60 A related view of Protagoras is that he was a subjectivist. Scholars such as W. K. C. Guthrie and Gregory Vlastos take this to be the case.61 ‘We may conclude’, says Guthrie, ‘that Protagoras adopted an extreme subjectivism.’62 Vlastos refers to the ‘freakish extremism of Protagoras’ generalized subjectivism’.63 Where relativism and subjectivism differ concerns the ontology each deems to underpin the Protagorean belief in multiple truths. Subjectivism considers the objects being perceived by different perceivers to be different from one another in the sense that they are 57 The article on relativism found in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example, cites Protagoras as an early relativist. Cf. Fine 2003: 19 n. 43. Relativism is often used as a general catch-phrase for the meta-ethics of the sophists as a group (see e.g. Kerferd 1981: ch. 9 and De Romilly 1998: 17 and 238). This notion, however, is well challenged by Bett 1989. 58 Most scholars would agree on this (notably not Fine 2003: chs. 6–8), though cf. Bett 1989: 168: ‘Sufﬁce it to say that a respectable case can be made for the conclusion that Plato interprets Protagoras as a relativist . . . but that this conclusion is by no means beyond question.’ The point of contention, rather, is whether or not Plato should be trusted to have accurately represented the historical Protagoras in this way, especially when other evidence leads in a different direction. 59 Burnyeat 1976a: 172. See also Burnyeat 1976 and 1982. 60 De Romilly 1998: 97–103. For other relativist readings, see Versenyi 1962; Glidden 1975; Bostock 1988: 88–92. 61 See also Taylor 1929: 325–33 and Cole 1966: 113. Burnyeat 1982 is a sustained argument against ﬁnding the notion of subjectivism (or idealism) in early Greek thought. 62 Guthrie 1971: 186. 63 Vlastos 1956: xvii.

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private entities. To use the ubiquitous example canvassed in the Theaetetus under Protagoras’ name, the wind I perceive is my wind and may be hot and the wind you perceive is your wind and may be cold. In this way, both viewpoints about the wind are true simpliciter in that they unimpeachably represent the subjective state of mind of the perceiver. Relativism, on the other hand, ‘solves the problem of conﬂicting appearances without commitment to any ontology’.64 Relativism is the view that, as the wind appears cold to me, so it is for me (and vice versa for you). Its modus operandi is to reject the existence of any sort of ﬂat-out truth, not to commit to a particular stance on whether the wind is a constantly changing, private, or stable entity. As Charles H. Kahn delineates the difference in respect of the man-measure formula: ‘the subjectivist interpretation takes the thesis to claim that whatever anyone believes is true . . . the relativist interpretation claims only that whatever anyone believes is true for the person who believes it.’65 To put it in a slightly different way, subjectivism does not allow for the existence of any impersonal truths, whereas relativism denies not only that there are any impersonal truths but also that there are any propositions that are true simpliciter.66 Relativism will be incompatible with subjectivism if the subjectivist is committed to the position that the perceiver’s personal experience of truth is absolute. But it can go hand in hand with subjectivism if the relativist is happy to maintain both that truth is as it appears for me and that such truth does not exist outside the limits of my personal experience, so long as there is no talk of my experiential truth being ﬂat-out.67 In describing the relationship between relativism and subjectivism on the ethical front, Susan Wolf helpfully explicates the nature of the potential overlap: In principle, one may be a subjectivist without being a relativist, for one may hold that what is right or wrong for oneself is right or wrong for everyone and yet take this thought to be necessarily nothing more than an expression of nonrational emotion. But commonly relativism and subjectivism are linked: one suspects that moral standards may legitimately differ from one individual or society to another and explains this

64

Fine 2003: 145. Original emphasis. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (9. 790). 66 Fine 2003: 138 n. 17. 67 And so Chappell 1995 argues for a relativist Protagoras (e.g. pp. 333–4), who also espouses something akin to emotivism (pp. 337–8). 65

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by the hypothesis that there is nothing to these standards (nothing, i.e., by which to evaluate them) beyond subjective judgments of the people to whom the standards apply.68

Where relativism and subjectivism agree most signiﬁcantly, however, is that neither allows for the truths in question to be objectively grounded, that is to say, to have a basis in reality independent either of personal experience/belief or a relationship.69 The most important implication of this agreement for present purposes is that neither theory allows for the existence of a single object of perception or judgement. For subjectivists there are two privately existing winds, each the product of the perceiver’s inner world; and for relativists likewise there are two winds: the wind as it is for me, and the wind as it is for you. In this way, neither theory can adequately accommodate disagreement between conﬂicting appearances, though for distinct reasons. We will return to this point in the following section.

Objectivism The objectivist interpretation of the homo mensura stands opposed to both relativism and subjectivism. It is proposed, for example, by E. R. Dodds, who calls Protagoras an ‘extreme realist’, and by Kerferd, who argues convincingly for what he calls the ‘objectivist view’ of the sophist.70 The objectivist view differs from the subjectivist one in denying an ontology of private objects. It claims ‘not that reality is merely my private world, but on the contrary that each man’s private world corresponds to something in reality’.71 In other words, the chrēmata referred to by the man-measure doctrine—in our example, the wind(s)—are objectively real entities which exist independently

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Wolf 1992: 786. Matthen 1985, however, argues for a relativist interpretation of Protagoras which is of a ‘peculiar, realist variety’ (p. 57). That is to say, he combines a relativity of judgement with an objectivity of existents: the wind itself is a public entity but our perceptions concerning it are not. This is similar to a ‘weaker’ form of subjectivism mentioned by Kerferd (1981: 86–7). 70 Dodds 1973: 95 and Kerferd 1981: 87. Cf. also Kerferd 1997: 250. For other proponents of this view, see Gomperz 1965: 200–78; Denyer 1991: 85–7; Woodruff 1999: 302; Schiappa 2003: 130. 71 Dodds 1973: 95. He goes on to say that this is why ‘Protagoras denied that reality is one’. 69

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of any beliefs or thoughts we might have about them and in which a range of qualities (some of which are contradictory) can coexist to be perceived by a range of different perceivers. The wind, therefore, actually is: it is singular, public, and can be both hot and cold at the same time. The objectivist reading differs from the relativist one in that it accepts that standards of truth can have a basis which is not relative to anything. Because ascribing objectivism to Protagoras is, on balance, the more controversial claim, we must consider in fuller detail what such a reading entails and what ancient evidence, if any, can be garnered to support it. In doing so, as ever with questions of Classical philosophy, it is incumbent upon us not to fall into the common trap of being blinded (and blindsided) by Plato. For as Kerferd points out, ‘virtually the whole of the later tradition about the meaning of Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine does in fact interpret it objectively . . . ’.72 Enter Sextus Empiricus. According to Sextus, Protagoras maintained that all perceptions are true in an objective sense and that every perception apprehends some aspect of an objective reality: ºª Ø

b ŒÆd F º ªı ø H çÆØø Œ EŁÆØ K B ﬁ oºﬁ Å, ‰

ÆŁÆØ c oºÅ ‹ Kç ÆıB ﬁ Æ r ÆØ ‹Æ AØ çÆ ÆØ (‘He says . . . that the reasons (logoi) of all the appearances are present in the matter, so that the matter is capable, as far as lies in its own power, of being everything that appears to everybody’).73 That is to say, things actually are all the different ways they are conceived of by different people: ª ÆØ ı ŒÆ ÆPe H Zø ŒæØæØ › ¼Łæø. Æ ªaæ a çÆØ Æ E IŁæØ ŒÆd Ø . . . (‘Men, however, apprehend different things at different times according to their various dispositions . . . ’).74 A telling parallel for this interpretation can be found in Protagoras’ ‘pluralist’ contemporary and countryman Democritus, who argued both that there is a reality

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Kerferd 1981: 107. Even Burnyeat concedes this point (1976: 46), though he himself follows Plato in ascribing relativism to Protagoras. 73 DK80 A14, tr. Sprague 2001: 11. See also Aristotle, Metaphysics 1062b13–18. Both accounts are rejected by Vlastos 1956, the former by Burnyeat 1976a. Lee remarks (2005: 23 n. 24) that ‘Sextus’ testimony undergirds the so-called “objectivist” interpretation of Protagoras’ measure doctrine, according to which each thing has in itself opposite properties which different people perceive at different times’. 74 Cf. Bett 1989: 167. On the instructiveness of Sextus’ account, see Gomperz 1965: 225–7 and Glidden 1975: 225 (and n. 78).

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and that it is comprised of a multiplicity (of atoms and void).75 On this view, then, there is nothing inherently problematic in a marriage between plurality and objectivity.

Pluralism Where does pluralism ﬁt into this picture of ‘-isms’?76 Pluralism, as we saw above, asserts that beliefs about truth—and the objects that constitute such beliefs—are indeed objective. In this way, it can be said, as a theory, to embrace the objectivist interpretation of Protagoras’ man-measure thesis. And yet, this link between pluralism and Protagoras only takes us so far, for it does not speak to the crucial question of conﬂict between truths. To come to grips with this issue we would do well to look more closely at the relationship between pluralism and subjectivism on the one hand, and pluralism and relativism on the other. Subjectivism and relativism present distinct—though related— problems for pluralism when it comes to its central tenet of conﬂict. Subjectivism’s problem for pluralism is ontological. Like pluralism, it can accept multiple, ‘ﬂat-out’ truths, but unlike pluralism it insists that these are simply reﬂections of an individual’s private state. The 75

Though, of course, for Democritus sensations concerning hot, cold, and colour are subjective (KRS 459). For an argument against accepting Plutarch’s account (Adv. Col. 1109a; cf. Sextus Adv. Math. 7.389–90) that Democritus castigated Protagoras for his denial of reality, see Glidden 1975: 213–14 (contra Vlastos 1945: 591 and Burnyeat 1976: 44). On the similarity between the two thinkers, see Jrgen’s chapter in Classen 1976. On their differences, Woodruff 1985: 496–7. Lee situates (2005: chs. 8 and 9) Democritus in the history of epistemology in respect of Protagorean doctrine. 76 It is worth noting one other ‘-ism’, infallibilism, which has been attributed to Protagoras and which perhaps comes closest to the claims of pluralism. The interpretation is robustly argued for by Gail Fine (2003: chs. 6–8). Fine describes (p. 155) infallibilism as the position that ‘all beliefs are true—true simpliciter, not merely for the one who holds them’, and pins this against a relativist understanding of the sophist as he is presented in Plato’s Theaetetus. Infallibilism on her view is equivalent to Burnyeat’s subjectivism (155 and n. 58, 182 n. 47). It differs from pluralism in that it is committed to a Heracleitan ontology of changing and/or private objects. Glidden 1988 is the only place I have seen Protagoreanism speciﬁcally referred to as pluralism. Glidden discusses what he describes as ‘metaphysical pluralism’ (pp. 322–5)—which seems to me similar, though in some signiﬁcant ways not identical to, the pluralism under investigation here—in opposition to three other readings of the Protagoras, and ﬁnds both pluralism and relativism in Plato’s Theaetetus. He ﬁnds the two interpretations ‘not formally contradictory’, but acknowledges that they ‘work at cross-purposes, since ontological pluralism ultimately concedes hegemony to reality, while relativism would deny it’ (pp. 328–9).

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consequence of this is signiﬁcant: it amounts to an inherent difﬁculty in accounting for disagreement. If statements about truth are nothing more than products of our subjective desires, emotions, or experience then genuine contradiction becomes impossible. There is no contradiction in agent A saying the wind is cold (meaning that it is cold in A’s private world) and agent B saying the wind is hot. They are talking about different winds. The distinction in terms of conﬂict between relativism and pluralism hinges on a similar difﬁculty.77 A relativist believes that when A says that the wind is cold and B says that it is hot, this too is the end of the story in terms of disagreement as the two are again talking about different winds. Because the temperature of the wind is qualiﬁed (for A and B respectively) and can be understood only in reference to each of their frameworks, the conﬂict between them is apparent only. A putative expert may come along and convince A that the wind actually is hot, but that becomes ‘right’ only insofar as it now appears so to A. Relativism does not accept that anything further can be said about the overarching truth or validity of A claim’s versus B’s. Presented with the same example, a pluralist believes both A and B hold objectively valid stances—stances, that is to say, which are independent of their feelings or thoughts about the wind and which concern the same wind. In this way, the conﬂict between their positions is real and a decision can be made. That decision, of course, cannot afford a unique and determinate solution but, predicated on an appreciation of the relevant facts and values, it can produce one that is objectively better. So too the pluralist interpretation allows for ‘worse’ choices to be made. The trick to understanding pluralism’s relationship with conﬂict, especially vis-à-vis relativism’s, is not to confuse the idea of objectivity with that of uniqueness.78 Wolf again offers a particular lucid explanation of the contrast:

77 On the relationship between relativism and pluralism, see Berlin 1990: 98; Wolf 1992; Kekes 1993: 48–52; Galipeau 1994: 58–71; Gray 1995: 62–70; Crowder 2002: 67–8. The distinction was introduced at I.3.C above. See Bett 1989 and Barnes 2000: 517–22 for a survey of different brands of relativism relevant to ancient texts. It should be noted that pluralism and relativism are not mutually exclusive. But where modernday relativists are prone to dipping into the objectivity well in an attempt to salvage their theory (e.g. Wong 1993), this is not the original meaning of ethical relativism. And so, Moser and Kustas argue (1966: 111–13) against interpreting Protagoras as a relativist based on his use of objective standards, as does Bett 1989: 166–9. 78 See Wolf 1992: 791.

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unlike the relativist, who believes that what is right for you is different from what is right for me, the pluralist holds that, for each and every one of us, the question of what is right in some cases lacks a unique and determinate answer. Rightness, on this view, is not relative to anything . . . It is just indeterminate . . . If there is an irreducible plurality of morally signiﬁcant values and no principle that orders it completely, then at least some persistent moral disagreements are apt to be a consequence . . . In such cases, the pluralist will say that there is no right answer about what one morally ought to do. But it is important to see that this does not imply that there are no wrong answers. Pluralism does not commit one . . . to the view that ‘anything goes’ in morality.79

Both relativism and pluralism disallow an ultimate resolution to value conﬂict. Relativism posits that there is no resolution and no conclusion when perspectives clash with one another, as conﬂict can be eliminated by qualiﬁcation.80 Pluralism, on the other hand, suggests that there is no resolution and no single (unique and determinate) right conclusion. For pluralists, then, in cases of collision there can be a conclusion and there can be a ‘better’ conclusion (so too there can be worse conclusions). To arrive at one of these is a matter of weighing the options in the most intelligent and informed way possible. Or it may be a matter of calling in your local expert. We will soon see (section C below) how Protagoras might well have adopted similarly pluralistic approaches to the problem of managing interpersonal conﬂict. Now, however, we must tackle the issue of whether he accepted the existence of conﬂict at all. While he is not made in the Theaetetus to raise this issue explicitly, I think it is highly unlikely that it did not occur to him.81

79 Ibid. 789–90. She then goes on to make the analogy between morally controversial issues and the question of who is the best hitter in baseball. There can be several candidates for this accolade in a given season depending on factors such as most runs batted in, highest batting average, most home runs. But even if we take into account all of the relevant information, it still may be the case that there is no fact of the matter. Regarding the vast majority of players, however, it will be uncontested that they are not the best and there will be many statistics to back up this consensus. 80 The important distinction between conclusion and resolution was introduced at I.3.C above and will be addressed further in respect of tragedy at VII.3.B, VIII.2.C, IX.4. 81 Schiller 1911: 184–5.

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B. Protagoras on conﬂict ‘It is impossible to contradict’: or is it? The biggest obstacle in comfortably describing Protagoras as a pluralist as opposed to a relativist or subjectivist is the fact that his insistence that all statements/judgements are true is often lumped together with the ascription to him of the claim that ‘it is impossible to contradict’ (PŒ Ø IØºª Ø).82 It has been, I think, soundly argued that ‘the evidence for attributing this slogan to Protagoras is quite tenuous, and even if Protagoras did say it, the claim admits of multiple interpretations and is therefore inconclusive’.83 And yet, because denying the possibility of contradiction is a stance that sits uneasily with pluralism’s fundamental acceptance of conﬂict (although, as we have just seen, it sits happily with relativism and subjectivism), we need to show that Protagoras is best interpreted as not upholding the law of non-contradiction. This can be done both explicitly and implicitly. The express way is to point out that a Protagoras who rejects contradiction is very difﬁcult to reconcile with the author of the two-logoi doctrine.84 As one commentator contends, ‘I ﬁnd it impossible to attribute the maxim “it is impossible to speak out against” (PŒ Ø IØºª Ø) as a seriously held principle to the author of Antilogiai, if, that is, it is taken to entail that interpersonal disputes

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Plato, Euthydemus 283e–286d and Cratylus 429c9–d3. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1007b18–23 and Isocrates, Helen 1–2. It would make sense to ascribe this view to someone who maintains that truth is multiple. But the idea that there are multiple truths (and further that both X and not-X can be true) is a difﬁcult position to sustain logically only if we subscribe to the idea that truth of this sort (¼ truth-value) must be singular and so agree with the ‘ “undoubtedly valid rule of logic” that no truth can contradict with one another and that all truths are compatible with one another’. See McKnight’s chapter in Archard 1996, quotation from p. 92. But we do not have to equate either truth or objectivity with uniqueness. Nor do we need to suppose that Protagoras did in a time before these so-called unimpeachable laws of logic existed, before, that is, Plato invented the notion of singular absolute truth. Kerferd argues (1981: 89–90) that the Didymus the Blind papyrus ‘vindicates completely the attribution of the doctrine . . . to Protagoras’, but this relies entirely on the doxographic tradition that Prodicus was the pupil of Protagoras, as well as the unsubstantiated claim that they therefore took the same position on the issue. 83 Lee 2005: 72 (and ff.). 84 See Kerferd 1981: 92 and cf. Burnyeat 1976: 61 (and n. 27).

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would be impossible’.85 Let us return to our friends A and B. If A says the wind is cold and B says the wind is warm, a relativist account would defuse the conﬂict by qualifying the two assertions, while a subjectivist account would do so by assigning the conﬂicting views to the agents’ respective private worlds. A and B are, on both of these accounts, talking about different winds. But Protagoras said that there are two logoi on a single issue, which endorses the idea that there is a genuine conﬂict between them. The pluralist account, based on the objectivist interpretation put forth by Sextus that one and the same object can have and simultaneously lack one and the same property,86 answers the difﬁculty: there is one independent wind and it is both hot and cold. On this view, the wind is, in reality, both hot and cold. A and B conﬂict in that A feels the cold in the wind and B feels the hot in the same wind. They conﬂict in the domain of action in that A may put on her jumper while B may take his off. In this way, to attribute consistently the two-logoi doctrine and the man-measure assertion to the same man, we need to make room for the possibility of genuine disagreement in the contours of Protagorean thought.87 Positing a single, objective wind is one of the most felicitous ways to do this.

Problems with Plato’s interpretation The implicit way to sustain the hypothesis that Protagoras accepted conﬂict is to show that he is not best conceived of as qualifying his man-measure thesis in any way.88 The obstacle here is the rider attributed to it by Plato: ‰ x Æ b ŒÆÆ Kd çÆ ÆØ ØÆFÆ b Ø K, x Æ b , ØÆFÆ b Æs (‘As each thing appears to me, so it is for me; and as each thing does for you, so it is for you’).89 But this is an obstacle only if we rely on Plato for our understanding 85

At Kerferd 1981a: 48. Matthen 1985: 49. 87 Aristotle thinks that the man-measure thesis and the doctrine that everything both is the case and is not the case stand or fall together (Metaphysics 1009a6–16). 88 For the view that relativism is not an accurate portrayal of the Protagorean position, see Moser and Kustas 1966: 111–13; Bett 1989: 166–9; Woodruff 1999; Gagarin 2002: 32; Fine 2003: chs. 6–8. 89 Theaetetus 152a6–8 (cf. 152b6–8 and 160b–c; Cratylus 385e6–386a3), where Socrates acknowledges the vagueness of the elaboration (or, at least, the precariousness of the relationship it might have to ‘real’ Protagorean thought): PŒF oø ø ºª Ø (‘Does he not say it something like this?’). That Plato had no text for this explanation, see Gagarin 2002: 32–3 n. 69. 86

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of Protagorean thought. Plato is the only straightforward source of evidence for relativism in Protagoras. There are two reasons why I think we should reject such a reliance. The ﬁrst is that there does exist another explanation of the doctrine, proffered by someone who was not a confessed enemy of the sophists and for whom explication of Protagorean philosophy was the primary focus (Plato was not trying to sketch Protagoras’ ideas in the Theaetetus, but to put his ﬁnger on a deﬁnition of knowledge).90 As we saw above, Sextus provides an objectivist reading of the man-measure statement.91 To be fair, he does introduce the idea of relativity into his explanation, claiming that Protagorean ‘truth is relational to something’ (æe Ø

r ÆØ c IºŁ ØÆ).92 But, as has been noticed, truth is relative on this view ‘only in the sense that which of the many (objective) truths about reality it is open to one to apprehend depends on one’s physical or mental state. What is true is not itself . . . a relative matter.’93 So too, it is worth mentioning Aristotle here. Aristotle is often taken to interpret Protagoras as avowing that every judgement is true simpliciter, and not relatively.94 Accordingly, he suggests that Protagoras is understood as denying or violating the principle of noncontradiction. That is to say, for Aristotle Protagoras thinks all beliefs are true, even those that contradict with one another: r ªaæ a

ŒFÆ Æ Kd IºÅŁB ŒÆd a çÆØ Æ, IªŒÅ Æ –Æ IºÅŁB ŒÆd ł ı B r ÆØ (‘If all beliefs and appearances are true, it is necessary that all things are both true and false at the same time’).95 In sum, even though Plato clearly has qualms about how, given the implications of his man-measure thesis, Protagoras can manoeuvre 90 Sextus was comparing Protagoras’ position to scepticism, but he was still trying to explain the respective theories. For the view that the Theaetetus was not ‘designed to do justice to, or even to capture, the original point of Protagoreanism’, see Farrar 1988: 54. 91 On the difﬁcult question of whether Plato’s interpretation of Protagoras agrees with the non-relativistic interpretation offered by Sextus, or whether Plato does present him as a bone ﬁde relativist, see Bett 1989: 167–68. Burnyeat separates (1976) the two exegeses, but argues that it is Plato and not Sextus who gets Protagoras right. Fine presents a strong argument (2003: chs. 6–8) for including Plato among those thinkers who do not conceive of Protagoras as being a relativist. 92 DK80 B1. Cf. Burnyeat 1976: 46 n. 3. 93 Bett 1989: 167. Original emphasis. See also Levi 1940a: 158. 94 See, e.g. Burnyeat 1976: 46 (with n. 3) and Fine 2003: chs. 6 and 7. 95 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1009a8–10. See the whole discussion at1009a6–15 and also 1007b18–25. Cf. Woodruff 1999: 302 and, for a fuller and nuanced discussion, Lee 2005: 57–72.

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to preserve the law of non-contradiction, this is not to say that it was a comparable source of concern for Protagoras himself, nor indeed that it should be for us.96 The second reason why we should take care not to rely too heavily on Plato is that a pluralist Protagoras makes better sense of several elements of the sophist’s thinking and biography. It explains why Protagoras feels he is able to be an effective teacher and make better citizens. And it squares more soundly with the objectivity that Plato himself ascribes to Protagoras in the portion of the Theaetetus that is (and purports to be) most reﬂective of the real sophist’s perspective.97 This ‘apology’, we should note, is concerned not with defending relativistic claims (as is done, for instance, at 160b5–c1), but rather with establishing a commitment to a certain objectivity of expertise (see the next section). Crucially, the restatement of the homo mensura at 166d1–4 is not relativistic. So too, when Plato condemns the position as self-refuting, he returns, as he must, to a non-relativized version of it.98 On the pluralist reading, Protagoras would accept the fact that someone else may think his view about many truths is itself not true. He would accept, that is, a contradiction.99 Pluralists, we recall, can accept multiple and contradictory truths, even truths that call into question the truth of one another. What they cannot accept is that those truths can be uniquely or determinately ranked.

96 Fine considers (2003: 187–90) violation of the principle of non-contradiction to be a big problem for Plato’s Protagoras (who takes care to provide his position with an ontology that sidesteps such a violation), but even she acknowledges (189 n. 15) that ‘one might argue that Protagoras’ position doesn’t care about PNC [the principle of non-contradiction]; rather, we do and so, since Plato wants us to take Protagoras’ position seriously, he tries to give it a run for its money by showing that, whether or not Protagoras cares about preserving PNC, he can in fact do so’. Original emphasis. 97 Plato evidently regards Protagoras’ concession that some men are wiser than others as damaging to what he conceives of as Protagoras’ doctrine (e.g. 161d9–e5, 169d5–e2, 179b). See Farrar 1988: 66. Glidden asserts (1988: 328, 330) that both Plato and Aristotle intermingle relativistic and objectivist readings of Protagoras. 98 Cf. Theaetetus 171a8–9, 171b1–2, 171b6–7 (Bostock 1988: 90). Burnyeat attempts (1976a) to explain these discrepancies, contending (p. 184) that we only need to give Plato the beneﬁt of the doubt once. On the problem of the qualiﬁers in the Theaetetus and why their appearances and disappearances ultimately make the best sense in the context of a non-relativist Protagoras, see Fine 2003: 156 n. 61, 185 (discussing Vlastos 1956: xiv n. 29; cf. Burnyeat 1976a: 174–5), 188. See further Lee 2005: 31 ff. 99 Cf. Barnes 2000: 548.

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C. Protagoras on decision-making If, then, we can accept, or at least posit, that Protagoras did not deny the possibility of conﬂict between his many truths, the new question arises: how did he suggest we deal with such conﬂict? Surely this concern too must have crossed his mind in the course of his rhetorical, ethical, and civic teaching. The answer, it seems, must lie in the positive role that antilogy can play for a deliberating agent and in the fact of expertise. That Protagoras took both of these ideas seriously and is made by Plato to defend himself in respect of the latter should, to my mind, be counted as evidence both that he acknowledged the existence of conﬂict and that he thought the difﬁculties inherent in resolving conﬂicts between measurers worth genuine attention. Both, it should be added, have proved notorious stumbling-blocks for those who want to attribute a full-ﬂedged relativism to him.

Antilogy In the world of ﬁfth-century Athenian law and politics, the presentation of multiple arguments on a single issue was commonplace. Faced with the prospect of delivering a judgement in either the courts or the assembly, voters would always have the beneﬁt of hearing the facts arranged in several different ways, each pointing to a different outcome. Thucydides provides ample evidence of how, for the Athenians, this practice was at the heart of political decision-making.100 As Pericles, a man who might have had certain intellectual links with Protagoras, is made to say in the famous Funeral Oration extolling Athenian democracy (2.40.2): ŒÆd ƒ ÆPd XØ Œæ ª j KŁı ŁÆ OæŁH a æªÆÆ, P f º ªı E æªØ º Å ª Ø, Iººa c æ Ø ÆåŁBÆØ Aºº º ªø ﬁ æ æ j Kd L E æªø ﬁ KºŁ E. We ourselves either judge policy correctly or even devise it, considering harmful to action not arguments but rather lack of instruction in argument before proceeding to the things which must be done.

100 Though Thucydides’ presentation of conﬂict resolution was not in itself pluralistically based. See further V.2.B and V.3.B below.

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In propounding the two-logoi principle, Protagoras seems to be highlighting the fact that rigorous thinking and its product, euboulia (‘good council’)—a key term in the Classical democracy—was nothing less than the direct result of the confrontation between argument and counter-argument.101 When various alternatives are set out together before a deliberator, he becomes that much more informed and his chances for a practically successful decision become that much higher: ‘The very elements that might seem gratuitous and artiﬁcial when each was considered in isolation became rigorous means of assessment and comparison once the arguments were taken together.’102 In this way, as for modern pluralists, better decisions about a course of action are those that are diligently and purposefully made after weighing all of the available arguments and testing those arguments against one’s own commitments and perspective of the relevant facts and values—in a word, they are those that are made by employing a type of phronēsis.103 They are not the decisions that are made a priori, imposed from above by some singular and transcendent standard of truth. Nor can they be ascertained by a precise measurement of alternatives. For Protagoras, it would seem, the fact that both X and not-X can be true of the same thing at the same time—an idea propounded in the two-logoi principle and implied by the man-measure statement— can serve a constructive purpose in the process of decision-making. It is worth noting, however, that for some of Protagoras’ critics the consequences of antilogy are far more vexed. We have already noted (3.B) how Plato ﬁnds the existence of contradictory appearances (and arguments) problematic and dangerous. His solution to this

101 Euboulia is, of course, what Protagoras promises (Plato, Protagoras 318e5–7) to teach his students (cf. 322e2–323a2, 323c3–5, 324c5–7). On its importance for Protagoras in marking the difference between tricky rhetoric and serious inquiry, cf. Woodruff, at Long 1999: 298. On a possible connection between Protagoras and Sophocles’ Antigone (1050, 1098, 1242) in respect of euboulia, see Crane 1989: 114–15. 102 De Romilly 1998: 86. Cf. Finley’s observation (1967: 77) that the point of juxtaposing conﬂicting speeches is ‘clarity enhanced by contrast’. See also Lloyd 1979: 252 and Farrar 1988: 63–4. 103 Such a sentiment is made explicitly by characters in Herodotus (Artabanus at 7.10.Æ) and Euripides (fr. 189 from the lost Antiope): KŒ Æe ¼ Ø æªÆ

ØH º ªø / IªHÆ Ł E i N ºª Ø YÅ ç (‘If someone were clever at speaking, he would make a contest of double arguments on every matter’). On phronēsis in this respect, see Larmore 1987: ch. 1 and I.3.C above.

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perceived difﬁculty, unlike Protagoras’, involves the introduction of mechanisms by which the contradiction can be eliminated or shown to be false, a matter perhaps of mistaken judgement. In the Protagoras, as we shall see, this is accomplished by introducing the art of measurement, the way par excellence to solve moral dilemmas with no remainder (III.4). In later Platonic thought the difﬁculty is combated by the existence of Forms, absolute standards against which contradictories can be assessed and a determinate answer as to which is right or true can be ascertained. Aristotle ﬁnds Protagoras’ apparent rejection of the principle of non-contradiction problematic in a sense similar to Plato.104 If all appearances are true, he queries, what reasons are there to choose one appearance or argument over another? Who counts as a legitimate judge and what non-arbitrary principles can we invoke to decide between them? Instead of positing a method of deciding—and of deciding perfectly—as Plato does, he argues against the possibility of genuine ‘undecidability’: most people, on his view, can actually tell which of two conﬂicting appearances is true. As one commentator explains: To defeat Protagoras’ conﬂicting appearances argument, Aristotle attempts to minimize the extent to which we experience conﬂicting appearances and to downplay the undecidability argument. We are not really subject to conﬂicting appearances concerning the special objects of the senses; each sense can and does decide about its special objects. A person’s actions reveal that she does not really believe that both X and its opposite are good. We do not regard the judgements of an expert and an ordinary person as equally convincing, since an expert can make accurate predictions about the future, whereas others cannot. Furthermore, we are not genuinely puzzled about whether dream-experiences are as true as waking-experiences, or whether what a sick person perceives is as authoritative as what a healthy person perceives. Nor do we experience conﬂicting appearances about a quality itself.105

We can notice here that Aristotle’s arguments against Protagorean antilogy preﬁgure those made by the opponents of Scepticism. Or, put in a different way, it might be the case that Protagoras said ﬁrst what

104

Metaphysics ˆ.

105

Lee 2005: 174–5; see also 126–9.

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the sceptics said later.106 Generally speaking, the sceptic took the view that, given the pull of equally valid arguments, isostheneia, there exists no criterion by which to decide between competing versions or visions of truth: ‘Their principle of equal strength . . . of opposed assertions does say precisely that “Yes” and “No” are equally valid answers, between which no decision can be made.’107 A corollary of this position is that reason can play no legitimate role in instances of conﬂict. For the sceptic, this fact leads to the adoption of a philosophical stance which altogether suspends judgement on questions of truth.108 We saw above how pluralists, including Berlin himself, have struggled with the role of reason or rationality in decision-making (I.3.C). Burnyeat contends that both the sceptic and the Protagorean positions are equally inimical to the idea of reason.109 And Sextus himself represents Protagoras as rejecting the existence of a criterion of truth (Adv. Math. 7.60–4), in the sense that he does not discriminate between truth and falsehood in an absolute sense. But this is not to say that Protagoras denies the existence of all criteria—or all reason-based criteria—in decision-making procedures. It is now time to ask how, if at all, Protagoras does discriminate between his multiple truths and, by extension, where he stands on the question of decidability.

The orthotatos logos and the expert With so many arguments to choose from, how do we beneﬁt most from the reality of antilogy? What, as Berlin worried about, are we to do practically in the face of conﬂict? How do we ensure (or at least increase the probability) that we will make the better choice between contradictories? The Protagorean response is that the better argument is not the one that is truer, but the one that is ‘most correct’ (orthotatos) in the given and always contingent circumstances. In Protagoras’ view, the way to compare (though not necessarily rank) arguments is ‘to class the preferred argument as orthos—“upright”, 106 Burnyeat 1976: 61 and Lee 2005: 170. Striker warns (1996: 20) that while Protagoras may have inspired a number of later (sceptical) views, it would be wrong to identify his own position with any one of these. 107 Burnyeat 1976: 61. Cf. Burnyeat 1982: 24 and Striker 1996: 95–6, 122–6. See Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh. 1.202–4. 108 Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh. 1.216–19. 109 Burnyeat 1976: 61.

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“straight”, “right” or orthoteros “straighter”, “more correct” and so on’.110 We can infer this from a conversation he had with the democratic leader Pericles. Protagoras and Pericles spent an entire day discussing the case of an athlete accidentally killed by a javelin. The argument turned on whether it was the javelin, or the man who threw it, or the organizers of the games who were to be judged to blame according to ‘the most correct argument’—the orthotatos logos (DK80 A10).111 The concept of correctness is also apparent in Protagoras’ views on naming and literary criticism (Protagoras 339a), to be discussed in the following chapter (III.5).112 With the notion of a ‘most correct’ argument, Protagoras is yet again injecting a signiﬁcant degree of objectivity in his thought. He is afﬁrming that when it comes to choosing between conﬂicting appearances and arguments (the inevitable by-product of multiple measurers)—perceptual, moral, political, or otherwise—there do exist certain standards of better and worse, more advantageous and less advantageous (though not more or less true), which can be gauged objectively, and it is these which must guide us in our decisionmaking. This is why A. D. H. Adkins has linked the concept of an orthos logos with Aristotle’s idea of phronēsis.113 As the sophist is made to say in his own defence: Iºº r ÆØ ÅæA ﬁ łıåB Ø ÇÆ ıªª B ÆPB åæÅB ﬁ KÅ

ÆØ æÆ ØÆFÆ, L Ø a çÆÆÆ e I ØæÆ IºÅŁB ŒÆºFØ, Kªg b ºø b a æÆ H æø, IºÅŁ æÆ b P . I think that when a man’s soul is in an evil condition he thinks things in accordance with it, but when his soul is in a good condition, it makes him think good things instead. Some people, out of ignorance, call these appearances ‘true’. I, on the other hand, call them ‘better’ than the others, not ‘truer’.114

110 Kerferd 1981: 102. Schiappa agrees (2003: 164) that such a meaning of orthos, though strange in his opinion for a relativist, ‘coheres with ﬁfth-century usage . . . and what is known of Protagoras’. For the distinction between comparing and ranking and its signiﬁcance for pluralism, see I.3.B–C above. 111 On the standard of the orthos logos, cf. Classen 1989: 26–7 and Gagarin 1997: 15. Antiphon was also said to have invoked it (DK87 B44, fr. A Col. 4) and, as we shall see, so does Herodotus (IV.2.B below). 112 See also Cratylus 391c and Phaedrus 267c. 113 Adkins 1960: 334–6. 114 Plato, Theaetetus 167b1–4. That Plato had no answer or recorded no answer to this excellent justiﬁcation, see Schiller 1911: 185.

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A careful consideration of the factors, context, and probabilities involved in a certain choice, brought to the fore by competing arguments, will help us to select one course of action over another, one truth over another, and to make a decision which is, in an objective sense, better. Protagoras gives no indication, however, that such a decision is universally or abstractly better: every dilemma must be assessed on its own merits. As one critic comments, his view is ‘compatible with objectivity; what it denies is not the possibility of objective judgments, but the possibility of broad and invariable universal rules’.115 Protagoras’ own role in all of this is not hard to fathom. He is the (objective) expert on call, the man who is trained and skilled in the objective matter of what is orthoteros, ‘better’ or ‘more advantageous’.116 He makes it clear that such expertise exists at Theaetetus 166d4–7: ŒÆd çÆ ŒÆd çe ¼ æÆ ººF ø e c çÆØ r ÆØ, Iºº ÆPe F ŒÆd ºªø ç , n ¼ ØØ H, ﬁz çÆ ÆØ ŒÆd Ø ŒÆŒ, Æ ººø ØﬁÅ IªÆŁa çÆ ŁÆ ŒÆd r ÆØ. I am far from claiming that there is no such thing as wisdom or a wise man. Rather, I call the man wise who changes one of us, and makes the things which appear bad and are bad to that person both appear and be good to him.117

And that he possesses it at Protagoras 328a8–b2: Iººa Œi N Oºª Ø Ø ‹Ø ØÆçæ Ø H æ Ø ÆØ N Iæ , IªÆÅ . z c Kªg r ÆØ x r ÆØ (‘But if there is anyone of us who is even a little better at leading others towards excellence, it is welcome. Indeed, I consider myself to be one of these men’). Just as the doctor is able to

115 Bett 1989: 147. Similarly, Gill describes (2005: 19) a characterization of ancient ethical expertise as ‘the ability to make correct judgements in speciﬁc situations’. He goes on to say that this characterization is ‘not accompanied by the requirement that those judgements involve a process of universalization or depend on a universal principle . . . The thought is, rather, that the person with ethical expertise is the one who knows that this speciﬁc act is just or brave in this situation, taking into account the particularities of the context and the relevant ethical considerations.’ Original emphasis. 116 On the inevitable objectivism (in respect to both the notion of ‘better’ and the existence of the expert himself) involved in reconciling the man-measure doctrine with expertise, see Cole 1966: 104; 1972; Burnyeat 1990: 24. 117 Again, I am taking Plato’s ‘defence’ or ‘apology’ of Protagoras to be genuine Protagorean thought.

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alter the sick man’s taste from bitter to sweet, so too the sophist, through logoi, can help his students move from a worse state of mind to a better one—a process which does not affect the truth status of their original judgement.118 Protagoras, then, is the man who, because of his experience and wisdom, is able to discern the better argument or the more effective course of action. In turn, he can train somebody else to discern it. That is, he can make it so that the better argument or course of action appears better to that particular individual and so becomes true for him.119 This is what he means in pledging to make Hippocrates beltiōn (‘better’, Prot. 318a8–9) and to teach him euboulia (318e5).

5. CONCLUSION Protagoras was a serious thinker. His assertion that man is the measure of reality should not be taken as a joke or logical exercise or sleight of hand, but as an important intellectual contribution with far-reaching philosophical ramiﬁcations. About this most critics would now agree.120 The exact nature and import of the assertion, however, is far less susceptible to consensus: this is hardly surprising given both the quantity and quality of the source information. As we have seen, several ‘-ism’s have been attached to the great sophist’s name. Fortunately, the signiﬁcant point for the argument at large is one that none of these denies: Protagoras accepted the existence of multiple perspectives on truth. Whether truth here refers to sense perception, moral and political judgements, as well as viewpoints concerning ‘factual’ questions such as the population of Athens or the average climate of Sparta, is unclear—perhaps the distinction he draws (Protagoras 322c3–d4) between technical and moral ability 118

The case with political judgements (167c, 172a–b) is of a different nature and is said by Socrates to correspond, not with the views of Protagoras, but with a modiﬁed or incomplete version of those views (Cole 1972: 27). 119 See Vlastos 1956: xxi–ii and Cole 1972: 23 ff. 120 Insofar as it needs to be argued for anymore, however, see Schiappa 2003: 12–16. Contrast Glidden, who raises the possibility (1988: 335) that ‘[t]here may never have been a Protagorean philosophy at all’. Interestingly, he further contends (pp. 332–3) that Protagoras can only be considered a serious philosopher (as opposed to a sophist) if we ascribe to him a realist ontology.

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suggests he would differentiate between the two.121 The man-measure doctrine is admittedly less effective if its scope is unlimited. My own opinion is that Protagoras would have conﬁned its application to areas such as ethics, politics, aesthetics, and sensation, areas where persistent disagreement is more likely and more understandable. Indeed, these are the spheres referred to most often by Protagoras’ ancient commentators. If relativism, subjectivism, and pluralism each acknowledge variability in perspective on truth, what they do not agree on is the ontological status of the entities man is the measure of and what happens when such entities (perspectives, judgements) come into conﬂict with one another. On the ﬁrst issue—the point of contention between pluralism and subjectivism—there is solid, even if not conclusive, evidence on which to build an interpretation that the things man measures are objectively grounded: that is to say, they exist in reality and are not the exclusive products of a private world-view. Testimony from Sextus Empiricus, as well as analysis from many leading modern critics, supports such a reading. The second issue—the point of contention between pluralism and relativism—is the crux of the controversy over Protagoras, as it is a topic for which the evidence is even thinner and more convoluted. It is not unrelated to another pervasive difﬁculty in Protagorean scholarship: reconciling his plurality with his objectivity. Evidence gleaned from Plato indicates that Protagoras claimed to possess an expertise that allowed him to make people better (his role—and success—as a teacher reinforces that he would have had to have held some such attitude concerning his worth to students).122 Plutarch conﬁrms that he acknowledged the existence of a most correct argument. Together, these sources suggest that Protagoras accepted plurality and objectivity, that he afﬁrmed, as is reported in the Theaetetus (167d2–3), that ç æ NØ æØ æø ŒÆd P d ł ı B Ç Ø (‘some men are wiser than others and nobody judges falsely’). So too, coupled with his belief that there are two (equally valid) arguments on every matter, they suggest that Protagoras took the view that there are better and worse ways to bring interpersonal conﬂict to a close.

121 The moral/political application of the man-measure statement will be treated in the following chapter (III.1.B and III.3). 122 See Plato, Meno 91e2–92a2 for the longevity and success of Protagoras’ career.

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This combination of plurality and objectivity is notoriously problematic for relativism. Consequently, those who want to keep such a reading of Protagoras alive have had to explain (or explain away) one or the other facet. But the marriage of plurality and objectivity (in all of its dimensions) is one that pluralism accommodates well. It is for this reason that I have sought to sketch what a pluralist Protagoras would have looked like—certainty beyond this is probably unattainable. And yet, as Thomas Cole remarks, ‘where the evidence for reconstructing a man’s thought is as limited as it is here, any interpretation which gives a consistent and straightforward reading of all the most important ancient testimony is worth serious consideration’.123 It is my contention that a pluralist reading of Protagoras merits such attention. So far I have focused mainly on non-Platonic sources. We must now turn to the major piece of evidence for Protagorean thought thus far left unconsidered: Plato’s Protagoras.124 A reading of this dialogue will further substantiate my pluralist understanding of Protagoras, as it provides explicit statements from the sophist about those areas of his thought that are most contentious—value conﬂict (III.3) and objectivity (III.2.A; III.5)—and as it explores his attitude toward a third tenet of pluralism: incommensurability (III.4).

123 Cole 1972: 22. On the other hand, we must be cautious in assuming complete coherence or consistency for Protagoras, as for any early philosophical or scientiﬁc theory (Adkins 1970: 49). Cf. also Striker 1996: 11. 124 Versenyi argues (1962: 180) that the Protagoras is likely to be a more reliable representation of Protagoras’ views than the major portion of the Theaetetus (see n. 5 for his reasons, which seem to me to be for the most part fair—though not deﬁnitive). Gagarin 1969 is a sustained effort to illustrate the great respect and admiration with which Socrates/Plato treats the sophist in the dialogue named after him.

III Plato’s Protagoras: the plurality of value in the sophistic age We are now ready to set out the moral counterpart to Protagoras’ views on truth. From our explication of the ‘man-measure’ and ‘two-logoi’ principles in the previous chapter, we saw that Protagoras can be interpreted to hold that a plurality of objective truths exists. This chapter, through an analysis of the main episodes in Plato’s Protagoras, examines the possibility of a connection between this idea and Protagoras’ ethical beliefs and teachings:1 that is, how pluralism in respect of value manifests itself in Protagoras’ treatment of several sophistic themes. In doing so, it draws attention to how notions of diversity and conﬂict, as well as the opposition between the one and the many, featured in ﬁfth-century Greek thought more generally.

1. DRAMATIC INTRODUCTION

A. What is a sophist? The opening of the Protagoras is often lauded as a dramatic masterpiece due to the richness of its characterization. The sophists of Athens’ golden age come alive to us through Plato’s mastery of the dialogue form. In a few short pages we are made privy to a wealth of 1 For the view that the Protagoras is a moral dialogue, cf. Vlastos 1956: xvi–xvii. For the view that the dialogues should be read the other way round, that is to say, that the man-measure statement should be interpreted in light of the Protagoras, see Levi 1940: 286.

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details about these otherwise elusive ﬁgures: the sound of their voices, the nature of their reputation, and the style of their teaching. The introduction is especially illuminating because it takes us into the heart of the controversy over the meaning of the word ‘sophist’. It presents us directly with the ambiguity of what it was to be one of these itinerant teachers in ﬁfth-century Greece: the multiple and competing connotations of the word.2 We witness, on the one hand, the enormous appeal the sophists had in the eyes of aristocratic young men eager to make a name for themselves on the political stage. In fact, the story begins with one such youth, Hippocrates, who is positively bursting to become the pupil of Protagoras. Arriving at Socrates’ door in the pre-dawn hours to enlist help in this endeavor (310a8 ff.), we discover soon after that he does not even have a clearly formed idea of what it is he expects to learn (311b2–314c2). Hippocrates’ excitement is by no means unique. Within the course of the introduction the point is driven home: the sophists enjoyed an immense popularity. Socrates and Hippocrates are almost turned away at the door because Callias has been so besieged by visitors for the sophists (314c7–e2); Prodicus is stationed in a guest-room which was converted from a storeroom because of the number of visitors (315d1–4); Protagoras is surrounded by a throng of such visitors (314e3–315b8). And yet, on the other hand, the stigma attached to the profession is made evident as well. When Socrates asks Hippocrates if he wants to train with Protagoras so that he might become a sophist himself, the boy blushes at the shameful thought (312a1– 7). Protagoras too recognizes the ancient phthonos (‘stigma’) connected to his work (316d3–e5). Indeed, he is thankful Å b Øe å Ø Øa e ›ºª E çØc r ÆØ (‘that I have not suffered anything terrible on account of admitting that I am a sophist’, 317b7–c1). If nothing else, the ﬁrst pages of the Protagoras teach us the important lesson that the word sophist signiﬁes more than one thing.3

On the etymology and meanings of the word ‘sophist’, see Guthrie 1971: 27– 34; Kerferd 1981: ch. 4; Schiappa 2003: 3–11. On its original usage, see Kerferd 1950. 3 So too, the meaning of ‘sophist’ was up for grabs in the fourth century, as Isocrates’ broad principles of inclusion demonstrate: Nehamas 1999: 110. Cf. the catalogue of predecessors Protagoras is happy to call sophists (316d3–e4). 2

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B. Foreigners and cultural pluralism The dramatic introduction to the Protagoras is invaluable as a source of detail about the sophists and their profession. But it is also a ﬁtting start to a dialogue whose theme is the relationship between the one and the many. The ﬁrst thing to notice in this respect is the motif of diversity. The house of Callias is teeming with foreigners.4 Present are not only the sophists themselves, whose home-towns range from Abdera in Thrace to Elis on the Peloponnese to Ceos in the Aegean, but the entourage of students each has amassed on his travels. All of these foreigners have collected in Athens, the intellectual centre of Greece at the time. In this way the Protagoras speaks to a larger theme, for the age of the sophists is known as one of expanded cultural awareness. Economic, military, and political factors worked together to foster this: contact with other peoples was substantially increased in the ﬁfth century through war, travel, trade, and the foundation of colonies.5 As itinerant teachers, the sophists were the men most likely to feel the effects of such contact. Not only did their profession make them likely travellers, participants in inter-state activities, and foreign diplomats.6 But it made them travellers likely to engage in meaningful exchanges of ideas with the people they met—potential pupils or other intellectuals. It is for these reasons that they have been described as ‘the ﬁrst internationalists’ and, even more aptly, as examples of ‘political pluralism’.7 We can notably contrast this internationalist spirit with Socrates, who claims to have barely left Athens (Crito 52b),8 and with Plato, who felt a restriction on travel was in the best interest of the polity (Laws 950d, 952b–d). What was the possible impact on sophistic thought of such contact with foreigners? Just as the fact that men qua human beings are plural contributed to Protagorean views on truth, so too it is plausible that the plural, distinct, and often contrasting customs of men qua citizens

4 The word xenoi (in its use as ‘foreigners’) is mentioned at 309c5, 315a7, 315c4, and 316c5. 5 Guthrie 1971: 16. 6 Cf. Hippias Major 282b–c. 7 Dodds 1973: 100 and Lloyd 1987: 98. 8 Cf. his praise of the Spartans’ cautious attitude towards foreigners and travel at Protagoras 342c3–d2.

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contributed to his and others’ views on value.9 That is, the exposure to various nations and their varying moral codes can be seen, in part, as responsible for the theoretical acceptance of an irreducible plurality of values and value systems. This strand of pluralism, better described as cultural pluralism, culminated in the highly sensitive ethnography of Herodotus’ Histories (cf. IV.2.B below).10 There, as a result of his researches on the distinct practices of Lydians, Egyptians, Scythians, and Persians, among others, the author reaches the conclusion that nomos (‘custom’) is king (3.38.4).11 For Herodotus, this is simply the way things are: [He] draws from the variety of customs he describes in history . . . the conclusion . . . that what is valid for one group of people is not necessarily valid for anyone else. But he never suggests that any practice is less right because everyone does not believe it to be right, or that it is possible for one thing to be right while other things merely seem right. Quite the contrary: the very diversity of the practices which different nations recognize as right is advanced as a proof of the validity of these practices’12

For the Callatiae, eating one’s dead kinfolk is a morally acceptable practice while burning them is disgraceful. For the Greeks it is the other way round. A similar conclusion is reached in the sophistic tract Dissoi Logoi: r ÆØ , ÆY Ø a ÆNåæa K £ Œ º Ø ı EŒÆØ Æ IŁæø, L ŒÆØ ÇØ, ŒÆd ºØ K IŁæ ø ø a ŒÆºa ºÆ , L ŒÆØ –ªÅÆØ, P b <ŒÆ> ŒÆºº ØçŁB , Iººa Æ Æ

ØÆºÆ . P ªaæ ÆPa ÇØ. And I think that if someone should order all men to make a single heap of everything that each of them regards as disgraceful and then again take from the collection what each of them regards as seemly, not a thing <would> be left, but they would all divide up everything, because not all men are of the same opinion.13

9

See Schiller 1911: 182; Cole 1972: 41–3; Dodds 1973: 98–9. Herodotus as cultural pluralist will be explored more thoroughly at V.3 below. For another contemporary statement of cultural pluralism, cf. Euripides, Andromache 173–80 on incest as custom. For a discussion of ‘Pindar on nomos’, see Guthrie 1971: 131–4. 12 Cole 1972: 41. Cole describes Herodotus’ position as relativism. We will discuss this terminology further at IV.1.A below. 13 DK90 2.18, tr. Sprague 2001: 283. 10 11

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Protagoras too was a defender of cultural plurality. At Theaetetus 167c4–6 he offers the cultural counterpart to the man-measure statement: K d x ª i Œﬁ Å º Ø ŒÆØÆ ŒÆd ŒÆºa ŒB ﬁ , ÆFÆ ŒÆd

r ÆØ ÆPB ﬁ , ø i ÆPa Çﬁ Å (‘Whenever some such thing seems just and noble to a given city, it is just and noble for it, so long as it is regarded as such’).14 On this view, standards of morality are nothing more than the local, temporal, and contingent norms of those who hold them, norms which are not only changing but changeable. They are emphatically not the universal and immutable dictates of nature.15

C. The one and the many: Socrates and the sophists The theme of one versus many is addressed in the introduction to the Protagoras by another, more literary means: the character contrast between Socrates and the sophists. The plurality and diversity of the sophists is artfully set against the singularity of Socrates in a way which extends beyond the simple fact that there are three of them and only one of him. A closer examination of the text reveals that Plato is making a more subtle point about the nature of their differences. After he is initially mistaken for being a sophist himself (314c7–e2), the prologue works to draw a distinction between Socrates and the sophists—particularly in respect of their teaching methods. The sophists were renowned for their ability to play the polymath. That is, they were reputed to be intellectual acrobats capable of answering questions and making display speeches on an endless variety of topics.16 Whatever an audience threw at him, the verbally dexterous sophist had something to say about it. This capacity was particularly linked with Hippias who, we are told in the Protagoras, was ﬁelding questions on science and astronomy (315c5–6).17 In addition to these 14

Cf. Theaetetus 172a1–4 and 177c9–d2. For the view that Protagoras and Herodotus shared this belief, see Farrar 1988: 45–6. In contrast, consider Thucydidean characters’ insistence on a natural base for international ethics (1.76.2, 4.61.5, 5.105.2; to be addressed at V.3.B below). For similar views of morality as grounded in nature, see Thrasymachus at Republic 336b ff., Polus at Gorgias 470d ff., and the sophist Antiphon’s On Truth. 16 As Plato describes it (Sophist 223c2), their expertise is s ºÆ ØŒºÅ (‘very diverse’). 17 See also 318e2–5, where some sophists, particularly Hippias, are said to teach an array of subjects including arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. Cf. Hippias 15

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subjects, we know Hippias was versed in geometry, mythology, history, painting and sculpture, rhythm and harmony, and the properties of letters and syllables.18 He was also a diplomat, wrote his own poetry, and even invented mnemonics. In contrast, Socrates is well known for eschewing peripheral enterprises (especially physical pleasures) in his dedication to one thing and one thing only: philosophical truth.19 Similarly well known is the method by which he pursues this, the ad hominem elenchus. And so it is not by coincidence that Socrates and Protagoras are both portrayed as walking and talking with their students. Indeed, we are invited to notice that they are having conversations of quite different sorts. Protagoras is discoursing to a large and diverse group of followers (314e3–b8).20 Socrates is engaging in his usual tête-à-tête and is unhappy to stop the discussion without an agreement (314c5–7). The two styles come into direct conﬂict when Socrates, having put Hippocrates’ request to Protagoras, asks the sophist if he would like to provide his answer privately or in front of the rest of the crowd. Unsurprisingly, Protagoras opts for the latter (317c6–d4).21 Their style of argument is also contrasted: Protagoras opting for longer speeches making multiple points; Socrates asking for ones which are short and focused on a single issue (334c7–338e5).22

Minor 363c–d. For the same polyvalence in Gorgias, cf. Gorgias 447c–448a and 458d–e, Meno 70b–c. Protagoras, however, tries to distance himself from this jackof-all-trades reputation (318d5–319a2). 18 See DK86 (particularly A14). 19 See e.g. Plato Symposium 216c–219d. Cf. Republic 588e–589a and Phaedrus 254c. In this dialogue, cf. 333c7–9 and 348a5–6. 20 There appear to be two groups with Protagoras: a ﬁrst group which is described as ‘walking around with him’ (ı æØ ı) and a second group of ‘following listeners’ (MŒºŁı KÆŒ ). 21 Contrast Socrates’ penchant for smaller crowds, especially in his conversation with sophists (e.g. Hippias Minor 364b; he and Hippias are apparently in private during the course of Hippias Major). 22 Cf. Hippias Minor 369c–d, Gorgias 449b–c, 461d, Statesman 286b–c and Socrates’ respect for the laconic, pithy speaking style of the Spartans at Protagoras 342d4–343b3. On the differences and overlaps between Socratic and sophistic methodology, see Nehamas 1999: 110ff. Interestingly, Socrates notes several times that Protagoras is multifaceted in terms of his ability to engage in both long and short formats of inquiry: 329b1–5, 334e4–335a2, 335b7–c2.

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2. THE GREAT SPEECH The ‘Great Speech’ is the combination of muthos (‘myth’) and logos (‘account’) Protagoras recites in answer to the challenge posed (319a8–320c1) that the virtue he claims to impart is, in fact, unteachable.23 The following are its main components. (1) We begin in the era before the existence of mortal beings. At the appointed time the gods give shape to them, yet allot the task of distributing their powers to Prometheus and Epimetheus (320c8–d6). (2) Epimetheus proceeds to assign various protective features (size, wings, thick hide), food tastes (pasture, fruit, meat), and number of offspring to the new creatures, making sure all the while that these are properly balanced against one another so that no species will be obliterated (320d6–321b6). (3) Not the sharpest tool in the shed (as his name, ‘Afterthought’, implies), Epimetheus uses up all of the powers on the non-rational animals, leaving it for Prometheus to devise a way to save mankind from extinction. Famously, Prometheus does this by stealing ﬁre and technical skills from their patron gods, Hephaestus and Athena.24 With these resources, men are able to master many skills (speech, carpentry, agriculture) (321b6–322a8). (4) And yet, Prometheus is unable to get his hands on the political technē (‘skill’). As a consequence of this, men are at ﬁrst forced to live in scattered units. This living arrangement, however, soon proves too precarious as it leaves them at the mercy of wild beasts: men must gather together for protection. They found cities. But because they are not in possession of the art of running a city, they treat each other with injustice in their

23

So-called by Vlastos (1956: xvi). Taylor argues (1991: 78–9) that it is reasonable to accept that the speech derives from some of Protagoras’ writings. For a sustained argument that it is at best partly Protagoras, see Maguire 1977: 111–22 (and cf. Havelock 1957: 87–8 and Prior 2002: 318–22). For references and summaries on the debate, see Untersteiner 1954: 72 n. 24; Havelock 1957: 407–9; Guthrie 1971: 64 n. 1; Schiappa 2003: 147–8 (with n. 30). We are told (DK80 A1) that one of Protagoras’ books was entitled — æd B IæåB ﬁ ŒÆÆ ø (‘On the Original State of Things’). 24 On reconciling the use of divinities in the myth with Protagoras’ known agnosticism, see Vlastos 1956: ix n. 11.

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(5)

(6)

(7) (8) (9) (10)

newly formed communities. Ultimately, they are compelled to scatter once more (321d4–7, 322a8–b8). Fearing for their survival, Zeus orders Hermes to deliver dikē (‘justice’) and aidōs (‘shame’) to mankind as a whole (322c1–d5). That every single man shares in these two qualities is evident from the fact that nobody would admit to not having them (323a5–c2). That they are learned and deliberate can be shown from the concept of punishment as deterrence (323c5–324d1). Furthermore, the whole educational process is designed to instill dikē and aidōs (324d6–326e5). Good men have worthless sons because of the inevitable variance in natural talent (326e6–327c1). While every man is in some sense a teacher of virtue, some men are better at it than others (327e1–328c2).

A. Progress and the diversity of nomoi With these ten points Protagoras offers a comprehensive response to Socrates’ charge that virtue cannot be taught.25 In doing so, he speaks to several larger themes: progress, democracy, and education. All of these are related, in their own way, to pluralism. The ﬁrst—referred to, economically, as ‘progress’—is actually a combination of two intellectual features of the period which, taken together, point to the conclusion that human progress is possible: the writing of accounts of the origins of civilization, and the concomitant emphasis on man’s technological inventiveness.26 25 For a sound response to objections raised (by, for instance, Adkins 1973 and Maguire 1977) that there is an uneasy transition (encouraged by Protagoras himself) from the non-moral euboulia (¼ politikē technē, ‘the political art’) he originally claims to teach to the fully moral dikē and aidōs he ends up with, see Kerferd 1981: 43. Even if Protagoras did only claim to teach his students how to be better citizens in the pragmatic sense of ‘better’, as opposed to the (conventionally) moral meaning, such a claim can still be considered ethical. For Protagoras is still concerned with values, just ones which are unconventional and uncooperative. For the idea of non-moral values, see Berlin 1991: ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’, and Kekes 1993: 44–6. 26 A different, and more monistic, connotation of progress will be treated in respect of Thucydides at IV.3.A below.

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The second half of the ﬁfth century is littered with texts that seek to describe how man evolved from a primitive state, how he came to possess various skills and crafts, and how, with these, he managed to live in stable communities.27 All of the extant samples of this sort of anthropology extol, in one way or another, man’s ingenuity, his ability to use his own wits and resources to survive. So he is described by Sophocles as æØçæÆ (‘very clever’) and ç Ø e ÅåÆ åÆ bæ Kºd åø (‘having the resource of invention as something wise beyond expectation’), by Protagoras as attaining PæÆ (‘good resources’).28 Not only is the proliferation of such accounts interesting in that they are a reaction to and reﬂection of the humanistic turn we noted above (II.1), but also because they are very much in conﬂict with the import of certain previous traditions concerned with man’s development and his ability to fend for himself.29 Hesiod’s perspective of decline and fall is emblematic of this earlier tradition of thought about the course of history. His myth of the metals and his idea of a golden age are laden with pessimism and a heavy sense of belatedness: the best men and the best days have been and gone, and there is no turning back.30 Another aspect of this tradition considered man amēchanos, ‘helpless’ and ‘without resources’ in the face of the difﬁculties of life.31 How does the presence of written tracts on the advent of civilization and technological progress affect our postulation that Protagoras was a pluralist? The most obvious response harks back to the Arendtian point cited above that men, not man, live in the world. Protagoras gives the point new meaning when he tells us that life as we know it is actually the product of that plurality. Not only is man physically incapable of existing in isolation (no. 4), but he must act towards his fellow men in a way that is both purposeful and cooperative if he is to have any hope of building a successful community: 27

See Aeschylus Prometheus Vinctus 442–68, 478–506; Sophocles Antigone 332– 71; Euripides Supplices 201–13; Critias Sisyphus fr. 25.; Diodorus 1.8.1–7 (often thought to be based on Democritus). Cf. also the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine and Isocrates Panegyricus 28 ff. For discussions of progress in the sophistic age, see Havelock 1957: ch. 3; Guthrie 1971: 60–8; Dodds 1973: 5–13. 28 Antigone 347, 365 and Protagoras 321e3. 29 For an earlier, similar tradition, see Havelock 1957: ch. 5. 30 On history as regress, see Havelock 1957: ch. 2, where Plato’s Statesman and Laws are discussed in addition to Hesiod. Homer too can be said to have contributed to this pessimistic attitude, referring as he does to the greater splendour and strength of heroes gone by: e.g. Iliad 1.272, 5.304, 12.383, 12.449, 20.287 (Cole 1990: 1 n. 3). 31 See Dodds 1951: 29 ff. and Lloyd-Jones 1971: 36–54.

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the technical crafts, we remember, were distributed severally. And then there is a further point. Not only is man unable to survive in his so-called natural state because he is without his fellow men, but he is unable to survive there because he is without the political technē, a technē which is later identiﬁed with the norms of society. [I]t is a necessary condition for the maintenance of effective communities that there should be added to man’s innate equipment the requisite political virtues. And in the explanation and further interpretation which follows the myth it is made plain that the justice of which Protagoras is speaking consists of the nomima of the community. In other words Protagoras has produced a fundamental defence of nomos in relation to physis, in that nomos is a necessary condition for the maintenance of human societies’.32

It is important to note here that for other such speculative communities of the ﬁfth century, nomos is not treated with a comparable respect. The origin of justice that Glaucon conjures up in Book 2 of the Republic lies in a compromise between man’s two most natural (that is, phusis-driven) feelings: what is most desirable (to do wrong and avoid punishment) and what is most undesirable (to suffer wrong without being able to obtain redress) (359a). For Glaucon, a society founded on nomos is unnatural. For Protagoras, a society without it is inhuman. The fact that Protagoras makes nomoi a requisite for civilization becomes relevant only in so far as these nomoi are plural.33 For some scholars this is clearly the case: the myth reveals Protagoras ‘as a strong believer in the view that morality is based on nomos, the system of conventions and traditions embodied in the “usages” of a civilized community’—conventions and traditions which vary from civilized community to civilized community.34 For others, however, it might well be argued that the nomoi Protagoras refer to in his speech are supposed to be universal and are neither diverse nor mutable.35 This is partly true. We are, after all, explicitly told that the gifts of Zeus are distributed to mankind as a whole (no. 5). They are what

32

Kerferd 1981: 126. Also insofar as nomos incorporates the concept of value. That it does is conﬁrmed by the fact that its political usage is always prescriptive (Kerferd 1981: 112). 34 Taylor 1929: 244. 35 As is done by Moser and Kustas (1966: 111). Cf. Prior 2002: 319. 33

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make men human: he who has no share in them is ousted from the community like a plague (322d4–5). At this point we come across another speciﬁc parallel between Protagorean thought and pluralism. While Protagoras in the Great Speech does not espouse a universal and static human nature, he does voice a belief in a sort of minimum threshold or common core to what it means to be human.36 Yet, instead of grounding this in phusis, Protagoras brilliantly founds it on something less rigid yet equally stable: the process of socialization and education.37 For while in the myth the universal element is represented by the divinely apportioned qualities of dikē and aidōs, in the logos it is represented by the constant lessons society inculcates in all of its youth and the values the youth, in turn, choose to adopt.38 Above this common threshold is where value pluralism thrives. Every person in every state, on Protagoras’ view, must have some share of what he believes to constitute political virtue in order to be able to function as a citizen. But this by no means precludes variability in the remainder of values and nomoi between cities or even within a single city. Protagoras makes this clear in his ﬂute-playing analogy: there is certainly a variability in musical excellence, despite a base-level of competence (327b7–c4). Furthermore, we are never led to believe that dikē and aidōs themselves are one thing for all communities. Rather, we are told that they are passed on through the team effort of parents, teachers, poetry, and laws. It may be true that ‘children are taught justice, piety, temperance, and courage, i.e., virtues required in all civilizations, not merely in any speciﬁc polis’.39 But—and this is a big ‘but’—these values are bound to have different connotations (if not meanings) in different communities. The fact that all societies develop language, for example, is not to say that they all develop the same one. Indeed, Protagoras himself 36 On this notion in pluralism, see I.3.C above. On its existence in Protagoras, cf. Taylor 1991: 101; Gagarin 2002: 32; Woodruff 2002: 203. This modicum of universalism is reﬂective of the degree of objectivity that runs through all of Protagoras’ thought. See II.4 above. 37 See 323c3–8 and cf. Kerferd 1953: 43. 38 There is a heavy emphasis on the fact that the acquisition of excellence is ‘by choice’ (K KØ º Æ) at 323c5–7, 323d6–c1 and 324a1–3; cf. 324c4–5, c7–8, and by teaching and training at 324c3–5. 324c5–d1. Cf. Gagarin 1969: 143. We should note the relevant Protagorean belief (DK80 A3): ç ø ŒÆd IŒ ø Ø ÆŒÆºÆ EÆØ (‘Teaching requires nature and training’). 39 Moser and Kustas 1966: 111–12.

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draws an analogy between teachers of virtue and teachers of Greek (327e1–328a1).40 A ﬁnal connection between pluralism and progress rests on the notion of human inventiveness. By enumerating man’s use of skills and techniques to create a habitable world for himself, Protagoras can be taken as making a more trenchant point. For he is drawing attention to the fact that, just as much as he was for constructing beds and tilling the soil, it was man himself who was responsible for making laws and determining values (326d5–6): ºØ ı ªæłÆÆ, IªÆŁH ŒÆd ÆºÆØH Ł H æÆÆ (‘The city made its laws, the inventions of good and ancient lawmakers’).41 The recognition that the laws and norms of a city are human constructs has an important implication.42 It gives yet another layer of theoretical support to the acceptance of value (or cultural) pluralism: societies consisting of different men and different histories will make laws for themselves which reﬂect those differences. There exists a useful parallel in a passage where Diodorus describes the development of speech (Diod. Sic.1.8.3–4): B çøB Iı ŒÆd ıªŒ åıÅ hÅ KŒ F ŒÆ Oºª

ØÆæŁæF a º Ø, ŒÆd æe Iºººı ØŁÆ ºÆ æd Œı H Œ Øø ªæØ çØ ÆPE ØBÆØ c æd ±ø æÅ Æ Øø b ıÅø ªØø ŒÆŁ –ÆÆ c NŒıÅ, På › çø Æ å Ø c Øº Œ, Œø ‰ ıå ıÆø a º Ø. Øe ŒÆd Æı æÆØ åÆæÆŒBæÆ

ØÆºŒø . . . And though the sounds which they made were at ﬁrst unintelligible and indistinct, yet gradually they came to give articulation to their speech, and by agreeing with one another upon symbols for each thing which presented itself to them, made known among themselves the signiﬁcance which was to be attached to each term. But since groups of this kind arose over every part of the inhabited world, not all men had the same language, inasmuch as every group organized the

40

On this point, see also Cratylus 385d9–e3. For this idea in Protagorean thought, see also Theaetetus 167c4–7, 172a1–4 and Gillespie 1910: 474–5. Cf. Popper 1999: 185. 42 There is an interesting connection here with Rorty 1989: ch. 1, which is a fascinating consideration of how the contingency of (man-made) language is responsible over the past 200 years for the growing belief that truth is made—and, therefore, mutable—rather than found. Cf. Lloyd 1979: 259 on Xenophanes, fr. 18 in this respect. 41

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elements of its speech by mere chance. This is the explanation of the present existence of every conceivable kind of language . . . 43

If we insert here the concept of ‘values’ for that of ‘words’ (º Ø) and ‘moral systems’ for ‘languages’ ( ØÆºŒø), we can see how the evolution of a plurality of moral codes is as inevitable as that of a plurality of languages. The building-blocks of each are determined by the gradual process of cultural consensus and not by identiﬁcation with some absolute and extemporal standard. As Havelock observes, ‘[m]orals and laws can be viewed in this way a posteriori as a kind of second language, part of the historical process, which like language itself never reaches ﬁnality. Their validity is temporal, not eternal.’44 It is perhaps Herodotus’ Histories, and the historian’s attitude towards differences in language, which best illustrate the interworking of nomos and dialect: what the value of courage means to a particular people, for example, can be given a ‘cultural’ translation.45

B. Education and democracy: the rule of the many The second and third sophistic themes addressed in the Great Speech, education and democracy, can be treated together. That the ﬁfth century was a hotbed of political and educational reform is a commonplace. Much has been written on the rise of a radical democracy at Athens and the related phenomenon of a secondary education for hire.46 The mutually enforcing relationship between the two is evident. If the new democracy increased both the number of political speakers and the size of the ‘audience’ (in both juries and the assembly), it is natural that a higher demand for rhetorical training would follow. Similarly, if rhetorical expertise and political excellence are no longer the exclusive province of the aristocracy, but can be taught and acquired by anyone who can afford it, there can be no justiﬁcation 43

Tr. C. H. Oldfather. Havelock 1957: 29. 45 Munson 2005: 32 (see e.g. 4.65.2). 46 See e.g. Jaeger 1967: 286–331 and Jarratt 1991: 98–107. The link between democracy and education is exhibited on a personal level by the relationship between Pericles and the sophists, particularly Protagoras. In general, see Kerferd 1981: ch. 3; O’sullivan 1995; Podlecki 1998: 93–9; Schiappa 2003: 170, 178–80. For a more sceptical view of Pericles’ involvement with the intellectuals of his day, see Stadter 1991. 44

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for excluding such people from involvement in government.47 If everyone can learn, everyone can participate. Protagoras, of course, went beyond this conditional. As we have just seen, he justiﬁed democracy by making possession of the politikē technē a prerequisite to even belonging to a community (322e2–323a3). In doing so, he espoused an egalitarianism based on the opportunity every (male citizen) child has to learn. He justiﬁed his teaching, however, by his promise to provide an expertise beyond what the normal process of socialization would instil.48 The most obvious connection between Protagoras’ views on education and democracy and pluralism is that democracy is the form of government associated with the many as opposed to the few or to the one. Herodotus’ constitutional debate crystallizes this point.49 The rule of the many is set against oligarchy and monarchy and argued for by Otanes because it involves open debate between all people.50 So too Pericles echoes the importance of debate for democracy in his panegyric of Athens (Thucydides 2.40.2). For Protagoras, this form of government should be privileged because men, not ‘man’, live in communities, and also, we might surmise, because of the logical implications of the man-measure and two-logoi theses: because each of these men has equal access to truth and because the most effective political decisions are made as a result of the informed weighing of multiple and competing alternatives.51 This takes us, once more, back to Arendt and her belief that every single man is capable of innovative political action and of contributing something, however small, to the process of decision-making on moral and political matters.52 Purely technical matters, of course, are delegated to experts. Even though we are never told explicitly why this is the case, as Taylor contends, ‘[i]t is . . . hard to see how a satisfactory answer could fail to embody the view that, while a technical expert is one who knows how best to attain an agreed end, questions of policy are themselves largely questions The sophistic treatise known as the ‘Anonymous Iamblichi’ (DK 89) stresses that aretē is available through education and training. 48 Cf. Kerferd 1981: 144. 49 3.80–2. This debate is reﬂective of sophistic argumentation and has been linked with Protagoras. See IV.2.B below. 50 Cf. Euripides, Supplices 438–9. 51 See II.2–3 above. On the relationship between the man-measure doctrine and Protagoras’ political theory, see Taylor 1991: 83–4 and cf. Lloyd 1979: 244 n. 73. 52 This is also a theme of Karl Popper’s work. 47

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about what ends are to be pursued, or which among a number of agreed ends are to be accorded the greatest importance’.53 Because every policy preference (and the values it encompasses) presented to the assembly is an end unto itself, it will be ‘right’ to the person who puts it forward. No one citizen is more qualiﬁed to decide the best course of action than any other: in the domain of politics, every man’s judgement has value (323a–b). Why, then, should not as many opinions as possible be heard? This, as we recall (II.4.C), is the positive role antilogy can play in deliberation. And yet, as we also saw earlier, despite the overarching plurality of opinions and advice that can be offered on any single matter of policy, Protagoras believed that there are some that will be objectively better than others. Indeed, his own services are designed to help young democrats determine precisely what these are (328a8–b5). The various arenas of democracy would be the places he expected them to put such arguments to the test. It is here where the community must choose the all-thingsconsidered better or orthoteros (‘more correct’) course of action.54 It is here where it must work towards a consensus with which the majority of its members can live.55

3. THE UNITY OF VIRTUE(S) Much ink has been spilled on the Socratic paradox of the unity of virtue in knowledge.56 Thankfully, we can pass over the host of uncertainties that continue to plague this debate: our focus here is on Protagoras and it is evident from Plato’s description of him in the Protagoras that he denies the unity of virtue. In fact, the section of the Protagoras which addresses the great sophist’s views on the nature of value and value conﬂict is the most explicit source for Protagorean pluralism we have.57 While a speculation such as Mario 53

Taylor 1991: 83. Cf. Pericles’ remark at Thucydides 2.40.2 that the Athenians are special because Œæ . . . OæŁH a æªÆÆ (‘we judge policy correctly’). 55 Thucydides’ view on political consensus as contrasted with Protagoras’ will be considered at V.2.B below. 56 Among the most probing discussions are Vlastos 1973: ch. 10; Taylor 1991: 103–8; Devereux 1992; Cooper 1999: ch. 3; Penner 1999. 57 I am using the words ‘value’ and ‘virtue’ interchangeably throughout. 54

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Untersteiner’s is insightful (and useful for our argument)—‘[i]t may be that in the — æd Iæ H the subject treated, in view of the plural title, was not that of the virtues in the absolute sense, but of various moral manifestations which together and separately take this name’— it possesses academic weight only to the extent that it builds upon what Protagoras 328d3–334c6 has to offer.58 That being said, there are good independent reasons to posit that a belief in the plurality of value—if not value pluralism itself—had a larger following in the ﬁfth century and that Protagoras was not alone in espousing it. We can infer from Aristotle that Gorgias held something along the same lines, as he is described as someone who enumerated the different virtues.59 The opening of the Helen speaks to this claim: cosmos (‘what is becoming’) is there described as having different meanings in different applications. Similarly, there is Meno, the ardent admirer of Gorgias, who stubbornly resists Socrates’ attempts to pin him down to a single deﬁnition for the term aretē in Plato’s dialogue of the same name. For Meno, virtue is not one thing but many (71e1–72a4): æH , N º Ø I æe Iæ , Þﬁ Ø, ‹Ø ÆoÅ Kd I æe Iæ , ƒŒÆe r ÆØ a B º ø æ Ø, ŒÆd æÆ f b çºı s Ø E, f KåŁæf ŒÆŒH, ŒÆd ÆPe PºÆ EŁÆØ Å b ØF ÆŁ E. N b º Ø ªıÆØŒe Iæ , P åÆº e Ø ºŁ E, ‹Ø

E ÆPc c NŒÆ s NŒ E, ﬁÇı a ŒÆd ŒÆŒ sÆ F I æ . ŒÆd ¼ººÅ Kd ÆØ e Iæ , ŒÆd ŁÅº Æ ŒÆd ¼ææ , ŒÆd æ ıæı I æ , N b º Ø, Kº ıŁæı, N b º Ø, ºı. ŒÆd ¼ººÆØ ººÆØ Iæ Æ NØ, u PŒ IæÆ N E Iæ B æØ ‹Ø K· ŒÆŁ ŒÅ ªaæ H æ ø ŒÆd H ºØŒØH æe ŒÆ æª Œø ﬁ H Iæ KØ . . . First, if you want the virtue of a man, it is easy: the virtue of a man is to manage the affairs of the city sufﬁciently and, in doing so, to help his friends and to harm his enemies and to take care that no harm befalls himself. If you are interested in the virtue of woman, it is not difﬁcult to relay this either: it is necessary that she manage her home well, preserve her possessions, and be obedient to her husband. There is another virtue for a child, either female or male, or for an old man, if you want, or for a free man and for a slave, if you are interested in those. There are very many other virtues, so that one is not perplexed to say what a virtue is. There is a virtue for every action and every age, for each one of us and in respect to each task . . . 58 59

Untersteiner: 1954: 13. Politics 1260a26 ff. See Consigny 2001: 78.

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Virtue, on this view, is a multi–faceted property which is dependent on to whom it is applied. For a man it is one thing, for a woman or slave or child quite another.60 Finally, of course, we can mention that Protagoras too found ‘good’ a relational, and therefore multiple, property (prot. 334b6–7): ØŒº d KØ e IªÆŁe ŒÆd Æ Æ (‘good is a diverse and manifold thing’). And while it is important to notice that Protagoras’ comment here does not propose relativism or pluralism in the evaluative, meta-ethical sense outlined earlier (II.4),61 it does illustrate a commitment to a diverse conception of value.

Plural, non-entailing, and objective values Whereas the sentiments of Gorgias, Meno, and Protagoras just discussed are focused on the fact that virtue, as a whole, is something relative, Protagoras is also concerned in the dialogue with the more trenchant philosophical question: in what sense is it whole? And here we are moving into the domain of meta-ethics. He agrees with Socrates to the extent that virtue is one thing and justice, temperance, and piety are its parts (329c6–d4). But he understands those parts as tantamount to parts of the face and not to parts of gold (329d4–e2). In other words—and this will prove to be a crucial distinction (see section 4 below)—Protagoras believes that the virtues are qualitatively different from one another. As the eyes, ears, and nose all have their separate functions and realms of activity, so too with justice, temperance, and piety (330a4–b3). He makes this point no less than six times with varying degrees of forcefulness and within less than four Stephanus pages, despite the pressure of an increasingly adversarial Socrates.62 60

The view that virtue means something different for different people is, of course, unacceptable to Socrates. He spends much of the ﬁrst half of the dialogue berating his young friend for giving him a ‘swarm of excellences’ when he only wants one. See Meno 74a6–10, 75a4–5, and 77a5. Cf. Rorty 1999: 267. 61 See Taylor 1991: 132–4; Prior 2002: 319; Fine 2003: 150; Lee 2005: 17. 62 330a3–4 (each virtue is something different from the others); 330a4–b3 (each virtue has its own power); 330b3–6 (none of the other parts of virtue are like knowledge, none like justice, none like temperance, and none like holiness); 331a1–5 (none of the parts of virtue are like the others); 331a7–c2 (there is a distinction between holiness and justice); 331d1–e4 (holiness and justice resemble one another to some degree, only in the sense that all things, even opposites, can be said to possess some similarity). Socrates restates Protagoras’ position that ‘wisdom’, ‘temperance’,

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Furthermore, on Protagoras’ view, the virtues do not entail one another. Conﬂicts between them are possible, in fact, inevitable (329e5–6, 349d6–8): ººd I æ E NØ, ¼ ØŒØ , ŒÆd ŒÆØØ Æs, çd b h (‘There are many brave men who are not just, and many just men who are not wise’); æ Ø ªaæ ººf H IŁæø I ØŒøı b ZÆ ŒÆd IØøı . . . I æ Øı

b ØÆç æ ø (‘You will ﬁnd many men who are very unjust and unholy but exceedingly brave).63 This statement is hugely signiﬁcant for Protagoras as pluralist. In contrast to the Socratic claim that to have one virtue is to have them all—a claim that seems to eliminate the potential for collision—Protagoras is expressing the straightforwardly pluralist sentiment that courage, justice, and wisdom may very well ﬁnd themselves in competing, rather than cooperative, situations. It is clear, then, that Protagoras accepted that values are both plural and non-entailing. If we combine this evidence with what we gleaned in Chapter II about Protagoras’ position on objectivity, it is plausible to surmise, with modern pluralism, that Protagoras not only believed in a plurality of non-entailing values but in a plurality of non-entailing, objective values. This becomes especially likely if we take into consideration the fact that values, or perspectives on values, can constitute the chrēmata of the man-measure statement (II.4.A).64 We have already seen (1.B above) that Protagoras can be read as maintaining something akin to cultural pluralism: namely, that what appears just to a city is in actuality just. Indeed, the man-measure statement is at its most convincing in its application to matters of ethics: matters on which disagreement is most rampant and most ‘courage’, ‘justice’, and ‘holiness’ are not ﬁve names for one thing, but separate entities with separate powers akin to the parts of the face at 349b1–c5. 63 So too for Protagoras, the good and the beneﬁcial do not entail one another (333e1–2), nor do daring and wisdom (350b1–4), daring and courage (350c7–d1, 351a4–5), capability and strength (350e6–7), or the pleasant and the good (351c7–d7). 64 The Theaetetus makes clear that Protagoras believed that man is the measure both of qualities of matter (coldness, bitterness: 152b, 166e, 171e) as well as more ethical and political judgements (157d, 167c, 172a–b, 177c–d). Sextus conﬁrms this, relaying that it applies to all phantasiai and doxai (‘appearances and opinions’, DK80 B1). Schiappa argues (2003: 118) that ø åæÅø conveys the widest possible range of things. See also Versenyi 1962: 179–81; Burnyeat 1976: 45–6; Lee 2005: 15– 17. Fine distinguishes (2003: 19, 133–5, 161–2) between narrow and broad Protagoreanism, whereby the former refers solely to perceptions and the latter to all beliefs. She insists (pp. 19, 134, 162) that the Theaetetus considers both.

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deep-seated; matters on which the existence of irreducibly multiple perspectives is most understandable. This is implied by Plato at Theaetetus 177c6–d2 and is highlighted on a more practical level by Socrates’ inability in the early dialogues to pin down a univocal deﬁnition of virtues such as piety or courage or justice. Book 1 of the Republic offers at least three distinct deﬁnitions of justice, all of which existed in ﬁfth-century thought and none of which is necessarily conducive to any another: Cephalus’ ‘truthfulness and returning what one has borrowed’ (331b), Polemarchus’ ‘giving every man his due’ (331e), and Thrasymachus’ ‘interest of the stronger’ (338c), ‘someone else’s good’ (343c).65 Altogether, Protagoras seems to be suggesting something rather profound. With his insistence that the virtues are different from one another like parts of the face, he seems to be implying that certain conﬂicts between the virtues will not be resolvable in a unique way. That is, if a situation transpired in which I had to choose between one nugget of gold and another and my aim was to maximize the amount of gold I had, I could simply (and literally) weigh my options. The heavier or larger piece would be the one I would choose, with no thought as to what I would be choosing against. If, however (elaborating from Protagoras’ own analogy), I was in a situation in which I had to choose between sight or hearing or, to cast the choice in a moral light, between depriving someone of sight or hearing, no such measuring procedure would be available to me. My options here are too different to rank determinately. There is no common standard against which I can assess them or into which I can cash them in order to render them commensurable. I am left to choose based on the exigencies of the particular circumstances and to bear the consequences of what I lose in the balance. Whether Protagoras actually thinks that conﬂicts between virtues are irresolvable in this way hinges on his conception of incommensurability (section 4 below).

Protagoras’ position on the unity of virtues Before proceeding to Protagoras’ relationship with this idea of value or virtue commensurability, however, a potential objection about the soundness of Protagoras’ belief in value plurality must be considered. 65 Perhaps this is why a tradition exists in which it is said that the entirety of the Republic is to be found in Protagoras’ ØºªÆØ (Diogenes Laertius 3.37 and 57).

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For it could conceivably be argued that, in the end, Protagoras abandons it. This is, after all, what apparently happens at 349d2–5 when the issue of the unity of the virtues resurfaces, where ‘[i]t seems likely that Protagoras’ use here of the formula “resemble one another fairly clearly” amounts to a somewhat grudging admission that the four virtues are either identical or as nearly so as makes no difference . . . ’.66 The phrase ‘grudging admission’ is key. Looking back to the original discussion, we notice the ﬁrst signs of Protagoras’ discontent at 333b3–4, when he only ‘very reluctantly’ agrees to Socrates’ thesis, and at 333d1–3, where he describes it as ‘uncongenial’. At 333e2–4 he is clearly ‘annoyed’ and ready for a ﬁght. In the course of the conversation, however, he does start to make concessions (331b8–c4): P ı Ø Œ E, çÅ, t ŒæÆ , oø ±ºF r ÆØ, u

ıªåøæBÆØ ØŒÆØÅ ‹Ø r ÆØ ŒÆd c ›Ø ÅÆ ŒÆØ, Iºº Ø Œ E K ÆPﬁH Øçæ r ÆØ. Iººa F ØÆçæ Ø; çÅ· N ªaæ º Ø, ø E ŒÆd ØŒÆØÅ ‹Ø ŒÆd ›Ø Å ŒÆØ. ‘It does not really seem to me to be so simple, Socrates’, he said, ‘that I should agree that justice is holy and holiness just—it seems to me that there is some difference in it.’ ‘But,’ he said ‘what does it matter? If you like, let us say that justice is holy and holiness just.’67

Protagoras does not quite agree with Socrates here that justice and holiness are one and the same thing, or predicative of each other—for him, things are not that simple.68 But he is willing to concede the point for the sake of moving on. When Socrates bans such concessions, Protagoras is compelled to elucidate his criticism further, challenging the unwarranted shift in the concept of ‘similar’ (331d2–e4).69 Socrates claims ‘astonishment’, and it is here where Protagoras, realizing that he and Socrates are beginning seriously to talk past one another, cuts the conversation short (331e6–332a1): P ı, çÅ, oø, P Ø P b Æs ‰ Ø Œ E Y ŁÆØ 66

Taylor 1991: 149. Cf. Bartlett 2003: 617, 619, and 623. Denyer comments (2008: 128) that the ‘imperative ø suggests that Protagoras is granting the point more because he does not wish to argue about it than because it has really convinced him’ (citing analogies at Symposium 201c, Gorgias 510a, and Sophist 231a). So too, ‘when Protagoras adds N º Ø to the imperative, he gives the impression that he is granting the point only to humour Socrates’. 68 Cf. a similar sentiment about the interrelation of the pleasant and good at 351c7–d7. 69 See Gallop 1961: 90–3. 67

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(‘ “Not quite,” he said, “but then again not in the way you suppose either”’).70 I think it is fair to say that the genuine (not to mention mutual) conversation stops here. The context makes clear that any putative concessions Protagoras makes after this point are just that: putative. And also grudging.71 The tension between Socrates and Protagoras, continually mounting through the dialogue, comes to its head with Protagoras’ brush-off at 331e6–332a1. The following exchange (332a2–333b6) contains a string of Socratic questions to which Protagoras, in the vein of one of Socrates’ mindlessly devoted interlocutors, answers with the appropriate (and shortened) response. He is made to offer nothing of his own. When the conversation resumes at 349a6, however, Protagoras becomes an active player once more. And yet, we should note, only with reluctance, much cajoling by the group, and a none-too-subtle prompt by Socrates to change his mind in order to move the conversation forward (348b1–d1). This time previous experience leads him to try a new and more speciﬁc tack. Surely he can convince Socrates that, of all the virtues, it is obvious that courage can conﬂict with prudence or justice or piety. It seems, therefore, that any of Protagoras’ concessions on the point of the unity of the virtues should be understood as polite annoyance rather than genuine agreement. As David Gallop suggests, Protagoras can afford to make such concessions because they do not damage his argument in any way. ‘Protagoras’ original assertions survive the whole argument completely intact.’72

4. HEDONISM, COMMENSURABILITY, AND THE METRIKĒ TECHNĒ

A. A common currency and a technē of deliberation For all of the controversy that has surrounded the nature of the ‘unity’ Socrates intends the virtues to possess in the Protagoras, there On the range of possible strengths the expression P ı can carry from ‘not exactly’ to ‘not at all’, see Taylor 1991: 121. 71 Cf. 360d3–e5 for a similar sense of reluctance at the progression of Socrates’ argument. 72 Gallop 1961: 90 n. 1, 93. For a reading of the dialogue that sees Protagoras and Socrates as more in line with one another theoretically, see Gagarin 1969. 70

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has been even more concerning the hedonism he appears to promote at the end of that dialogue. While we are again (and fortunately) exempt from certain facets of the argument—for example, how the Socratic hedonism of the Protagoras is in friction with his views expressed in the other Platonic dialogues that treat the subject, whether the historic Socrates could ever truly advocate such a doctrine, the strangeness of the Socratic denial of weakness of the will— our judgement on why he chooses to use hedonism at all is relevant to how we understand Protagoras. For whether Socrates is a hedonist or not, he does use the primacy of pleasure to necessitate a special form of decision-making. It is a form of decision-making which Protagoras must reject. In this way, with Martha Nussbaum, we can conclude: The Protagoras has long been found anomalous among Plato’s early and middle dialogues because of Socrates’ apparent endorsement of the thesis that pleasure is the only intrinsic end or good . . . I want to suggest that both the adoption of the hedonistic premise (essential to Socrates’ argument) and the vagueness surrounding the strategy can be best understood in the light of Socrates’ goal of ﬁnding the right sort of practical technē, one that will do what the arts of Protagoras could not. We will be saved only by something that will assimilate deliberation to weighing and measuring; this, in turn, requires a unit of measure, some external end about which we can all agree, and which can render all alternatives commensurable. Pleasure enters the argument as an attractive candidate for this role: Socrates adopts it because of the science it promises, rather than for its own intrinsic plausibility.73

This section of the Protagoras—indeed, in some ways the dialogue as a whole—is about discovering a technē of deliberation. We addressed above (II.4.D) Protagoras’ own views on deliberation, how and by whom a dilemma can be most successfully handled. Through the intelligent assessment of alternatives and with the help of an expert, an all-things-considered better course of action is likely to emerge. What we did not learn, however, is how exactly Protagoras understands the nature of the alternatives in question—beyond whether they are objective entities or not. The evidence led us to infer that, on his view, they can be irreducibly plural and equally valid. But can we say anything more about them? That is, can we make a claim that they are

73

Nussbaum 1986: 110.

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incommensurable and further cement our contention that there are seeds of value pluralism in Protagoras’ thought? Yes, we can: through Socrates’ belief in the commensurability of values and his insistence that the metrikē technē is what will save our lives. Protagoras believes in the judicious, non-ﬁnite weighing of options. And he believes that man is the measure. Both of these pluralist sentiments, which make use of the concept of measurement, are perverted by Socrates in the ﬁnale of the Protagoras. For Socrates, human salvation must not depend on man with all his imperfections to act as his own measuring implement. Nor may it depend on the better or more straight answer such a man may (or may not) stumble across. Rather, on Socrates’ view, what we need is a craft that will produce an exactly calculated and unambiguously right answer—an answer, that is, which is both unique and determinate. His argument is designed to provide just this: to solve the problem of irresolvable moral conﬂict by introducing the concept of commensurability. That is, he considers the best way to ensure success in moral deliberation is somehow to render the given alternatives or ethical claims commensurable, to create a way in which they can be weighed against one another with perfect precision. We are alerted to the importance of commensurability for the dialogue writ large as it opens with an example of how such a notion works.74 Although Socrates has just been in the company of his beloved Alcibiades (with whom things were going quite well), a most handsome boy at a most handsome time of his life (309a1– b2), he tells his anonymous friend something ‘remarkable’: he did not even take much notice of his beautiful companion. In fact, on a number of occasions he forgot about him altogether. ‘Have you met someone more beautiful?’ the friend asks in disbelief. He certainly has: Protagoras. For Socrates, e çÆ ŒººØ çÆ ŁÆØ (‘the wisest seems to be the more beautiful’, 309c11–12). Wisdom and beauty, that is, can be interchanged with one another with no conceptual difﬁculty at all. In the very ﬁrst lines of the Protagoras, then, we are offered a practical anecdote that depicts the Socratic inclination towards commensurability, as well as the unity of the virtues. It is not until the end, however, that he will offer a theoretical justiﬁcation of its importance.

74

Ibid. 92 (pace Richardson 1990: 24–5).

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B. Socrates’ argument The Socratic argument proceeds in ﬁve steps. The ﬁrst and most crucial step is the equation of the pleasant with the good (351b3– e11, reiterated at 355a1–5): the rest will depend upon the intersubstitutability of these two terms. The next step is the presentation of the common man’s claim to akrasia (352d4–e2, 353c1–e1). Akrasia is the scenario in which ordinary deliberative rationality breaks down, where people, ªØªŒÆ a ºØÆ PŒ KŁº Ø æ Ø, Ke ÆPE, Iººa ¼ººÆ æ Ø (‘who know what is best are unwilling to do it, even though it is in their power, and do something else’, 352d6–7) because they are e H H AŁÆØ (‘overcome by pleasure’, 352e6–a1). In other words, a moral dilemma arises in which there are two alternatives and a deliberating agent chooses the morally inferior one because he succumbs to some overpowering whim of emotion or desire. The third step is Socrates’ rejection of the very possibility of akrasia. It is inane, he contends, for a rational person to fail to choose the morally better (read: more good) option because he is overcome by pleasure. For, as we have seen earlier, pleasure and the good are identical with one another. And so, the putatively akratic situation yields this absurdity (355c1–8): . . . ºªø ‹Ø ˆØªŒø › ¼Łæø a ŒÆŒa ‹Ø ŒÆŒa KØ, ‹ø ÆPa Ø E. Ka s Ø A æÅÆØ, “˜ØÆ ;” H , ç · “ ‘!e F;” KŒ E Kæ ÆØ A· E b e b B PŒØ Ø

N E—¼ºº ªaæ ZÆ ºÅç Id B B e IçÆŁ —KŒ ø ﬁ

c IŒæØ ŁÆ ŒÆd ºªø ‹Ø H —“ ‘!e ;” ç Ø. "F IçÆŁF, ç c ˜Æ. Let us say that a man, even though he knows that some things are bad, does them anyway. If someone were to ask us ‘why?’, we will answer that he was overcome. ‘By what?’ that person will ask us. But it is no longer possible for us to say that it is by pleasure—for it has taken another name instead of pleasure: the good. Indeed, we would then answer that man and say that he has been overcome. ‘By what?’ he will ask. ‘By the good’, we will say, I suppose!

The fourth step introduces the key ingredient for conﬂict resolution. What makes akrasia impossible lies in what makes good things not worth bad things and vice versa (355d7–8): size (355d8–e4). If we can determine precisely the amount of good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, each of our alternatives represents, decision-making

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becomes simple, even more so because we have a single common standard, pleasure, into which all of our options can be converted and then assessed against each other (356b3–c1): Ka b ªaæ Æ æe Æ ƒB ﬁ , a Çø I d ŒÆd º ø ºÅÆ· Ka

b ºıÅæa æe ºıÅæ, a Kºø ŒÆd ØŒæ æÆ· Ka b Æ æe ºıÅæ, Ka b a IØÆæa æ ººÅÆØ e H ø, K a Kªªf e H ææø K a ææø e H Kªª, ÆÅ c æAØ æÆŒ K ﬁ w i ÆF KB ﬁ · Ka b a Æ e H IØÆæH, P æÆŒÆ. If you weigh pleasant things against pleasant things, you must always take the greater and the more; if you weigh painful things again painful things, you must always take the lesser and the smaller. If you weigh pleasures against pains, however, and if the pains are outweighed by the pleasures, no matter which are nearer and which farther, you must do that which brings the pleasures about. If the pleasures are outweighed by the pains, though, you must not do those things.

The only reason this process would fail is if we were somehow confused about the sizes of the packages, if we were somehow deceived by appearances into thinking that the option that contained less pleasure actually contained more (356c4–8). The ﬁnal step of Socrates’ argument is devised to eliminate just this potential. At 356d4–e4 he concludes that it is the art of measurement, the metrikē technē, that will ensure our ‘salvation’ (øÅæÆ), and not the ‘power of appearances’ ( F çÆØı ÆØ), because it is the metrikē technē that will always, infallibly, be able to determine the morally superior alternative: j ÆoÅ b A KºÆ ŒÆE K Ø ¼ø ŒÆd Œø ººŒØ ÆºÆ Ø ÆPa ŒÆØ Æº Ø ŒÆd K ÆE æ Ø ŒÆd K ÆE Æƒæ Ø H ªºø ŒÆd ØŒæH, b æÅØŒc ¼Œıæ b i KÅ F e çÆÆ, ÅºÆÆ b e IºÅŁb ıåÆ i KÅ å Ø c łıåc ıÆ Kd ﬁH IºÅŁ E ŒÆd ø i e ; Is it not that the [power of appearances] leads us astray and often makes us change our minds about the same things and dither both in our actions and our choices about large and small things; while the measuring device, on the other hand, would make this appearance powerless, and by showing us the truth it would make our soul, abiding by that truth, content, and it would save our life?

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The one leads to the ﬁrm grasp of truth, the other to ethical confusion and vacillation. And so we are presented with a seemingly unimpeachable method with which uniquely to solve moral disagreement.

C. Protagoras on incommensurability It remains to be seen how central a role the idea of commensurability plays in accomplishing this. We brieﬂy noted above that pleasure provided us with one such common currency we could use to cash out any other value. It must be emphasized that this is essential for the success of the metrikē technē. Moral alternatives can be weighed against one another in the way suggested only if they are qualitatively homogeneous, that is to say, commensurable or determinate.75 This is the hidden premise at work in Socrates’ argument.76 For even if we have managed to convert all our alternatives into quantitative parcels of pleasure, there exists the all-too-real possibility that they will vary from one another in some non-numerical way that will make them, ultimately, unrankable. It is by assuming that there is nothing special, distinct, or uniquely appealing about the ‘lower’ or ‘lesser’ option that Socrates can legitimately deem someone irrational for not selecting it. In contrast to Socrates’ insistence on the commensurability of the virtues, we have developed the sense, from his likening the virtues to parts of the face and not to parts of gold, that Protagoras recognized their inherent incommensurability. This hypothesis can be further 75

Cf. Wiggins: 1978–9 and Seung and Bonevac: 1992. Seaford shows (2004), through the existence of coinage, that the concept of commensurability was a live one in the period under investigation. In this way, it is not anachronistic to attribute a belief in commensurability or incommensurability to ﬁfth-century thinkers. On the contrary, the Greek understanding of the fungibility and susceptibility to measurement of coined money accords particularly well with Protagoras’ use of the gold analogy, as well as Socrates’ use of monetary terminology for ethical reckoning (e.g. Phaedo 69a9). 76 See Gallop 1964: 125–6; Gagarin 1969: 157–8; Irwin 1977: 102–14; Nussbaum 1986: 114; Kahn 1996: 239; Rudebusch 1999: 21–7. Richardson 1990 is an interesting, though in my view ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to argue that Socrates’ hedonic calculus is not dependent on the notion of commensurability. He questions (p. 24) what evidence there is that Plato was concerned in the Protagoras to remove occasions of value conﬂict or whether he even intended to have Socrates present a decision procedure (p. 25). Perhaps the best answer is the identity of his opponent: these are, after all, highly logical concerns for the upholder of the man-measure doctrine.

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supported by returning to his assertion that man, in all his plurality, is the only measure of what is. We saw earlier (II.4) that, in a clash between two outlooks (which may represent two distinct values or perceptions of truth), Protagoras left room for the idea that there may not be a single right resolution. His dicta led us to believe that there could be multiple right answers or realities even though, on a practical level, only one could be chosen and some would be better than others. Now there is a way in which a belief in the irreducible plurality of reality presupposes the concept of incommensurability. For if one man’s viewpoint were commensurable with another’s, it would be possible, by ranking them or assessing them against some other ﬁxed standard or goal, to deem one of them correct or the ‘truth’ (in the Platonic sense discussed above). From Plato’s point of view, this mechanism would yield a more than adequate defence of the Protagorean position; indeed, it is a mechanism which Socrates calls into play, in different ways, in several dialogues (see section D below). And yet, crucially, in the apology that Plato provides Protagoras with in the Theaetetus the sophist is made to say nothing about access to a common standard or criterion by which to justify himself; he simply mentions the fact that he is an expert and capable of changing people’s beliefs. In this way, it is plausible to suggest that commensurability was not a viable way out of some of the perceived difﬁculties in upholding the man-measure principle (and, by extension, the law of non-contradiction) for the historical Protagoras. Rather, he is better understood as thinking that every man provides his own measure and that things are to him the way he sees them—even if his perception conﬂicts with someone else’s—without recourse to a common tool by which to judge measure against measure. The irreducibility, therefore, involved in the homo mensura helps to shed light on his disagreement with Socrates in the Protagoras, and lends support to the case that the sophist himself accepted the fact of virtue incommensurability. The Protagoras provides two additional (albeit subtle) pieces of evidence for the hypothesis that Protagoras accepted the incommensurability of some virtues and viewpoints. The ﬁrst is that it is highly conceivable that Plato had Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine in mind when he postulated the art of measurement as the answer to moral disagreement. Not only is there the obvious link between æ and æØŒ, but there is the fact that Socrates poses his conclusion in terms of a contrast between the metrikē technē

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and ‘the power of appearances’. ‘What else can this “power of appearances” be but an indirect reference to the appearance-is-reality doctrine and its bearing on the good life?’77 As we saw earlier, for Protagoras the appearances and opinions of men, for all their instability, are objectively real. If two competing alternatives appear one way to one person and another way to a second person, then the relationship between them is as appears to each. In this way, the alternatives will never be reducible to a single calculation in the way Socrates would hope. For Socrates, the power of appearances stands against the measuring technique: it fails, where the latter succeeds, in making ethical conﬂict a matter of weighing commensurables. Moreover, the literal import of the ‘power of appearances’ supports the common-sense belief that many ethical conﬂicts are composed of incommensurables. That is, if we take Protagoras seriously in his contention that appearances are reality, when decisions arise between X and Y where X and Y appear sufﬁciently conceptually distinct as to be unrankable, that is indeed how X and Y actually are. Secondly, support can be garnered by refocusing on the prominent theme of the dialogue, the question of the unity of the virtues. For it is made explicit that Socrates’ hedonism is an outgrowth of his advocacy of the unity of virtues (353b1–3). His previous search for a single end makes much sense in light of his new search for a common standard. ‘[T]he lengthy intervening discussions of the unity of virtues reveal Socrates’ strong interest in showing that there can be a single quantitatively homogeneous standard of choice. He correctly ﬁnds in the plurality and apparent incommensurability of the virtues a troublesome feature of Protagoras’s so-called technē, one that impedes the solution to certain pressing problems.’78 Indeed, Socrates foreshadows the importance of size in his earlier discussion about how the virtues relate to one another (329d4–8), making clear that if the virtues differ from each other like parts of gold, this is a matter of size alone. If, on the other hand, as Protagoras holds, the virtues are distinct from one another like parts of the face, it is fair to assume that their different faculties will extend to qualities beyond size, making a determinate comparison or ranking between them difﬁcult, if not impossible. In this way, the Socratic postulation that all conﬂict is between commensurable values is a response to the problem 77 78

Vlastos 1956: xvii–xviii and liv–lv n. 13. Nussbaum 1986: 110.

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he gleaned from Protagoras’ insistence that values are plural and distinct. It is only fair, then, to infer that Protagoras’ own belief in such plural values is meant to result in the opposite conclusion that conﬂicts between values can be incommensurable.

D. Socrates and a science of ethics It is worth mentioning at this point one other, more encompassing, contrast between Socrates and Plato on the one hand, and Protagoras on the other that the present section of the dialogue brings to the fore. It is a contrast which, by situating the ethical views and motivations of Protagoras in context, will help to illuminate further his pluralist tendencies. Socrates’ conclusion that the salvation of the human race is intimately linked with measurement highlights the signiﬁcance, to his mind, of the relationship between ethics and mathematics. In the Protagoras, the precision of a mathematical technique is meant to serve as a paradigm for moral deliberation. Throughout Plato’s work, in fact, this strong afﬁnity for linking numbering with knowing—that is, for assimilating the ethically or philosophically graspable to the mathematically countable—is evident.79 A substantial part of his method for achieving ethical harmony is to posit a world in which morality is reduced to a ‘craft’ (technē) or ‘science’ (epistēmē), a science in which hierarchies and quantitative (as opposed to qualitative) differences rule the day—a science, therefore, in which single and singularly correct solutions can be calculated.80 Consider Aristotle’s claim that Socrates desired to construct a body of scientiﬁc knowledge (epistēmē) about ethics, and that is why he wanted deﬁnitions.81 Or Epictetus’ assumption that Socrates was trying to do for ethics what Hippocrates had done for medicine, by ﬁnding an account of the reality that underlies our common-sense beliefs about the virtues.82

79 See e.g. Republic 522c, 525b; Statesman 285a, Philebus 55d-3, 56d–57d (Cf. Richardson 1990: 25–32.). On the relationship between arithmos (‘number’) and goodness in Platonic thought, see Roochnik 1994. 80 The repercussions of Thucydides’ similar assimilation (of history to science) will be addressed at IV.3.A below. 81 Metaphysics 1078b23–30. 82 Epictetus 2.17.7–11.

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It is illuminating to mention brieﬂy three passages which shed light on this relationship between ethics and science or measurement and build upon the picture of Socrates/Plato which emerges from the Protagoras. The ﬁrst is Euthyphro 7b2–d8, where Socrates anticipates in respect of piety the idea of commensurability and the beneﬁts of measurement for morality that he puts forward in the Protagoras.83 The second is a similar sentiment found at Republic 348a–b. Here, even though Socrates rejects the use of antilogy to determine the meaning of justice, he sees such a determination as a matter of counting up and measuring the advantages of the competing deﬁnitions. Lastly, Phaedo 68c–69c provides another example of Socrates’ use of a common standard. Though Socrates is not here espousing hedonism, but rather extolling the virtue of wisdom, he is demonstrating how such an argument from commensurability might work in resolving moral questions.84 The connection between arithmos and epistēmē was known to the sophistic age and earlier. It was a prominent element of Pythagorean epistemology, and there is evidence that its application extended into the domain of values.85 Indeed, ‘[a]n examination of ﬁfth- and early fourth-century uses of words associated with measure and quantitative commensurability shows that they come freighted with heavy cognitive and ethical associations: what is measurable or commensurable is graspable, knowable, in order, good; what is without measure is boundless, elusive, chaotic, threatening, bad.’86 It is easy to see how the Socratic/Platonic fascination with mathematics, exact measurement, and commensurability is intimately connected with a desire to establish a single system of morality. So too, it should be seen how a rejection of such a connection would work towards the opposite end. In this light, we might note Protagoras’ more negative attitude towards the sciences, in particular geometry.87

83

Cf. Nussbaum 1986: 106–7 and Roochnik 1994: 545–7. See Weiss 1989 on how this passage contrasts with the views set out in the Protagoras. 85 See Aristotle, Metaphysics 985b23–986a26. For an example of a Pythagorean, Archytas, who saw calculation as the remedy for social conﬂict, cf. DK47 B3. On Pythagoreanism and monism more generally, see Seaford 2004: 266–83. 86 Nussbaum 1986: 107. See n. 44 for examples from Homer onwards. 87 See Protagoras 318d9–e5 and Aristotle, Metaphysics 997b32–998a4. 84

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5. THE POEM OF SIMONIDES Because the interpretation of Simonides’ poem is only tangentially related to the other, moral, topics of the dialogue, there are only a few points to make about its connection with pluralism. First, there is the subject of the poem. It is, as one scholar comments, a ‘reﬂection on cases of what we have called tragic conﬂict (certainly it concerns a case where circumstances force a good person to do something shameful against his will) . . . ’.88 Secondly, there is the fact that Protagoras introduces the poem for the explicit purpose of questioning its intrinsic ethical contradiction (339b9–10). And lastly, through Socrates’ exposition, we are exposed to glimpses of the paradox mentioned above that nobody does wrong willingly (345b5–6, 345d9–e4). In addition to these more attenuated links with the themes of the dialogue and of value pluralism, the poem’s inclusion does give the opportunity to address a ﬁnal sphere of sophistic thought: linguistic theory.89 Many of the sophists were concerned with the workings of language and grammar. More speciﬁcally, they were esteemed as experts on OæŁ Å Oø (‘the correctness of names or words’) and OæŁ ØÆ (‘correct diction’).90 Prodicus was a master of ﬁne distinctions between apparent synonyms. The Protagoras gives us a wonderful and lengthy sample of the ever-so-subtle shades of meaning of sets such as ŒØ (‘impartial’) and Y (‘equal’), IçØ Å E (‘argue’) and KæÇ Ø (‘wrangle’), P ŒØ E (‘esteem’) and KÆØ EŁÆØ (‘praise’).91 Hippias was supposedly interested in the correctness of letters, and Democritus is said to have written something entitled — æd ˇæı X OæŁ Å ŒÆd ªºøø. (‘On Homer, or On Correct Diction and Dialects’)92 Above all, however, there is Protagoras. Protagoras was known to be interested in literary criticism of a sort or at least to exhibit a

88

Nussbaum 1986: 111. For general discussions of language and the sophists, see Guthrie 1971: 204–25 and Kerferd 1981: ch. 7. 90 Plato, Cratylus 391b9-c4. See Guthrie 1971: 204–6 for a consideration of the differences between the two endeavours. 91 337a1–c4 (plus 340b3–d7, 358a6–b2, 358d5–e2). Cf. Taylor 1991: 136–40. See also Cratylus 358a and DK84 A13–19. 92 DK86 A12, DK68 B20a. 89

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concern for the correct use of language in poetic composition.93 He was associated with OæŁ ØÆ by Plato.94 He was said to have divided discourse into parts of speech and words into genders.95 And, as we can garner from Aristotle, he sought not merely to describe language but to change it.96 The ﬁfth century’s fascination with words was inextricably tied up with its fascination with knowledge and reality (see II.3). In this way, underpinning linguistic theory was the question of how language related to the world. If words are to be assessed in terms of their correctness, the question ‘correctness, in respect to what?’, must be answered. This is the subject of Plato’s dialogue, the Cratylus. Were words merely conventional and arbitrary in origin, as Hermogenes propounds, born of consensus and all equally correct? Or, as Cratylus believes, were they reﬂective of some determinate natural order against which correctness must be gauged? Clearly, such a topic echoes the sophistic nomos–phusis debate and questions of the nature and number of reality. It is therefore unsurprising that Protagoras is mentioned in the dialogue. It is interesting, however, that Hermogenes, whose position has natural afﬁnities with Protagorean principles, expressly renounces the sophist’s work ºŁ ØÆ (386a5–7, 391c5–7). As Kerferd contends: ‘This provides sufﬁcient grounds for us to conclude that in his work On Truth Protagoras had in fact discussed the rightness of names, and the natural way to read the passage is to suppose that Protagoras had himself in some sense and in some degree given expression to a belief in the doctrine of natural rightness.’97 The upshot and importance of this for pluralism is that, once more, Protagoras is represented as afﬁrming some sort of objectivity. His belief in the correctness of words has parallels with his belief in the orthotatos logos. The Cratylus allows us to see the possibility of a third theory of language that is a pluralist admixture of convention and 93

See DK80 A28 and Protagoras 338e6–339a3. Phaedrus 267c6. Cf. Fehling, in Classen 1976. 95 DK80 A1, A27. 96 Sophistici Elenchi 173b17–25. According to Aristotle, for Protagoras words such as BØ or ºÅ should not be feminine but masculine. See Bett 1989: 155 and Kerferd 1981: 68–9. Cf. the parody at Aristophanes, Clouds 658 ff. 97 Kerferd 1981: 75. There is a telling connection with Herodotus, who might have had a similarly intermediary position on correctness in respect of naming (cf. IV.2.B below). See Thomas 2000: 278–9 and Munson 2005: 41–6. 94

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correctness. ‘Might there not have been a third view, which held language to be conventional, but which still insisted on a valid distinction between correct and incorrect usage? Certainly, this is possible. That language is a human creation is . . . [included in] Protagoras’ myth in Plato’s Protagoras (322a6) . . . ’.98 Pluralism as applied to literary criticism yields just this balance,99 and can easily be contrasted with Socrates, who in his conversation with Protagoras expresses disapproval of poetic analysis precisely because of its inability to establish points of interpretation with certainty (347e4–348a2).100

6. CONCLUSION Taken together, the man-measure statement, the two-logoi principle, and the portrait of Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue of that name give good reason to posit that Protagoras believed that perspectives, veridical and ethical, can be plural. This fact, in and of itself, is signiﬁcant for demonstrating that his philosophical outlook is consonant with pluralism, as it rejects a straightforward understanding of truth and morality as singular entities. And yet, the argument here has been that Protagoras’ position on questions of truth and value is not merely sympathetic to pluralism, but shares with it several more ‘technical’ aspects. To this effect, I have drawn attention to the roles that objectivity and incommensurability may be seen to play in his thought: namely, that the homo mensura should be taken not as a sentiment of relativism, but as an expression that there are multiple truths, all of which are real; that, in instances of conﬂict between these truths, better outcomes can be ascertained; that amidst the diversity 98

Bett 1989: 158. See, for example, Metzidakis 1995. Heath (2002: 39–46) argues for such a pluralist approach to literary criticism, in particular to the interpretation of classical texts. On Protagoras’ approach as applied to interpretation of the sophists more generally, see Consigny 2001: 19. 100 Socrates puts forward a similar attitude towards Homeric criticism at Hippias Minor 365d. Finkelberg makes the interesting point (1998: 26) that Protagoras’ kind of literary criticism was a harbinger of a new approach to poetry, ‘the poetics of ﬁction’ as opposed to ‘the poetics of truth’. Of DK80 A30 she says: ‘For Protagoras, the question of whether or not Homer’s account is true is of no relevance, the only considerations being those of the text itself.’ 99

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of cultural systems a common core of morality exists; and that plural values can be incommensurable with one another. There will always be a sense in which any interpretation of Protagorean thought is reconstructive.101 But this does not mean that we should shy away from examining him or his sophistic contemporaries in serious detail, nor that we should regard it as implausible for them to have possessed well-developed theories of truth and value. As Kerferd warns, ‘[b]ecause of the highly selective and accidental sieve through which the literature of the ﬁfth century has had to pass before becoming accessible to us, there is a constant danger of underestimating the vigour and range of the written and unwritten discussions going on over matters of public interest’.102 In this way, while we may never be certain there existed in antiquity a systematic or deliberate temper of pluralism, we should not underestimate the possibility. The remainder of this book will explore the thought of Herodotus and Sophocles in respect of the issues raised here. It is by noticing certain similarities of world-view between philosopher, historian, and poet that we may begin to realize such a potential.

101 For survey and critique of the two recent ‘schools’ of sophistic interpretation, see Consigny 2001: 10–17. For his approach, with which I am largely sympathetic, see pp. 17–21. 102 Kerferd 1981: 162.

Part Two Herodotus

Everyone is today aware of the fundamental difference between, on the one hand, those historians who paint portraits of entire societies or groups within them that are rounded and three-dimensional, so that we believe, whether rightly or mistakenly, that we are able to tell what it would have been like to live in such conditions, and, on the other hand, antiquaries, chroniclers, learned compilers, or theorists who look on the use of imagination as opening the door to the horrors of guess work, subjectivism, journalism, or worse. (Isaiah Berlin, ‘Giambattista Vico and Cultural History’) Thucydidean historiography laboriously cleanses muddy testimony, and removes irrelevant accretions and all ‘wrong’ versions of the facts from a severely limited series of events . . . whereas Herodotus has built an elaborate set of portraits of civilizations from a rich variety of their great and remarkable actions. (Donald Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus) . . . his work reveals why the title Histories ﬁts perhaps somewhat better than the other widely used alternative, History; as reﬂected in the plural form of the noun, its author’s views of a single topic can be plural, divergent, or even . . . contradictory of one another. (James Romm, Herodotus)

IV Pluralism and history This chapter provides three contexts for our examination of Herodotus. First, it unfolds the more encompassing relationship between pluralism and history, the ways in which we can speciﬁcally understand a historian—as opposed to a philosopher or a tragedian—in those meta-ethical terms made familiar to us from our investigation of Protagoras. Secondly, it aims to situate the man himself in the proper temporal and intellectual milieu. It is the argument of this book that there are telling parallels in the thought of Protagoras, Sophocles, and Herodotus. Literary and geographical overlaps between the men bolster the contention that the pluralistic tendencies in each are not coincidental, but instead represent a conscious acceptance of diversity and conﬂict (as opposed to singularity and moral harmony) that was in some way part of an important theoretical trend in the mid-to-late ﬁfth century bce. In this light, the third context demarcates Herodotus from his more monistic successor, Thucydides. By setting out the reductionist methodological tendencies of Thucydides in some detail, we will be in a better position to appreciate Herodotus’ very different approach to history, as well as his role as an early champion of the depth and inclusiveness that deﬁnes pluralism in the ﬁeld of history.

1. HOW CAN HISTORY BE PLURALIST? In the introductory sketch of the philosophical nature of pluralism (I.3.A), we noticed that there are three distinct levels on which the theory can operate. Value conﬂict—the mainspring of ethical pluralism—can occur within values, between values, and between whole

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value systems. When discussing the relationship between moral pluralism and history or historical writing we are, for the most part, concerned with the last of these. In this way, the application of pluralism to history is often called cultural pluralism. This amounts to the belief that the societies of the world, both past and present, are irreducibly diverse and that, when they come into conﬂict with one another (primarily in the form of war), this conﬂict is between ways of life and thought that are incommensurable. As Berlin deﬁnes it and elaborates its implications, cultural pluralism allows for a panorama of a variety of cultures, the pursuit of different, and sometimes incompatible, ways of life, ideals, standards of value. This, in turn, entails that the perennial idea of a perfect society, in which truth, justice, freedom, happiness, virtue coalesce in their most perfect forms, is not merely Utopian (which few deny), but intrinsically incoherent . . . Every culture expresses itself in works of art, or thought, in ways of living and action, each of which possesses its own character which can neither be combined nor necessarily form stages of a single progress towards a single universal goal.1

The study of history has in and of itself important implications for pluralism. In directing analytical attention to the civilizations of days gone by, there is a sense in which we are bound to recognize differences: differences, for example, in the provinces of language, politics, art, ritual, et cetera. So too, we are likely to recognize that these differences are irreducible: that is to say, they can not be explained or accounted for as manifestations of a single set of norms. Furthermore, we may notice that the wars which have shaken the world through time are not simply the product of conﬂict over land or material resources but the result of clashing and irreconcilable ideological and religious beliefs (think, among others, of Britain and Germany during the World Wars or the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War). Such observations work to illustrate the ‘fact’ of pluralism on a grand scale. The annals of history, on this view, provide ‘real life’ examples of conﬂict between incommensurable value schemes. History teaches pluralist lessons. But here we are interested in how historical writing can be pluralist; how the works of ancients such as Herodotus and Thucydides or moderns such as Giambattista Vico 1

Berlin 1990: 65.

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and Johann Gottfried Herder can be assessed in such terms. What factors can we adduce to show that a given historical account is pluralist? In addition to the moral considerations involved in cultural pluralism, pluralism as applied to history can also touch upon ideas of method, causality, and truth. It is to these topics that I now turn.

A. Cultural pluralism: diversity and incommensurability Vico and Herder on history Berlin cites a stress on differences and not on similarities as the root of pluralism.2 For him, the ﬁrst pluralists were not philosophers per se but historians and historiographers, both those who wrote history and those who theorized about it. In the course of his lifelong study of ideas and their origins, Berlin discovered—in contrast to the fundamentally perfectionist premise of Enlightenment thinking advocated by such philosophes as Voltaire3—a certain sort of historical writing and understanding that he considered pluralist.4 It was the sort of ‘deep’ or ‘thick’ history practised and described with great insight by, above all others, the seventeenth-century Neapolitan jurist Giambattista Vico and the eighteenth-century German Romantic philosopher J. G. Herder.5 For present purposes, it will be instructive to allow some space for a general discussion of these two thinkers’ views on what constitutes history. For it is these men to whom Berlin attributes the invention of cultural pluralism.6 Vico and Herder were largely concerned with two aspects of the study of the past. The ﬁrst is to do with the subject matter of history: what a proper historical narrative should include. The second is to do with how one approaches such subject matter. Both thinkers believed that the goal of history is to reveal cultures in their entirety. The great individual, the hero, or the statesman should not be the 2

Jahanbegloo 2000: 80. See Berlin 1998: ‘The Divorce Between the Sciences and the Humanities,’ esp. 334–40. 4 For where and how Berlin’s views on history ﬁt into his ‘intellectual path’, see 2001: ch. 1. 5 On the notion of ‘deep’ versus ‘shallow’ and ‘thick’ versus ‘thin’ history, see Berlin 1998: 17–58. 6 Berlin calls (1990: 58–9) Herder ‘the principal, ofﬁcially recognized exponent of this view’, but Vico ‘the true father’. 3

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privileged beneﬁciary of investigative effort.7 Moreover, each recognized that the civilizations of the world are irreducibly diverse, that every culture has, in Herder’s expression, a ‘centre of gravity’ (Schwerpunkt), its own particular arts and fears, rituals and metaphors, foods and myths, ideals of beauty, justice, piety, and so forth. And each saw that in order to come to know such a culture it must be explored in these terms. When we look at, for example, ﬁfth-century Athens, it is not enough to unearth the cold ‘facts’ about polis life: raw statistics and causal explanations. We must ﬁnd out what motivated the people who lived there, what they valued, why they did what they did, and chose as they chose. This kind of knowledge, however, is not easy to come by. It is not to be found solely in the interpretation of documents or the piecing together of inscriptions. Rather, on this view, the historian must be gifted with, and able to exercise, the faculty of imaginative insight, fantasia as Vico called it.8 Knowledge of the past is not knowledge simply of what or how (Wissen), but is grounded in a deeper understanding (Verstehen) made possible by our common humanity. As Berlin explicates Herder’s conception of Verstehen: To understand a thing was, for him, to see how it could be viewed as it was viewed, assessed as it was assessed, valued as it was valued, in a given context, by a particular culture or tradition. To grasp what a belief, a piece of ritual, a myth, a poem or a linguistic usage meant to a Homeric Greek, a Livonian peasant, an ancient Hebrew, an American Indian, what part it played in his life, was for Herder to be able not merely to give a scientiﬁc or common-sense explanation, but to ﬁnd a reason for or justiﬁcation of the activity in question, or at least to go a long way towards this. For to explain human experiences or attitudes is to be able to transpose oneself by sympathetic imagination into the situation of the human beings who are to be ‘explained’; and this amounts to understanding and communicating the coherence of a particular way of life, feeling, action, the part it plays in the life and outlook which are ‘natural’ in the situation.9

As we saw above (I.3.C), this understanding allows us to ‘enter into’ the otherwise closed doors of a foreign culture.10 Crucially, it also allows us to make value-judgements about it.

7 9

Berlin 1998: 361. Berlin 1998: 369.

8 10

Berlin 1990: 62 and 1997: 354. Ibid. 253, 426 (Einfühlung, Einfühlen).

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Cultural pluralism versus relativism Cultural pluralism is a corollary of the application of this method of reconstructing the past.11 Vico and Herder were not relativists. Berlin is at pains to refute this often-brandished accusation in his essay ‘Alleged Relativism of Eighteenth-Century European Thought.’12 Rather, Berlin contends, what Vico and Herder believed in was plurality and incommensurability, and neither of these entail relativism. We have seen in the Introduction (I.3.C) and in the discussion of Protagoras (II.4) how pluralism is able to distinguish itself from relativism in a general sense. When it comes to whole cultures, pluralism and relativism part company most sharply in respect of the ability to judge. Relativists hold that such cross-cultural evaluation is impossible: men are too ensconced in their own values and visions to see the worthiness of others’ or, more extremely, even to comprehend them.13 But pluralists—for the same reason they believe we can get under the skin of those who are distant from us in both space and time to know what drives them and what deters them—insist that there exists enough commonality between otherwise disparate nations to allow for understanding and, therefore, judgement. As Berlin characterizes the views of Vico and Herder on this point: ‘Both thinkers insist on our need and ability to transcend the values of our own culture or nation or class, or those of whatever other windowless boxes some cultural relativists wish to conﬁne us.’14 The acceptance of the fundamental incommensurability of cultures also serves to demarcate Vico and Herder as pluralists as opposed to relativists. In recognizing that it is impossible, because they are so conceptually different, to avow that Republican Rome is uniquely better than, say, Renaissance Florence, these thinkers are not making relativistic claims. Instead, they are undermining the idea of the existence of a perfect society. An example from aesthetics will help to illuminate this distinction. History has produced many extraordinary feats of architecture. If we examined the Parthenon, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Taj Mahal, we would no doubt be surprised at (or, at least, intrigued by) how strikingly different from one another are these three religious buildings. That they are so, we can infer, is representative of the fact that the people who used such structures 11 13

Berlin 1990: 65. Cf. Berlin 1990: 80–1.

12

Ibid. 70–90. See also Wolf 1992: 792–7. 14 Ibid. 85.

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were equally different themselves—not only in terms of their conceptions of beauty and design but perhaps also in terms of their perspectives on notions of worship, divinity, even piety. Furthermore, we can deduce that the cultural contexts in which these ediﬁces were commissioned and built must have been as diverse as both the buildings and their inhabitants. And yet, we could legitimately proclaim each a great work of art. We could understand why and how ﬁfth-century Athens erected the Parthenon and seventeenth-century England built St. Paul’s. If we wanted to rank them determinately, we should run into some difﬁculty: there exists no absolute standard by which to evaluate, no common denominator against which they may each in turn be measured. As with all incommensurables, there may very well be a breakdown in transitivity, though we could still make an individual judgement or express a preference about each, and though we could still claim that other temples were objectively inferior.15 Herein lies the difference between pluralism and relativism. Pluralism tells that the notion of a single ‘perfect’ religious building is an illusion. Relativism—in its stronger and more consistent form—tells us simply that we could not even grasp what it is that makes each place of worship beautiful, nor compare it meaningfully with something else.

The denial of linear progress The concept of incommensurability entails a further ramiﬁcation for historiography. It irreparably damages the belief that the history of civilization as a whole can be one of linear progression or retrogression, in which each nation or cultural moment is but one step forward or backward on the road to progress or enlightenment or truth, one rung in an overarching hierarchy.16 Visions of this kind are familiar to us from antiquity. Hesiod’s belief in the golden age of men and his postulation of the myth of the metals presupposes a time of harmony that has since slipped away. But as we have just seen in respect of aesthetics, cultural artefacts cannot be gauged against one another in this way: St Paul’s is not the best building because it is the product of the most ‘advanced’ civilization. And nor can cultures themselves. My discussion of tragedy in the chapters that follow will 15

Cf. Ibid. 66–7, 80–1; Gray 1995: 50–1; Chang 1997: passim. For a perspective on progress (Fortgang) in tune with pluralism, see Berlin on Herder at Berlin 1997: 407–10. 16

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repeatedly point out that when incommensurables come into conﬂict with one another, loss ensues. In this instance, when civilizations disappear or are destroyed by others, something is similarly lost: the unique value of the routed culture. When the Lydian empire was subsumed by the Persians, this was not an unequivocal example of a better nation beating a lesser. The special customs and merits of Lydia (as, for example, expounded at Herodotus 1.92–4) were lost, not simply superseded. So too, in the battle between the ancients and the moderns—a debate which occupied Enlightenment and Romantic imaginations and which is still alive today in, among other arenas, ethical theory—there is no winner. A pluralist historical perspective impresses upon us the notion that the development of human civilization [is] . . . conceived not as a single linear movement, now rising, now declining, nor as a dialectical movement of clashing opposites always resolved in a higher synthesis, but as the realization that cultures are many and various, each embodying scales of value different from those of other cultures and sometimes incompatible with them, yet capable of being understood, that is, seen by observers endowed with sufﬁciently acute and sympathetic historical insight, as ways of being which human beings could pursue and remain fully human.17

B. Methodological and truth pluralism: history as science? The division between knowing and understanding, Wissen and Verstehen, that was mentioned above has larger repercussions for the activity of history. Berlin credits Vico with having created this schism. Its existence is responsible, from his perspective, for the divorce between the sciences and humanities—now well established in contemporary academic practice. In advocating a certain approach to history, Vico and Herder were rejecting a model of history popular amongst Enlightenment rationalists. This model is based on the view that historical writing must, in order to gain credence, be assimilated to a science; it must be carried out with the methods and aims of abstract scientiﬁc theory. That is to say, its goals should be the establishment of truth and the ability to predict behaviour

17

Berlin 1990: 58.

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through the reduction of phenomena to universal laws.18 It was precisely history’s lack of similarity to mathematics and logic that caused Descartes and others to deny it the status of a serious discipline. As Berlin describes this way of thinking: ‘While the accumulation of this confused amalgam of memories and travellers’ tales, fables, and characters’ stories, moral reﬂections and gossip might be a harmless posture, it was beneath the dignity of serious men seeking what alone is worth seeking—the discovery of truth in accordance with principles and rules which alone guarantee scientiﬁc validity.’19 Such a description, we will see, brings to a head the differences between a Herodotus and a Thucydides. And it warns against an overly quick assessment of their work based on preconceptions of what history should be. Reducing history to a science of humanity is a form of methodological monism. It is predicated on the fact that it is appropriate to apply one method of inquiry to all ﬁelds of thought. And, in turn, it assumes that all disciplines are suitable to that particular method. According to Berlin, such a view gets the point and subject of history wrong. For this reason, he is opposed to the conﬂation of the study of history and that of the natural sciences. Interchanging the two rests on the false notion that a universally valid method had ﬁnally been found for the solution of fundamental questions that had exercised men at all times—how to establish what was true and what was false in every province of knowledge . . . this method consisted in the application of those rational (that is, scientiﬁc) rules which had in the previous century produced such magniﬁcent results in the ﬁelds of mathematics and the natural sciences to the moral, social, political, economic problems of mankind.20

The problem with such a conﬂation, to Berlin’s mind, is that these latter humanities-based ﬁelds are not, by their very nature, admitting of the scientiﬁc method. To assume that they are is to make an error about the nature of human beings. It is to fail to make sufﬁcient room for cultural diversity; it is to take for granted that there is one truth or group of true laws to be discovered about cultures (truth monism); and it is to take as given that the world is a single harmonious entity which embraces this truth or these laws absolutely. Because history is 18 19

On prediction, see Berlin 1998: 25–6; on universal laws, Ibid. 359, 390. 20 Ibid. 17. Berlin 1990: 51.

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about people and cultures that are inherently plural and incommensurable, it should be an enterprise about differences as opposed to similarities, understanding as opposed to knowledge and prediction, quality as opposed to quantity, speciﬁcs as opposed to general laws. It is the historian’s effort to predict, to apply, or to elicit general laws from his subject matter, to ‘retrodict’ according to such laws, and to conceive of the goal of his project as the exhibition of a set of compatible universal principles that mark his view of history as in accord with science. It is these criteria that we can marshal to evaluate the extent of his methodological and truth monism.

C. Other types of historical pluralism: causal and moral Another variety of pluralism, which may or may not be attributed to a historian, concerns causation.21 How does a historian explain an event or decision? Does he allow for multiple, overlapping, and irreducible causes or does he prefer to offer a single cause, interpreting and shaping the evidence himself? If he does allow for a variety of causes, does he then rank them into a hierarchy of explanation? In a sense, causal pluralism (or monism) is related to truth pluralism (or monism), the metaphysical belief in one ‘reality’ or one ‘truth’ behind multiple ‘apparents’. Authors who believe in a singular notion of truth, be it one true rendition of the facts or one true method of inquiry, might be more inclined to advocate that there exists one true cause for a given occurrence. This might be the true cause in the sense of the ‘most authentic’ or ‘most important’, or it might be the true cause in the sense of the only ‘real’ cause (as opposed to other merely ostensible causes). Either way, causal monism of this sort tends to discredit the concept of incommensurability: it implicitly maintains that causes can be weighed against each other in a way which allows a single explanation to emerge victorious. On this view, two or three or four causes do not interact, in different ways, to produce the same effect. Rather, with rigorous logic or acute insight, the real impetus behind an event can often be uniquely determined. This raises the further issue of how much room a historian allots for reader interpretation. To leave multiple and incommensurable causes vying for attention allows, perhaps encourages, the reader to 21

This can be viewed as a branch of methodological pluralism.

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make up his own mind about their priority, to decide for himself what is their respective importance. It can also make its own statement about what the author believes is the right way to approach causation more broadly. In an account of history the authorial voice is often a strong one from which we take our cues about how to interpret the material. If a historian feels the necessity to relay a series of causes, we are more likely than not to assume they all have at least some relevance. By contrast, if a historian closes off the avenues of explanation—by either enumerating the causes and then dismissing them or ordering them, or by proffering only a single cause in the ﬁrst instance—we will probably follow his lead. The same is true if a historian continually relies on one factor or series of factors (expedience, for instance) in determining either causes or outcomes. Finally, we can notice the way moral pluralism may manifest itself in the pages of history. When causal pluralism is concerned with the motivations or reasons behind certain decisions and disagreements (as opposed to the causes behind events), we return to the domain of ethics. Historical narratives are often no more than stories about people and states who become the characters in a ‘real life’ drama: in this way, we will come to see how the moral conﬂicts that present themselves on the historical stage, as it were, are relevant to our study of tragedy. These characters are often faced with grave decisions, dilemmas, between alternative courses of action that represent variant values or ethical paths. So too, they become embroiled in disagreements with one another over moral issues. The way a historian opts to display and to explain such dilemmas and disagreements can contribute to our perception of him in terms of monism and pluralism. When he presents a character (or group of characters) on the brink of choice, does he set out all of the factors at work (or only those he, as the author, considers important)? Does he comment on the way in which people make choices, those who fail to weigh options versus those who are more open-minded? Is there anything in his presentation of conﬂict that would imply a posture on the concept of incommensurability? A work of history should not be treated exactly the same as a play. But it is still a literary creation where the author’s choices of inclusion and arrangement shade meaning. There are many ways, then, in which the discipline of history can be broadly understood in monist-versus-pluralist terms. The question we must now ask is how Classical Greek history fares by such standards. In other words, where do Herodotus and Thucydides ﬁt

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into this picture? To the reader familiar with these two authors, the previous descriptions of ‘monist’ and ‘pluralist’ historiography generally conceived will no doubt have already struck a chord. It remains now to ﬁll out any preliminary categorizations we might have made, of Thucydides in section 3 below, of Herodotus in the following chapter. Before we address these issues, however, it is time to offer a fuller account of the context into which Herodotus and his work can be seen to ﬁt in order to discover what, if anything, can be said to have inspired or contributed to his pluralist leanings. The discussion will include a brief exploration of his relationship with Thucydides as well as the Ionian traditions from which he emerged. Most signiﬁcantly, it will attempt to clarify the relationship the historian shared with the other pluralists under discussion, Protagoras and Sophocles.

2. A MAN OF MULTIPLE INFLUENCES

A. Herodotus and his predecessors: Ionian historiē In a moving essay entitled ‘The Three Strands of My Life’, Isaiah Berlin explains how the multiple traditions in which he was raised were responsible, in part, for his acceptance of the fundamental and irreducible diversity of values.22 Jewish by ethnicity, Russian by birth, and British by custom, Berlin considered himself a living embodiment of cultural pluralism. The three components of his life did not always coalesce in perfect harmony, but together, Berlin acknowledges, they were what made him who he was. Herodotus’ native city Halicarnassus provided a comparable admixture of cultural inﬂuence.23 Halicarnassus was originally a Dorian colony, but one which harboured Ionian language and culture. It was a Greek city, but one which was perched on the edge of the vast Persian empire, ‘having close contact with the non-Greek Carians who occupied the hinterlands and were subject to Persia’.24 In fact, for hundreds of years the Carian and Greek populations of the area had intermarried, though each was able to retain its native traditions. Herodotus’ own family is 22

Epilogue to Berlin 2001. See the enlightening discussion of the city at Gould 1989: 5–8. Cf. also Cartledge 1993: 37–8 and Thomas 2000: 9–10. 24 Marincola 1996: x. 23

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said to have been of such a blend. In light of this, it can perhaps be argued that his early exposure in Halicarnassus to different ways of life, language, and value contributed to his interest in foreign societies as well as to his relatively impartial treatment of ‘barbarian’ manners.25 The exposure does not stop there. Herodotus’ home-town was not far removed from the northern cities of Ionia, cities which were leaders in trade and commerce and which enjoyed ‘material prosperity and special opportunities for contact with other cultures—with Sardis, for example, by land, and with the Pontus and Egypt by sea . . . ’.26 Nor was he overly distant from the eastern island of Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras and the location where the historian is himself said to have gone into exile after his participation in an unsuccessful uprising against the tyrant Lygdamis. It should not come as a surprise, then, if Herodotus felt a certain sense of statelessness: birth in one city, exile in another, citizenship (and possible burial and death) in yet another (Thurii), not to mention extensive travel.27 Nor would it be a surprise if such a feeling contributed to the open-mindedness that characterizes his historical interest and perspective.28 In addition to the physical inﬂuence on Herodotus’ plural outlook of growing up at a crossroads of culture and having lived his adult life in transit, we should consider the, no doubt signiﬁcant, debts he accrued from his connections with the Ionian prose-writing scene.29 His proximity to cities such as Miletus, a hotbed of intellectual activity and innovation, would almost certainly have affected his development as a thinker. There are three links in this respect worth pointing out. The ﬁrst is with the burgeoning ﬁeld of ‘natural’ philosophy. There is no direct mention of this variant of pre-Socratic philosophy in the text of Herodotus, nor of the discipline 25

For this view, see Hart 1993: 205; Marincola 1996: x; Luce 1997: 19. Kirk, Raven, and Schoﬁeld 1999: 75. Aristotle had a version of the preface which read ¨ıæı instead of AºØŒÆæÅ. Pella also claims to be Herodotus’ place of death. 28 Friedman similarly argues (2006: 166–7) for a ‘deterratorialized’ Herodotus, whose lack of geographical attachment and extensive travel made him, like Solon, more able to see the big picture. On the link between travel and wisdom, cf. Democritus DK68 B299. 29 For general discussions of Ionian inﬂuence on Herodotus, see, in particular, Lloyd 1975: 156 ff.; Waters 1985: ch. 2; Gould 1989: ch. 1; Luce 1997: 7–14; Romm 1998: ch. 4; Thomas 2000: passim. 26 27

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of philosophy more generally. But it is clear that Herodotus was fully aware of and strongly marked by it. He cites Thales in three instances (1.74.2, 1.75.3 for scientiﬁc feats; 1.170.3 for political acumen), and describes a map that recalls the one we know was invented by Anaximander (5.49.1).30 There are also potential connections between the historian’s remarks about fossils (2.11–12) and Xenophanes (of Colophon, DK21 A33), between Empedocles’ (of Acragas) natural explanation of dreams (DK31 B108) and Artabanus’ similar sentiment (7.16.2).31 There is also a larger sense in which the early Ionian physicists helped to shape Herodotus’ enterprise. First, in terms of the subjects they were interested in: changing phenomena, geography, and the ‘natural’ world more generally. And secondly, in the novel modes of analysis and critical thinking that they initiated.32 In particular, Herodotus was no doubt inspired by their new-found emphasis on rationalistic, as opposed to mythical, explanation. We can see this inﬂuence in, among other places, Herodotus’ effort to cast the exchange of rapes between East and West in a more rationalistic mould (1.1–5), in his discussion of the ﬂooding of the Nile (2.19–27), in his explanation of the speaking doves (2.57), as well as in his placement of Polycrates and Minos in different veridical categories (3.122.1).33 But we can also see, by the numerous instances of religious, mythological, and fantastic sentiment included in the Histories, that he was not entirely converted to this way of thinking.34 Perhaps most interesting in this respect is his ability happily to wed scientiﬁc and divine causation (7.128–9), precise mathematical calculation with more archaic ideas of nemesis and fate (1.32.2–4).35 30 KRS 98, 99. Cf. Lloyd 1975: 126–7 and Waters 1985: 15–16. So too, he makes mention of the philosopher-cum-sage Pythagoras (4.95–6) and of his theory of transmigration of the soul (2.123). 31 Raaﬂaub 2002: 157 and Thomas 2006: 62. 32 Luce 1997: 9–10. Thomas 2000: ch. 5 is particularly good at pointing out connections between Herodotus and the physiologoi in this respect. See too Lloyd 1975: 141–70; Raaﬂaub 2002: 156–60; Romm 2006: 178–82. 33 On the ﬂooding of the Nile, cf. Thales KRS 71 and Anaximander DK59 A91. On aspects of Herodotus’ method as in tune with and representative of ﬁfth-century scientiﬁc thought, see Lloyd 1979: 29–30 and Thomas 2000. 34 The story of Arion and the dolphin, for example (1.23–4). It should be noted that the philosophers were themselves not uninterested in such ‘wonders’. See Thomas 2000: 138. 35 Double causation of this sort in Herodotus is addressed by Immerwahr 1956: passim; De Ste Croix 1977: 138 ff; Gould 1989: 115–16, 120 ff.; Lateiner 1989: 205–7;

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Inspired as he was in certain regards by these scientiﬁc pioneers, Herodotus’ theoretical leanings do not appear in sympathy with their ‘monism’ (see I.4.A above). His belief in sense perception as the basis for knowledge seems to ﬂy in the face of their more transcendent theories. So too, it undermines the insistence of their disciples, particularly the Eleatics, that such perceptive faculties are deceptive and fallible.36 A second Ionian debt is to the group of medical men whose works comprise the so-called Hippocratic corpus.37 It may be surprising to look for coincidences between Herodotus and these writers in light of what we have already said about the potentially problematic relationship between history and science. Indeed, we shall see the tight nexus between certain aspects of medical inquiry and ‘scientiﬁc’ method as a hallmark of Thucydides’ methodological monism. Herodotus, however, seems to have been touched by the doctors in a different way. To be sure, he was affected by their rationalism, empiricism, and quest for truth in certain areas.38 But the inﬂuence we should note here is derived from those medical theories concerned with the effect of geography, particularly climate, on custom and behaviour, as articulated in treatises such as Airs, Waters, Places: the recognition (2.35.2, 3.12, 7.102.1, 9.122.3; cf. 1.142) that customs and dispositions may vary according to, among other things, location.39 A ﬁnal inﬂuence is that of the ‘historical’ prose writers, predecessors of Herodotus or contemporaries, known as ‘chroniclers’ or ‘prose writers’ (ºªªæçØ or ºªØ)—and referred to vaguely as Luce 1997: 47, 54–5; Harrison 2002. For this phenomenon in medicine, see esp., On the Sacred Disease 21. 36 Cf. Müller 1981. If we were looking for a link with the Ionian pre-Socratics that was more theoretically in tune with Herodotus, we could perhaps cite statements of anthropological ﬂux made by Heraclitus of Ephesus (DK22 B12, 91) with Herodotus’ enduring belief in the mutability of fortune or Xenophanes’ criticism of anthropomorphic dieties (DK21 B11–16; cf. 1.131, 2.53). 37 On the relationship between the Hippocratics and Herodotus generally, see Lateiner 1986 and Thomas 2000: passim. Hippocrates himself was said to have hailed from Cos, an island just opposite Halicarnassus. The other ‘school’ of medicine was associated with the locale Cnidus, similarly close. On the religious connections between the three cities, see Hart 1993: 204. 38 On rationalization, cf. How and Wells 1912:1. 32–3; Hunter 1982: 107 ff.; Fowler 1996: 71–2; Luce 1997: 7–8. 39 Thomas, however, is careful to point out (2000: ch. 4) that Herodotus’ own ‘geographical determinism’ is far more muted than that of certain medical treatises, as the historian tends to put his emphasis on the power of nomos.

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‚ººÅ (‘Greeks’, 2.2.5), ø (‘Ionians’, 2.15.1), Eººø Ø (‘some Greeks’, 2.20.1)—who produced works of local chronicle, ethnography, geography, and genealogy. The exact extent of the inﬂuence these men had on Herodotus, both in terms of style and content, is still unclear, as it will in all probability remain. But it can be said that their interest in and inquiries into foreign regions were signiﬁcant (whether negatively or positively) not only in his choice of subject matter but in his general approach to history.40

B. Herodotus and Protagoras: the sophistic background Until relatively recently Herodotus has often been considered the bearer of an Archaic world-view.41 In particular, his choice of subject, the Persian Wars (490–479 bce), and the religious and folk-tale quality of his narrative induce scholarly opinion to locate him intellectually in the ﬁrst half of the ﬁfth century and to excuse him from the trends of new-wave thinking associated with the sophistic movement. J. B. Bury, for instance, writes that Herodotus ‘belonged in temper and mentality to the period before the sophistic illumination, which he lived to see but not to understand’.42 Such categorization is meant, of course, in contrast to Thucydides, the great son of the sophistic.43 In the same way that Sophocles is often viewed as conservative and backward-looking in comparison with the ever-trendy 40 On the four main testimonies as to Herodotus’ obligation to other prose writers (Ephorus, Dionysius, Porphyry, and Suda), see How and Wells 1912:1. 22–3. On the contentious issues of the relative dates of these authors and their precise impact on Herodotus, see Jacoby 1913, 1949, 1956; Von Fritz 1936; Pearson 1939; Drews 1973; Fornara 1983: ch. 1; Fowler 1996; Marincola 2001: 14–18; Fowler 2006. The most important of the early Ionian ‘historians’ is Hecataeus of Miletus, whom Herodotus mentions at four points in the narrative (2.143 on his personal genealogy; 5.36, 5.125 on his political advice; 6.137 on an account in his History of Athenian action). West examines in detail (1991) Herodotus’ relationship with Hecataeus. See too Lloyd 1975: 127–39. Other potential sources and/or inﬂuences are Xanthus the Lydian, Charon of Lampascus, and Hellanicus of Lesbos. So too, Herodotus mentions the geographer Scylax of Karyanda at 4.44. Romm also draws attention (1998: 15–16) to Aesop as a potential prose source for Herodotus (the historian mentions the writer of fable at 2.134.3–4, referring to him as ºªØ ). 41 Good bibliography and survey at Thomas 2000: 4–9. Cf. also Schmid and Stählin 1934: 318 and Hart 1993: 216 n. 45. 42 Bury 1909: 74–5. 43 See, e.g. Connor 1984: 27–8; Hornblower 1987: 45–53, 60–2; De Romilly 1998: passim.

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Euripides, Herodotus is similarly labelled in relation to Thucydides.44 Happily, though, attitudes towards Herodotus’ place in the age of the sophists are changing: the major—and precedent-setting— contribution in recent years being Rosalind Thomas’s excellent study of Herodotus in Context (where the context in question is mainly sophistic and medical).45 As Thomas makes clear, there are many ways, across a variety of domains, in which Herodotus’ work shows ‘sophistic’ inﬂuence. Our interest, however, is the inﬂuence on the front of pluralism; that is to say, how some of the features of Protagorean thinking identiﬁed earlier as pluralist manifest themselves in Herodotus. The exact nature of the pluralistic character of the Histories is the subject of Chapter V. Here it is instructive to notice some more general ways in which Herodotus exhibits a link with Protagoras in this respect. Commentators on the sophistic age are happy to drop Herodotus’ and Protagoras’ names together. G. B. Kerferd maintains that ‘[i]t is generally admitted that there were deﬁnite sophistic inﬂuences at work upon the historian Herodotus. It is extremely likely that he knew Protagoras . . . ’.46 Jacqueline De Romilly points out that Herodotus ‘was one of Protagoras’ contemporaries’, in a broader sense than merely being alive at the same time.47 While there can never be absolute certainty on the question of whether the two men actually knew each other (as opposed to knew of each other), were friends, or, more boldly, intellectual allies, a number of overlaps exist that make such speculation more probable. The most persuasive of these is the fact that both thinkers were associated with the Athenian colony of Thurii founded on the southern coast of Italy in 444/443 bce.48 According to the testimony of Aristotle and Plutarch, 44 On the ‘classic view’ of Sophocles, cf. VII.3.D below. On Euripides and the sophists, see Conacher 1998. For Herodotus and Sophocles as old-fashioned in comparison with Thucydides and Euripides, cf. Dodds 1951: 50 n. 1 and Finley 1967: 3. 45 Thomas’ work ﬁts into a minority tradition of linking Herodotus and the sophists represented by, especially, Nestle 1908; Dihle, 1962; Lloyd 1979: 149 ff., 156ff. See too Thomas 2006. 46 Kerferd 1981: 150. 47 De Romilly 1998: 112. Cf. Burkert 1990. Rough dates for Herodotus: 485–430 bce (or later); for Protagoras: 490–420 bce. Cf., among others, the mention of the two names together at Morrison 1941: 14–16; Vlastos 1973: 167 n. 17; Kahn 1981: 106; Farrar 1988: 46. 48 Cf. Kerferd 1981: 150 and De Romilly 1998: 20–1, 221.

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Herodotus was a citizen there.49 And Protagoras was invited to draw up its laws.50 In addition to the potential of a physical overlap in this respect, Protagoras’ identity as a lawmaker is often brought to bear on analyses of Herodotus’ constitutional debate at 3.80–2.51 Moreover, we should note that both are likely to have found themselves at one point or another in their careers in Athens, a veritable centre of enlightenment and exchange.52 Plato’s dialogue Protagoras informs us that the sophist was there at least twice; Herodotus is said to have given public recitals of his work in the city.53 The fact that both men were involved in the foundation of Thurii and spent time at Athens highlights another commonality between them, one which is more reﬂective of their possible intellectual afﬁnities. This is the fact that both were travellers: Herodotus claims extensive journeys, telling of his willingness to span great distances in search of information;54 Protagoras came from Abdera and was itinerant by virtue of his profession.55 The penchant to travel appears to have had two consequences for Herodotus, which, as we have seen in Chapters II and III, also affected Protagoras. The ﬁrst is an interest in human as opposed to cosmic affairs. Exposure to different countries and contact with foreign ways of life opened up the way for inquiry, not only into the world itself, but into the human beings who inhabit it. It fuelled a new humanism that caused Herodotus, like Protagoras, to shift his searchlight from the heavens to the earth and 49

Aristotle, Rhetoric 1409a35–6; Plutarch, Moralia 604 f. Heraclides Ponticus quoted at Diogenes Laertius 9.50. 51 See Lasserre 1976; Kerferd 1981: 150; Crane 1989: 110; Lateiner 1989: 167; Cartledge 1993: 61; De Romilly 1998: 219–21; Thomas 2000: 18 and n. 54; Raaﬂaub 2002: 161. As Thomas points out (2006: 68), though, the evidence for this is rather ﬂimsy. On the relationship between the Herodotean debate and Antigone, see Crane 1989: 113–14. 52 On Athens’ attraction as a cultural hub in the mid-to-late ﬁfth century, see De Romilly 1998: 20–3. On Herodotus in Athens, see Jacoby 1913: 226–42; Gould 1989: 14–16; Ostwald 1991; De Romilly 1998: vii, 18, 226; Romm 1998: 52–5; Moles 2002: 33–5. Aristophanes, Acharnians 65–94, 523–9 make it probable that Athenian audiences were familiar with the Histories. On this, see Fornara 1971: 25–30; Flory 1980: 23–5; Hart 1993: 222–4. On Protagoras at Athens: Plato, Protagoras; Kerferd 1981: 42–3; Farrar 1988: 45 and n. 3. 53 See Plato, Protagoras 310e5. Cf. How and Wells 1912:1. 6–7 and Marincola 2001: 23–5. 54 Cf. esp., 2.44 and 2.29. See also Asheri 2007: 6. 55 On the importance of travelling in the ﬁfth-century and the idea of the travelling intellectual, see Thomas 2000: 9–16. It is also worth mentioning the medical writers in this respect, who would similarly have had to travel in order to collect evidence. 50

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to apply the same investigative procedures the pre-Socratics were using with regard to the universe at large to the study of people and their habits.56 The second, and more interesting, consequence is the evaluative attitude born from such travels and exposure. I think it is plausible to suggest that seeing with his own eyes and describing for his readers in great detail the differences in custom (nomos) between Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and Scythians, among others, played a part in showing Herodotus that cultures are irreducibly diverse. So too, this autopsy might have shed light on why and how they come into irresolvable conﬂict with one another. Indeed, it could be argued that Herodotus’ ﬁrst-hand knowledge of the variety of nomoi acted as a source from which his pluralism sprang.57 The idea of moral variety and the inescapable importance of nomos (cf. Demaratus’ remark that nomos is master, 7.104.4) is enshrined in the Histories at 3.38, an often-cited passage supporting Herodotean ‘relativism’.58 It is similarly found in Protagoras’ man-measure statement (as applied to whole cultures), as well as in his belief that customs are man-made.59 Here we can note a common support, if not championing, of nomos over phusis in the debate between the two which was raging in late ﬁfth-century intellectual circles. And yet (importantly for pluralism), there is also a respect in which both men recognize the existence of a common phusis underlying the multiplicity of difference.60 This can be seen implicitly in their shared views on language/naming and also in their similar invocation of an orthos standard. As pluralists do, both seem to accept that fundamental diversity does not rule out commonality or the ability to evaluate on either a grand (cultural) or small (onomastic) scale.61

56

On the new humanism, see Guthrie 1971: 16; Kerferd 1981: 112; Romm 1998: 16. Cf. I.4.B above. 57 For this idea, see Kerferd 1981: 112; Farrar 1988: 46; Hart 1993: 205; De Romilly 1998: 112–13, 226; Marincola 2001: 14. Cf. III.1.B above. The sophistic treatise known as the Dissoi Logoi illustrates the point, using examples similar to those found in Herodotus. 58 To be addressed at V.3.A below. 59 See III.1.B and III.2.A above. On the connection between the two thinkers in this respect, cf. Kerferd 1981: 105–6; Cartledge 1993: 60; Thomas 2000: 126–7. 60 For this idea in Protagoras, see III.2.A above; in Herodotus, V.3.A; in history generally, IV.1.A. Cf. I.3.C. 61 On language, see III.2.A; on orthos, see II.4.C and III.5.

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An interesting corollary to this, at least on the cultural front, is that both acknowledge that the existence of a ‘common core’ to human morality means that some will fall outside of this boundary. For Protagoras, it is those people who are without the basic constituents of political virtue, dikē and aidōs (III.2.A above); for Herodotus, it is people like the Androphagoi, who are similarly without a conception of dikē and nomos (4.106). Herodotus’ proem nicely brings to the fore his shared, pluralist concerns with Protagoras: humanity, even-handedness, and difference (here in the form of conﬂict). In it, he announces his subject to be ‘the deeds of humans’ (a ª Æ K IŁæø), and speciﬁes that he is interested in ‘Greeks and non-Greeks alike’ (a b ‚ººÅØ, a b Ææ æØØ). Furthermore, one of his main focuses will be the ‘conﬂict between them’ (KºÅÆ IºººØØ). Such a programme is one that sophist and historian alike would be interested in. Finally, we should mention that both thinkers seemed to have embraced some degree of scepticism about the divine. It is clear that Protagoras’ famous denial of the possibility of knowledge about the Gods (DK80 B4) and Herodotus’ comment at 2.3.2 speak to one another.62 I have argued earlier that Protagoras’ position differed from that of the sceptics (II.4.C) generally, but perhaps religion was the one domain where he felt, understandably, there was no ‘better’ viewpoint to be ascertained and so opted to deny knowledge altogether. In this way, scepticism here may very well be an outgrowth of the unempirical nature of the divine or of the fact that religious beliefs and/or theories are particularly prone to being multiple and contradictory in a way that would defy an ‘expert’. Herodotus’ sentiments are more outwardly pluralist (as opposed to sceptical), as he conﬁrms that the reason for his reticence is that each nation knows an equal amount about the gods, where the implication is that the amount is extremely limited and, also, that the information itself varies from one people to another (as do the names of the gods).63 Interestingly, though, like Protagoras, it is perhaps the extremity of the disagreement surrounding the subject matter and its fundamental intangibility that prompt a pointed caution (cf. 2.65.2) beyond what either man

62 63

Cf. Thomas 2006: 67 and Scullion 2006: 200–1. Cf. Scullion 2006: 200.

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might exercise when confronted with plurality and disagreement in another arena.64

C. Herodotus and Sophocles: poetic parallels65 Herodotus and Sophocles were members of the same circle.66 So we are told over and over again.67 Plutarch relays a story of how Sophocles wrote a poem dedicated to Herodotus.68 Literary overlaps make a good show that this was indeed possible.69 There are straightforward commonalities, such as the dream-induced image of sprouting foliage covering a whole land at Herodotus 1.108.1 and Electra 417–23, and the fact that both Salmoxis (4.95) and Electra (62 ff.) grasp the idea that people can beneﬁt from having been thought dead. But there are also more trenchant tragic themes that unite the two. A direct borrowing seems clear at Herodotus 3.119.3–6 and Antigone 903–15, which both enshrine a terrible choice. The similarity between how sisters beg mercy for their brothers, at the expense of other family members and on the grounds that it is these relatives alone who are irreplaceable, is striking.70 So too, each author has characters touched by the transience of fate and the struggles inherent in life. Oedipus Tyrannus 1527–30 appears to be an illustration of Solon’s words of

64

For the sake of completeness, we should mention the coincidence of Protagoras’ and Herodotus’ views on the balanced attributes of animals (Herodotus 3.108; Plato, Protagoras 321b)—on which, see Nestle 1908: 16–18; Kerferd 1981: 150; Thomas 2000: 147; Raaﬂaub 2002: 160. Thomas also draws attention to (2006: 68) two more attenuated linguistic parallels, between the title of Protagoras’ book on truth (Alētheia ē kataballontes) and Herodotus 7.77.1 and between Protagoras’ weaker/stronger thesis and Herodotus 8.83.1. 65 The relationship between Sophocles and Protagoras will be touched on at VII.3.A below. 66 Approximate dates for Sophocles: 496/5–405 bce. On the relationship between history and tragedy generally, see Gomme 1954: passim; Walbank 1960; Macleod 1983: ch. 13; Luce 1997: 55–7. 67 Among many others, How and Wells 1912: 1. 7; Perotta 1935: 25 f. and 26 n. 1; Whitman 1951: 14; Finley 1967: 43–4; Proctor 1980: 43; Waters 1985: 21; Hart 1993: 204, 216; Marincola 1996: x; Romm 1998: 53. On Herodotus and Euripides, Schmid and Stählin 1934: 663 n. 4 and Fornara 1971a. 68 Plutarch, Moralia 785b. 69 See Schmid and Stählin 1934: 318 n. 3, 567–72 and Ostwald 1991: 143–7. 70 Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1417a34–40; Finkelberg 1995b: 149–51; West 1999; Dewald and Kitzinger 2006.

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wisdom at 1.32.5–9.71 Cleobis and Biton’s mother, (1.31.4–5), Artabanus (7.46.3–4), and the chorus at Oedipus at Colonus 1224–48) all voice the idea that it is best not to be born, that life is a series of unending struggles.72 And ﬁnally, there is the common recognition at Herodotus 2.35.2–4 and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 337–41 that the mores of Egypt are a reversal of those of Greece.73 Taken together, these concurrences make plausible the supposition that Herodotus and Sophocles had certain intellectual interests and ideas in common or, put more generically, that they were both part of a certain environment where such interests and ideas were in the air, so to speak.74

D. Herodotus and Thucydides: illumination by contrast Marcellinus records a story that, upon hearing Herodotus recite from his Histories, the young Thucydides burst into tears.75 The interest of this, probably apocryphal, anecdote lies in the ambiguity of the cause of those tears. Was Thucydides made to weep because he was so impressed by the work of his forerunner or because he was so disconcerted by it? Factual or not, accurate or glib, the legacy of Marcellinus’ tale is a tension between the two writers that is crucial

71 Cf. also Sophocle’s, Trachiniae 2–3, Antigone 1155–72, and fr. 646. Herodotus 1.32.7: æd i º ıﬁÅ, KØå E Å b ŒÆº Ø Œø Zº Ø (‘Until a man dies, hold fast and do not call him happy’); 1.32.9: Œ Ø b åæc Æe åæÆ c º ıc ŒB ﬁ I ÆØ (‘It is necessary to consider in every instance the end, in which way it will go’). Oedipus Tyrannus 1528–30: u ŁÅe Z KŒ Å c º ıÆÆ Ø | æÆ KØŒFÆ Å K Oº Ç Ø, æd i | æÆ F ı æﬁÅ Å b Iºª Øe ÆŁ (‘Look upon that last day and consider no mortal man happy until he has passed through the end of his life having suffered nothing grievous’). Here we have an accord of language as well. In this regard, compare also Sophocles, fr. 401 with Herodotus 1.36.2 and Oedipus Tyrannos 1080 with Herodotus 1.126.6 (Grifﬁn 2006: 49). Finkelberg (1995b) argues for an overlap between Trachiniae 634–9 and Herodotus 7.176.3, 7.198.2, 7.200.1–2. On Herodotus’ relationship with tragic themes more generally, see Saïd 2002 and Grifﬁn 2006. 72 Cf. also Theognis 425–28; Bacchylides 5.155–60; Euripides, Trojan Women 509–10. 73 Cf. Dissoi Logoi 2.17. 74 A third mutual source could also explain some of the convergences, but probably not all. Even if this were the case, the fact still remains that both authors chose to include the common passages. All in all, we are bound, I think, to agree with Flory (1980: 26) that there is a ‘strong probability’ that Sophocles read Herodotus. 75 Life of Thucydides 54.

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for understanding the nature of their relationship.76 Thucydides was deeply inﬂuenced by Herodotus, but he was also deeply sceptical of the older man’s methodology.77 Indeed, much of the later author’s historical outlook, as well as his conception of his project, was deﬁned by reference to his predecessor. But that reference can be said to be negative in the sense that Thucydides often took Herodotus as an example of what not to do.78 Thucydides is concerned to castigate, often by allusion, those he felt had got it wrong (1.20–2). Herodotus must be seen to be a—if not the—main target here. When it comes to making a case for the pluralism of Herodotus, therefore, the value of Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War should not be underestimated. This is in large part why I will allow room to discuss it at some length. Thucydidean monism, we shall see, was above all a reaction. In the same way that the dialogues of Plato are indispensable in shedding light on sophistic—and, more speciﬁcally, Protagorean—beliefs about the plurality and diversity of phenomena, the reality of sense perception, and the ambiguity of truth-value, the History of Thucydides illuminates the Histories of Herodotus in respect of a similar set of concerns. The well-documented ideas of the later authors help to speak for and give shape to the less explicit (or less well preserved), though equally compelling, positions of their antagonists. In this way, it is Thucydides’ approach 76 Many scholars have remarked upon the either/or relationship between Herodotus and Thucydides in varying respects. See, among others, Gomperz 1901: 503; Collingwood 1993: 28–31; Luce 1997: 60; Marincola 1997: 9–10. Raaﬂaub helpfully reminds us (2002: 149–54, 183–6), however, of the importance of their similarities. 77 Herodotus’ inﬂuence on Thucydides can be seen, among other places, in the prefaces of both works (name and origin); in the fact that Thucydides mentions the Persian Wars as a previous (though lesser) enterprise than his subject (1.23.1); in the fact that he opted to launch his Pentecontaetia from the exact place that Herodotus left off (479 bce); in their shared indebtedness to Homer (Cf. Macleod 1983: ch.13; Luce 1997: 3–5; Romm 1998: 12–26); in Thucydides’ express rejection of the mythical element that is prominent in Herodotus’ work (1.22.4). Thucydides uses Herodotus as a point of departure, taking further trends that the latter set in motion (chronicling res gestae, documenting military exploits, rationalizing them), but parting company with him on matters of style, voice, religiosity, and mythology. Lucian (How To Write History 41–2) points out that Thucydides developed his take on history from observing Herodotus. See Woodman 1988: 6–7, 40–7, 50–1 n. 38 and Hart 1993: 224–9. 78 For the most important points of factual divergence between Herodotus and Thucydides, see How and Wells 1912: 1. 36 n. 2 and Myres 1953: 17–18. Hornblower provides (1996: 122–45) a detailed account of Thucydides’ use of Herodotus in this respect. Differences in style were commented upon in antiquity: Dionysius, Letter to Pompey 3 and Hermogenes, On Types 409–11.

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to history—broadly speaking, his celebration of the ‘scientiﬁc’ method—which affords added signiﬁcance to the choices Herodotus makes in constructing his Histories. It is Thucydides’ clear and express monistic tendencies that bring to the surface the more latent features of Herodotus’ pluralism. (It is, for instance, Thucydides’ insistence on truth as the object of inquiry or his reduction of causation and source material that reveal Herodotus’ more pluralist attitude on parallel issues). This situation as regards Thucydides and Herodotus—the fact that Herodotus’ pluralism is best elucidated by contrast with his successor—is due to two reasons. The ﬁrst is the nature of pluralism itself (cf. I.5.B above): as a philosophical position, pluralism is often regarded as unworthy of attention until viewed in light of the theoretically bolder stance of monism. To recognize that values or societies are diverse and potentially conﬂicting might be seen as uninteresting until such a perspective is challenged by a viewpoint that privileges similarity or focuses on unifying themes. As postmodernity’s response to the Enlightenment has shown, pluralism is most likely to be taken seriously, to gain visibility and credibility, only in response to its less obvious, though somehow more comforting, opponent. The other reason why Thucydides helps to clarify Herodotus is related to the expectations and development of genre. By the time Thucydides came to write his history, notions of methodology and self-deﬁnition in written works were more advanced than—or, put less teleologically, were different from—how they were when Herodotus composed his. Herodotus is rightly described by Cicero as pater historiae because the text he composed, however we want to label its content, is sui generis.79 He did not inherit a legacy that called for the speciﬁcation of method and he clearly did not think to invent it. As Arnaldo Momigliano famously put it: ‘There was no Herodotus before Herodotus.’80 Also relevant is the fact of the more oral tradition in which Herodotus worked.81 If selections of his Histories were tailored for public recital, rather than close examination in the conﬁnes of a reader’s study, there may have been less need for Herodotus 79

De Legibus 1.1.5. On Herodotus and the invention of history, see the excellent collection of essays in Arethusa, 20 (1987). 80 Momigliano 1966: 129. 81 Though both historians relied mainly on oral evidence. Cf. Momigliano 1966: 135. I would not want to press the distinction between the two authors too hard in this respect. See Thomas 1992: 103–4.

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to deﬁne himself from a methodological point of view as sharply as there was for Thucydides.82

3. THUCYDIDES: MONISM AND METHOD Thucydides, therefore, provides a contrasting backdrop against which we can assess Herodotus:83 he offers a more monistic foil against which the pluralism of his forerunner can be seen to emerge.84 We will now illustrate some of the ways in which Thucydides’ story of the Peloponnesian War is monistic in those senses of the term outlined above. In particular, we will concentrate on his express attempt to assimilate the craft of history to that of science—an effort which sees him commit the fallacy of methodological monism—with special attention to his tendency towards reduction. Chapter V’s detailed discussion of the Histories will provide an opportunity to see how Thucydides’ attitudes towards moral conﬂict are similarly monistic, especially in contrast to Herodotus.

A. History and science The two faces of Thucydides In the current climate of scholarship, it is too crude to categorize Thucydides baldly as either, on the one hand, a cold, rationalist scientist or, on the other, a literary, mythically inspired artist. Nearly a century ago F. M. Cornford argued persuasively for the latter view, where many others, most notably C. N. Cochrane, have done so for

82 For Herodotus as a public performer, see Marincola 2001: 23–4 and n. 18 for bibliography. Especially important are Flory 1980; Thomas 1992: 123–7 and 2000: 257 ff.; Murray 2001. 83 Homer will provide a similar model for Sophocles. See VI.2 below. 84 The monistic elements of both Plato and Thucydides, because these thinkers came after Protagoras and Herodotus, can be viewed as, in some sense, reactive. Sophocles’ pluralist leanings, on the other hand, might themselves be perceived as a response to certain reductive or unifying tendencies in Homer and Aeschylus. Tracing inﬂuence in antiquity is a notoriously thorny enterprise: see Goldhill 1986: 229 and Thomas 2000: 19–21.

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the former.85 But the days of pigeon-holing this ancient author, as many critics have noticed, are over.86 The work of Thucydides, it is more often than not granted, is emblematic of both of these personae. The historian is an acute observer of fact and a brilliant creator of ‘ﬁction’ (even if we concede that such ﬁction is based, however loosely, on fact).87 There is, no doubt, much art to be found in the pages of Thucydides, but it remains accurate to describe him and his history as scientiﬁc. Even if highlighting the scientiﬁc facet of the History has fallen out of fashion, it is still the case that neglecting this side of the work would be remiss. As Gregory Crane makes the point: ‘Thucydides the Hippokratic observer and Thucydides the proto-Euclid have exerted rather less of a hold upon recent scholarly imaginations. Nevertheless, these analogies, though inexact, do capture a crucial element of the Thucydidean project.’88 In this way, even if an interpretation of Thucydides as ‘scientiﬁc’ represents only half of the picture, the classiﬁcation bears weight nonetheless. For present purposes, this amounts to the fact that it would not be a category mistake to analyse the text in terms of science and scientiﬁc method. And yet, because the ‘scientiﬁc’ is but one competing aspect of the work’s ethos, we should be wary about drawing overly general conclusions about monism and pluralism based on it alone. To be fair, we would have to qualify any assertions we made about the monism of Thucydides in respect of method (that is, the application of the scientiﬁc method to the domain of the humanities against which Berlin so

85 See Cornford 1965 (ﬁrst published 1907) and Cochrane 1965 (ﬁrst published 1929). Many authors have subsequently tried to redress the balance in one direction or the other. In the ﬁrst camp fall authors such as Jacqueline De Romilly and F. E. Adcock; in the second, John H. Finley, Simon Hornblower, and W. Robert Connor. On this persistent ‘tug of war’ in Thucydidean scholarship, see Percival 1977: 202–5; Dover 1973: 44; Hunter 1973: Introduction; Luce 1997: 80; Crane 1998: 5–6, 12–13. 86 See esp., the Introduction to Connor 1984, which nicely elucidates the stages of the debate. 87 On the reality that all historians are, to some extent, artists, see Berlin 1998: 47–8. Elsewhere Berlin mentions (1990: 71) the English historian G. M. Trevelyan’s insightful observation that even Clio was a muse. Gay 1975: 185–217 is a good account of how history is at once ‘science and art’. 88 Crane 1998: 13. Cf. Pouncey 1980: 26 and Luce 1997: 81. On the ubiquitous scholarly perception of Thucydides as scientiﬁc, however, see Woodman 1988: 5. Percival describes (1977: 202) Thucydides’ programme as ‘essentially scientiﬁc’. Fornara calls (1983: 105) Thucydides ‘indubitably scientiﬁc’.

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adamantly rallied) with the knowledge that there are non-scientiﬁc and literary elements of the History as well. While Thucydides certainly acts as an artist in various places— including and omitting at will, shaping reader response by careful arrangement of material, shading meaning where possible—his own express goal is to be a scientist.89 Even Cornford conceded the point: He chose a task which promised to lie wholly within the sphere of positively ascertainable fact; and, to make assurance double sure, he set himself limits which further restricted this sphere, till it seemed that no bias, no preconception, no art except the art of methodological inquiry, could possibly intrude. But he had not reckoned with the truth that you cannot collect the facts like so many pebbles, without your own personality and the common mind of your age and country having something to say to the choice and arrangement of the collection.90

Thucydides, on this view, aimed at one thing but produced—albeit unwittingly—another. He misjudged: his ‘work of science came to be a work of art’.91 The art of the History was in some sense a mistake: it might have been inevitable, but it was not necessarily desired.92 The fact remains, however, that the standard of science is that to which he would hold his history accountable and, as such, it is the standard to which we should hold it as well, at least in good part.

What do we mean by scientiﬁc history? The use of the term ‘scientiﬁc’ requires a further word of explanation, as it has been contended on more than one occasion that it is anachronistic to apply such a concept to an ancient work. Scientiﬁc history, we are warned, is a product of the nineteenth century—the century Berlin is so concerned with in his discussions of history—and 89 For the artistic aspect of Thucydides, see, among others, Cornford 1965; Hunter 1973; Connor 1984; Hornblower, in Hornblower 1994; Luce 1997: 92 ff., Pelling 2000. That ancient critics (Plutarch, Longinus) regarded Thucydides as a conscious literary author, see Flory 1990: 195. 90 Cornford 1965: viii. 91 Ibid. xi. 92 This is not to say that Thucydides did not, along the way, make intentional or deliberate ‘artistic’ choices, only that he would not recognize such stylistic choices as a constitutive, deﬁning feature of the work and would not have seen them as detracting from or competing with the more scientiﬁc basis. For ways in which Thucydides fails to be scientiﬁc, see Clark 1993.

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a by-product of the ascription of Darwinian categories to historical writing.93 On this view, we are badly misinterpreting the evolution of ancient Greek scientiﬁc thought if we label Thucydides’ history as such. To be sure, Greek science was still in its infancy at the time Thucydides’ was composing his history.94 This is a point on which Cornford and his critics can agree.95 But as Cochrane has rightly argued, and as many others have recognized in the context of Thucydides’ intellectual afﬁnities, the study of medicine was a fairly well-developed enterprise at the time.96 The extant collection of Hippocratic treatises goes a long way towards demonstrating this.97 It is not, therefore, overblown to maintain that this area of investigation—its methodology, aims, language, and style—had an effect on the historian.98 So too, we may imagine, did the natural science/ philosophy of the pre-Socratics.99 ‘Scientiﬁc history’ as applied to Thucydides, then, should be understood as an adoption by the historian of some of the practices and theories employed in sixth- and ﬁfth-century medicine and philosophy.100 Moreover, if we distill Berlin’s critique of nineteenth-century scientiﬁc history, it is possible 93 See e.g. Bury 1909: 147, 258 and Cornford 1965: ix, 73–4. Cf. Luce 1997: 80–1. For a description of the development of nineteenth-century scientiﬁc history and Thucydides’ relationship with it (particularly to the mindset of Leopold Von Ranke), see Fornara 1983: 196–7. On Ranke, see further Gay 1975: ch. 2. 94 On the state of Greek science in the ﬁfth century, see Lloyd 1979 and Rihll 1999. 95 Cf. Cornford 1965: 74 with e.g. Bury 1909: 147. 96 See Cochrane 1965: chs. 1–3, 166. On the inﬂuence of medicine on Thucydides, cf. Finley 1942: 69–72; Proctor 1980: 41–2; Hornblower 1987: ch. 5; Luce 1997: 80–6. The idea of ‘science’ was not conﬁned in the ﬁfth century to medicine. Antiphon’s Alētheia, for example, had a scientiﬁc bent (Finley 1942: 56). Furthermore, the ﬁeld of ‘political science’ was similarly blossoming (e.g. the Old Oligarch), even within nonscientiﬁc genres such as tragedy (e.g. Euripides, Supplices 195–245, 399–456). Gagarin and Woodruff 1997 collect excerpts of ‘political thought’ from this period. 97 Thomas discusses (2000: esp. ch. 5) at length the way in which the Hippocratic writings are ‘scientiﬁc’ and what affect this could have on a historian (speciﬁcally Herodotus). 98 To make this claim we do not need to posit any personal relationship between Thucydides and Hippocrates, as does Cochrane (1965: 15–16), though we do not need to rule one out either. See also Littré 1961: 474–75. Not all doctors or contributors to the Hippocratic collection, it should be mentioned, were equally or at all scientiﬁc. On this point, see Lloyd 1979: 37–49. 99 For these philosophical trends and how they inﬂuenced the development of science, see Lloyd 1979: 32–7. On the relationship between medicine and philosophy more generally, see Longrigg 1993. 100 For good deﬁnitions of ‘scientiﬁc history’, see Finley 1942: 70; Cochrane 1965: 25, 167, 173; Luce 1997: 80. For the relationship between realism and science, cf. Forde 1995: passim.

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to isolate a number of raw features, detaching them from their modern context in a way that makes them relevant to our discussion of antiquity. These features are closely related to the aspects of Greek science that Thucydides was interested in emulating: namely rationality, veracity, predictability, universality, and progress.101 We will now examine them in more detail.102

Rationalism and truth The ﬁrst way in which Thucydides aims for a scientiﬁc-styled history lies in what we could describe as his rationalism. Like many of the Hippocratics and phusiologoi, the historian makes clear that his history will be a serious and reason-based inquiry, lacking in romantic aspects that might otherwise obscure or mislead.103 Unlike Homer and Herodotus before him, Thucydides tells us, ‘the mythical’ (e ıŁH , 1.21.1, 1.22.4) will be omitted from his exposition of war. It is left unspeciﬁed what exactly this precludes. But from the rest of the work it becomes apparent that he is referring to those occurrences that are legendary (in both time and content)—happenings, that is, which cannot be proven conclusively—as well as those that are religious.104 Gods, oracles, tall tales: for Thucydides, these are not the stuff of history (1.10.3, 1.21.1, 1.22.4; no divine origin of plague 2.47–48, 54): in most instances they are relegated to that group of phenomena introduced by the indeﬁnite ºª ÆØ (‘it is said’).105 101 The most overt similarity between Thucydides and the Hippocratic writers is, of course, the historian’s painstakingly detailed description of the plague at 2.47–54. On the detailed parallels of this description with the medical treatises, see Weidauer 1954; Page 1953; Holladay and Poole 1979; Swain 1994. 102 For these features as common elements of Greek scientiﬁc practice, see Hankinson 1998: Introduction and Rihll 1999: 10, 16–17. 103 Consider e.g. On the Sacred Disease 3–5 and Airs, Waters, Places 22. The Hippocratics, however, tend to intermingle naturalistic and divine causation (Cf. On the Sacred Disease 21). They offer scientiﬁc reasons for disease without wholly eschewing traditional religion. See Jouanna 1999: 191ff. As for the pre-Socratic inﬂuence in this regard, see, among others, Lloyd 1979: 32–7 and Barnes 2000: 3–5. 104 For the general consensus that e ıŁH refers to the fabulous or storytelling element of his predecessors, see Woodman 1988: 23 ff. and Marincola 1997: 117. For a different view, which reads e ıŁH as referring to the absence of political chauvinism or excessive patriotism, see Flory 1990. Thucydides considers the Trojan War to be a real event, Minos a real person, though his opinion about their veriﬁability seems to waver and though he certainly questions the reliability of Homer’s evidence (1.9.4, 1.10.3). Cf. Connor 1984: 27–31 and Marincola 1997: 96–7. 105 See Bury 1909: 83; Dover 1973: 30 ff.; Westlake 1977.

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Oracular pronouncements or religious sentiment may make an appearance in the narrative—often as examples of folly—because they govern the actors described (the Melians, 5.104, 5.112, for instance; the Spartans, 1.103, 7.18.2; Nicias 7.50.4, 7.77.2–4), but the historian himself never draws on such factors for his own purposes of explanation.106 Indeed, Thucydides is wary of interpreting even physical phenomena as omens (6.70.1, 7.50.4, 7.79.3; his own practice: 2.28). As is the hallmark of the scientiﬁc method, both for the Hippocratics and for Berlin—and this is the second way in which he is inﬂuenced by the medicine men—Thucydides is most concerned with that which can be veriﬁed.107 Accordingly, with the notable exception of the so-called Archaeology (1.2–19), he conﬁnes his study to contemporary history, that about which, as he says himself, it is easiest to ﬁnd the truth (1.1.3, 1.20.1, 1.20.5).108 The apprehension of ‘truth’ is his express goal (e Æç, 1.22.4; B IºÅŁ Æ, 1.20.3; IºÅŁ æ, 1.21.1), and never are we given the impression that truth is anything but singular.109 This is what the scientiﬁc method is all about: it exists, Berlin reminds us, to reinforce ‘the old conviction that to every question there was only one true answer, universal, eternal, unchangeable . . . with the corollary that the most reliable criterion of objective truth was logical demonstration, or measurement, or at least approximations to this’.110 Thucydides is here continuing in the tradition of assuring truth at the outset of a work that was, we will remember (I.4.C), a common feature in epic and lyric poetry. Instead,

106 See, among others, Bury 1909: 129; Dover 1973: 41–3; Hornblower 1987: 30; Luce 1997: 91–2. 107 Cf. On Ancient Medicine 1 and Lloyd 1970: 59–61. 108 Cf. Williams 2002: ch. 7. Information about the remote past, like divinities and oracles, is often introduced with the non-committal ºª ÆØ (e.g. 4.24.5, 6.2.1). On contemporary history as falling out of the ambit of the activity of the historian, though, see Oakeshott 1991: 176–7. 109 On IºŁ ØÆ in Thucydides, see Allison 1997: 206–37. For the idea, however, that Thucydides was concerned with realism and not ‘historical truth’ per se, based on his interpretation of e Æç and belief that e ıŁH is not to be contrasted with e IºÅŁ at 1.21.1, see Woodman 1988: 23–8. Gomperz, on the other hand, describes (1901: 513) Thucydides as ‘absolutely tireless in his search for truth’ and calls that search ‘perhaps the most prominent feature of the historian’s character’. So too Scanlon argues (2002: 147) that ‘e Æç is not simply another synonym for precision or accuracy. This phrase and other terms in its semantic sphere are concerned with but not restricted to speciﬁc data; they also concern a more abstract, general, and yet certain truth with relevance for the future.’ 110 Berlin 1998: 333.

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however, of invoking the Muses, as the early poets did, or guaranteeing veracity by divine inspiration, as a prophet would, the historian insists on a new basis for ascertaining truth: empiricist rigour.111 We need look no further than the tract On Ancient Medicine to discover a contemporary statement arguing for the merits of such an approach.112 About events, Thucydides is conﬁdent that his history can achieve this standard of veracity. The truth may ‘difﬁcult’ to discover (cf. åÆº , 1.20.1; åÆº , 1.22.1; KØ ø, 1.22.3), but through a commitment to ‘accuracy’ and ‘precision’ (IŒæØ Æﬁ), it can be attained (1.22.2; cf. his disdain for evidence that is I º ªŒÆ, ‘not examined’, 1.21.1). Indeed, he castigates his predecessors, who were not similarly rigorous in its pursuit (1.20.2–3, 1.21.1; cf. Herodotus 6.57, 9.53; Hellenicus at 1.97.2). The trick, Thucydides implies, is the strict avoidance of multiplicity and conﬂicting information. Accordingly, in his efforts to uncover the facts of the war Thucydides is keen to eradicate the inevitability of perspectivism. The many reports he hears, each tainted by the all-too-human defects of ‘bias or memory’ ( PÆ j Å), obscure the truth rather than deliver it (1.22.3). These conﬂicting versions are not merely variant perceptions of a given event, each telling in its own way. For Thucydides, some are false and some are true, some are closer to the truth, others further from it. Implicit here is the common belief we have already touched upon that plurality and error go hand and hand; that an independent, uniﬁed truth is ‘out there’ to be unearthed by whoever is dedicated enough to do the digging. This is but one example of Thucydides’ belief (which will eventually form the cornerstone of the Platonic programme) in the existence of a ‘real’ behind the ‘apparent’, a singular and immutable reality behind the ﬂux of phenomena.113 As he himself phrases it, most people are not committed to ‘the search for truth’ ( ÇÅØ B IºÅŁ Æ, 1.20.3): they would rather turn toward what is ‘readily available’ (a EÆ, 1.20.3). Moreover, so deep is his commitment to an independent truth that Thucydides conceives of his own impressions (‰ Kd K Œ Ø, ‘as it seemed to me’, 111

Philosophers such as Parmenides (KRS 288) and Empedocles (DK31 B3) were still claiming such divine inspiration. 112 See Cochrane 1965: 7 and Hankinson 1998: 64–9. Cf. also Epidemics I and III as well as Regimen in Acute Diseases. 113 On this distinction in Thucydides, common in pre-Socratic thought, see Crane 1998: 6, 295–6.

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a favourite Herodotean expression) as but a further layer of fat to be stripped away (1.22.2). As for the speeches, Thucydides is here, of course, less adamant that he can meet the imposing standards of empiricism (1.22.1).114 But, as we shall see below, he invokes another scientiﬁc principle to help in their composition: retrodiction. Such a principle similarly irons out conﬂict and multiplicity, but does so in a different way.

The predictive power of history: human nature and universal laws The third way in which Thucydides demonstrates an afﬁnity with the scientiﬁc method of the doctors concerns the purpose of his history. The raison d’être of medical science (as well as science generally) is prediction or, in the case of medicine, prognosis.115 A doctor will study a patient with the utmost care and attention to detail, he will familiarize himself with the speciﬁcs of a case history in order that he may make an accurate diagnosis based on what he sees, but also so that, when presented with a similar set of symptoms in the future, he not only will know what ailment he is dealing with but will be able to predict correctly its course and treatment.116 In the ﬁeld of medicine, such an attitude presupposes the belief that human beings are of an essentially uniform constitution and that their bodies, their health, or lack of it, are subject to knowable and predictable patterns.117 Thucydides himself accepted this view of the prescriptive power of medical science at the onset of his description of the plague (2.48.3): Kªg b x Kªª ºø, ŒÆd Iç z ¼ Ø ŒH, Y ŒÆd ÆsŁØ KØØ, ºØ i åØ Ø æ Ø g c Iª E, ÆFÆ Åºø ÆP Æ ŒÆd ÆPe N g ¼ººı åÆ. 114

Though, it might be argued, he would want to. That Thucydides’ ideal in respect of the speeches would be verbatim reports, see Fornara 1983: 65 and Scanlon 2002: 146. For the opposite view, Woodman 1988: 11–14. 115 Prognostic 1: e NÅæe Œ E Ø ¼æØ r ÆØ æ ØÆ KØÅ Ø (‘It seems best to me that a doctor make use of foresight’). Cf. also On Ancient Medicine; Airs, Waters, Places 2; Hornblower 1987: 132; Luce 1997: 84. 116 As Epidemics I and III depict, it is common practice to include a general description of the conditions prevailing, climatic and otherwise, when the disease broke out followed by a catalogue of symptoms. Cf. Prognostic and Thucydides 2.49–50. 117 On the assumption of uniformity in diagnosis, see Airs, Waters, Places 22 and Lloyd 1979: 25–6.

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I will describe what sort of thing it was, and, if it ever strikes again, I will make clear these things [symptoms] from which someone who was investigating it would most be able to recognize it through foresight, since I myself was ill and I myself saw others suffering from it.

When transposed to the ﬁeld of history, a belief in predictability of this sort similarly presupposes a scientiﬁc and uniﬁed conception of the world:118 in particular, it presupposes the existence of a relatively stable human nature and of a set of general laws that govern it.119 Accordingly, Thucydides’ express aim for his history in this respect is to provide readers with a ‘possession for all time’ (ŒBÆ K ÆN ), a record that will serve, not as a transient showpiece, but as a tool for the future for those who want to know ‘the truth about the things that happened and the things that will happen’ (H ª ø e Æçb . . . ŒÆd H ºº ø, 1.22.4).120 As John Finley asserts, this sentence ‘states his belief that history is both useful and scientiﬁc: useful because posterity will ﬁnd in the experience of the past some indication of the forces at work in their own day; scientiﬁc, because those forces are implicit in human nature and, as such, can be studied and recorded as something quite permanent’.121 The ‘utility’ of history (its ability to be TçºØÆ, 1.22.4) is, for Thucydides, dependent on the fact of a constant ‘human nature’ (1.22.4, e IŁæØ): to know the past is beneﬁcial for someone in the future only if there exists a good deal of continuity in behaviour.122 That Thucydides accepts the notion of a fairly static ‘human nature’ can be garnered from several key passages, in some of which we hear the author’s own

118 The History’s relationship with utility and prediction—its celebration of their merit—reveals itself further in Thucydides’ interest in and strong approval of the attribute of foresight. See 1.22.5, 2.48.3 (Thucydides); 2.65.5, 2.65.13 (Pericles); 1.138.3 (Themistocles); 3.45.1, 6.62 ff., 7.73 (Hermocrates). Cf. Jaeger 1967: 403; Finley 1942: 50, 98; De Ste Croix 1972: 30; Legon 1997: 4. 119 For predictability as being the chief merit of history for Thucydides, see Luce 1997: 84. Cf. also Finley 1942: 68, 109. This is not to say that Thucydides was not impressed by chance. Cf. Pericles’ remark at 1.140.l, Archidamus’ at 1.82.6, and Edmunds 1975. 120 Utility is therefore linked with the notion of truth in that a false account of events or humanity will clearly be less useful than an accurate one. e Æç is, in this way, equivalent to e IºÅŁ. 121 Finley 1942: 108–9. 122 For different ways in which Thucydides might have considered his History useful, see Percival 1977; Flory 1990: 202–3; Rutherford 1994.

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voice (F IŁæø ı æ ı, 1.76.2; B ﬁ IŁæø Æﬁ ç Ø, 1.76.3; c IŁæø Æ çØ, 2.50.1; ÆPc çØ IŁæø, 3.82.2; e IŁæ Ø, 4.61.5; NøŁ ƒ ¼ŁæøØ, 4.108.4; e IŁæ Ø, 5.68.2; e IŁæ Ø, 5.105.2; IŁæ ØÆ, 7.77.4).123 Thucydides’ feeling that his history will be of use in the future because human nature is stable also accords with the scientiﬁc belief that certain general laws or principles operate in the world, are determinative, and, once discovered, will repeat.124 The most explicit statement of this combination in the text is found at 3.82.2: ŒÆd K ººa ŒÆd åÆº a ŒÆa Ø ÆE º Ø, ªØª Æ b ŒÆd ÆN d K Æ, ø i ÆPc çØ IŁæø ﬁ q (‘Many harsh things befell the cities in the course of civil war, things that happen and will always happen so long as men have the same nature’).125 The point is that, if people will act in the same way in all places and at all times, it must be possible to ascertain (and predict) the forces that necessitate and shape their behaviour.126 If, in other words, there exists a ‘common human nature amongst men’ ( ÆPc çØ IŁæø), the ‘things which are’ (ªØª Æ) ‘will always be’ (ÆN d K Æ). If, for example, in conditions of international warfare or diplomacy a stronger state will always be governed by fear or advantage or will always try to maximize its power (if, that is to say, this is a question of phusis), we can apply this pattern of behaviour to all similarly situated states, everywhere, in the past, present, and future.

123 Many have recognized Thucydides’ belief in a stable human nature. See, among others, Finley 1942: 98; Cochrane 1965: 18–19; Jaeger 1967: 385–6 n. 21, 397 n. 1; De Ste Croix 1972: 29–30; Percival 1977: 202; Luce 1997: 86; Legon 1997; Crane 1998: 296ff.; Reeve 1999: 435. 124 On this belief in the History, see Gomperz 1901: 503; Finley 1942: 48, 57; Dover 1973: 43–4; Hunter 1973: Conclusion; Pouncey 1980: x and passim; Collingwood 1993: 29–31; Forde 1995: 151–2; Legon 1997: 4; Luce 1997: 88; Crane 1998: 12 (contra Cornford 1965: 68–9). 125 This formula, it should be noted, allows room for variation within the more rigid framework (as the passage itself makes clear as it continues). For variability within unity, cf. On Ancient Medicine 20 and Airs, Waters, Places. 126 For the idea of compulsion in the History, see Jaeger 1967: 397 ff.; Hunter 1973: 7; Ostwald 1988. For the link between science and necessity in respect of political realism, see Forde 1995: 150 ff. Thucydides’ use of the idea of necessity is similar to the way Sophocles employs it to colour the morality (or lack thereof) of the monistic hero. On which, cf. Knox 1964: 10 and Williams 1993: 75. For a recent discussion of how Herodotus’ (much more limited) use of IªŒÅ (‘necessity’) differs from his successor in a way that emphasizes responsibility, see Munson 2001.

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We can both predict how such nations will act given a known scenario and we can explain why.127 Several arguments are preponderant in the History which give expression to the belief that a given class of people are apt to act in a certain way, in certain circumstances. Finley points out three of these: the argument from probability, the argument from advantage or interest, and the law of the stronger (might equals right).128 All recur throughout the text, but the last two are particularly relevant as they are intimately linked with the conception of an abiding human nature.129 That is to say, in the History it is a matter of nature and natural inclinations that men pursue their own advantage and dominate where they can. The two ideas appear in tandem at various points in the narrative (6.85 and 6.87.2; 4.59.2 and 4.61.5; 3.45; 5.105; 7.77.4). The interconnectedness of their relationship is revealed most explicitly and lucidly by the Athenians at 1.76.2: oø P E ŁÆıÆe P b ØŒÆ P Ie F IŁæø ı æ ı, N Iæå Ø Å K ŁÆ ŒÆd ÆÅ c I E e <æØH> H ªø ØŒÅŁ , ØB ŒÆd ı ŒÆd Tç ºÆ, P Æs æHØ F Øı æÆ , Iºº ÆN d ŒÆŁ H e lø e F ıÆøæı ŒÆ æª ŁÆØ . . . In this way we have done nothing out of the ordinary nor against human nature if we have taken an empire when it was offered to us and not let it go, having been conquered by great factors: honour, fear, and advantage. And we are not the ﬁrst to start such behaviour, but it has always been established that the weaker have been subject to the stronger.130

It is nothing extraordinary, the Athenians muse, that they took an empire which was handed to them and refused to let it go. On this view, the reality that men act from motivations of fear and advantage is unsurprising. So is the fact that stronger states dominate weaker ones. This is a law that stems from human nature. 127 Pouncey points out (1980: xi, 20–9 and passim) that human nature has different loci in Thucydides: the individual, the faction, and the nation. 128 Finley 1942: 46–60. See also Luce 1997: 90–1. 129 The ‘Archaeology’, Thucydides’ ﬁrst stab at historical analysis, is a programmatic showcase for these arguments. Cf. esp. 1.8.3. 130 Human nature, interest, and law of the stronger (all emphasized) are, on this view, entirely interrelated. It is interesting how of the three forces the Athenians enumerate here—honour, fear, and advantage—the ﬁrst steadily drops out as the History proceeds. Cf. Pouncey 1980: 21, 169 n. 20, 38. Proﬁt has already been glossed as ‘self-interest’ (ıçæÆ, 1.75.5–76.1).

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It is also worth mentioning that, taken together, the ideas italicized in the above extract highlight Thucydides’ belief in the notion of phusis (as opposed to nomos). It is in his use of phusis as an explanatory principle that we see Thucydides again attempting to penetrate the apparent and excavate the real, in true monistic fashion. In contrast to Protagoras, who upholds the multiplicity of nomoi (see III.1.B, III.2.A above)—not to mention Herodotus (V.3)—for Thucydides, historical analysis is dependent on the belief that a single phusis exists beneath the veneer of plural and differing customs, a phusis that is determinative of behaviour. I will return to this supposition in my discussion of Athens and Sparta in the following chapter.

Retrodiction It can perhaps also be maintained that the belief that his history can be used, based on the existence of a stable human nature and of general laws which derive from it, as a tool for prediction allows Thucydides to retrodict—another Berlinian no-no. By retrodict, I mean simply that it allows him to ﬁll in what has happened in the past predicated on what he perceives to be timeless about the present.131 The idea of retrodiction is closely related to the sophistic practice of eikos (‘probability’) argument.132 ‘ . . . [I]n the hands of acute observers the principle of likelihood (eikos) was a powerful tool—for statesmen in estimating behavior in the present and anticipating it in the future, for historians in discovering the truth of what has happened in the past.’133 The Archaeology is one place where Thucydides sets in motion some rather general factors (ships, resources, empire) and forces (interest, fear, proﬁt) that he considers determinative in the process of history. Such principles allow him to draw conclusions about events as far back as the Trojan War (1.2–8), as well as to claim credibility for his version of events (1.21.1).134 A similar situation arises in the speeches.135

131 As Crane 1998: 296 puts it: it allows him to use ‘his analysis of the present to “predict” the past’. 132 Cf. Finley 1942: 47 ff. and Luce 1997: 90. 133 Luce 1997: 90. 134 See Finley 1942: 49; Hunter 1973: ch. 2; Connor 1984: 20–7. 135 Jaeger 1967: 392 feels that the speeches ﬁll in political laws. Cf. Pouncey 1980: x. More recently, Pelling 2000: ch. 6 is illuminating.

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Few doubt that a good deal of invention went into the creation of the speeches, and that the language which ﬂows from the characters’ mouths is in good part Thucydides’ own. But controversy still reigns on how far this is the case. In the same way that Thucydides’ omissions are due to relevance (more on this below), what he does include, particularly in the speeches, is similarly selected. That is to say, the content of the speeches is based precisely on that limited spectrum of factors and principles he deems important in determining the war’s course.136 Much turns on the interpretation of the notoriously ambiguous phrase a Æ (‘what is required’) at 1.22.1. The descriptions of Pericles (2.65) and Themistocles (1.138.3)—possessors of that highly acclaimed attribute of æ ªøØ or æ ØÆ (‘foresight’)—help clarify the connotation and the import of this expression.137 The fact that both of these admired politicians are able to provide ‘what is required’ and possess foresight is not a coincidence.138 These two skills are ﬂip-sides of the same coin. ‘When therefore, on the one hand, both these men are said to have foresight and to have expounded a Æ and, on the other hand, the History as a whole is to set forth the nature of future events and the speeches to contain a Æ, it follows that a Æ are the instruments of conveying the tendencies of society and human nature on which alone foresight can be based.’139 The Corcyrean debate (1.32–44), consisting of the History’s ﬁrst speeches, provides an excellent—and indeed precedent-setting—example of how a Æ should be interpreted. It illustrates well the way in which Thucydides crafts the speeches in light of his beliefs about human nature and universal laws. In fact, these particular speeches can serve as a showcase for the historian’s perception of how certain forces control history at large.140 Under Greek traditional values, the Corcyrean position is a weak one. According to W. Robert Connor, ‘they had no claim on Athenians either by kinship or by past services. They were Dorians, much more closely tied to the Corinthians and the Spartans than to the

136 This is not, of course, to say that Thucydides did not at least try to stick to ‘the general gist’ (B ıÅ ªÅ, 1.22.1) of what was said. 137 See also Gorgias, Helen 2 and Plato, Phaedrus 234e6. 138 It is often the case in the History that foresight involves acknowledging the inevitable. Cf. Jaeger 1967: 403. 139 Finley 1942: 98. 140 Cf. De Romilly 1990: 61–104 and Crane 1998: 297–8.

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Athenians, their conduct, moreover, had been outrageous.’141 And yet, despite the absence of a moral card to play, the Corcyreans manage to convince the Athenians to help them (1.44), by illustrating how interest and strength are the crucial factors at issue. For an interlocutor in Corcyra’s morally dubious position, a Æ include arguments from expedience.142 The Corinthians take a different tack, harping on mainly moral considerations.143 ‘What is necessary’ for the Corinthians is to illustrate the reality that arguments from justice are feeble and ineffective at an early and programmatic point in the narrative. a Æ, on this view, is a speech based on expedience for the winners and justice for the losers. ‘What is necessary’ for the antilogy as a whole is to introduce, in the ﬁrst debate-scene of the work, a contrast between and ordering of dikaion (‘justice’) and xumpheron (‘advantage’, ‘self-interest’) that will become a persistent theme throughout the History. Thucydides uses the speeches here (and elsewhere) to make clear the ideas and forces he feels are relevant to the course of history (more on this below at V.2.B).

Progress The ﬁnal afﬁnity to be discussed between Thucydides and the scientiﬁc approach demonstrated by the Hippocratics is a belief in progress.144 Subscribing to the idea that man has, through time and effort, matured into something better than he once was is another common intellectual trend of the day—in contrast to an older,

141

Connor 1984: 34 n. 33. Expediency matters, not morality (1.32.1); discussion of past behaviour is anchored in international policy and interest, not previous acts of justice and glory (1.32.1); eager for their own survival (1.32.5); the Athenians will proﬁt (1.33.1); alliance with them will be advantageous (1.35.5); ask the Athenians to focus on gains, not ethical considerations (1.36.5); note their advantageous location (1.36.5); remind the Athenians that their, the Corcyrean, naval power is considerable (1.36.5). 143 The Corinthian speech contains twelve occurrences of ŒÆØ (‘justice’) and its cognates, three times more than we ﬁnd in the Corcyrean speech. Not only do the Corinthians disclose the Corcyreans’ specious claims to justice (1.38.1, 139.1–2) but their chief points of persuasion are based on (1) what constitutes a fair relationship between mother-city and colony (1.38.5); (2) the question: who is in the right? (1.39.2); (3) the (disputed) fact that by receiving the Corcyreans, Athens would be unjustly breaking the treaty (1.40.1); and (4) reciprocity, in respect of both Samos (1.40.5) and Aigina (1.41.2). 144 See On Ancient Medicine 2, 12, 14; On the Art 1; Airs, Waters, Places 2, 3. 142

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Hesiodic pessimism.145 We see this belief at work most clearly in the Archaeology.146 Thucydides obviously believes that clear progress has been made since early days; that the moment he lives in can be compared—on a single scale, by reference to a single set of criteria— with the time of Minos;147 that the war he is writing about can be similarly poised against those of both Herodotus and Homer. Consider 1.6.6: ººa i ŒÆd ¼ººÆ Ø I Ø e ÆºÆØe EººÅØŒe ›Ø æÆ ﬁH F Ææ ÆæØŒﬁH ØÆØ (‘And someone could point out that the early Greeks lived similarly in many other ways to the barbarians today’). Early Greece, he contends, is similar to the current Barbarian way of life in that both are primitive. In this way, if only certain factors are relevant to understanding the advancement of humanity (naval power, commercial gain, political control), then it follows that stages of civilization which excel in respect of such factors are objectively (that is, uniquely and determinately) better or more evolved than others (cf. æıç æ æ, ‘more sumptuous’, ‘more civilized’, at 1.6.3).148 Berlin, of course, rejects such notions of linear, absolute progress. Civilizations, for him (as they were for Vico and Herder), are irreducibly diverse and incommensurable with one another.149 They cannot be so neatly, metrically compared: more ships, more money, larger empire does not necessarily mean a better or more advanced state.

B. Authorial reduction In his attempt to create an authoritative and accurate portrait of one slice of human history, Thucydides looked for inspiration not to Herodotus and his predecessors in the craft of ƒæÅ, but to the blossoming discipline of science with its, to his mind, more congenial 145 See III.2.A above. That Thucydides’ view of history is not cyclical, cf. Luce 1997: 87 and Dodds 1973: 12 (contra Finley 1942: 83). 146 See Connor 1984: 22–3. 147 Contra Cochrane 1965: 32. 148 Macleod contends (1983: 123–39) that the stasis chapters show a decline, an ‘undoing of human progress by the very means of that progress’ (p. 125). If this is right, we still have a linear conception of human development, but in reverse. Thucydides is using the same values that he promoted in the Archaeology to demonstrate that civilization has in fact regressed. 149 See Berlin 1998: 348, 350–1 (on Vico); 1990: 57–8 and 1997: 407–10 (on Herder).

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relationship with truth and nature. Accordingly, we have focused so far on how Thucydides’ treatment of the Peloponnesian War can be called scientiﬁc, where that word is used in a way that makes sense in terms of both ﬁfth-century Greek medical practice and Berlinian criticism. It is precisely those elements of the scientiﬁc model Berlin considers inappropriate for the discipline of history that we found to be most attractive to Thucydides: its precision; its belief in and aim for prediction, universality, progress, and singular truth; its ability to ﬁnd patterns in otherwise chaotic material. It is in light of Berlin’s comments on historical writing that the connection to monism emerges. We will recall that Berlin’s gripe with assimilating history (or any humanities subject, for that matter) to the natural sciences rested on his conviction that to do so was to commit the fallacy of methodological monism. It was to assume (falsely) that the scientiﬁc method was appropriate—and desirable—for all areas of investigation. It was also to assume, equally falsely, that human history could be reduced to a coherent uniﬁed story.150 This tendency toward reduction is the second lens through which we will examine the History in terms of monism and method. It is a species or outgrowth of methodological monism and, as such, is intimately related to Thucydides’ use of science as a paradigm.151 Thucydidean reductionism manifests itself in several ways, to which we will now turn.

Subject matter Thucydides’ chosen subject matter—as well as his relationship to that subject matter—dovetails with his desire to employ a scientiﬁcally styled method of inquiry. In one sense, Thucydides’ choice of topic is highly conventional. War as the focus of lengthy reﬂection and record begins with Homer and continues through Herodotus. Thucydides clearly saw himself as part of this tradition, even if only in respect of his effort to supersede it (1.10.3, 1.20, 1.21.1, 1.22.4).152 But unlike Herodotus, Thucydides conﬁned his subject to military and political Cf. Finley’s observation (1942: 109): ‘In reading the History, one feels that Thucydides was constantly trying to reduce the movements of society to some clear, orderly, pattern . . . ’. 151 On the relationship between science and reductionism in Thucydides, cf. Pouncey 1980: xiii; in ancient thought more generally, Hankinson 1998: 2–4. 152 See Woodman 1988: ch. 1. 150

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history.153 His focus, as one scholar observes, ‘was one of ﬁerce, laserlike concentration on a single topic, the war. When it begins, he ﬁxes its precise date (2.2) and recounts the events of each year by summers and winters. There are few digressions: topics that do not bear directly on the war are excluded.’154 If Thucydides’ rendition of the Peloponnesian War was our only testament to ﬁfth-century Athens, we would be almost wholly unaware of the awesome cultural renaissance the city hosted during that time. There is virtually nothing in the pages of the History of the extraordinary feats of poetry, architecture, and philosophy that were deﬁning aspects of Athens’ identity and selfworth during the period.155 This lack of interest in ethnography and cultural description, of ‘thick’ or ‘deep’ history, has become an enduring feature of historical writing.156 Today, these provinces of study have been hived off to the disciplines of anthropology, geography, and cultural studies. But for Thucydides, we must remember, they were acceptable elements of his ﬁeld.157 As we have seen above (section 1.A), the omission of cultural description from the accepted purview of history was seriously criticized by pluralist thinkers such as Vico and Herder. For these men, lack of insight into the traditions, values, and ways of living of a given people was a fatal ﬂaw for any proper historical investigation. I think it is fair to say that this practice—this anti-pluralist tendency—begins with Thucydides. For a scientist, as for a doctor, cultural information of the kind included by Herodotus (chapter after chapter, for example, devoted to the customs of Egypt) can easily be classed as extraneous. A scientist works by paring down the variables. Diagnosis of a given disease depends on an evaluation of certain aspects of a person’s ﬁtness and these alone. What is relevant is deﬁned: symptoms, diet, 153 For the contention that Thucydides consciously eschewed Herodotean ethnography, see Fornara 1983: 32. On the ambiguity of this legacy, see Hornblower 1987: 30; Marincola 1997: 95–117; 2001: 58–60, 103–4. 154 Luce 1997: 69. 155 Cf. Bury 1909: 87 and Jaeger 1965: 387. Notable, though minor, exceptions are Pericles’ description of Athens as the school of Hellas (2.41.1) and Thucydides’ remark about Athens’ appearance (1.10.2). 156 On the dominance of this model in later times, see Lateiner 1989: 220–4. For some exceptions in Thucydides, see his brief digressions on Corcyra (1.46.4), the kingdom of the Odrysians (2.96–7), on Delos (3.104) and on Sicily (6.2–6). For a discussion of whether these digressions derived from existing geographical writings, see Woodman 1988: 15–16. 157 See, among others, Fornara 1983: ch. 1, and V.1.B below.

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climate, exposure.158 For Thucydides, the way in which the malady of strife affects the body politic is to be discerned with reference to a similarly limited set of criteria.159 As Book 1 depicts—in the Archaeology, the speeches, the Pentecontaetia—Thucydidean analyses of complicated patterns of events and decisions tend to be reduced to questions of power, interest, and resources, and not those of culture or custom.160

Causation: ‘the truest cause’ The Thucydidean penchant to reduce is even clearer when we look at the arena of causality. As Christopher Pelling has noticed, adapting terms used by Bakhtin, when it comes to causation Thucydides can be described as ‘monologic’ (whereas Herodotus may be said to be ‘dialogic’).161 That is to say, while Herodotus, as we will see (V.1.D), leaves room for irreducibly multiple causes to exist in the text together, battling for our attention and priority, Thucydides does the choosing for us. This amounts to one of two possible scenarios. Either he does not tell us whether or not other causes are at work.162 Or, if he does include multiple causes, he lets us know which are determinative or dominant, thereby creating a monistic hierarchy of the sort described in Chapter I (I.3.B). The cause of the war at large, for instance, to the discovery of which Book 1 directs itself, is a prime example (1.23.5–6). He describes it thus:

Ø Ø ºıÆ, a ÆNÆ æªæÆłÆ æH ŒÆd a ØÆçæ, F ØÆ ÇÅBÆ K ‹ı F º E ‚ººÅØ ŒÆÅ. c b ªaæ IºÅŁ Å æ çÆØ, IçÆ Å b º ªø ﬁ , f ŁÅÆı ªFÆØ ªºı ªØªı ŒÆd ç ÆæåÆ E ¸ÆŒ

ÆØØ IÆªŒÆØ K e º E· Æƒ K e çÆ æe º ª ÆØ ÆNÆØ Æ¥ qÆ ŒÆæø, Iç z ºÆ a a K e º ŒÆÅÆ.

158

Cf. Lloyd 1970: 55–7. Cf. Luce 1997: 87. For the metaphor, see 6.14. 160 On omissions due to relevance as a feature of the scientiﬁc historian, see Cochrane 1965: 31–2. This reductive tendency can be cast in the light of the broader contrast in the History between ethics and interest. I will address this at V.3.B below. 161 Pelling 2000: 83. On this ‘monophonie’, cf. Lateiner 1989: 249 n. 2. 162 Examples of this type of causal reduction will be treated at V.2.B below. 159

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In terms of why they broke the treaty, I have ﬁrst written of their causes for complaint and their disputes, so that somebody may never seek the reason why so great a war befell the Greeks. But I consider the truest cause—the one most obscured by what people say—that the Athenians were becoming powerful and instilling fear in the Spartans. This made it necessary to go to war. The following were the reasons being openly stated on each side as to why they broke the treaty and went to war.

The episodes at Epidauros and Corcyra were the disputes, most openly discussed, which catalysed the war. But the real cause, Thucydides tells us, was Spartan fear and Athenian expansion.163 To underline this assessment, it is repeated at 1.88 and 1.118.2, and alluded to at 1.33.3. The cause for the Sicilian expedition is similarly set out (6.6.1): ŒÆd Kd sÆ ÆPc ƒ ŁÅÆEØ æÆ Ø uæÅ, KçØ Ø b B ﬁ IºÅŁ ﬁÅ æç Ø B Å ¼æÆØ, ÅŁ E b –Æ Pæ H ıº Ø E ÆıH ıªª Ø ŒÆd E æª ª ÅØıåØ. The Athenians were eager to campaign against so large a place, desiring to conquer the whole of the land—this was the truest cause—but also wanting conspicuously to help those who were related to them and their allies who were there.

The real reason the Athenians invaded Sicily was to rule the whole place. Other factors—still present though less motivating—were helping their allies and kinsmen.164 Such descriptions take us back to the contrast between real and apparent, which we have already pointed to.165 Thucydides is searching for the real reasons why war broke out between Athens and Sparta, why Athens launched the Sicilian campaign, why Agamemnon assembled his Trojan War force (1.9.1), not

163 For arguments against interpreting 1.23.5–6 in this way, see Pearson 1952: 219–21 and Kirkwood 1952: 47, 51. But for the contention that these should be rejected in favour of the older view (propounded, for instance, by Gomme) that Thucydides does state the true cause of the war in this passage, see Sealey 1957: 8–11, who relates this causal usage to Thucydides’ growing interest in power politics. Cf. also Immerwahr 1956: 246 n. 10 and Orwin 1994: 33–8. 164 Cf. also 8.89.3–4. 165 On real versus apparent in respect of causality, see Finley 1942: 57 and Luce 1997: 88. Causation and nature were linked concepts in the ﬁfth century. Part of the understanding of phusis at this time was that everything in nature had a predetermined, regular cause and effect. See Lloyd 1979: 25–6, 49–58. Cf. also On the Art 6.

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the ‘readily available’ reasons that researchers less devoted to the truth might adduce.166 As these examples illustrate, Thucydides ﬁnds the combination of an underlying disposition with an immediate triggering cause useful for explaining why something happens. This use of causal language owes much to the medical writers—an overlap regarding language that highlights a more overarching afﬁnity of thought.167 Several comparable instances of this kind of causal explanation can be found in the Hippocratic corpus. In describing the situation for peoples who face the cold winds between the summer setting and the summer rising of the sun, the author of Airs, Waters, Places explains why pleurisies are common (4.3): IªŒÅ b z å Ø, ›Œ Æ Æƒ ŒØºÆØ ŒºÅæÆd øØ· ı ººd ªªÆØ Ie Å æçØ· ı b ÆYØ KØ F Æ ÆØ ŒÆd ŒºÅæ Å B ŒØºÅ (‘It must be this way whenever bellies are hard. There are many abscesses from every kind of pretext. The [underlying] cause of this is the tension of the body and the hardness of the belly.)168 The author of On the Sacred Disease makes use of a parallel opposition: ‘A body’s internal imbalance predisposes to epilepsy, but a particular epileptic attack will be triggered by something more speciﬁc, a change in the weather, a sudden panic, an unexpected noise, a child’s failure to catch its breath.’169 The vocabulary of Thucydides 1.23.5–6 may be reversed in these instances, but the meaning of the contrast between æ çÆØ and ÆYØ accords with what we ﬁnd in the Hippocratic collection.170 We should also note 166

Pelling justly warns (2000: 87 ff.) about interpreting such sentences as enshrining a truest cause in the sense of an only cause. That being said, Thucydides still makes the hierarchy clear. Cf. 1.9.1, 1.11.1, 2.65.11, and 7.57.1, where the ‘not . . . so much as’ formula is employed to similar effect. The last example is especially interesting as we see how morality, as it often does, bows to advantage (or compulsion): P ŒÆa ŒÅ Ø Aºº P b ŒÆa ıªª ØÆ Iºººø , Iºº ‰ ŒØ B ııåÆ j ŒÆa ıçæ j IªŒﬁÅ å (‘standing with one another not according to principle or kinship so much as according to the advantage or compulsion in the circumstances of each’). 167 See Finley 1942: 68; Jaeger 1965: 393; Cochrane 1965: 17; Luce 1997: 83–4; Hankinson 1998: 55–8; Pelling 2000: 84–5. On causality in ﬁfth-century history and medicine, see Vegetti’s chapter in Long 1999. 168 Note also the use of the idea of necessity. 169 Pelling 2000: 85. 170 For an analysis of words for cause in the Hippocratics, see Kirkwood 1952: 41–5, who warns against the theory (accepted by many: see p. 40 n. 6) that Thucydides’ general use of causal language is directly borrowed from the medical corpus.

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that the close connection between the historian and the doctors on this point reinforces the relationship between, on the one hand, the monism of the scientiﬁc approach to history and, on the other, the narrative tendency toward reduction and simpliﬁcation. Part of the aim of science, we recall, is to boil down events in the effort to ﬁnd clear-cut and generally applicable reasons why they transpired, reasons which, once discerned, will be useful in subsequent identiﬁcation.

Voice A ﬁnal aspect of Thucydides that is relevant to his tendency towards monism and reduction is his general authorial presence. It is a presence that is characterized, above all, by certainty.171 This is a further way—in addition to his claim to adhere to a scientiﬁcally styled method—in which Thucydides emblazons his authority on the work.172 We begin to perceive the role Thucydides will play from the very onset, in the historian’s own assessment of his topic. By averring, purportedly when it has only just begun, that the war in question will be the greatest ever known (1.1.1), is not Thucydides implicitly gifting himself with that attribute of foresight he so admires in his favourite politicians? This is a programmatic example of the unwavering certainty—his own quasi-prophetic ability to see (or to verify) what the average person may not—that has become the historian’s trademark: ‘It is now quite widely seen that Thucydides in fact offers the reader no alternative to his own view in his actual narrative.’173 So convinced is he by the merit of his account that he feels the war will never have to be written about again (1.23.5). Limiting possibilities—facts, 171 On expression of apparent uncertainties in Thucydides, see Woodman 1988: 16 ff., contra De Ste Croix 1972: 8 n. 9. Some of these expressions (3.87.2–4, 5.74.1–2), Woodman points out (p. 17), serve to tone down hyperbole and most are about trivial matters. As Dover comments (1973: 29), ‘[i]f these are data about which Thucydides felt less sure than about others, it seems to follow that he felt quite sure about almost everything’. 172 Cf. Marincola 1997: 9–10. Interestingly, by relating his authority to both scientiﬁc history and certainty, Thucydides is essentially basing his authority on monism. What he ﬁnds distasteful about his predecessors—particularly, we might infer, Herodotus—is the openness and multiplicity of ideas, topics, sources, and causes they include. The difference between Thucydides and Herodotus here has been noticed by Dover 1973: 29 and Luce 1997: 69. 173 Allison 1990: 50.

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interpretations, and causes—is a feature of the historian we notice again and again. It is responsible for the, as K. J. Dover puts it, ‘magisterial assurance’ we feel as we turn the pages, and it creates the impression of utter accuracy and objectivity, even if it is only an impression.174 Indeed, it is the rare occasion where Thucydides is not absolutely conﬁdent in his interpretation of action that proves the rule (Cf. 2.5.6, 7.44.1).175 So, too, do we notice this stance of certainty in relation to source material: ‘The narrative homogeneity of Thucydides is meant to inspire conﬁdence; he does not, like Herodotus, want the emphasis to be on his tracking down of sources, but on the ﬁnished product: the reader is to be concerned not with the process of research, but rather with the result.’176 On the whole, we do not hear Thucydides’ voice in the same way we hear Herodotus’. There are very few of the interruptions, expressions of doubt, or admonitions concerning conﬂicting source information and causation, which, as we shall now see, are frequent in and deﬁning of the older historian.177 174

On Thucydidean objectivity, see Connor 1984: 6–19. 8.87.1–3 is a good example of an instance when Thucydides cites alternative theories and sources that he might have edited out later, had he the opportunity. That being said, his own explanation (8.87.4) of why Tissaphernes went to Aspendos is made to sound the most conclusive. 176 Marincola 1997: 9. Cf. Bury 1909: 83, 89 (eighth book as providing insight into sourcing methods); Dover 1973: 29; Luce 1997: 70–1; Marincola 1997: 7 (avoids questions about sources). See generally De Romilly 1967: 21–106. 177 Interruptions: 1.1–23, 2.47 ff., 2.65, 3.82 ff., 5.26, 8.97. Rather than diminishing objectivity, these tend to reinforce the authority of the third-person narrative. 175

V Pluralism in the Histories 1. HERODOTUS’ APPROACH TO HISTORY

A. Variety and method If we were asked to capture the essence of the Histories in a single word (though we might recoil at such a reductionist task), I think it would have to be a word such as ‘variety’ (ØŒØºÆ).1 In this sense, Herodotus’ general approach to history can be described as pluralist (emphasis on ‘plural’) with little controversy. By ‘approach’ I mean his attitude towards discrete topics such as subject matter, source material, and narrative voice. But I am also referring to a characteristic of Herodotus that is less tangible, a quality which is harder to classify but which subsumes all of these more speciﬁc areas. Herodotus offers us in his text a degree of diversity that is unprecedented. It is a diversity not just of discipline (we are certainly dealing with a patchwork of ethnography, geography, genealogy, mythology, folklore, and history), but of content, of source, of causation, and, most importantly, of perspective.2 Indeed, the pervasive willingness displayed by Herodotus to include and accommodate difference— and differences of all kinds—is not insigniﬁcant to our meta-ethical 1

Cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ad Pompeium III.11. The undifferentiation of genre and the ‘catholicity’ of the text have been evinced as rationales for the fact that literary interpretation of Herodotus remains so open (Dewald and Marincola 1987: 13; cf. Dewald and Marincola 2006: 7, 12). This argument, known as ‘the disagreement thesis’, will be used later with regard to Sophoclean interpretation (VI.3.A below). Gould (1989: 10) and Marincola (1996: xiii) both remind us how important it is for understanding Herodotus to grasp that distinctions in intellectual activity or spheres of interest that seem fundamental to modern eyes did not exist in sixth- and ﬁfth-century Greece. See also Thomas 2000: passim, esp. ch. 5. 2

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evaluation of his work. It was an emphasis on difference and not similarity, we recall, that Berlin cited as the root of pluralism.3 Thucydides, of course, rejects this breadth of vision. Moreover, he is at pains to tell us why. The explicitness with which their methodological programmes are set out is a telling point of contrast between the two historians. Unlike his more reticent forerunner, Thucydides, as we saw, is concerned to articulate and pinpoint his stance on certain questions of method (1.20–2).4 The generation gap between the writers is signiﬁcant enough in this respect: for whatever reason, Thucydides felt it was part of his task qua historian to articulate his methodology (whether he adhered to it or not is a different matter) in order to make clear how he viewed himself as separate from and superior to the ºªªæçØ (‘chroniclers’) who had gone before. Herodotus’ ‘method’, in so far as he had one, is to be gleaned not from a chapter or chapters speciﬁcally assigned to discussing it, but rather from the choices of inclusion he makes throughout the narrative.5 It is to be discovered in the text itself. The following three sections will examine different aspects of Herodotean method and their relationship with plurality and conﬂict.

B. Subject matter ‘The variety of wares at the Herodotean bazaar is truly staggering.’6 Indeed: the pages of Herodotus’ Histories are ﬁlled with examples of what we would describe as ethnography, anthropology, mythology, and geography, as well as history. Far from the Thucydidean belief that a sharply deﬁned subject area—war and politics—and a single discipline, that of science, provide the best model for all spheres

3

Jahanbegloo 2000: 80. For the argument that 1.22 provides the sole chapter on methodology, see Woodman 1988: 8–10 (and p. 51 n. 47 for those who disagree). 5 Herodotus does make a number of explicit comments about method at 2.123.1, 4.195.2, 7.152.3; cf. 2.130.2, 4.173, 6.137.1 (all to the effect of ‘I record what I am told, true or not’) and 2.99.1, 2.29.1; cf. 2.147.1 (difference between autopsy and hearsay). On the difﬁculties in apprehending the nature and correct application of Herodotean procedure, see Dewald and Marincola 1987: 38–40. On Herodotean methodology generally, see Immerwahr 1966 and Lateiner 1989. 6 Marincola 1996: xiii. Meier remarks (1987: 41): ‘Of the terms which Herodotus uses for what we would consider his historical subject, all are plural, none are singular.’ 4

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of investigation, Herodotus lets numerous genres and methods of inquiry coexist in his text. He moves from topic to topic and from method to method with what, at times, can seem like alarming alacrity.7 He relays at one point (2.99.1), for example, that he is turning from ‘direct observation’ (ZłØ) to ‘hearsay’ (IŒ) in his effort to ascertain information about Egypt.8 Different procedural techniques are appropriate for different kinds of questions, such as the course of a battle or the facts of early oriental history; expectations should shift accordingly. In recognizing this, Herodotus is defying the notion that ‘history’ speciﬁes a single subject deserving of attention and a single way of processing information—a notion constitutive of methodological monism. The fact that the Histories is a mixed bag of subject matter has caused much speculation about Herodotus’ own intellectual progress. Some have found in the movement from the ethnography of the ﬁrst four books to the more ‘proper’ and ‘focused’ war narrative of Books 5 through 9 an indication of the historian’s development, or at any rate, a crystallization of his acceptance of his true calling: writer of the military and political history exempliﬁed by both Thucydides and historians of the modern era.9 Others have found the direction of development to run in reverse.10 But these views of Herodotus’ ‘evolution’ are both overly simpliﬁed.11 Herodotus’ inclusion of an array of subjects should be understood, I think, not as a mistake, an unfortunate conglomeration due to a deﬁciency of editing skills or time, nor as a map charting his intellectual ‘growth’. Instead, it should be seen as reﬂective of the fact that he thought an array of subjects was

7 Far from the laser-like focus of Thucydides, the Histories is suffused with digressions. Herodotus expressly comments on this proclivity at e.g. 1.140.3, 4.30.1, 7.171.1. On digressions generally and their relation to the ‘main’ text, see Cobet 1971 and Marincola 2001: 28–30, bibliography at n. 42. 8 Marincola rightly contends (2001: 36), predicated on 7.152.3, that this statement is not meant to be universalized. On the interplay of Herodotus’ different methodological techniques, see Lloyd 1975: 84–120 (in the context of Book 2) and Luraghi 2006: 77–80. 9 See, among others, Jacoby 1913: 341ff.; Von Fritz 1936, 1967; Powell 1939; Fornara 1971; Hornblower 1994: 15–16 (cf. 1987: 19 n. 14). On Herodotus’ later reputation and the relative dominance of the Thucydidean model of history, see Momigliano 1966: 130ff.; Evans 1968; Murray 1972; Gould 1989: 111–12. Cf. Marincola 2001: 58–60. 10 See e.g. Macan 1908: xlv–xlix and Drews 1973: 45–96. 11 Cf. Luce 1997: 17–18.

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relevant, interesting, and meaningful to his readers and to his story— the story he wanted to tell in all its complexity.12 On this view, Herodotus does (at least) two things in his narrative to which it is difﬁcult (and possibly useless) to ascribe priority.13 On the one hand he tells the tale of the rise and magnitude of the Persian force that was ultimately to fall at the hands of the conjoined Greek city-states. And on the other hand he carves out space to explore, often in considerable detail, those peoples the Persians (and perhaps he himself ) came into contact with along the way. On this interpretation, the ﬁrst four books are not conﬁned to the war between East and West because this war is not the sole or ‘real’ topic of the Histories.14 These books should not necessarily be read as a prelude to or subordinate to the so-called ‘main theme’ of his narrative (the rise of Persia and its defeat at the hands of Greece). We can tell this is the case because when he mentions the Egyptians or the Scythians as objects of Persian conquest, Herodotus does not see ﬁt to stop there, though he easily could have.15 Rather, as was the case for Vico and Herder, Herodotus is not concerned exclusively with historical data— although of course his pages are peppered with statistics about kings and battles, with lists of tributes and tribes.16 He is not solely a practitioner of that more scientiﬁc model of history outlined above—the model which values above all reductionism and the weight of cold, hard facts—but a writer of ‘deep’ or ‘thick’ history, who views it as part of his job to get under the skin of the cultures that enter his story.17 In other words, Herodotus includes in his Histories the larger moral outlooks of these cultures—indeed, the larger moral outlooks of men generally—because he considers them important.18 12 Herodotus’ broad principle of inclusion can perhaps also be seen as reﬂective of his belief in mutability (1.5.4). Things that seem random or unimportant may prove, in the long run, to be otherwise. See Lateiner 1989: 216. 13 Cf. Hartog 1988: 312ff. 14 For where this view ﬁts into recent trends in Herodotean scholarship, see Dewald and Marincola 2006: 5–6. 15 Cf. Pohlenz 1937: 70. 16 E.g. 3.89–96, 5.52–4, 7.59–99. 17 And so Immerwahr attributes (1966: 4) the positive change in Herodotus’ estimate to a growing interest in the non-scientiﬁc aspects of history. For the view that Herodotus’ ethnographic understanding was limited, see Redﬁeld 1985 and Gould 1989: ch. 5. 18 Among others, Lydians (1.93–4); Persians (1.131–40, 9.24); Babylonians (1.178–87, 1.196–200); Massagetae (1.216); Egyptians (2.35–98); Ethiopians (3.20–4); Indians (3.99–103); Scythians (4.59–83, esp. 59–80); Scythian neighbouring

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The most pressing question for present purposes is: why? Why does Herodotus include these mini-essays on foreign mores; why are a nation’s rituals, myths, motivations, and dress important to him; why is something like Book 2 incorporated into the Histories at all? Any answer will, of course, be speculative. But some combination of the following factors is plausible. First, literary heritage: ethnography and geography were the subject matter of his most historically oriented predecessors. We can cite here, for example, the — æØªÅØ of Hecataeus, the ¸ı ØÆŒ of Xanthus (who is said by Ephorus to have provided Herodotus with a ‘starting-point’, a Içæ), or something akin to Hellanicus’ Ææ ÆæØŒa ØÆ.19 Including material of a cultural bent would have felt natural, although, of course, this is not in and of itself a reason to do so: Thucydides eschews a similar potential inﬂuence. Secondly, interest: Herodotus was obviously fascinated by the customs of the people he met on his travels—an attention to detail with regard to their ways of living permeates his narrative. It is clear that he wanted to discover as much as possible about foreigners and to share such information with his readers, especially when it proved particularly interesting or alien. Thirdly, therefore, it is likely that Herodotus saw the inclusion of descriptions of barbarian cultures as a part—though not necessarily a primary or subsidiary one—of his historical project. If we read the a º ª Æ (in the context of Herodotus’ conception of his task as recording ‘the things which were said’) at 2.123.1 as referring to customs, Herodotus indeed considered this an element of the plan of his book. Exposition, on this view, was a deliberate aim. A large part of his narrative was devoted to how the Greeks confronted, and ultimately defeated, an enemy which was extraordinarily different from them—in military tactics, in political organization, but also in less obviously ‘relevant’ spheres such as religion, burial, even something as overtly trivial as hair-style. It was, in turn, also devoted to how that enemy built itself up by waging war with a series of different tribes (4.103–17); Libyans (4.145–205: tribes (4.168–80); nomads (4.186–96)); Thracians (5.6–10). Mention of ‘men’ reminds us that Herodotus’ inclusion of women in his text should be noted as similarly representative of his breadth. See Dewald, in Foley 1981; Waters 1985: 128–30; Cartledge 1993: 76–86; Marincola 2001: 53–4, bibliography at n. 150; Blok 2002. Herodotus includes fauna and ﬂora as well: see Romm 2006: 181–2. 19 On Ephorus, though, cf. Drews 1973: 102. The Odyssey is another relevant model in this respect.

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nations in its quest for expansion and domination. To tell this story, it seems that Herodotus felt Persian culture, Egyptian culture, and Scythian culture, among others, should be examined and relayed: their differences from Greece as well as from one another should not be suppressed but shown up. It seems probable that Herodotus felt such differences as not merely cosmetic but explanatory; that in them he felt lay answers to questions not only about how the conﬂict between East and West began and ended, but why.20 In this way, Herodotus thought he was doing a service to his Greek audience by introducing them to the fact that there are many and diverse nations in the world and, more speciﬁcally, to the ways in which they are diverse. Ignorance of foreign mores is a recurring motif in the Histories: not knowing what the Massagetae or Ethiopians or Scythians are like got Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius into trouble.21 Theirs was a collective lesson from which Xerxes was hoping to gain.22 Moreover, the knowledge Herodotus was imparting would have to affect his audience’s conception of their own value system, highlighting its merits and faults, as well as its contingency. John Marincola remarks that we can understand the Greek world, ‘enter’ it in Herderian fashion, through the ‘inclusiveness of Herodotus’ vision and the wide compass of his humanity’.23 I think it would be helpful to envisage this as what Herodotus was himself, at least in part, trying to do for his audience.24

C. Source, voice, truth Multiple and conﬂicting sources There is a long history of robust scholarly attention to questions concerning Herodotus’ sources: their identity, their veracity, Herodotus’ 20 More on Herodotus’ view of the cultural difference between Greeks and Persians in sec. 3 below. 21 Note too Herodotus’ remarks about the Greeks being ‘uncritical’ (I ØŒø, 2.45.1) in respect of the Egyptians: Kd ı ŒıØ ÆFÆ ºª B `Nªıø çØ ŒÆd H ø Æ I æø å Ø ƒ ‚ººÅ (‘The Greeks seem to me to be entirely ignorant when they talk about the nature and customs of the Egyptians’, 2.45.2). 22 Consider, for example, his inquiry into Greek custom at 7.101–5. 23 Marincola 1996: xxviii. 24 On who this might have been, see Flory 1980.

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attitude towards their identity and veracity.25 While these issues are no doubt stimulating in their own right, here we must focus on one particular aspect of Herodotus’ use of sources, an aspect which does not stand or fall on the invention question and which is most relevant to his pluralism: their multiplicity and conﬂict.26 Unlike Thucydides, Herodotus is quite content to include in his narrative multiple source-citations for a given piece of information.27 Moreover, it is often the case that those sources are conﬂicting. That is to say, they offer different and incompatible versions of the story in question. For some, this tendency devalues the earlier historian. To fail to choose for us which account is correct is considered a sign of indecision or incompetence, indeed a dereliction of duty. Thucydides’ masterly suppression in this domain is, on this view, what accounts for his superiority.28 But the insertion of plural and competing sources in the Histories—even those sources the author himself dismisses as inaccurate, unconvincing, or downright silly—should, I think, be interpreted in a different light. It should be seen for what it is: a deliberate choice by the author. An analysis of instances of dual/multiple sourcing will be helpful in discovering why he makes such a choice. There are over ﬁfty examples in the Histories where Herodotus offers or alludes to at least two conﬂicting versions of something retold.29 These can concern relatively trivial and detailed bits of fact such as the size of the Araxes and the Danube (1.202.1); whether Leonidas and Cleombrotus were twins (5.41.3); the nationality of Perseus (Greek or Assyrian, 6.54); or the name of the pass leading 25 See Dewald and Marincola 1987: 26–35 and Marincola 2001: 31–9. For arguments against veracity, see O. Kimball Armayor 1978, 1978a, 1980, 1985 and Fehling 1989. For a defense of Herodotus, see Cobet 1974 and Fowler 1996: 81 n.135. 26 Whether Herodotus engaged in free invention of source or not, the ramiﬁcations for his pluralism remain the same: fact or ﬁction, he included multiple citations by his own volition. 27 Fowler argues (1996) that this is, so far as we can tell, a Herodotean innovation, though Hecataeus does exhibit a conﬂict in source between his own view and Hesiod’s (fr. 19). Dewald reckons (1987: 162–3) that Herodotus supplies variant versions of the same event 63 times. Lateiner increases (1989: 76–90) the number to 125. On this variation, see Groten, 1963; Flory 1987: 67–9; Fehling 1989: 143–7; Lateiner 1989: 76–90; Hart 1993: 225; Marincola 1996: xix; Luce 1997: 22; Gray 2003. In Greek historiography generally, Marincola 1997: 280–6. 28 See, in particular, De Ste Croix 1977: 136. 29 There are also instances where he gives more than one source for corroborative purposes (e.g. 1.1.3, 1.20, 1.23, 2.55.3, 4.14, 4.32–3.1, 5.87.1, 6.134.1).

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to Plataea (Three Heads or Oak Heads, 9.39.1). But they can also point to more consequential disagreements over questions such as whether it was actually Amasis’ dead body that was maltreated by Cambyses or a fake’s (3.16.6–7); why Cleomenes went mad (6.75.3–84); and who showed Xerxes the path round the mountain at Thermopylae (7.214.1). In some instances Herodotus names his sources: the Persians claim that Io was abducted, the Phoenicians that she was pregnant and opted to run off with the ship’s captain to escape exposure (1.5.2); the Samians claim that the Spartan campaign against them was prompted by gratitude, the Spartans insist it was undertaken as a punishment (3.47.1); the Athenians believe that they were justiﬁed in forcing certain Pelasgians to leave Attica, while Hecataeus maintains that they were in the wrong (6.137). At other times he refers more vaguely to ‘some’ versus ‘others’: ‘some say’ (ƒ b ºªıØ) Smerdis was killed by Prexaspes while hunting, ‘others’ (ƒ ) that he was drowned (3.30.3); some call certain bodies of water the Nile and the Phasis, others call them the Maeotic Tanais and the Cimmerian Strait (4.45.2).30 At still other times Herodotus puts forward his own view (or what reads like his own view) and then mentions a contradictory version: I believe the Caunians are of native stock though they themselves say they are originally from Crete (1.172.1); I say that the Bridge of Halys already existed but there is a ‘common story among the Greeks’ (› ººe º ª Eººø) that Thales contrived the crossing (1.75.3).31 Most frequently Herodotus gives only two competing versions of a disputed fact, though sometimes he speaks of multiple stories, which are often not attributed to speciﬁc sources (1.214.5, for instance: a b c ŒÆa c ˚æı º ıc F ı ººH º ªø º ªø, ‘Many accounts have been given about the end of Cyrus’ life’). At other times he mentions a number of three or four speciﬁcally (1.95.1: four accounts altogether of Cyrus’ death; 7.150–2: three different stories about the relationship between Argos and Persia; 3.45.3: three versions of what happened to the Samians whom Polycrates sent to Cambyses; 4.5–11: three accounts of Scythia’s origins).

30 In this category belong those moments when he cites a common Greek story or tradition (e.g. 1.75.3 1.75.5, 6.53.1, 7.150.1) or an ‘account’ (º ª, 3.3.1, 7.214.1, 8.118.1, 9.74.1). 31 Herodotus only rarely reports something as if it is his own opinion, but without explicitly saying so, to then give an alternative (e.g. 1.51.2–4, 9.120.4).

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Truths? The most important aspect of the fact that Herodotus cites plural and competing sources or versions is his attitude concerning their truthvalue. This question moves us into a discussion of general narrative voice, as it is not simply Herodotus’ attitude towards the sources themselves that is critical, but his attitude to the material or perspectives those sources are representative of.32 An overriding feature of Herodotus’ presence in the Histories is that he does not exude certainty in the way Thucydides does.33 His voice—which we hear a lot34—tends not to adopt a quality of unimpeachable conviction; his tone is not one of overconﬁdence or of arrogance.35 Rather, Herodotus is not embarrassed to say when he does not know something: consider, for example, 6.82.1, where the historian explicitly disavows knowledge of the truth or falsity of Cleomenes’ answer to the Spartan ephors: › çØ º , h N ł ı h N IºÅŁÆ ºªø, åø ÆçÅø r ÆØ (‘He said this to them and I am not able to say clearly whether he was lying or telling the truth’).36 Moreover, he is often ready to tag positive assertions with the words ‘as it seems to me’ or ‘so far as I know’—a qualiﬁer, we recall, Thucydides took care (or

For incisive explanations of what constitutes an historian’s ‘voice’, see Dewald 1987 and Fowler 1996: 69–71. 33 Interestingly, Thucydides does adopt a rather Herodotean voice in the sections of his History concerned with the more distant past, including one admission of ignorance and one instance of alternative versions (Fowler 1996: 76 n. 106). See also Westlake 1977. 34 Dewald counts (1987: 150 n. 10) 1,087 ﬁrst-person narrative interjections. These comments, she contends, are meant to deprive us of a sense of third-person objectivity. This idea stems from Barthes’ essay ‘Historical Discourse’, which equates the rhetorical technique of suppression of the ﬁrst-person ‘I’ with narrative objectivity. See further Dewald 2002. Thomas interprets (2000: 235–48) Herodotus’ use of the ﬁrst person differently, as a marker of certainty in several cases. Cf. also Hartog 1988: 289–94. 35 This is not to say that there are never instances where Herodotus gives the impression of sureness. See, e.g. 1.14.4, 1.140.1–2, 1.210.1, 1.214.1, 2.77.3, 4.77.2, 6.124.2, 7.57, 7.134–7, 9.84. Dewald counts (1987: 160–1) 58 positive comments about knowledge. For another, though different, list from the one given here see Lateiner 1989: 71. Thomas argues (2000: 168–212, 214–21, 228–48) for a more dogmatic Herodotus, based in part on his language of ‘proof’ and his expressions of opinion in the ﬁrst person on the more controversial topics. 36 Other disavowals of certainty are found at: 1.172.1, 2.16.1, 2.29.1, 2.31, 2.34.1, 2.43.3, 2.122.2, 4.45.2, 4.187.3, 5.66.1, 6.82.1, 6.121–3, 6.124.2, 7.26.2, 7.133.2, 7.189.3, 8.8.2, 8.87.1, 8.112.2, 8.128.1, 9.8.2, 9.18.2, 9.84. 32

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promised to take care) to avoid (1.22.2).37 That Herodotus does not feel the need to exude certainty, to repress his presence for the sake of objectivity (or the impression of it), to offer only what he is sure is true or to pretend that he possesses such knowledge about everything he writes, is not unrelated to his practice of including more than one perspective on an event or question.38 Indeed, these general observations about his narrative voice help to illustrate Herodotus’ complex attitude toward the notion of truth, a notion that should be understood in this context not in the monolithic, Thucydidean sense of H ª ø e Æç (1.22.4), nor, for that matter, in the poetic sense of an externally granted divine gift.39 Rather, it should be taken as a more ﬂexible reﬂection of a polymorphous reality.40 When it comes to alternative accounts of source information, this generally non-controlling narrative presence manifests itself not in Herodotus’ refusal to take a position on the plausibility of one particular version versus another, but in the way he goes about making that position clear. It would be all too easy for him to list clashing versions of a particular story and then tell us, categorically, which is correct. Such a practice would produce results along the lines of Thucydidean suppression: the reader, more often than not, would be expected to accept the rendering advocated by the historian without further thought. But this is not what we ﬁnd in the pages of Herodotus. Herodotus does, from time to time, articulate his perception about the truth or falsehood of a given story, his personal preference.41 But his tone on these occasions is not usually of the ‘this is the truth, the one truth, because I say it is’ ilk. His aim is more one of accuracy or 37 See e.g. Herodotus 1.22.2, 1.23, 2.124.3–4, 2.146.1, 2.52.2–3, 6.121.1. Dewald has counted (1987: 161) Herodotus as conveying opinion 95 times using Œ Ø (‘seem’) and 62 times using other expressions. 38 The constitutional debate (3.80–2) is a good example of Herodotus’ attitude toward the expression of conﬂicting opinions. He has each governmental stance argued for in full and responsive to the slights made against it. Cf. De Ste Croix 1977: 134 and Romm 1998: 177, who ﬁnds the author here ‘completely neutral’. But see Lateiner 1989: 163–89. 39 See Marincola 2006: 15–16, and I.4.C above. On how notions of truth may differ in contexts of oral transmission, cf. Cobet 1974: 742 and West 1985: 304–5. 40 Cf. Dewald’s observation (2002: 276) that in ‘Herodotus’ narrative we are apparently encountering the polyvocalism of the world itself ’. Meier calls (1987: passim) Herodotus’ Histories ‘multi-subjective’. 41 e.g. 1.51.4, 1.75.6, 1.21.5, 1.95.1, 2.3.1, 2.15–16, 2.56–7, 3.2, 3.16.7, 3.45.3–4, 4.11–12, 4.77.2, 4.155.1, 5.57.1, 5.86.3, 5.87.1, 6.84.3, 7.220.2, 8.120.

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correctness, in the Protagorean sense (see II.4.C and III.5 above).42 It is more common, Carolyn Dewald observes, for Herodotus to give opinions than to indicate certainty.43 To put it another way, Herodotus does makes choices about inclusion and credibility, but his choices ‘are between what is more or less plausible, not between true or false accounts in absolute terms’.44 Often he simply remarks on which rendering he conceives of as ‘most plausible’ or not plausible at all: the ØŁÆÆ version of Cyrus’s death (1.214.5); the account of Scythia’s origins which ﬁH ºØÆ º ªø ﬁ ÆPe æ Œ ØÆØ (‘I myself put most faith in’, 4.11.1); a certain version of the quarrel between Cambyses and Amasis is Kd b P ØŁÆ (‘not credible to me’, 3.3.1). Sometimes he offers his opinion in a nondeterminative, merely suggestive, way: despite ‘what is said’ (ºª ÆØ) about why Leonidas dismissed his troops at Thermopylae, Herodotus is ‘more of the opinion’ (Æﬁ Å ŒÆd Aºº c ªÅ º E NØ, 7.220.2) that he did it because they had not the heart for battle. Similarly, he explains why the Ionians are wrong to think that Egypt is conﬁned to the Nile Delta (2.15), but says that they are wrong only if his perspective is right: N t E OæŁH æd ÆPH ªØŒ , ”ø PŒ s çæıØ æd `Nªı (‘The Ionians are not right about Egypt, if my opinion is correct about these things’, 2.16.1). He then acknowledges that, despite all of this, the Ionians still may be correct: N b OæŁ KØ ªÅ H ø . . . (‘If the opinion of the Ionians is right . . . ’, 2.16.1). This last is also an example of the fact that Herodotus will give reasons or evidence why he feels a particular claim should be dismissed. Here, Herodotean expression of opinion provides us with an insight into how the historian, and how we in turn, might deal with competing alternatives. It manages to offer a paradigm, tantalizingly similar to Protagoras’, for selecting what to believe—what factors could or should be taken into consideration—without creating the impression of imposition. 42

For the Herodotean practice of offering reasons and sifting through evidence to ascertain the better version see, among others, 2.146.1, 3.45.3, 8.119–20. Cf. Thomas 2000: 228–35 on his use of the notion of ‘correctness’. For the idea that eikos (‘probability’) is a tool Herodotus uses for dealing with multiplicity and conﬂict, see Dewald 1987: 170 and cf. Asheri 2007: 22–3. 43 Dewald 2002: 279, e.g. 1.51, 3.80.1, 4.77, 6.43.3, 8.8.2. Cf., however, Cartledge and Greenwood 2002: 362 on Herodotus’ use of the noun ‘certainty’ (atrekeia). 44 Asheri 2007: 22. This sentiment is strikingly similar to Protagoras’ own view of his job as expert (Theaetetus 167b1–4; see II.4.C above).

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In instances where Herodotus presents an opinion as to which version of an event is more credible, his tone is not overly insistent. But there are other instances where Herodotus articulates no preference between sources whatsoever. Usually this takes the form of listing the alternatives on offer with no further mention of their merits or drawbacks (for example, 5.44–5, 6.137, 8.94.4). At other times, however, he is more explicit. There are several examples in the Histories where Herodotus expressly declines to comment on the veracity of a story;45 1.5.3 is an excellent and precedent-setting example: Kªg b æd b ø PŒ æåÆØ Kæø ‰ oø j ¼ººø Œø ÆFÆ Kª (‘About these things I am not going to say whether they happened in this way or another’). The burden of deciding who to believe and which account is more plausible or more true, Herodotus maintains, must fall on the audience’s—on our—shoulders, when he knows full well that different readers will opt for different renditions. As he says explicitly of this onus at one point in the narrative: ÆFÆ ı Œ æØ ÆPH ÆææØÆ IçÆÆØ· ŒÆd æ Ø, ›ŒæØ Ø Ł ÆØ ÆPH, ØØ æåøæ Ø (‘Each side presents these things as evidence: it is necessary to side with whomever of them one believes’, 5.45.2). The implications of this attitude for pluralism will be discussed below (section E) after we explore how a similar attitude features in the historian’s stance on causality. For now, however, the crucial thing to notice is that, for Herodotus, possession of opinion does not necessarily equal certainty of expression. He may convey preferences, but the majority of the time he is never so convinced that one particular source’s version is the true one, or rather the only true one, that he excludes conﬂict altogether or feels the need drastically to reduce or omit information.46 Rather, we may feel the opposite is the case, that, as Donald Lateiner observes, for Herodotus ‘false or inadequate histories can contain valuable truths and preserve illuminating false opinion’.47 Indeed, there are moments when Herodotus 45

1.5.3, 3.120–1, 4.96.1, 5.45.2, 7.152.1. There are, of course, times when he tells us that he will omit something or that he is being selective, for a variety of reasons (e.g. 1.51.4, 1.177, 2.47.2, 4.43.7, 7.224.1, 8.85), that something is unknown (1.47.2, 9.81.2), or that he is restricting himself to one account (though he lets us know there are many: 1.95.1, 2.10.3, 2.70.1). On explicit omission, see the thorough discussion at Lateiner 1989: ch. 2. Cf. also Benardete 1969: 3. 47 Lateiner 1989: 77. 46

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tells us he does not believe a source but proceeds to relay its information nonetheless, perhaps on the chance that someone else might ﬁnd it credible;48 when he relays a story for the simple reason that it is in circulation (3.9.2); when he gives his opinion though he knows most people will object (7.139.1); when he gives his opinion though he feels his suggestion will never come to fruition (5.3.1). On the whole, it seems that Herodotus does not rest his authority on singularity of perspective or possession of the one true account. He does not, like his predecessor Hecataeus, think stories are many and false or false because they are many. In fact, it might be the other way round. That is to say, it might be that Herodotus rests his authority on knowledge of many versions of a story and many sources for that story, in the same way as he prides himself on knowing many different cultures.49

D. Causation In the previous section we saw that Herodotus is not averse to listing multiple sources in his narrative even when he does not agree with all of them. To be sure, Herodotus’ relationship with his source material is not entirely straightforward or consistent. There are many places where he does not cite his sources properly, attributes information to groups rather than speciﬁc individuals, comments explicitly that he is keeping back information, or relies on vague phrases such as ºª ÆØ (‘it is said) and çÆ (‘they say’). We would be going astray to claim that he has but one procedure in this sphere and that it is always ‘pluralist’. That being said, by revealing his sources time and time again, and by admitting that these are not always in harmony with one another, Herodotus suggests that he is willing at least to invite us into his workshop, to use Arnaldo Momigliano’s metaphor.50 In doing so, he shows us that events are not always accounted for in the same way; people’s perspectives on matters of ‘fact’ often diverge; 48 e.g. 1.182.1, 2.73.3, 4.77.2, 7.214.1, 8.120. There are more than 40 instances when Herodotus interrupts the narrative to expressly call into doubt the truth of the version he records (Dewald 1987: 151). 49 Cf. Asheri 2007: 22: ‘Though generalizations should be resisted and each case should be considered individually, we may say here that for Herodotus the most important thing is not always to corroborate his reports, but rather to present different moral and political points of view.’ 50 See Dewald and Marincola 2006: xiii.

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‘truth’ is not always ‘out there’ to be found.51 It will be instructive to examine how this perspective manifests itself in the domain of causality before drawing some more general conclusions about Herodotean methodology and pluralism.52

Different reasons, different sources When different sources give varying reasons in order to explain why something happened, we move from the arena of pluralism of source to that of cause.53 When the bowl the Spartans wanted to give Croesus in return for his gifts never reached Sparta, for instance, Herodotus notes that this happened Ø ÆNÆ ØçÆÆ . . . (‘for these two reasons’, 1.70.2). The Spartans claim that the islanders of the coast of Samos stole it (1.70.2), while the Samians deny the theft, countering that the Lacedaemonians arrived too late to give their present to Croesus and the crater was sold (1.70.3). On the question of why the Argives refused to join the united Greek enterprise against Persia, Herodotus records three reasons derived from three different sources. The Argives insist that it was because Sparta refused their demand to lead one of the confederate forces (7.148.4, 7.149.2) and because they found the Spartans grasping (7.149.3)—and so themselves enumerate two separate causes. There is ¼ºº º ª º ª Ia c Eºº Æ (‘another story being told throughout Greece’), by contrast, which maintains that Xerxes sent a messenger to Argos reminding them of the common blood between the two countries (7.150). In addition, Herodotus tells us, there is yet another account that claims that it was the Argives who invited the Persians to invade Greece because their war with the Spartans was going poorly (7.152.3).54 For the view that Herodotus does not espouse ‘revealed, eternal truths’, see Lateiner 1989: 84. Cf. also Marincola 2006: 22, 24. 52 I am not using the concept of cause in any scientiﬁc or technical sense here, but as a general term for why things happen. 53 It is worthwhile to mention that in the majority of instances when multiple causes stem from multiple sources Herodotus remains neutral on the issue. Exceptions are 2.20.1, where one of the ‘sources’ is Herodotus’ own opinion; 3.1–5, where Herodotus ﬁnds the stories that contradict the Persian account P ØŁÆ (‘not believable’); and 6.75–84, where Herodotus agrees with what ƒ ººd ºªıØ Eººø (‘the majority of the Greeks say’). 54 For other instances of overlap between multiple sources and multiple causes, see 2.20.1, 3.1–5, 3.47, 3.120–1, 6.75–84, 7.230.1. 51

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Reasons, more reasons, and kinds of reasons For Herodotus, then, there might be different rationales why a certain event occurred—depending on whom you ask.55 He allows reasons, though contradictory, to simmer together in the narrative with recourse neither to a ‘solution’ as to which is right nor to a means of ascertaining one.56 But this is not always the case. It is not always the case that Herodotus’ causes clash with one another. Nor, as with sources, is it always the case that he withholds indication of preference (to be addressed in the next section). In the majority of places that Herodotus cites more than one reason, these reasons are supplementary rather than adversative.57 Usually he offers two explanations, using several different linguistic markers: Otanes decided to repopulate Samos Œ ZłØ O æı ŒÆd ı l Ø ŒÆºÆ

BÆØ a ÆN EÆ (‘because of a dream later on and because of an illness which affected his genitals’, 3.149); Mardonius chose Alexander as his messenger –Æ b ‹Ø æŒÅ ƒ —æÆØ qÆ . . . –Æ b › $Ææ Ø ıŁ ‹Ø æ Ø YÅ ŒÆd P æªÅ › ºÆ æ . . . (‘because the Persians were his kinfolk together with the reason that Mardonius knew that Alexander was a friend and a benefactor [of Athens]’, 8.136.1); Hegesistratus was performing his duties so zealously ŒÆa e åŁ e ¸ÆŒ

ÆØø ŒÆd ŒÆa e Œæ (‘on account of hatred of the Spartans and on account of gain’, 9.38.1). Although at times he is happy to list up to ﬁve reasons, or simply remark that there are ‘many.’58 Croesus, for instance, attacked Cappadocia H ¥ ŒÆ, ŒÆd ªB ƒæø ﬁ æŒÆŁÆØ . . . ŒÆd ºØÆ ﬁH åæÅÅæø ﬁ ı Kg ŒÆd ÆŁÆØ Łºø bæ ıª ˚Fæ (‘on account of these reasons: desire to expand his territory, because he was trusting the oracle very much, and because

55

Other examples of conﬂicting reasons, though with no mention of conﬂicting sources: 1.19.2, 1.86.2, 3.121, 7.239.2, 8.87, 9.5.2, 9.18.2, 9.41. 56 Cf. Pelling 1991: 139–40, 141–2. 57 Herodotus also gives multiple, conﬁrmatory source information. Sources, however, are more problematic as supplements than causes because, taken together, they strain credibility. Fehling interprets (1989: 17–21, 21ff., 113–15) such coincidence as a mark of invention (six source citations, for example, which all corroborate Herodotus’ report on the Colchians and Egyptians). 58 Three reasons: 1.73.1, 1.86.2, 1.86.6, 1.156.1, 2.20.1, 3.74.1, 3.133–34, 3.139.1. Four reasons: 3.1–5, 5.49.1–4 and 5.97.2, 6.75–84, 6.94.1, 6.119.1. Five: 1.91. ‘Many’: 1.109.2, 1.138.1, 1.204.2, 5.36.1 (which can be enumerated as three: 5.33–5), 8.58, 8.60, 8.144.2.

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he wanted to take revenge on Cyrus for Astyages’, 1.73.1); the Persians are horriﬁed by debt ººH b ŒÆd ¼ººø ¥ ŒÆ (‘on account of many other reasons’, 1.138.1). More interestingly, the multiple reasons given can be conceptually distinct from one another. That is to say, they can be conceived of as incommensurable (though, here, not incompatible). The examples above illustrate this implicitly: we learn of motivations arising from hatred and gain, physical disability and dreams, desire for expansion, oracles, and vengeance. Each rationale draws from a separate well of value and meaning. To choose to act because of a dream is quite different from making the same decision because of a malady of the genitals. Moreover, Herodotus does not limit himself to a particular type of explanation, to the exclusion of all others. That is to say, he is content to cite bases for action or occurrence that are predicated on a range of factors: on, among others, science (2.20.1, 3.149); conventional morality (1.69.3, P æª ÆØ, ‘good-service’), religion (1.86.2), fate (1.91), personal motivation (6.94.1), emotion (9.38.1, e åŁ, ‘hatred’), as well as on expediency (9.38.1, e Œæ ).59 Herodotus remarks expressly upon the reality of causal incommensurability and its existence in his narrative at 3.4.1, when he offers a fourth reason to explain why the Egyptian expedition transpired, a reason he describes as ¼ºº Ø Ø æBªÆ (‘another thing altogether’). It is clear that Herodotus parts company with his successor in respect of causation (see IV.3.B above).60 Thucydides shuts down options for explanation. He often chooses the one reason or group of similarly based reasons that he himself has concluded is correct and says as much. Herodotus, by contrast, keeps avenues of explanation open. This aspect of Herodotean narrative technique is related to pluralism in two ways. First, it allows us to recognize that reasons for action can be variable and distinct and not always easily ranked. Decisions, on this view, are not necessarily the outcome of a single, predominant motivation, but are often the result of a complex

59 Lateiner sketches (1989: 196–205) ﬁve different types of historical explanation in Herodotus. For multiple types of causes, cf. also Immerwahr 1956: 251–4. 60 He parts company with Thucydides in two directions. What is remarkable about Herodotus is that he will shower us with causes when he can (in a way Thucydides will not) but, at the same time, will not impose a cause on us when he does not know it (admitting ignorance or uncertainty in a way that Thucydides would not). Cf. e.g. 3.33, 3.122.1, 8.63, 9.18.2.

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and intricate weighing of multiple and incommensurable factors.61 Secondly, the inclusion of multiple and (seemingly) incommensurable reasons for action makes the possibility of a clean assessment of right and wrong difﬁcult. Again we can note how Herodotus’ explicit invitation to the reader to decide the reason behind Polycrates’ death (3.122.1: æ Ø b Ł ŁÆØ ›Œæﬁ Å Ø º ÆØ ÆPø, ‘It is possible to believe whichever of them one wants’), for example, illustrates his understanding that different readers will choose differently. In this way, the historian seems acutely aware that multiplicity and incommensurability of cause, even without conﬂict, leave less room for a unique and determinate assessment—whether factual or moral. Together, they make it harder to ascertain a single answer both to the question ‘why did Xerxes invade Greece?’ and to the question ‘was he right to do so?’ (more on Xerxes below).

Causal ordering Herodotus displays a penchant for incorporating plural causes in the Histories. But it would be inaccurate to insist that, in doing so, he does not at all employ an ordering system. As was the case with source information, there are places where he expresses preference or signals relative weight. He does this in two ways. The ﬁrst is by use of a terminology similar to Thucydides and the Hippocratic authors (see IV.3.B above). One reason, that is, will often be labelled a pretext while a second reason will be given as the ‘real’ one.62 The reason Darius left the sick behind was because he did not want them, though he gave the pretext that they were to guard the camp: ƒ b ¼ŁæøØ IŁ Å b ¥ Œ ŒÆ º , æçØ b B ÅºÆ . . . (‘The men were really left behind because of their illness, but the pretext of course . . . ’, 4.135.2). Eretria and Athens were ‘the professed reason for the expedition’, though really the Persians wanted to subjugate as many Greek towns as possible: ÆyÆØ b t çØ æ åÅÆ qÆ F ºı, Iaæ . . . (6.44.1).

61 Cf. Hesk 2003: 19 on Sophocles: ‘The Ajax does indeed give us the “general truth” that tragic events never have simple or single causes or explanations.’ 62 1.29–30 (æ çÆØ), 4.135.2 (æçØ), 4.167.3 (æ åÅÆ), 6.44.1 (æ åÅÆ), 6.133.1 (æ åÅÆ), 7.157.1 (æ åÅÆ). Cf. 7.137.1 and 9.99.3. On this terminology in Herodotus, see Sealey 1957.

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In Herodotus, however, the dichotomy is not always absolute. At one point, for example, he lends personal qualiﬁcation to the opposition. Concerning a reason why Aryandes ordered the troops to march, he remarks that ÆoÅ ı ÆNÅ æ åÅÆ F º ªı Kª . . . Kd ¸Ø ø ŒÆÆæçB ﬁ (‘this was the cause that was the pretext for the expedition . . . [the real reason] was the overthrow of Libya’), but only ‰ Kd Œ Ø (‘as it seems to me’, 4.167.3). At another point Herodotus dilutes the opposition. At 9.99.3 he says that the Persian command enjoined the Milesians to guard the passes up to Mycale ‘on the grounds that they were familiar’ (‰ KØÆØØ) with those parts of the country, while ‘the real reason they did it’ ( K ı b ı ¥ ŒÆ, ¥ Æ . . . ) was to get them out of the way. But at 9.104 these same two reasons are reiterated in nonhierarchical terms (ı ¥ ŒÆ ŒÆd ¥ Æ . . . ‘on account of this and so that . . . ’). The second way Herodotus expresses preference is by invoking a less discrete ordering formula, also found in Thucydides, to the effect that something happened ‘not for X reason but for Y reason’ or ‘for X reason but especially for Y reason’, as the following examples illustrate.63 He thinks the Colchians are of Egyptian descent because they have black skin and woolly hair, ‘and more especially’ (Iººa Ø ŒÆd Aºº) because they both practise circumcision (2.104.2). The Eretrians ‘joined the expedition not for the sake of the Athenians but for the Milesians, repaying them what they owed’: Q P c ŁÅÆø åæØ KæÆ Iººa c ÆPH $ØºÅø, Oç Øº çØ I Ø (5.99.1). Demaratus continued slandering Cleomenes ‘not so much because of kindness toward Aegina but out of envy and spite’: PŒ `NªØÅø oø ŒÅ ‰ çŁ ø ﬁ ŒÆd ¼ªﬁ Å åæø (6.61.1). There are many reasons why Cyrus had the courage to undertake war against the Massagetae, the two most important being his belief in his origin and the success of his previous campaigns: ºº ªæ . . . æH . . . æÆ . . . (1.204.2). Taken together, these two methods by which Herodotus indicates weight serve to impose some order on the plurality of causes he incorporates into the Histories. They do not undermine that plurality completely, but they do qualify its ‘irreducibility’.

63

See also 6.108.3, 7.213.3, 8.41.2.

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E. Conclusion This section focused on various aspects of Herodotean narrative procedure. It is useful to take stock and ask what conclusions for Herodotus’ relationship with pluralism we can now draw from our analysis. While we have made several observations about his methods and authorial choices concerning his ‘narrative surface’, we should take this opportunity to elucidate what we have not claimed.64 It would simply be false to assert that Herodotus’ voice is constantly one of uncertainty, that he always cites multiple and conﬂicting sources, that he pathologically offers a plurality of reasons or motivations for action, or that he never prioritizes. And yet the fact remains that, at certain points in the Histories and on a signiﬁcantly frequent basis, he does all of these things. This fact cannot help but shape our perception of his presence in the narrative as well as our understanding of his conception of history. What is impossible to know for sure is whether Herodotus’ presence and narrative choices are a mere by-product of his personality, an uncritical (perhaps because unprecedented or uncriticized) injection of one’s self into one’s text, or whether there is something more philosophical and deliberate underpinning them. Yet, with this limitation in mind, the suggestion made here is that plurality and conﬂict ﬁnd their way into the narrative far too often in Herodotus (and far too little in Thucydides) for the latter to be deﬁnitively ruled out. Dewald has suggested that Herodotus’ ﬁrst-person intrusions are reﬂective of his experience that knowledge of reality is partial and provisional and that the truth is hard to ﬁnd.65 Given certain features of the time in which Herodotus was writing—the sophistic insistence on multiple logoi with their only inexact reﬂection of reality (chapter II), the tragic showcase of insoluble moral conﬂict (chapters VI–IX)— it is plausible to take Dewald’s suggestion one step further. It is not simply that Herodotus wants to show that discovering reality is a tortured process and in that search we are likely to stumble upon different accounts of it with different degrees of truth. Rather, it is,

64

The phrase is Dewald’s (1987). Dewald 1987: 166ff. Marincola describes (2006: 24) Herodotus as willing to reveal that his knowledge is ‘fractured and incomplete’ and as someone who accepts the ‘imperfect’ nature of truth. 65

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I think, that Herodotus is deliberately commenting upon the sometimes plural nature of reality itself.

2. HERODOTUS ON MORAL DILEMMA The previous section was concerned with exploring the presence of diversity and conﬂict in Herodotus’ methodology: namely, in his approach to subject matter, source material, and causation, as well as in his general narrative voice. Through the course of the discussion it should have become clear how different his practice is in this respect from that of Thucydides (IV.3 above). In what follows we will have occasion to call on the younger historian yet again, as we move from the sphere of methodological monism (or pluralism) to that of ethical monism (or pluralism). It is here where we will examine how moral conﬂicts feature in the Histories, ﬁrst in the form of dilemmas—that is, conﬂicts within a single person or decisionmaking body—and then (section 3 below) in the form of disagreements between two separate entities, in this case nations.66

A. From reasons to choices Xerxes As we have already seen, Herodotus is not afraid to elicit a plurality of reasons to explain why it is that a particular action or event transpired. Most of the time this willingness manifests itself simply in the inclusion of more than one cause in the narrative, where such causes are additional as opposed to competing. The presentation of Xerxes’ choice to invade Greece offers a detailed example of how plural and incommensurable reasons come together to inﬂuence a decision of moral character.67 Originally, we learn, Xerxes was not even interested in a campaign against Greece: his real designs were on Egypt: 66 The distinction between dilemmas and disagreements will recur in respect of tragedy at VII.3 below. 67 For a discussion of the equally complex causal sequence involved in Croesus’ decision to attack Persia and his failure (1.6–91), see Immerwahr 1956: 255–7; Lateiner 1989: 207–8; Luce 1997: 43–6; Romm 1998: 67–9.

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› ı ˛æÅ Kd b c Eºº Æ P ÆH æ Łı q ŒÆ Iæåa æÆ ŁÆØ, Kd b `Yªı KØ æÆØB ¼ª æØ (‘At the beginning Xerxes was not at all eager to march against Greece, he was mustering his army against Egypt’, 7.5.1). But the king’s advisor, Mardonius, begins applying pressure. He puts forward three discrete reasons why an expedition against the Greeks is worthwhile: the Athenians have done us great injury; your name will be held in honour all over the world; and Europe is a very beautiful place, ﬁt for a Persian royalty (7.5). Furthermore, Mardonius himself, we are told, is spurred by two further reasons: ‘desire for adventure and the hope of becoming governor of Greece himself’ ( øæø æªø KØŁıÅc Kg ŒÆd Łºø ÆPe B Eºº oÆæå r ÆØ, 7.6.1). To compound these already supplementary explanations, we are given three more: messengers arrived from the Aleuadae in Thessaly promising zealous assistance (7.6.2); and the Pisistratidae in Susa spoke to the same purpose (7.6.2), invoking the help of the oracle interpreter Onomacritus (7.6.3–4). It was because of these seven factors, taken together, that I ªŁÅ ˛æÅ æÆ ŁÆØ Kd c Eºº Æ (‘Xerxes decided to campaign against Greece’, 7.7.1).68 And yet this is not the end of the story. After Xerxes ﬁnishes up in Egypt, he convenes the leading men in Persia ‘to ascertain their opinions’ toward the new war on the horizon (¥ Æ ªÆ ŁÅÆ ç ø, 7.8.1). The swathe of reasons adduced for war earlier, it seems, is not enough. Now a debate on the issue opens up. The king takes the opportunity to propound his own reasons: I am following the precedent of expansion (Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, 7.8.Æ.1); I will win for Persia glory and a large, rich country (7.8.Æ.2); he reiterates the need for revenge (7.8. ; cf. 7.5.2 and 7.11.4); and he adds the extra advantage of extension of empire (7.8.ª). Mardonius then speaks again to make the point that if we do not punish the Greeks, we will look like fools, so piling motivations of embarrassment onto those of revenge (7.9). And Xerxes, in response to the protests of Artabanus, raises the valid concern that if we make no move, surely the Athenians will (7.11.2). In the last analysis, Xerxes chooses to invade Greece because of a host of factors: some logical, some military, some religious, some personal, and some supernatural: it is, of course, the dream that 68 This is not to mention the complex matrix of causes that got Xerxes into the position he was. See Immerwahr 1956: 270–2.

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comes to both Xerxes and Artabanus that makes the expedition certain (7.12.2, 7.14; 7.17). The upshot is that our evaluation of the validity of the decision is that much more complex because the reasons behind it are so varied and distinct from one another. I may think it utterly stupid to go to war on the advice of a nocturnal vision, but entirely justiﬁed to do so on the merits of self-preservation. Somebody else may think differently.

Gyges But there are also instances in the Histories, also alluded to above, where causes are given in an either/or manner, that is to say, where they come into conﬂict with one another. Alyattes sent to Delphi to inquire about his health ‘either because somebody was advising it or because it seemed best to him’: Y c ı ıº Æ ı, Y ŒÆd ÆPﬁH . . . (1.19.2). Polycrates did not turn to speak to Oroetes’ messenger ‘either purposely to take no account of Oroetes’ importance or by some such luck’: Y KŒ æÅ ÆPe ŒÆÅºªÆ a Oæ ø æªÆÆ, Y ŒÆd ııåÅ Ø ØÆÅ K ª (3.121.2). Logically, there is nothing in either of these examples to preclude both reasons from operating in tandem, though Herodotus does seem to present them as alternatives. (We should note too their incommensurability.) In other cases, however, the possibility of causal harmony is literally made impossible: the reasons on offer, by their very nature, cannot both be right. The Histories’ dilemmas—instances where reasons for action clash with one another in a person’s moral deliberation—provide important exemplars of this species of causal conﬂict. A pluralist stance on causality has ramiﬁcations for the portrayal of (moral) decision-making and dilemma. If Herodotus were to believe that reasons for action can be plural, incommensurable, and at times incompatible, it follows that an individual, confronted in the Histories with a choice between such motives, would not necessarily have access to a uniquely determined correct course of behaviour. In this way, we would expect there to be some indication in the text that moral dilemmas of such a genuinely intractable nature exist. We would expect further that, based on the information provided, we, as readers, would not always be able to say whether an actor made the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choice. Rather, we would have to accept, in Protagorean fashion, only that the better (as conceived of by the actor or

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perhaps even the observer) all-things-considered action was taken. Perhaps we can read Herodotus’ voice into Artabanus’ comment: c º åŁ Øø b ªøø IØø Iºººﬁ ÅØ PŒ Ø c I ø Æƒæ ºŁÆØ (‘It is not possible to make the better choice if opposing opinions are not set out against one another’, 7.10.Æ.1). On this view, the presentation of conﬂicting opinions augments the chance of arriving at the better, though not necessarily the best, practical outcome. Herodotus is indeed familiar with the reality of imponderable moral conﬂict. The Histories’ opening gambit focuses our attention on a man on the horns of a dilemma. Gyges is put in a disconcerting position by the king—observe my wife naked, despite its impropriety, or displease your master—a position ‘he is unable to escape’ (› b c ‰ PŒ K Æ ØÆçıª E, 1.10.1). But he is put in an even more disconcerting one by the queen. She makes the clash confronting him explicit: F Ø ıH › H Ææ ıø, ˆªÅ, øØ Æ¥ æ Ø, ›ŒæÅ º ÆØ æÆŁÆØ· j ªaæ ˚Æ Æº Æ IŒ Æ K

ŒÆd c ÆØºÅÅ å c ¸ı H, j ÆP ÆPŒÆ oø IŁﬁŒ Ø

E (‘There are two roads open to you now, Gyges, I am giving you a choice of which you want to take: either kill Candaules and take me and the kingdom of the Lydians or you yourself must die straightaway’, 1.11.2). We are witnessing here a thoroughly entrenched dilemma, put in starkly pluralist terms. The alternatives are plainly incompatible. Gyges cannot both survive and spare the king. They are incommensurable in that the options enshrine very different values. Opting to kill the king might be based on the values or concerns of expediency, longevity, fear; whereas choosing to die oneself might take into consideration more conventional norms such as propriety or guilt or reciprocity. But as we will notice with regard to Agamemnon (VI.2.A below), a theoretically pluralist dilemma of this sort relies for its meaning on literary presentation. It remains, therefore, to be seen how Herodotus treats the conﬂict. He could, we know well, dismiss its pluralist implications by a deft blow of prioritization. But this is not what happens: indeed, as Jasper Grifﬁn points out, Herodotus’ rendition of Gyges’ tale is much more complex and tragically inﬂuenced than either of the other two versions that existed at the time.69 Right away

69

Grifﬁn 2006: 50–1. See also Saïd 2002: 133–4.

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we are made aware that Gyges recognizes its severity. We might say he is overwhelmed by its ineluctable tragedy. At ﬁrst he is too astonished (I ŁÆÇ ) to even speak. He then ‘begs the queen not to compel him to make such a choice’: a b ƒŒ ı Ø IÆªŒÆﬁ Å K Ø ØÆŒæEÆØ ØÆÅ Æ¥ æ Ø (1.11.3). Gyges’ reactions suggests that the choice is so trying because either way something will be lost. In this instance, the loss is very clear as it literally corresponds to a life. One life is weighed against another: both have done wrong but both are human. Ultimately, Gyges chooses his own salvation (1.11.4). But we are not given the impression that he believes his decision to have been unequivocally right, only that it was necessary: P ªaæ K › ˆªÅ, P ƒ q IÆººÆªc P Æ (‘For Gyges was not released [from the dilemma], there was no way out for him’, 1.12.1).70 The situation illustrates two things. First, that Herodotus recognizes the existence of tragic dilemmas—dilemmas, that is, where no matter what a person does he will do wrong or suffer evil. And secondly, Gyges’ drama shows that Herodotus sees how irresolvable conﬂict can be a feature of reality and not necessarily a mistake or signal of failure on the agent’s part. Gyges’ second dilemma (that posed by the queen) is a direct outgrowth of his ﬁrst (that posed by the king). It was a situation that he himself created, albeit unwittingly and under duress. The fact that a choice was made in which both options were bad and in which loss would ensue is not a reﬂection of Gyges’ irrationality or inability to choose well, but a matter of circumstance. Herodotus highlights this by stressing in both instances of dilemma that the situation was not one that could be avoided (1.10.1, 1.11.4, 1.12.1). The story of Gyges is but the most drawn out example of a rationally irresolvable dilemma in the Histories. There are a number of instances, admittedly less explicit, where Herodotus reveals an understanding of two signiﬁcant facets of pluralist conﬂict. First, there is his recognition of the brute reality of the lose—lose scenario. The most obviously tragic example of this sort is the dire choice put to Intaphrenes’ wife, mentioned earlier in its relation to Antigone, of which member of her family to save at the expense of the rest (3.119.3). Another example of this sort of decision is that of Xerxes

70

IÆªŒÆﬁ Å, IÆªŒÆÅ, IÆªŒÇ Ø (1.11.4).

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(9.108–13), who is forced by his wife to decide between public disgrace and the mutilation of his lover’s innocent mother. Yet another is the inhabitants of Cyme (1.157–60): compelled by the Persians to hand over the Lydian Pactyes, they did not want either to give up their suppliant or to be besieged by the Persians—as a result they were left in a tricky situation.71 Artabanus, as ever the wise observer if not the sometimes mouthpiece for the historian himself, makes express the loss inherent in pluralist dilemma when he comments on the possibility of Ionian support of the Persian cause: whatever course of action the Ionians opt for, he muses, the result will be negative. Either they will prove dishonourable by enslaving their own people, or, in deserting Xerxes and helping their mother country, they will incur the wrath of Persia and all that such desertion entails (7.51.2–3). Secondly Herodotus shows true understanding of the upshot of pluralist dilemma: the idea that alternatives can be equally compelling and incompatible and that, though a decision has to be made between them, there is no one right way to go. In a word: irresolution (this term will recur with regard to tragedy). The Cimmerians, for example, could not agree what to do when they saw the Scythians approaching, and ‘divided into two opinions, both vehement’: ŒÆd c a ªÆ çø Œ åøæØÆ, K ı b IçæÆ (4.11.2). One course of action was supported by the people, another by the princes. Neither party, however, could convince the other: PŒ t c KŁº Ø Ł ŁÆØ h EØ ÆØº FØ e B h ﬁH ø ﬁ f ÆØºÆ (4.11.3). It is interesting that, even though Herodotus offers his own opinion about which policy was ‘better’ (I ø), the result is that each group acted on its own initiative: literally, no resolution ensued. Another moment of irresolvable conﬂict occurs at 4.119.1: ÆFÆ ŒıŁø KÆªª ººø K ıº ƒ ÆØº . . . ŒÆd ç ø KåŁÅÆ ÆN ªHÆØ (‘With the Scythians announcing these things the rulers were deliberating, but their opinions were divided’). Here too each group ends up acting in accordance with its own beliefs, this time with no comment from Herodotus about which is ‘right’. Sometimes close calls come down to the intervention of a single person.72 When ‘the opinions of the Athenian commanders were 71

See Grifﬁn 2006: 50 and Saïd 2002: 121. This phenomenon can already be seen in the role Aristodicus played in resolving the Pactyes situation (1.157–60). 72

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divided’ (EØ b ŁÅÆø æÆÅªEØ Kª åÆ Æƒ ªHÆØ, 6.109.1) on whether to ﬁght or not, it seemed at ﬁrst that what Herodotus describes as the ‘“worse opinion” was winning’ (KŒÆ å æø H ªøø, 6.109.2). But then Miltiades prevails upon the polemarch Callimachus to vote in favour and this single vote sways the outcome (6.110.1). The timely intervention of one man changes the policy, though it so easily could have gone the other way. In a similar situation, the Ionian tyrants shift from the proposal of Miltiades to that of Histiaeus: qÆ æÆØ æe ÆÅ c ªÅ, æ æ c $ØºØ ø Æƒæ Ø (‘They all turned to this opinion, where before they were choosing that of Miltiades’, 4.137.3). But though one initiative was followed and the other rejected, as Richmond Lattimore rightly observes: ‘this is not exactly good against bad advice, for both men are justiﬁed from different points of view, and Herodotus neither expresses nor implies any preference.’73 A ﬁnal point that sheds light on our discussion of pluralist dilemma in Herodotus comes not from the history but from the historian himself. When Herodotus offers his readers a choice between two competing versions of events, is he not, even if only implicitly, underlining his belief in the existence of pluralist dilemma? Above we noted (1.C) how this tendency was illustrative of a general lack of certainty and singularity in the author’s narrative voice. Here we must draw attention to how the tendency, particularly when it is express (as at 2.146.1, 3.122.1, 5.45.2), exhibits that in conﬂicts between two variant accounts of ‘history’ there is a sense in which both alternatives are right. So, for example, he says at 2.146.1: ø t Içæø æ Ø åæAŁÆØ E Ø ÆØ º ªØØ Aºº (‘One must accept whichever of these two accounts one believes more’). By giving what he knows to be a plurality of people a choice between versions of the ages of the gods, how Polycrates died, whether the Crotoniates had allies in the war against 73 Lattimore 1939: 28 n. 9. These last two episodes raise another relevant theme: actors made to change their mind. This is a recurring motif in Herodotus: cf. 1.86.6, 1.156.1, 1.208, 7.5.1, 7.12.1, 7.15.1, 7.18.4, 7.17. It underlines that moral decisions, once taken, are not absolute (as we notice with Sophoclean characters such as Ismene and Chrysothemis, as well as Creon). Thucydides’ Athenian assembly is also depicted as wavering. But the historian’s portrait of Pericles illustrates that this was seen as problematic, a negative feature of the homilos, ‘mob’. Cf. 2.65.4, Herodotus, 3.81.1, Euripides, Supplices 411.

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Sybaris, Herodotus, surely, knows that different readers will choose differently. By not commenting on correctness, he implies that either way is ‘right’—or, at least, that no single ‘right’ answer can be ascertained. It is not going too far to extend this tendency to moral alternatives and to draw the conclusion that Herodotus similarly believed that ethical questions too could be without resolution.

B. Thucydides on dilemma As I discussed earlier, Thucydides is often helpful in illuminating the signiﬁcance of certain elements of Herodotean practice. His more discrete stance on a particular issue has the effect of highlighting its less overt treatment by his forerunner. This is certainly the case when it comes to the portrayal of ethical decision-making. Herodotus differs from Thucydides in this arena in two important respects. First, there is the issue of how many and what kinds of reasons count in the last analysis of moral deliberation. And secondly, there is the portrait drawn (or not drawn) of tragic dilemma and the implicit (or explicit) comment on its place and potency in the annals of history. We saw how in the Histories Xerxes’ decision to invade Greece was a result of multiple causes of varied types working together to inﬂuence policy. So too, we saw how Gyges was struck and deeply affected by the profundity of his dilemma and the reality that a grave loss would ensue no matter what he chose. The pluralist nature of both of these examples of internal ethical dilemma is well elucidated by Thucydides. We need only look at his depiction of how Athens deals with the conﬂicts that confront her in the course of the Peloponnesian War to see how different is her conﬂict resolution— or, rather, Thucydides’ depiction of her conﬂict resolution—from either of these men. There are three important moments that work together to paint a picture of Thucydidean moral monism in this respect. The ﬁrst instance of moral choice in the History is the debate between the Corcyreans and the Corinthians, both of whom are vying for Athenian support in their struggle against one another. We have already explored (IV.3.B) the Corcyrean speeches in reference to ‘what is necessary’ for an oration on a given occasion. The Corcyreans, we remember, based their plea for support on the advantages an alliance with them would promise the Athenians. The

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Corinthians, by contrast, were more concerned with typically moral values of reciprocity, honour, and fairness. The Athenians are forced to decide between alternatives that are not only incompatible (they cannot offer succour to both) but based on entirely different conceptual premises. Will they be moved by the arguments from xumpheron (‘expedience’) or those from dikaion (‘justice’)? At 1.44 Thucydides relates the result of the debate: the Athenians opt to ally with the Corcyreans. He then includes, in rather compressed fashion, a very important point which colours our understanding of the conﬂict. The ﬁrst is that the Athenians ‘staged two separate assemblies’(ª Å ŒÆd d KŒŒºÅÆ) in order to discuss the issue. ‘In the ﬁrst instance’ they were inclined toward the Corinthians (B ﬁ b ææÆﬁ På w H ˚æØŁø I

Æ f º ªı, ‘they accepted the arguments of the Corinthians as not inferior’); only ‘in the second’ did their sympathies sway to the Corcyreans (K b B ﬁ æÆÆﬁ ªøÆ . . . , ‘they changed their minds’). In other words, the Athenians were quite torn by the dilemma, though Thucydides himself simply concludes the ‘decision chapter’ by stating (1.44.2), with a heavy dose of authority, that the real reasons why the Athenians acted as they did were threefold: because they knew war was inevitable and did not want Corcyra to reinforce the Corinthian ﬂeet; because they wanted the two navies to wear each other down so that, if it did come to war, they would face a weakened opposition; and because Corcyra’s well-situated location was favourable to them. All of these reasons are concerned with Athenian perception of her own advantage (reasons one and three were brought to her attention by the Corcyreans). What is important to notice is the tension between, on the one hand, Thucydides’ description of the Athenians’ experience of the dilemma and, on the other, his reductive enumeration of the factors that actually determined their decision. The Mytilenean debate gives expression to an even more trenchant moral dilemma (3.36–49). The fate of an entire population rests on the shoulders of the Athenian assembly. One decision has already been made, that Mytilene must be punished for its insurrection. But a general feeling of remorse having swept over the citizenry prompts the opening of another deliberation (3.36.4–5). At the second meeting of the assembly ‘various opinions on each side are voiced’ (¼ººÆØ

ªHÆØ Iç Œø Kºª), but only Cleon’s (against rescinding the death sentence) and Diodotus’ (in favour) are recorded. The

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dichotomy between dikaion and xumpheron that animated the Corcyrean antilogy returns, though in a different fashion.74 The most salient thing to notice about these two opposing logoi is that they both hinge on expediency to support their proposal.75 In the decision chapter (3.49.1), we once again hear Thucydides’ voice on the matter. The historian relays that the proposals were of even strength, that the Athenians clashed over the resolution, and that their show of hands was nearly equal (ÞÅŁ ØH b H ªøH ø ºØÆ IØºø æe IºººÆ ƒ ŁÅÆEØ qºŁ b K IªHÆ ‹ø B Å ŒÆd Kª K B ﬁ å ØæÆﬁ IªåÆºØ, ‘After these viewpoints, which were very equally weighted, were put

74 Orwin 1984 is an instructive overview of how these ideas feature in the debate at large. 75 Cleon’s speech weaves together claims of dikaion with those of xumpheron but speciﬁes that, in moments of tension, the latter will prevail. He concludes by making this clear (3.40.4): ØŁ Ø b Kd ŒÆØÆ K $ıØºÅÆı ŒÆd a çæÆ –Æ Ø , ¼ººø b ª E b P åÆæØ EŁ , A b ÆPf Aºº

ØŒÆØ Ł . N ªaæ yØ OæŁH IÅÆ, E i P åæ g ¼æåØ . N b c ŒÆd P æBŒ ‹ø IØF F æA, Ææa e NŒ Ø ŒÆd ıç æø E ŒºÇ ŁÆØ (‘If you obey me you will be doing both the just thing and the expedient thing in respect of the Mytileneans. You will not be doing them a favour by deciding otherwise, rather you will be condemning yourselves. For if they were right to revolt, you would not be holding your empire rightfully. And yet, if you rule even though it is not appropriate, then in all likelihood they must also be punished for the sake of your expedience’). Diodotus’ speech addresses Cleon’s conclusion head on, not merely elevating the importance of xumpheron above dikaion, but shattering any illusion that the two are plausible bedfellows. His opener here is notorious for its stark realism and expression of the primacy of expedience: X ªaæ Içø ı I ØŒFÆ ÆP, P Øa F ŒÆd IŒ EÆØ Œ º Fø, N c ıçæ, X ŒÆd å Ø ıªªÅ < r >, N B ﬁ º Ø c IªÆŁe çÆØ (‘If I were to profess that they were entirely guilty, I would not urge you to put them to death on account of this if it is not advantageous. And even if they should be forgiven, [I would not urge you to put them to death] if it did not seem to be good for our city’, 3.44.2). Diodotus’ remaining rhetoric works to illustrate how the mass murder of the Mytileneans is not, in fact, in the Athenians’ best interest. Somewhat paradoxically, he argues for their salvation not on the basis of notions of clemency or proportionality, but solely on the basis of advantage. Although they call for opposite policy measures, Diodotus’ speech speaks to Cleon’s in many ways. In addition to the verbal echoes, the two are not very far removed from one another in substance. Both admonish their audience not to be swayed by pity and decency (3.37.2, 3.40.3ff; 3.44.2). Both emphasize the importance of their subject’s ﬁnancial contributions as well as the expenses that go into a siege (3.39.7–8; 3.46.2–4). Both discuss theories of punishment as deterrence, thereby drawing attention to the salience (perhaps necessity) of self-interest and the efﬁcacy of self-interest-based arguments in an international context (3.40.7; 3.45–6). And most signiﬁcantly, both realize that xumpheron is a value distinct from dikaion, yet one which, when push comes to shove, must be considered more motivating.

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forward the Athenians were still in a conﬂict of opinion and they were nearly equal in their show of hands’). Again, this is not surprising as the issue is clearly a perplexing one. And yet, there is no word about what considerations actually fuelled the voters and, ultimately, the reversal of policy. We are given a sense of the Athenians’ pity toward the Mytileneans through the description of their actions, the frantic rowing and simultaneous eating, the sleeping in turns (3.49.3). We may infer it from the recall of the assembly. But neither pity nor morality is given any weight in Thucydidean analysis or choice of inclusion.76 In this way, we are left with the impression that expediency, because it was the main factor in both speeches, was the prime motivator. The question, on this reading, that the Athenians were struggling with was: which alternative is more expedient? Finally, there is the case of Melos. The situation that prompts the Melian dialogue is, at least in one important respect, similar to that over Mytilene (5.85–116): the fate of a small and relatively weak island depends upon a decision of the ‘superpower’ Athens. But the events at Melos provide an even more striking statement about the predominance of interest as a motivating factor. We can speculate from the outcomes of the episodes at Corcyra and Mytilene (as well as Plataea) that the Athenian decision will be based upon expedience, yet at the same time we can suspect from the behaviour of the other little states, Mytilene (3.9–14) and Plataea (3.53–9), that the Melians will employ the rhetoric of dikaion to support their case. This is indeed what happens.77 In the last analysis, the Athenians articulate the principle on which their policy decision will rest and they attempt to convince their weaker adversaries to concede on account of it: ıÆa b ƒ æå æıØ ŒÆd ƒ IŁ E ıªåøæFØ (‘The strong do what they are able to and the weak yield’, 5.89); ª ŁÆ . . . e IŁæ Ø ÆçH Øa Æe e ç ø IÆªŒÆÆ, y i ŒæÆB ﬁ , ¼æå Ø (‘We think that it is obvious that mankind, because of a natural compulsion, continually rules where it is able’, 5.105.2). 76 He does refer to the decision as T . . . ŒÆd ªÆ (‘brutal and extreme’, 3.36.4) and the business at hand as Iºº Œ (‘unwelcome’, 3.49.4)—but these evaluations seem merely descriptive. Or, they might be focalized. See Marincola 2001: 76 n. 74. 77 Despite the fact that the Athenians explicitly attempt to limit the conversation to the realm of xumpheron (5.89; picked up by the Melians at 5.90, 5.98), the Melians persist in making arguments based on fairness and justice (5.90), hope (5.102), religion (5.104), and trust in Spartan loyalty (5.104, 5.106, 5.108, 5.110).

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They are, in this way, not faced with a dilemma at all. The two perspectives may be incompatible (Melos will either survive or perish), and on most readings incommensurable.78 Yet, when the talks break down, there is no question as to what the Athenians will do. As Thucydides relays: ƒ b æÆÅªd ÆPH, ‰ P b Œı ƒ $ºØØ, æe º PŁf Kæ . . . (‘Their generals, as the Melians were not submitting at all, turned themselves to war immediately’, 5.114.1); ƒ b IŒ ØÆ $Åºø ‹ı HÆ ºÆ , ÆE Æ b ŒÆd ªıÆEŒÆ M æÆ ØÆ. e b åøæ ÆPd ﬁþŒØÆ (‘They killed the Melians, as many of the grown men as they captured, and they enslaved the women and children. They settled the land themselves’, 5.116.4). In conﬂicts of this sort, we see that the prerogative, both in terms of outcome and in terms of the type of arguments to be entertained, lies with the more powerful state. The Melian dialogue illustrates that a conﬂict between dikaion and xumpheron exists, but that on the international stage it is easily resolvable. In the face of moral dilemma, the Athenians may be ﬂummoxed. They may change their minds and they may struggle with their consciences. Thucydides does not deny this. Neither, though, does he attempt to invest it with any signiﬁcance.79 Rather, what he does try to do, in a way that differs signiﬁcantly from Herodotus, is shape reader interpretation of the decisions in a way which minimizes the import of the conﬂict. From Corcyra to Melos, Thucydides makes expedience or advantage an increasingly potent trump card in the game of war. Each episode builds upon the next to illustrate the overriding status of xumpheron in respect of dikaion. At Corcyra, both values are given weight, but the assembly, we are informed, is moved entirely by considerations of advantage. At Mytilene, xumpheron is the main principle articulated in the speeches both for and against extermination. We are not expressly told the basis for the ﬁnal decision, but are left to infer it

78 Athens feels it is her right to subdue the tiny island and in her interest to so display her power and keep imperial order (5.95, 5.97); Melos feels it has the right to self-rule (5.112). 79 The beauty of Pericles, in Thucydides’ eyes, was his ability to control monolithically the otherwise diverse and unpredictable demos (cf. 2.22.1, 2.65.2). Cf. Berlin 1990: 56. The Athenian decision to go to war after Pericles’ First Speech is quick and clean. No opposing views are recorded, though there were many (1.139.4); the vote is made with no dithering and no reservations. The process of deliberation is reduced to Pericles telling the Athenians what is best for them and the Athenians wholeheartedly embracing his recommendation.

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was the preponderant factor. Finally, at Melos, there is no dilemma posed at all. The dominance of interest is complete and Melian pleas in the name dikaion are swiftly, ruthlessly dismissed. This triad of Athenian dilemmas work together to show that a single matrix of factors—personal advantage and laws of human nature—have an increasingly overriding role in the History in terms of resolving decisions, even those that we know were disquieting. This is a monistic tendency that will recur with full force in our discussion of Sophoclean heroes. But what does it tell us about Herodotus? The most obvious point is that Herodotean dilemmas are not so starkly set up and are not so easily reduced or resolved. Like Thucydides, Herodotus realizes that deliberating agents can be torn and confused by alternatives. But unlike Thucydides, he is relatively happy to allow that multiple and varied causes can coalesce to determine the big moments in history. His service, it would seem, is not to control the reader’s interpretation of why something happened but to illustrate the pluralist reality that most decisions are not so readily controllable.

3. HERODOTUS ON MORAL DISAGREEMENT

A. Cultural pluralism It is not merely Herodotus’ broad principle of inclusion that makes his work an example of the deep history Berlin was so fond of. While the fact that the historian describes, often at some length, a variety of moral schemes is important in its own right, to speak of Herodotus in a meaningful way as a (proto-) cultural pluralist we need to examine his attitude towards such variety. As many critics have observed, Herodotus is strikingly tolerant towards other, foreign ways of living.80 Indeed, this proclivity was noted even in antiquity: Plutarch inveighs against him as Ææ Ææ çØº (‘one who loves foreigners’) for this very reason.81 To be sure, Herodotus is a Greek writing for a 80

Flory 1987: esp. ch. 3 and 4; Waters 1985: ch. 9; Cartledge 1993: 55–62; Luce 1997: 32–3; Romm 1998: ch. 7; Marincola 2001: 52; Rood 2006. For the more typical, parochial view against which Herodotus pulls, see Cartledge 1993: 38–41. 81 Moralia 867a. Herodotus was the object of much denunciation in antiquity, though none of the attacks survive. See Schmid and Stählin 1934: 665–670; Momigliano 1966: 133; Flory 1987: 83.

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Greek audience. But he is conspicuously slow to take sides; he is notoriously generous to ‘the enemy’. Cultural pluralism, we recall, is a philosophy that allows for an irreducible diversity of cultures. It is a philosophy that, unlike relativism, allows these cultures to be evaluated against one another based on a common core of moral understanding, though never in a wholly determinate way. And it is a philosophy which espouses the view that conﬂict between such cultures is not a matter of right and wrong, but a clash between incommensurable systems of value and practice. It remains to be seen how these three tenets fare in the Histories.

Cultural diversity in the Histories When it comes to custom, Herodotus is interested in multiplicity generally, but he is particularly interested in difference. I discussed above (1.B) how the Histories is a fount of information on the customs of many cultures: at different points in the narrative, for example, Herodotus tells us that Lydian girls prostitute themselves for their dowries and choose their own husbands (1.93.4); Babylonian girls are auctioned off for marriage (1.196.1); and young Thracian girls are allowed to have sex freely (5.6.1). This fact of inclusion was adduced as evidence for Herodotus’ plural methodological perspective. But more than a mere collection of cultural facts and artefacts, the Histories is a discourse on the differences between those cultures. We learn about the attitudes Lydians, Babylonians, and Thracians have towards the unwed women of their community. But we also learn how they differ from one another in that respect. This is comparative work we can undertake on our own, through a careful reading of the text. But it is often the case that Herodotus himself is keen to note when the mores of one culture diverge from those of another. This interest explains the preponderance of attention to nations such as Egypt and Scythia, nations which Herodotus views as the most distinct from Greece.82 82 Cf. 2.35.2 about the Egyptians: a ººa Æ ÆºØ EØ ¼ººØØ IŁæØØ KÆ XŁÆ ŒÆd ı (‘Their ways and customs are the reverse of the rest of mankind in very many respects’). See Redﬁeld 1985: 103ff.; Hartog 1988; Cartledge 1993: 55–9; Pelling 1997a. On binary opposition in Herodotus generally, see Schmid and Stählin 1934: 577–8, 564 n. 1; Immerwahr 1966: 50–1, 234 n.10, 182–3, 262, 321; Lloyd-Jones 1971: 65; Flory 1987: 17–19; Cartledge and Greenwood 2002: 363–71. Luce, however, points out (1997: 32) that Herodotus does not overly insist on

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There are over twenty-ﬁve instances in the Histories where Herodotus takes care to point out that two or more cultures vary in their attitude towards a speciﬁc norm or set of norms.83 The Greeks have markets for buying and selling. This is unlike the Persians, who never buy in an open market and do not have a single marketplace in their whole country (1.153.2). People on the Libyan frontier were unimpressed with the Egyptian custom prohibiting eating the ﬂesh of heifers (2.18.2). The Amazons and Scythian women differ in a number of respects, as the Amazons make abundantly clear (4.114.3): P ªaæ a ÆPa ÆØÆ E ŒIŒ ﬁÅ KØ. E b

ŒÆd IŒÇ ŒÆd ƒÆÇ ŁÆ, æªÆ b ªıÆØŒØÆ PŒ KŁ · Æƒ b æÆØ ªıÆEŒ ø b P b H E ŒÆ ºÆ Ø FØ, æªÆ b ªıÆØŒØÆ KæªÇÆØ ıÆØ K B ﬁ Ø ±ﬁÅØ, h Kd ŁæÅ NFÆØ h ¼ººﬁÅ P ÆB ﬁ . Our customs are not the same as theirs. We shoot with the bow and throw the spear and ride horses: we have not learned feminine tasks. Your women do none of these things we mention. They do the work of women, staying in their wagons, and they do not go out to hunt or for anything else.

So too, Persians and Macedonians have distinct ideas about intermingling with women, as Amyntas of Macedonia knows well (5.18.3): t —æÆØ, b E ª KØ PŒ y, Iººa Œ åøæŁÆØ ¼ æÆ ªıÆØŒH (‘Persians, this is not the custom for us, but the men are divided from the women’). Herodotus’ descriptions of difference, as these examples show, are not mere excurses (though, for Herodotus, ‘digressions’ are still an integral part of the work: 4.30.1). Rather, as Marincola contends, they are ‘woven into the historical narrative and form an integral part of his conception of the world and human action’.84 Difference is a persistent theme of the Histories because, for Herodotus, it helps to explain why things are the way they are. antitheses. Rather, he will accommodate inconsistencies and irregularities such that, when evidence does not ﬁt into a pattern, he does not force it, ignore it, or explain it away (e.g. 2.2, 2.23). 83 1.71, 1.74.6, 1.82.7, 1.93–4.1, 1.153.2, 1.172.1, 1.173.4–5, 2.35.2–4, 2.41–2, 2.48.2, 2.51.1, 2.58–63, 2.64.1, 2.80.1–2, 2.92, 2.104, 2.145, 3.16.2–3, 3.20.2, 3.99–103, 4.103–17, 4.114.3, 4.172, 4.190, 5.3–10, 5.18.2–3, 5.87.3–88.1. 84 Marincola 1996: xiv. See also Lateiner 1989: ch. 7.

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Herodotus’ attitude toward cultural diversity Herodotus is concerned with a number of cultures in his work and he is concerned with the differences between them. The crucial question is what, if any, stance he takes with regard to such differences. Throughout our investigation we witness opportunities to notice that the inclusion of plurality—whether of values, of courses of action, of sources, or of explanations—does not necessarily entail pluralism. Socrates could admit that there was more than one virtue, only to conclude that each was a manifestation of wisdom (III.4 above). Thucydides could mention in his narrative that there were two squabbles that contributed to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, only to eclipse them both with a ‘truest cause’ (IV.3.B above).85 So too, we will see how Ajax can enumerate the two incompatible alternatives before him, life or death, only to deny that one of them is a possibility at all (VII.2 below). In the same way, even Herodotus can cite two versions of Xerxes’ retreat from Salamis, but dismiss one as entirely unconvincing (8.119).86 Monism, in other words, can exist in the face of an ostensible plurality; it can stem from the imposition of an ordering system or hierarchy on what otherwise appears a multiplicity (see I.3.B above). To use our earlier example, Herodotus could relay the treatment of both Lydian and Babylonian girls on the brink of marriage—indeed, he could even note that they are distinct from one another—but then say, categorically, that the Babylonian practice is the better one. Perhaps he has deemed it so because he has formulated some axiom that auction is always the ﬁnest means of coupling; perhaps because he embraces the value of redistribution and thinks this should be determinate in all situations. Whatever method he uses to come to the judgement, as long as it was predetermined and applied universally, he would not be exercising pluralism, despite the mention of diversity. This is not what Herodotus does. To be sure, he ﬁnds the Babylonian practice ‘very ingenious’ (çÆ, 1.196.1; cf. 1.197): he is 85 Interestingly, Herodotus also attributes two different lines of causation to the Persian invasion: Darius’ desire to punish Athens and Eretria (5.105) and the pretext of the burning of Sardis (5.102.1). See Flower 2006: 276–7 and 1.D above. And yet, Herodotus does not control or reduce these causes in anything like the way Thucydides does. 86 Though, in line with our earlier observations about his narrative voice, his opinion is qualiﬁed: P ÆH Øª Ø (‘in no way credible to me’).

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not reticent about occasionally offering his opinion on matters of custom.87 But most of the time he refrains from comment altogether on what could easily be conceived of as dubious moral standards.88 This tolerant perspective is especially apparent in his remark about religion, a notoriously divisive issue: Æ IŁæı Y æd ÆPH KÆŁÆØ (‘All men know an equal amount concerning these things’, 2.3.2).89 When Herodotus does express an opinion, however, it reads only ever as an opinion, mostly in the ﬁrst person; he tends not to make sweeping judgements. So, for example, he ‘admires the custom’ of the Persians whereby boys younger than 5 never see their fathers because this spares the men distress if their sons die at an early age (ÆNø b ı e , 1.137.1). He also ‘admires the one’ whereby even the king is forbidden to put a man to death for a single offence and servants are not permitted to be punished by irreparable injury (1.137.1): ÆNø b ŒÆd . The Babylonian practice that calls for every woman to give herself to a strange man he refers to as › b c ÆYåØ H ø Kd EØ BÆ ıºøØØ ‹ (‘indeed the most shameful of all of the Babylonians’ customs’, 1.199.1).90 He believes that it is not appropriate to have sex in temples (Øª PŒ Iæ , ‘it is not acceptable in my view’), even though many countries condone it and despite the fact that there is a sound explanation of why it is natural, an explanation, we should note, that he delivers (2.64.1–2).91 Herodotus, then, does make judgements, but they are not universal. His tone, as we

87 We should notice too that he gives a reason for its ingenuity. He ﬁnds the custom so appealing because, while the rich men are able to enter into bidding wars over pretty women, the poor men (who have no use for beauty in a wife) are actually paid by those sales to take the uglier girls. The fact that Herodotus usually provides explanations for his preferences is, I think, indication that when two compelling alternatives are given, reasons need to be provided why one should be chosen over the other. His reasons, however, do not have to be accepted by everybody—a fact his ‘voice’ indicates that he acknowledges. On Herodotean standards of ‘correctness’ in the face of multiplicity, see 1.C above. 88 So, for example, human sacriﬁce (1.86.2, 7.114); dismemberment (4.64–5); necrophagy (3.38.3–4). Romm observes (1998: 99) that ‘ . . . he reports such practices as cannibalism, polygamy, and extreme sexual promiscuity without the slightest hint of distaste or disapproval’. 89 Luce 1997: 32. Cf. IV.2.B above. 90 Cf. IªæØÆÆ (‘most savage’) at 4.106. 91 For other expressions of opinion, see 1.137.1, 2.177.2, 4.46.2. For the view that ‘Herodotus must understand and judge their customs and laws if he is to go beyond a mere presentation of their incompatibility’, see Benardete 1969: 11.

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recognized in respect of his comments on source and cause, is not one of unmitigated certainty. It is almost always couched in the ﬁrst person or tempered by a ﬁrst-person qualiﬁcation (ÆNø, Øª ). It is put forward as an expression of opinion and not of fact.

Cultural pluralism versus relativism (again) That Herodotus feels able to make value judgements about other cultures is evidence that he does not engage in relativism. We recall that a strong brand of relativism does not allow for cross-cultural moral evaluation, while pluralism does (I.3.C, IV.1.A above). The reason is that pluralists believe in the existence of a common moral core underpinning even the most diverse value systems. That Herodotus recognizes such a universal platform of humanity or, put less technically, that he at least feels foreign people are not vacuumpacked in their own societies, incapable of being comprehended from the outside, can be inferred from the way he intermixes similarity and difference in cultural description.92 Herodotus writes of difference, but he also draws attention to similarity.93 Often he focuses on similarity only then to point out further difference. Lydians and Medes, for example, have the same form of oath as the Greeks, but for additional conﬁrmation make a shallow cut in their arms and lick each other’s blood (1.74.6). The Lycians resemble the Cretans in some manners and the Carians in others, but are unique in that they take the mother’s name instead of the fathers: ØØ b a ˚æÅØŒEØ, a b ˚ÆæØŒEØ åæøÆØ. £ b Y Ø ŒÆØ ŒÆd P ÆEØ ¼ººØØ ıçæÆØ IŁæø (‘They have some of the customs of the Cretans and some of the Carians. But they have this one distinct custom and they do not share it with any other peoples’, 1.173.4–5). The Thracians all live in generally the same way, except for certain groups: ØØ b yØ ÆæÆºÅØØ åæøÆØ ŒÆa Æ, ºc ˆ ø ŒÆd "æÆıH ŒÆd H ŒÆ æŁ ˚æÅøÆø (‘On the whole they all have similar customs, except for the Getae, the Trausi, and the people above Creston’, 5.3.2). The Trausi, for instance, follow the norms of the Thracians in

92 For this admixture of phusis and nomos in Herodotus, particularly at 3.38, see Gagarin 2002: 32. Cf. Benardete 1969: 9–16 and Antiphon the sophist (DK87 B44). 93 e.g. 1.198, 1.199.5, 1.215.1, 2.167.1, 7.74, 7.89.1, 7.91, 7.93, 7.94, 7.95.1.

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everything except matters of birth and death (5.4). Those who live beyond Creston differ in that they engage in polygamy (5.5).94 This combination of similarity and difference functions as if to say: we are looking at two peoples and they possess certain incompatible social mores. But they are similar enough that we can comprehend their practices and their rationales for so practising. They are similar enough that we can compare them meaningfully either to each other or to our way of doing things. And, therefore, they are similar enough that we can judge them. Sometimes Herodotus uses similarity to pinpoint difference between Greeks and foreigners; sometimes for groups within a single culture.95 So, for instance, the Egyptians resemble the Lacedaemonians in their protocol of young men making way for elders in the street, although they are unlike any of the Greeks in that they do not greet one another by name: ıçæÆØ b ŒÆd ¼ºº `NªØØ Eººø ØØ ¸ÆŒ

ÆØØØ . . .

Ø ¼ºº Eººø P ÆEØ ıçæÆØ (‘The Egyptians are like the Spartans alone in one respect . . . But they are unlike any of the Greeks in another respect’, 2.80.1–2). Here we learn that Egyptians vary from almost all Greeks in one respect and all Greeks in another. Because they share a practice with the Lacedaemonians—a Greek culture, and so less alien to a Hellenic audience—it is more likely that that audience, hearing about such a custom, would feel it was something they could grasp and evaluate, even though the majority of them do not partake in it. This overlap, in turn, sets up an analogous feeling of connectedness toward that custom with which they have nothing in common. Because the fact they do not greet one another by name was introduced by reference to a commonality (young men making way to their elders), an aura (however much an illusion) of understanding is created. Treating the two together, the similarity and the difference, also raises the obvious point that most cultures will follow some set of traditions when meeting others in passing. At other times Herodotus emphasizes similarity in order to expound difference between two foreign cultures. The Egyptians and the Persians both think it horrible to burn their dead (e t ŒÆÆŒÆ Ø ª f Œæf P ÆH K ø ﬁ P æØ KØ, ‘It is 94

See also 1.82.7, 2.48.2, 2.80.1–2, 2.92, 2.104, 4.172, 4.190. Interestingly, Herder has been criticized on the ground that he does not recognize pluralism within societies (Larmore 1987: 96–9). 95

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not customary for either of the two to burn their dead’), but for different reasons: the Persians because they think ﬁre is a god and it is wrong to give a man’s dead body to a god; the Egyptians because they think ﬁre is an animal and it is unholy to feed a man’s dead body to an animal (3.16.2–3). The two countries may both be considered alien by a Greek audience, as might the attitude toward burial they share. But because Herodotus gives two different explanations of a single foreign practice, it may be easier for a Greek mind to assess the ritual and weigh against one another the reasons for observing it. The idea that ﬁre is a god may be more ridiculous to them than the idea that it is an animal. By learning that the Egyptians will not burn bodies for a more plausible reason, they may be that much more sympathetic to the idea or, simply, that much more comprehending. In other words, there is a basic commonality here that transcends difference: most people have some set of religious beliefs or names for certain gods, even if the names are different. All people have language, even though they speak different ones (and even the barbarians have languages that they consider ‘barbarian’, 2.158.5). As Thomas contends of the medical writers’ search for phusis, here ethnography is being used ‘not so much to show difference, to underline a gulf between the Greeks and . . . other peoples, or to reinforce the rightness of Greek behaviour and character, as to make connections across the whole of the human world . . . ’.96

B. Conﬂicts of culture National character and changing fortunes A further point to notice is that, for Herodotus, cultural systems are not static.97 Just as the Pelasgians once spoke a foreign tongue but ultimately acquired the Greek language (1.57.2–3), so too other norms, even of the most character-deﬁning sort, can change over time. Each nation might think that it has the best nomoi at any given point in time (3.38), but this is not to say that it will not look to borrow or to change.98 As they were for Protagoras, customs and 96

Thomas 2000: 70. Dewald shows (1990: 221–2) that this idea is introduced as early as the proem. 98 Herodotus points out, almost as exceptions, those nations (all ‘hard’) which are particularly resistant to foreign cultural inﬂuence: the Egyptians (2.91) and the 97

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values in the Histories are man-made and, therefore, mutable.99 Difference between countries is, in this way, a matter of nomos and not of phusis. To invoke the language metaphor again, it might be fundamental for all societies to have language (phusis), but what that language consists of will vary from people to people (nomos). Cultural adaptation in Herodotus can refer to practices we might consider trivial, such as hair-style: after a battle with the Spartans, the Argives who previously wore their hair long began to cut it short (1.82.7); the Spartans also a KÆÆ ø Ł (‘adopted a [new] custom opposite to this’, 1.82.8). Or it can refer to more serious ones such as circumcision (1.204), religious imagery (2.51.1), declaration of livelihood (2.177).100 It can affect only one custom or spread its net wider. The Lydians, for instance, ‘transformed their entire way of life’: ¸ı d c AÆ ÆØÆ B Ç Å Æº (1.157.2; cf. 1.79.3, 1.55.4). The Persians are another example of a people in the Histories who underwent large-scale change. They are, Herodotus tells us, ‘the most willing of all men to adopt foreign norms’: ØØŒa

b ÆØÆ —æÆØ æ ÆØ I æH ºØÆ (1.135).101 They began as a people devoid of luxury, but ended as one consumed by it (1.71, 1.89, 1.126; cf. 9.122). The fact of cultural metamorphosis is intimately linked with Herodotus’ express belief that fortune is bound to change (1.5.3),102 for both individuals (e.g. Croesus) and countries (e.g. Lydia).103 The pluralist nature of this sentiment will reappear in my discussion of Ajax (VII.3.C–D below). There, I will invoke Odysseus’ recognition of the transience of fate as evidence for his pluralist leanings, especially as compared to the more rigid Ajax. Herodotus embraces this Odyssean characteristic well, acknowledging as he does throughout

Scythians (4.76.1), as well as the Amazons (4.114). The stories of Anacharsis (4.76.2–5) and Scylas (4.78.8) illustrate to what lengths these would go to keep themselves insulated. See Hartog 1988: 62–84. 99 Sophocles’ Philoctetes offers an interesting parallel to this Herodotean idea on the level of the individual, in the person of Neoptolemus (IX.3 below). 100 Cf. also 2.49.1, 2.50, 4.180.4, 4.189, 5.78, 5.87.3–88.1. 101 For details of this change, see Redﬁeld 1985: 111. For a more parochial Persian attitude, cf. 1.134. 102 Also 1.32.4, 1.207.2, 3.40.3, 7.10 , 7.49.3. 103 See Thomas 2000: 105, 113, 123.

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his Histories that just because someone is at the height of his power or success does not mean he will continue to be.104

Athens versus Sparta It is interesting to note that, for Thucydides, national character is similarly mutable. In Book 1 of the History Athens and Sparta are set up as overt contraries. The Corinithian speech at 1.86–71 presents the two states as glaring opposites: Athens as the quick-tempered, aggressive revolutionary; Sparta as the dilatory, stay-at-home underachiever.105 The Pentecontaetia (1.89–117) corroborates the dichotomy.106 And yet, this original portrait is challenged as the book proceeds.107 First, by the Corinthian speech at 1.120–4, which 104 The idea of Herodotus as Odyssean (perhaps in comparison to the more Achillean Thucydides) would, I think, repay further analysis. Intriguingly, as Gray points out (2003: 46), ‘Homer uses alternative motivations in the Odyssey but not in the Iliad ’. 105 Cf. 4.55.3 and 8.96.5. This notion of Athenian aggression is, of course, also encapsulated in Thucydides’ assessment of the causes of the war (1.23.5–6, 1.88). For examples of Spartan and Athenian national characters ‘in action’ throughout the History at large, see (respectively) 2.11.3–5, 2.93.3, 3.29.1, 4.55.4, 4.117.1, 5.70, 5.75.3, 6.93.1, 8.11.3, 8.78; 2.11.7–8, 2.21.2, 2.65.6–7, 3.16.1–2, 4.65.4, 4.108.3–6, 4.123.3, 6.18.2–3. On national character in Thucydides, see further Finley 1967: 154–62; Edmunds 1975: 89ff.; Connor 1984: 36–47; Pelling 1991: 122–30; Luginbill 1999. 106 The overriding impression being that the Athenians are restless and overambitious and the Spartans, while not categorical homebodies, are by comparison slow and cautious. See e.g. 1.89.1, 1.95.7 (cf. 1.70.4), 1.102.3 (cf. 1.70.2). Thucydides concludes this portion of the narrative with the following comment: K x ƒ ŁÅÆEØ Iæåc KªŒæÆ æÆ ŒÆ Æ ŒÆd ÆPd Kd ªÆ KåæÅÆ ı ø, ƒ

b ¸ÆŒ

ÆØ ØØ ÆNŁ Ø h KŒºı N c Kd æÆå, åÆÇ e º F åæ ı, Z b ŒÆd æe F c Æå E NÆØ K f ºı, j c IÆªŒÇøÆØ (‘In these years the Athenians made their hold on their empire stronger and advanced their own power greatly. The Spartans perceived this but they did not prevent it except in small ways and they were inactive for most the time, being slow, as in the past, to go to war unless compelled’, 1.118.2). 107 We should note that throughout the History we are given counter-examples to the stereotypes drawn in the Corinthian speech at 1.68–71. Nicias is one of the more striking embodiments of this phenomenon. Brasidas is another prominent example. His activity in Book 4 can be considered very ‘un-Spartan’. See Westlake 1968: 148 and Edmunds 1975: 109–42. As for Nicias, like Pericles, he represents penchants counter-intuitive to Athenian self-identity, that is, his un-Athenian inclination toward quietism, caution, and delay (see, e.g. 6.9.1, 6.9.2, 6.10.5, 6.13.1, 7.3.3, 7.8.3). But, unlike Pericles, he is not able to mould Athens in accord with them. Furthermore, it is not simply that Nicias is unable to mould the Athenian character but rather that he is unwilling to attempt it. For Nicias, the Athenian disposition is ﬁxed. It is an element

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recasts the Lacedeamonian ethos in a more positive light: in an uncharacteristically forward move, the Spartans have voted for war (1.120.1), now convinced they will be able to acquire Athenian techniques, particularly nautical ones (1.121.1).108 And secondly, by Pericles’ First Speech, which similarly reappraises the Athenian identity. Here, Pericles actually suggests that Athens thwart some of the very same traits she was originally deﬁned by and assume characteristics more like her enemies—characteristics which were claimed by the Corinthians to be uniquely Spartan.109 At the end of the ﬁrst book, then, we are left to reassess our perspective on national character. To behave in the way Pericles has prescribed, the Athenians are expected to become un-Athenian. The Spartans too have shed their caution and inactivity in favour of a more aggressive stance. For Thucydides, the Athenian and Spartan cultural identities are not static, despite the initial picture. In fact, they are revealed to be more similar than we might have originally thought. What was at ﬁrst set up, in Herodotean fashion, as a clash between opposing attributes and values, is ultimately revealed to be about something much more fundamental and natural: power.110 Underlying what emerged to be cosmetic differences, we discover a similarity between the two polities in their role as strong states, a similarity which ultimately proves to be more penetrating than their differences.111 In other words, there is established by phusis. We observe this explicitly at 6.9.3, 7.14.2, 7.48.4. This misconception is, in part, why he fails. 108 Syracuse provides another example of how national character is seen to be mutable in the History. In the course of the sixth and seventh books we watch the Syracusans gradually, yet increasingly, dress themselves up in Athenian tropoi (‘ways’) as the expedition at Sicily drudges on. So too we watch Athens having a hard time sustaining her old attributes of speed, decisiveness, and boldness. Cf., e.g. 6.63.2, 6.69.1, 7.56.1. 109 At 144.1 he says: ººa b ŒÆd ¼ººÆ åø K Kº Æ F æØ ŁÆØ, j KŁºÅ

Iæå c KØŒAŁÆØ –Æ º F ŒÆd ŒØ ı ÆPŁÆØæı c æŁ ŁÆØ (‘There are many other grounds on account of which I hope to succeed, if you are willing not to extend your empire when we are at war and not to incur any self-made dangers’). 110 This is why everything in Book 1 points to an Athenian victory, calculated by reference to power and resources. The interesting thing, of course, is that the calculus failed. Whether Thucydides felt the equation was wrong or was foiled by too many unexpected setbacks (the plague, the death of Pericles) is unclear, though I strongly suspect the latter. The Archaeology prepares us for such an analysis, exhibiting that the desire for power and gain is a universal one (1.15.1–2, 1.18.2–3). 111 Similarly, the weak states share certain reactions and patterns of behavior. First, as Hermocrates argues, it might be the case that they too are governed by a law of

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more that unites Athens and Sparta in their role as superpowers than there is that divides them in the fact that they are enemies with ostensibly different ‘personalities’.112 We can see this most clearly in the way that both deal with the weaker, satellite states who get swept up in the war’s wake: Athens, for example, in her ruthless treatment of Mytilene and Melos (see 2.B above) and Sparta in her similarly unsparing treatment of Plataea (3.68).113 The most penetrating conﬂict in the History, then, is not that between the different dispositions of Athens and Sparta. It is not, as Euphemus reminds us (6.85.1), one that hinges on racial or political ﬁ j º Ø Iæåc Kåﬁ Å P b ¼ºª oppositions:114 I æd b ıæø ‹Ø ıçæ P NŒ E ‹Ø c Ø · æe ŒÆÆ b E j KåŁæe j çº a ŒÆØæF ªª ŁÆØ (‘For either a tyrant or a city who holds an empire nothing is illogical if it is advantageous nor familiar if is not trustworthy. In every case it is necessary to make friends or enemies opportunely’). Rather, it is between those states who are strong and who rule by natural ﬁat and those who resist. This is not an irresolvable conﬂict on the international stage. For Thucydides, in line with his monistic methodological style, it is solved by an easily calculable tally of power. nature: namely, to resist encroachment at any cost (4.61.5): çıŒ ªaæ e IŁæ Ø

Øa Æe ¼æå Ø b F YŒ, çıº ŁÆØ b e KØ (‘It is always the nature of man to rule those who submit, as well as to protect against those who impose themselves’). And secondly, they often support themselves with more conventional moral arguments. This is true of the Mytileneans and of the Melians, as we have seen. It is also true of the Plataeans (3.53–9; they know their verdict is a foregone conclusion: 3.53.4, 3.56.6). Weak states appear, for lack of an alternative, to draw from the ethical well in their conﬂicts with the interest-driven strong states. Always, we should note, unsuccessfully. 112 This phenomenon can be illustrated on the individual level as well. The successful statesmen are those who (like Pericles), whatever their nationality, manage to quell stasis, maintain order, and respect aggression. Consider Phormio at 2.88.1, Brasidas at 4.86.6, 4.126.6, Hermocrates at 4.65.1, 4.61.1–2. See Pouncey 1980: 11. 113 For another instance of Spartan brutality, cf. 4.80.3–4. The Athenians are themselves quick to point out Spartan self-interest: 1.76.1, 1.143.2, 5.105.4. 114 It could be argued that the moral issue dividing the two is democracy versus oligarchy. Cornford convincingly dismisses (1965: 5–7) the idea that the disagreement was motivated by either racial (Ionian versus Dorian) or political concerns. Of political division in the History, he contends (p. 7): ‘The struggle between democracy and oligarchy, where it existed, was in the main not a warfare between nations and cities, but an internal duel between two parties in one city.’ Aristotle (Politics 1296a33–7) is helpful here, asserting that both Athens and Sparta were ruled by one and the same factor: interest. They merely instituted in their satellites the government that happened to mirror their own.

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East versus west Again, this aspect of Thucydidean reductionism is instructive. For while it is clear that Herodotus agrees with Thucydides that national character is a shifting entity, this is not the end of the story. We saw above how Herodotus and Thucydides both recognized that decisionmaking can be troubling in the face of serious moral conﬂict. And yet, for Thucydides this difﬁculty was smoothed over with the brush of expedience. What remains to be seen is how Herodotus represents large-scale conﬂict between cultures. Does he similarly deny incommensurability by offering a common denominator (e.g. power) to gauge how the conﬂict will be resolved? What other aspects of pluralism can we uncover in his treatment of cultural conﬂict? The overarching conﬂict of the Histories is between East and West, Persians and Greeks, soft peoples and hard.115 There are two important points that should be brought to the fore in our appreciation of Herodotean pluralism in this respect. First, the Histories is clearly concerned with the moral clash between not only armies but cultures and ideologies. Over and again, we have wealthy, luxury-soaked, aggrandizing nations (Lydia, Persia) come up against poor, rough, and insular ones (the Massagetae, Ethiopia, Scythia, Greece).116 We have tyrannies confront free states.117 We have people who worship different gods, eat different foods, practice differently concerning marriage, sex, death, and burial, engage one another in battle. Conﬂict between incompatibles of this sort permeates the work. Secondly, Herodotus presents these conﬂicts as, for the most part, incommensurable.118 He goes out of his way, to be sure, to describe how distinct are the cultures who come into conﬂict with one another, and often doing so in a paradigmatic way. But incommensurability has two further, more interesting, aspects here. The ﬁrst is that Herodotus does not present, in Thucydidean fashion, the 115 This subject is much discussed by commentators on Herodotus. Particularly good treatments of the topic are Flory 1987 and Pelling 1997a. 116 For this paradigm, see Flory 1987: ch. 3; Luce 1997: 57–9; Romm 1998: 106–13; Asheri 2007: 44–9. 117 Cf. 7.101–4 and 7. 208–9. See Flory 1987: ch. 4; Luce 1997: 33; Romm 1998: ch. 12. 118 That Herodotus accepts incommensurability on this grand scale is further strengthened by the fact that he does not believe in a linear form of progress, as we saw Thucydides did. So-called primitive nations and advanced nations are, for him, contemporaneous. See Flory 1987: 88.

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clash between East and West as easily reducible to a single calculation or tally. Who is going to win, for instance, does not hinge simply on who is bigger or has more manpower. Such an attitude is made abundantly clear by the misconceptions of Xerxes, who is utterly bemused by his advisors’ insistence that size is not everything.119 When Demaratus tells him that there is no use in asking about Spartan numbers when it come to their resolve to ﬁght (7.102.3), Xerxes is incredulous:120 how is it possible, he wants to know, that even ten thousand men would stand up to an army as big as his (7.103. 2)? Demaratus is left to explain his theory that there are other factors that can be more important in the game of war than sheer numbers, a lesson that Xerxes learns too late: ººd b ¼ŁæøØ

r , OºªØ b ¼ æ (‘There might be many men [in his army], but few soldiers’, 7.210.2).121 This conversation is redolent of Socrates’ pervasive belief in the importance of size for solving moral problems (III.4 above), as well as Ajax’s confusion about why seven girls would not quell Achilles’ desire for one (VI.2.E below). The second aspect of incommensurability is to do with its consequences. In his presentation of cultural conﬂict, Herodotus does not necessarily conceive of one side as determinately right or intrinsically better than the other, nor does he expect us to. He does not, as was traditionally argued, loathe despotism and support the rule of law categorically.122 Put in different terms, he does not unequivocally support the more ‘pluralistic’ Greeks at the expense of the ‘monistic’ Persians.123 He can esteem certain aspects of monarchy in theory (3.82.2; cf. 5.3) and in practice (Pisistratus, 1.59.6, 1.64; Deioces, 119 Belief in the strength of numbers is a Persian nomos that Herodotus mentions earlier (1.136). 120 Xerxes is similarly incredulous in his conversation with Artabanus that the vast numbers of his army could come up against more powerful opponents anywhere (7.47–9). 121 Xerxes in preoccupied with numbers and counting (Cf. 7.60, 7.100). Konstan 1987 is a good analysis of this feature of the Persian king and its implications. 122 For this view see, e.g. How and Wells 1912: 2. 338ff. and Fornara 1971: 48–50. 123 Luce suggests (1997: 35) that the clash between Greeks and Persians can be interpreted as one between monism (cf. 1.134, 1.133, 1.153) and pluralism with Herodotus coming down on the side of pluralism (e.g. 3.38). See also Immerwahr 1996: 187; Konstan 1987: 73; Romm 1998: 103. While there is something to be said for this view, we should be wary about pressing it too far on the grounds that, as will be the case for Sophocles, it may detract from an overall pluralist interpretation of the historian (see VII.3.D and VIII.1.C below). Rather, it might be that, like Sophocles, Herodotus recognizes the survival value inherent in the Greek way of life.

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1.96.2; Psammetichus, 2.147–52; Amasis, 2.169, 2.177, 3.10.2; Polycrates, 3.60, 3.122, 3.125), while showing that the institution, as in the extreme case of Cambyses, can and often does go badly wrong.124 He can remark upon certain failures and dangers of freedom (3.142–3, 7.56.1, 7.223.3) as well as open debate (5.97.2) and laud the effects of isēgoriē (‘equality in rights’), nomos, and aretē (5.78, 7.101–4, 8.26), without contradiction.125 So too, he does not unambiguously bristle against wealth and champion poverty. As it will be for Sophocles, Herodotus’ relationship to the ‘hero’ and ‘enemy’ of his story is complicated, as is his presentation of each. If his ‘contemporaries shared a stereotype of the barbarian as weak, effeminate, and servile, he employs various narrative strategies to undercut it, challenge it, modify it and subvert it’.126 He can, for example, praise Xerxes (7.187.2, 7.197.4), remarkable Persians (7.106, 7.107.2, 7.224.2), and Persian ways of life (1.137.1, 7.224.2, 7.238.2). And at the same time, he can chide the Greeks for being twice duped (1.59.4, 1.60.3).127 Moreover, as cultures are themselves mutable entities, the dichotomy between them is not entirely straightforward. The lines are often blurred: Greeks can love money (1.29.1) and be grasping (Pausanias, 5.32; Miltiades, 6.133–5; Themistocles, 8.4.2–5, 8.111–12); they can falter in debate (8.58ff.).128 On the other hand, we can be introduced to an Eastern king, Croesus, ‘who is fascinated by Greece, who welcomes Greek sages to his court, who is prepared to listen, who learns his lessons from Bias/Pittacus and eventually even from Solon; a king who prizes Greek insight, Greek gods, and Greek friendship.’129 So too, Persian nobles can discuss the merits of multiple forms of government (3.80–2). All of this is to say that the moral conﬂict between states in the Histories is, as we would expect, complex and multifaceted. And it not one that is evaluated by the author in a determinate way.130 It is 124

On the goods and bads of the Persian tyrants, see Flower 2006: 282–4. See Forsdkye 2006: 234. Flower 2006: 275. The whole discussion here is a well-rounded portrayal of Herodotus’ presentations of the Persians generally. See also Harrison 2002: 565–71. 127 On which, cf. Benardete 1969: 22–3 and Waters 1985: 120–1. 128 Indeed, it has been argued that Herodotus draws ‘a tacit parallel between Athens under Pericles and Persia under Xerxes’ in order to highlight for contemporary audiences the dangers of excessive imperialism’, and in doing so casts some sort of shadow on the success of Greek ‘freedom’: Forsdkye 2006: 228–35. 129 Pelling 1997a: 5. See also Dewald 1990. 130 Cf. Pelling 1997a; Luce 1997: 57. 125 126

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noteworthy that the conﬂict between East and West in Herodotus is more reminiscent of the conﬂict between weak states and strong states in Thucydides (which is, of course, not the showcased conﬂict) than of that between Athens and Sparta. In this way, ‘Herodotus no less than Thucydides sees history dominated by the antithetical desires for liberty and power. The nomos of the Persian kings, always to expand and to leave nothing untried, clashes with the nomos of the Spartans, never to submit.’131 These nomoi are as incompatible as they come, but, unlike for Thucydides, they are not so easily measured. Just as we will now see that many plays of Sophocles close with no resolution to the ﬁerce conﬂicts that animate them, so too does the Histories end with a feeling of enduring unease about the vicissitudes of culture and fortune. As Stewart Flory observes, ‘Herodotus’ intent . . . seems to have been to leave his readers with an uncomfortable sense of tension and transition at the end of the book rather than with the satisfaction of battles clearly and irrevocably won or lost’.132 131

Raaﬂaub 2002: 184. Flory 1987: 84. And so (p. 82): ‘readers of the Histories have not always agreed as to where the writer’s sympathies lie in the contrast between “us” and “them”.’ For a similar sentiment, see Romm 1998: 190. 132

Part Three Sophocles

Sophocles’ obsession with the Achillean temperament and situation must stem not from an interest in the past but from a deep conviction that this temperament and situation are the true, the only possible, dramatic expression of the tragic dilemma of his own place and time. (Bernard M. W. Knox, The Heroic Temper) Moral conﬂict was not a notion congenial to Plato or most Greek philosophers, but it is the life blood of tragedy . . . a simple ‘right answer’ to the complex issues central to many Greek tragedies risks reducing the plays to melodrama. The essence of the tragedies in such cases is often precisely that moral conﬂict is insoluble . . . (Mary Whitlock Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies) . . . it seems to me difﬁcult to see in what terms it would be possible to assert that Sophocles simply reﬂects a conventional or conservative attitude . . . it is only for conservative and conventional critics that the texts of tragedy have lost their power to question and challenge. (Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy)

VI Pluralism and tragedy 1. PLURALISM AND TRAGIC CONFLICT Pluralist conﬂict is often tragic.1 When values that are incompatible and incommensurable clash with one another, something will always be lost in the fray. The incompatibility of the values in such a conﬂict necessitates, on the one hand, an either/or decision between them: the choosing agent will not, in practice, be able to realize both. The incommensurability of the values, on the other hand, creates a situation in which the alternative chosen against cannot be conceptually compensated for. In other words, one could not, by claiming that the conﬂict was determinately resolved and the ‘right’ decision made, eliminate altogether the sense of loss or regret which would stem from the unfulﬁlled option. In collisions, then, between values which are both incompatible and incommensurable a degree of tragedy becomes inevitable: one value must always be ‘sacriﬁced’ at the expense of the other and the loss inherent in such a sacriﬁce cannot be theorized away. In this way it can be said of pluralism that it entails tragedy. A dramatic sounding assertion such as this, however, must be qualiﬁed. Not every conﬂict between incompatible and incommensurable values will spell disaster. As we saw in the Introduction (I.3.B), conﬂicts of this description run the gamut in terms of severity—that is to say,

1

Lesky astutely comments (1965: 8) that any attempt to deﬁne tragedy should begin with the following observation of Goethe: ‘All tragedy depends on an insoluble conﬂict. As soon as harmony is obtained or becomes a possibility, tragedy vanishes.’ For doxography of other attempts to deﬁne tragedy, see Eagleton 2003: ch. 1. Gellrich examines (1998) the modernity of the idea that conﬂict is constitutive of tragic drama, an idea about which Aristotle is notoriously silent.

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the magnitude of what will be lost—from the banal choice between going for a walk or going to the movies to the more profound one between loyalty and friendship. It is only when the alternatives involved are each of grave importance in the eyes of the deliberating subject or centre on weighty obligations that we are justiﬁed in calling the conﬂict ‘tragic’.2 For in tragic conﬂicts of this variety, the import of the sacriﬁce will be painfully magniﬁed: whichever option is selected, it is often the case that a wrong will have been done or an evil suffered. The ancients may not have had an explicit expression or word to describe a speciﬁcally ‘pluralist’ conﬂict as such. But they were certainly familiar with the fact of it. Indeed, antiquity is the birthplace of the most extreme of all tragic circumstances: the literal sacriﬁce. Consider Abraham on Mount Sinai. His is a situation in which an agent is compelled to commit a supremely egregious evil—to slaughter his own child—in order to prove his religious loyalty. A father’s relationship with his son must be weighed against a man’s relationship with God. But can they be so weighed? Can one of these values or moral obligations be said to outweigh the other, to be determinately superior? If it could, then it would be possible to put them in the balance, as it were, and to calculate which of the two possessed more stringency or more ethical clout. We could imagine then that the disadvantaged party (in this case, Isaac, not to mention his mother) would have no justiﬁed complaint about what was chosen nor would the agent himself have cause for regret (or remorse).3 But surely this is far from the case. For Abraham, neither obligation could succeed in outweighing the other in the sense that it could nullify its claim on him or mitigate the consequences of its neglect: whichever choice is made here, one of the relationships in question will be severely, perhaps irreparably, damaged. This is the ramiﬁcation of incommensurability. And when incommensurability is combined with the fact of incompatibility the situation becomes intrinsically ‘tragic’: there is no escape from performing an act which is, in some way, wrong—or at the very least problematic. The important point to notice at this stage is not what Abraham actually decides nor the rationale behind that decision. What matters is the existence of a certain sort of ethical 2

Cf. Baghramian and Ingram 2000: 91. Williams 1981: 74. We can here think ahead to the claims of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra (to be discussed at VIII.2.B below). 3

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situation in ancient thought which is markedly pluralist (and tragic) in its implications as well as its repercussions. The Greeks were no strangers to the idea of sacriﬁce and loss.4 As the substance of their mythology reveals, they were quite familiar with the possibility of being pulled in two competing and irreconcilable directions. Indeed, we have just seen (V.2.A) how this was the case for Herodotus’ Gyges. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon, however, is Agamemnon’s plight at Aulis. If not the locus classicus of what we now refer to as the ‘tragic choice’, it is certainly one which modern philosophers are likely to cite when expounding the phenomenon of a clash of obligations.5 In its bare bones, Agamemnon presents us with a textbook case of pluralist conﬂict with tragic effect.6 When the joint Greek forces against Troy are detained by bad weather, Agamemnon learns from the prophet Calchas that he must sacriﬁce his daughter in order for the expedition to sail. His dilemma can be summed up thus: (1) either kill a member of your immediate family, an innocent and beloved daughter, to allow the ﬂeet passage; or (2) by sparing the life of your child, stymie the entire war effort of which you are the leader and of which your brother is the cause and, in doing so, signiﬁcantly tarnish your honour and fail to carry out divine will. However we want to characterize them exactly, the scenario at Aulis presents us with a serious clash of values. If we examined the situation in a vacuum, that is, detached from any speciﬁc moral code or poetical context, Agamemnon’s alternatives look both incompatible and incommensurable. They are incompatible in the sense that he cannot, as a matter of fact, secure both his daughter’s survival and a successful expedition. It is crucial to notice that this incompatibility is not the result of any deﬁciency or logical inconsistency on Agamemnon’s part: it would be neither justiﬁed nor rational for him to deny that each of these requirements applied to

4 Sacriﬁce in the literal sense is, of course, a recurring situation in Greek tragedy, as Euripides’ Heraclidae, Phoenissae, and Erechtheus make clear. Cf. Homer 23.22–3. 5 See Williams 1973: ch. 14; Gowans 1987: passim; Sinnott-Armstrong 1988: 1, 4–5, 23–4, 40, 88, 92–3; Lukes 1989: 133; Levi 1992: 824–34; Richardson 1994: 114–15; Newey 2001: 6. This is not to imply that the Greeks experienced ‘obligations’ in the Kantian sense of the word, but only that they knew what it meant to have a duty to do A, to have a duty to do B, and to not be able to do both. ‘Tragic choices’ are often referred to in the literature as ‘moral dilemmas’. 6 This was perhaps ﬁrst noticed by Hegel in his lectures on aesthetics. See Hegel 1975: 1213.

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him. To insist that it was or that it must be in order to mitigate the dilemma is to ‘misplace the source of the agent’s trouble, in suggesting that what is wrong is his thought about the moral situation, whereas what is wrong lies in his situation itself—something which may or may not be his fault’.7 As to their incommensurability, it is clear that Agamemnon’s alternatives are conceptually quite distinct from one another. Indeed, they represent claims which emanate from completely separate domains—one domestic, the other military and religious; one based on a father’s love for his daughter, the other on a commander’s desire for prestige and his perceived duty to launch successfully a war the gods enjoined. There is no common currency into which they can be cashed; there is no way that the party chosen against would feel no cause for complaint, as various dramatizations of the aftermath show well. And yet, whether Agamemnon was a real person or not, his relevance and his power to the Greeks was as a literary ﬁgure. Most Greek boys would have learned the story of the great leader’s dilemma at Aulis, but they would have done so always with some slant on it. The details that surround the story would be exaggerated or suppressed, ignored or altered to suit the particular author’s moral and dramatic taste. These literary choices would have a strong impact on the overall ethical message of the example: indeed, they would have far-reaching philosophical implications.8 The fact, then, that there was a man named Agamemnon who was confronted with a dire choice becomes less signiﬁcant, in terms of our investigation, than the way in which that choice was treated and dramatized by the Greek poetical tradition. For among the Greeks there were various ways in which Agamemnon’s tale was told and this is critical for understanding the relationship between pluralism and Greek tragedy.9 Not least because Agamemnon is an epic character, our inquiry into pluralist conﬂict and Greek tragedy must begin with Homer—a tragic writer himself, though not a writer of tragedy as that genre was later to be moulded. The poems of Homer provide us with three very important precedents. First, they offer a ‘standard’ presentation of 7

Williams 1981: 74–5. Mythical ﬁgures were often used to illustrate philosophical points. See e.g Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1110a26–1110b1, 1116a21–1116b-3. 9 So too, as we mentioned earlier, there was more than one rendition of Gyges’ tale, and it was Herodotus who made it ‘tragic’. 8

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some of the enduring characters and conﬂicts of Greek literature.10 Secondly, they offer us a paradigm for understanding moral decisionmaking, dilemma, and disagreement. And thirdly, they supply us with the content of a moral system that was substantially different from— though uniquely relevant to—that under which the tragedians were composing. By exploring the Homeric poems, particularly the Iliad,11 in respect of all of these topics, we will begin to see how the tragedy there differs from that of tragedy proper, as well as to draw some conclusions about pluralism’s relationship with the genres of both epic and tragic drama.12 It is through the prism of Homer that we will come to appreciate most thoroughly the ethical innovation of the tragedians generally (section 3 below) and, in the chapters that follow, of Sophocles particularly.13

2. HOMER ON CONFLICT AND INCOMMENSURABILITY Traces of many of Greek literature’s great conﬂicts are to be found in epic narrative.14 In this section we will examine how several of these

10 For the way in which Homer’s poems became seminal texts for later Greeks, see Rutherford 1996: 20–4. 11 The Iliad as a whole is more relevant to Sophocles in terms of models of conﬂict. As Lateiner neatly sums it up (2004: 22): ‘Iliadic men and women confront insoluble dilemmas—not here the Odyssean black and white heroes and villains, fairy-tale reunions and happy endings.’ This is not to say that the Odyssey would not repay careful consideration in respect of some of the issues raised, only that it will not be considered in any detail here. The Odyssey is a richly diverse, wide-ranging (in terms of its narrative scope, array of characters, geographical reach; cf. Silk 2004: 42–4), and in its own way ambiguous (cf. Segal 1996: 220: ‘the poet of the Odyssey was aware of the ambiguities attaching to his hero “of many turns.” He deliberately plays off against one another different perspectives on the heroic tradition.’) poem. The ambiguous nature of Odysseus, both generally and vis-à-vis Achilles, will be touched upon below at VII.3.C and IX.1.A. 12 For the ways in which ﬁfth-century tragedy echoes that of Homer, see Rutherford 1982. 13 Cf. Goldhill 1986: 161. 14 On why we are concerned here with Homer as the precedent for tragedy and not the collection of inferior poems which have come down to us in fragments known as the ‘epic cycle’, see Grifﬁn 1977 and Davies 1989: ch. 1. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1459a29–b7.

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conﬂicts are depicted by Homer. We will discover that while his characters experience tragedy in the sense outlined above—that is, they ﬁnd themselves in situations where values are of necessity sacriﬁced—a deep or strong pluralist notion of conﬂict that fully incorporates the concept of incommensurability is never achieved in the poems. What we ﬁnd instead is a species of weak pluralism.15 Pluralism of this variety allows, on the one hand, for the reality of moral collision, but asserts, on the other, that ultimately the values in question can be ranked against one another in a way that determines a single right decision. We will come to see in what way Homer can be legitimately described as a ‘weak pluralist’ by analysing how he treats dilemmas and disagreements, as well as by a more general interpretation of the moral content of the Iliad. This will form the background both for our discussion of tragedy’s inheritance of Homeric ethics and for our claim that Sophocles has created several plays with ‘strongly’ pluralist meanings.

A. Homer’s Agamemnon Agamemnon is a key ﬁgure in Homer’s Iliad and mention of his unhappy fate recurs notably in the Odyssey. But how was his dilemma depicted by Homer? Or was it presented as a dilemma at all? It seems fair to say that, for Homer, Aulis and its aftermath were straightforward events. Both Calchas’ prophecy and Agamemnon’s murder are stripped of any and all of their potential ambiguity. Iliad 2 tells us that the interpretation of the seer was a mere matter of arithmetic.16 The omen of the serpent devouring the eight young sparrows and their

15 On this signiﬁcant idea of ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ pluralism, see Gray 2000. The distinction is cast as ‘tragic’ versus ‘benign’ pluralism in Riley 2000. In drawing the distinction, the point both authors are trying to make is that any meaningful philosophical expression of pluralism has to make room for the concept of incommensurability and, therefore, for the possibility that some conﬂicts can never be uniquely and determinately resolved. This is strong or tragic pluralism. Weak or benign pluralism, by contrast, is similar to strong/tragic pluralism only in its admission that conﬂicts among values exist. It is decidedly different from it—and similar to monism—in that it insists that those values can be adjusted or ordered to ﬁt an overal pattern. See I.3.B above. 16 299–332.

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mother prompted no dubious action on the part of the expedition’s commander. It simply told the length of the war: ‰ y ŒÆa ŒÆ çª æıŁE ŒÆd ÆP, OŒ, Iaæ Åæ KÅ q, m Œ ŒÆ, S E ÆF Æ º ÆsŁØ, ﬁH Œø ﬁ b ºØ Æƒæ PæıªıØÆ. Just as this snake ate the sparrow’s children and the sparrow herself, eight of them, and the mother who bore the brood made nine, so we shall battle there for that many years, and in the tenth year we shall take the broad streets of the city.17

Iphigenia certainly was not sacriﬁced by her father as Agamemnon had no such child. Rather, he had a daughter called Iphianassa and she was quite happily alive.18 Similarly, in the Odyssey, the tale of Agamemnon’s reception at Mycenae and Orestes’ vindication of his father’s killing is used as an express moral parable: a warning for Odysseus and a goad for Telemachus.19 Aegisthus becomes the principal villain and Orestes’ action is cast as a clear-cut example of retributive justice.20 The matricide, in this way, is conspicuously suppressed and so too Orestes’ prosecution by the Erinyes: even though Homer does allude to Clytemnestra’s death, we are left in the dark about how it came to pass.21 Furthermore, no practical reason (for example, that he sacriﬁced his daughter) other than his usurper’s wickedness and his wife’s treachery is proffered as to why Agamemnon was slaughtered in the ﬁrst place.22 Whether Homer opted to include the story in his poems in the form he did because he was ignorant of any other version or versions or because he deliberately endorsed this particular one, the result is the same: Agamemnon’s conﬂict is defused—as is Orestes’.23

17

1987.

Iliad 2.326–9. All translations of Homer’s Iliad are from Martin Hammond

Iliad 9.145 ¼ 9.287. Warning: Odyssey 11.439–56; 24.192–202; goad: Odyssey 1.298–302; 3.196–207. 20 Principal villain: Odyssey 3.253–75 and 4.521–37, although at 11.404–34 Agamemnon is clear about Clytemnestra’s role in his own murder. Retributive justice: Odyssey 1.29–44; 3.193–8, 301–12. Cf. Jebb 1894: xi. 21 Odyssey 3.310. 22 Cassandra’s fate is mentioned at Odyssey 11.421–3, but she is not offered as a reason for Clytemnestra’s actions. 23 Cf. D’Arms and Hulley 1946 and March 2001: 1–2. 18 19

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B. A ‘heroic code’? In Homer, then, Agamemnon serves as an example of the perils of going abroad with a scheming wife left at home, rather than of the reality of serious moral dilemma. Homer’s one-sided treatment of this particular plotline is echoed by the way in which he deals with value conﬂict more generally. As it was in the case of Agamemnon, the moral universe in which the rest of the Homeric characters live is one deﬁned and delimited by a code that provides, on the whole, right and wrong solutions to normative problems. But unlike Agamemnon, these characters are allowed to experience ethical dilemmas. Or are they? There has been much interesting scholarly debate concerning just this question. One reason we could deny that Homeric characters experience dilemmas hinges on whether we can legitimately claim that they are ‘agents’ in the modern sense of the term. That is to say, whether they possess ‘selves’ capable of actively and consciously choosing between two alternatives and, if so, whether it is these ‘selves’—as opposed to divine or internal forces—which are responsible, in the last analysis, for making the decision. It has been, I think, more than satisfactorily shown that Homeric man is able to experience decision-making, moral or otherwise, as a real agent.24 But there is a second reason why a Homeric character may be immune to genuine ethical dilemma. This has to do not with the ability of a hero to make decisions (and so his status as moral agent), but the way in which he goes about making them. In other words, the fact that an Achilles or a Hector has the philosophical capacity to face and make moral choices does not preclude the possibility that there is still something primitive about how he goes about making them. Likewise, to accept that a Homeric hero can operate as a moral agent despite the intervention of the gods or the pull of appetitive drives within him is not to say that the choices he makes are not, in some

24 For an excellent argument supporting this view, see Gaskin 1990. Cf. LloydJones 1971: 2–3, 8–10; Sharples 1983: 1–7; Halliwell in Pelling 1997: 34–42; Williams 1993: ch. 2; Finkelberg 1995a: 15–16; Gill 1998: esp. ch. 1. Contrast Snell 1982: ch. 1. By ‘real agent’, I mean that Homeric man possesses a minimum amount of ‘will’ to choose ‘freely’ between two courses open to him and can be, consequently, held responsible for his actions. A man, on this account, whose decision is made for him by some heteronymous force cannot be so regarded.

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sense, preﬁgured.25 What is essential to notice is that, on this view, the predetermination stems from the moral system under which the Homeric heroes themselves exist. Such predetermination is a product of the ethical world of their creator and not of his lack of philosophical/psychological maturity.26 Homeric heroes may be psychologically equipped to deal with dilemmas, but they are still somehow constrained in the decisions they will actually make. The reason is that, for Homer, there are right answers to be found in moments of moral collision. These answers are determined by what we shall refer to as the ‘heroic code’ and, as such, they are ingrained into the epic hero’s consciousness.27 Before we examine how characters in Homer use this code in the process of deliberation (sections C and D below), we should ﬁrst attempt to specify what the code consists of. It is often said of Homer’s world that it is one in which honour (timē) and the glory (kudos, kleos) which spawns from it are prized above all else, and that it is the aim of the hero to win these at all costs:28 ‘Every value, every judgement, every action, all skills and talents have the function of either deﬁning honour or realizing it.’29 ‘The Iliad proceeds from an idea of hero which is pure and simple: a hero is one who prizes honour and glory above life itself . . . ’.30 Because Homer’s is a hierarchical world in which the characters are deﬁned and conﬁned by their social roles and goals, what counts as honour will be determined accordingly.31 So, for instance, in the Iliad glory for the warrior is won through success in battle; the virtues which help achieve this end become

25 For discussions of how divine causation and human causation work together in ancient Greek decision-making as a type of ‘double determination’, see Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: ch. 3 and Lesky’s chapter in Cairns 2001. For a discussion of the complex interaction of internal and external factors in Homeric decision-making and the implications this has on personal responsibility, see Williams 1993: passim and Cairns 2001: 12–20. 26 Cf. Gaskin 1990: 8. 27 For scepticism about the worth of the concept of a ‘heroic code’, see Taplin 1992: 6–7, 50–1, 71–2. Cf. Rutherford 1996: 40 ff. As will become clear, I think the expression is still helpful as an explanatory framework, though with certain restrictions. 28 On the relationship between kleos, kudos, and timē, see Redﬁeld 1975: 31–5. 29 Finley 1999: 113. Cf. Zanker 1994: 11–12 and Gill 1998: 77. 30 Finkelberg 1995: 1. See also King 1987: 28–37, 45–9. Both authors discuss the differences between Iliadic and Odyssean conceptions of honour and glory. 31 Cf. Redﬁeld 1975: 20. See also MacIntyre 1981: 122–30 and Finley 1999: 75.

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paramount: military prowess, physical strength, courage.32 In the Odyssey, on the other hand, glory is attained for the hero through a successful return to and defence of his domain: practical wisdom and resourcefulness can be added to the list of virtues.33 Furthermore, it has been well argued that skill in speaking and the capacity for euboulia (‘good counsel’) must also be included in a conception of Homer’s moral scheme.34 All of these qualities are the aretai (‘virtues’, ‘excellences’) that make a man agathos (‘good’, ‘noble’)—perhaps the highest commendation available in the Iliad and Odyssey— and it is the nature of the agathos to pursue honour and glory. It is clear that formulations, such as those of A. W. H Adkins and M. I. Finley, which ignore the breadth of attributes that count as values in Homeric morality are in some sense limited or ﬂawed.35 In this way, Adkins has rightly been challenged for his overly crude insistence that what constitute the aretai of Homeric society are only those virtues that we would call ‘competitive’ as opposed to ‘cooperative’.36 Similarly, the claim, made most forcefully by Finley, that the heroic code was ‘complete and unambiguous’ should be seen as exaggerated.37 And yet, despite these valid criticisms of the notion of a monolithic interpretation of heroic ethics, the important point to grasp here is the one about which I think Adkins and Finley are correct. For even if Homeric heroes do embrace both competitive values (for example, bravery, brawn, cunning) and cooperative values (fairness, good counsel, loyalty), they esteem both sets of values and practise them primarily for their ability to achieve a single end, an end which is not abandoned.38 32 For examples of this mentality in the Iliad, see Rutherford 1996: 40–1, who cites 6.208 ¼ 11.784; 12.243; 6.441; 12.310–28. 33 On how Achilles and Odysseus share each other’s attributes, cf. Rutherford 1992: 25–6: Odysseus needs to employ martial skill to defeat the suitors (indeed, he praises the heroic ideal at Odyssey 11.482–503), while Achilles yearns for a life on any terms. The opposition of these hero-types will be treated at length at VII.3.C and IX below. 34 See Schoﬁeld 1986. 35 See Adkins 1960: ch. 2 and Finley 1999 (rev. edn., ﬁrst published 1956): ch. 5. 36 See, particularly, Long 1970; Creed 1973; Schoﬁeld 1986; Zanker 1994: esp. ch. 1; Hammer 2002. 37 Finley 1999: 113. 38 For the way in which the concept of honour straddles the putative divide between competitive and cooperative values, see Cairns 2001: 21. Cairns, whose treatment of the concept of aidōs (‘shame’) in Homer rejects the worth of the shame/guilt divide, still concludes by stating (p. 140): ‘I feel the designation of

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Whether he likes it or not, the goal of the Homeric hero, qua hero, is the pursuit of honour and glory. Honour may come by being a doer of deeds or it may come by being a speaker of words.39 Its attainment may vary by personality, as between Achilles and Odysseus, or by age, as between Telemachus and Nestor. Its content may depend on whether it is a time of war or of peace. But it is the singularity of the heroic code in the sense of its being structured towards and founded on a single and clearly deﬁned end that is the key to understanding how it enables the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey to make ethical decisions when values, either competitive or cooperative, clash with one another.40

C. Three Homeric dilemmas Odysseus We can now turn to the text to explore how Homeric conﬂicts are resolved by reference to the single goal of honor. Perhaps the paradigm for this type of decision-making comes from Book 11 of the Iliad. Having lost his ﬁghting partner, Odysseus ﬁnds himself in dire straits. He contemplates what he should do in the increasingly perilous situation:41 OåŁÆ ¼æÆ r æe n ªÆºæÆ Łı · “þ Ø Kª, Łø; ªÆ b ŒÆŒe ÆY Œ ç øÆØ ºÅŁf Ææ Æ· e b ÞªØ ÆY Œ ±ºø F· f ¼ººı ˜ÆÆf Kç Å ˚æø. Iººa Ø Ø ÆFÆ çº Ø ºÆ Łı ; Homeric society as a ‘shame-culture’ is misleading, but the importance of honour in that society can hardly be overstressed.’ 39 Iliad 9.443. On the perfect hero as excelling in both ﬁghting and counsel, see Redﬁeld 1975: 110–11 and Schoﬁeld 1986: 8–13. On the way in which the goal of counsel is honour for the counsellor (as opposed to advice on a practical problem), see Schoﬁeld 1986: 15 ff. 40 The point about conﬂict is pivotal. Rutherford stresses (1995: 40) that ‘[o]ther qualities [in addition to prowess as a leader and ﬁghter] are also admired—ability as a speaker, piety, sound judgement and advice, loyalty, hospitality, gentleness, but these are secondary’. This idea of being ‘secondary’ is extremely important as, in instances of conﬂict, virtues that are less intimately related to the heroic conception of honour will always be placed second. This universality is, as we saw earlier (I.3.B–C), a mark of monism. See also Irwin at Kraut 1999: 82 n. 35. 41 Iliad 11.403–10.

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Sophocles r Æ ªaæ ‹Ø ŒÆŒd b IåÆØ ºØ, n Œ IæØ ﬁÅØ åﬁÅ Ø, e b ºÆ åæ g K ÆØ ŒæÆ æH, X ºÅ X Æº ¼ºº.”

In dismay he spoke to his own great heart: ‘What will become of me now? A great dishonour if I turn and run in fear of their numbers: but worse if I am caught isolated—the son of Kronos has put the rest of the Danaans to ﬂight. But what need for this debate in my heart? I know that it is cowards who keep clear of ﬁghting, while the brave man in battle has every duty to stand his ground in strength, and kill or be killed.’

This monologue is often cited in defence of the claim that Homeric actors are genuine agents capable of making real decisions.42 And it is usually grouped together with several stylistically parallel passages in which other characters in the Iliad experience a similar dilemma, framed in similar language.43 Our interest in the passage, however, lies in the way it portrays the resolution of a potentially difﬁcult ethical dilemma.44 Odysseus is in a tricky position. He has unexpectedly found himself without support on the battleﬁeld, an onslaught from the Trojans imminent. Both of the options open to him, he realizes, are bad. He could ﬂee out of fear but it is a great kakon (‘evil’) to do so. Or he could run the risk of being caught, isolated and thus more susceptible to being killed. Surely, this is worse (ÞªØ: literally, ‘more chilling’). If he runs, he will feel immense aidōs (‘shame’) before himself and others: cowardice is emphatically not the way for heroes.45 But if he stays put, he might die—even heroes value their lives.46 The threat of shame, of dishonour, comes head to head with the threat of death. Are they portrayed as incommensurable? Will one outweigh the other 42 See, among others, Lloyd-Jones 1971: 9; Redﬁeld 1975: 110–11; Fenik 1978; Sharples 1983; Gaskin 1990; Gill 1998: ch. 1. 43 Menelaus at 17.91–105; Agenor at 21.553–70; Hector at 22.99–130. Some of the differences between these passages are examined and stressed by Fenik 1978 and Gill 1998: ch. 1. 44 The example has been specially chosen for its moral content. For instances of non-ethical or practical dilemmas which concern themselves more with tactics than with ends, see Odyssey 9.299–30, 22.333–9; Iliad 13.455–9. 45 On the way in which aidōs can be internalized as well as heteronymous, see Redﬁeld 1975: 115 ff.; Williams 1993: 81 ff.; Cairns 1993: 27 ff. Aidōs is not mentioned by Odysseus as the reason he will not ﬂee, but it is implicit. Hector, of course, makes it explicit (Iliad 22.105). 46 Cf. Schoﬁeld 1986: 20–1 and Finley 1999: 113.

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in the sense of outweighing we discussed above? In the typical way in which Homeric characters are made to experience internal dialogue, the impasse is broken and our question answered. ‘But what need for this debate in my heart?’ Odysseus asks himself. In other words, why am I even debating alternatives when I know what the right thing to do is. He knows (r Æ) that it is the kakoi who run from war and the aristoi (‘best men’) who hold their ground. This is a principle about which the heroic code is unequivocal. Odysseus will not be a kakos, for this is a fate worse than death. He will stand fast and he will ﬁght for his honour. This is what men such as Odysseus must do.47 In a clash between death with honour and life without it, the Homeric hero has but one choice.48

Hector Odysseus’ dilemma occurs on a small scale. But the Iliad portrays two much graver conﬂicts, both ultimately tragic but neither insoluble in the terms of the poem. The ﬁrst is that of Hector. Book 6 is largely given over to a depiction of the complicated relationship between Hector and his wife and child. It explores the paradox that, in order to protect his family, the hero must risk destroying it; that, in order to be of any worth to them, he must betray them.49 What is Hector’s dilemma? It is, as James Redﬁeld puts it, ‘a tension between obligations to household and to city, for in defending everyone the warrior must set aside his special obligations to those who are most truly his own’.50 On the one hand, we get the sense that Hector is the Trojan stalwart, that the city will stand or fall with him. On the other, we are deeply moved by how much Andromache needs him personally. And 47 And so Agenor and Hector make the same choice. Menelaus’ case is slightly more interesting in that he introduces a mitigating factor: Hector is ﬁghting ‘with the aid of a god’ (Ł çØ). His decision, however, is still made in terms of honour. Cf. Gaskin 1990: 9: ‘Menelaus in effect uses one moral norm (only fools ﬁght the gods) to discount the course of action recommended by another norm (only cowards retreat) . . . ’. 48 We will be tracing, in later chapters, the force of this sentiment in Sophocles (Ajax 479–80, Philoctetes 94–5). Paris provides a useful counter-example, as he plays the Homeric antihero in this regard. While it is Aphrodite who whisks him out of harm’s way at Iliad 3.380–2, his presentation throughout leaves little doubt that he might have similarly shirked his duties left to his own devices. 49 Cf. Schein 1984: 174. 50 Redﬁeld 1975: 123.

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how much he loves her. This is, I think, the most interesting touch in the Iliad’s illustration of Hector’s conﬂict. For Homer makes it quite clear that, when Hector refuses his wife’s plea to stay in the city, he is going against his own feelings as well as hers.51 In denying Andromache, Hector is denying himself; her concerns are his.52 For of all the people in Troy, it is Andromache that Hector values most: Iºº h Ø "æø º Ø ¼ºª Oø, h ÆPB EŒ Å h —æØØ ¼ÆŒ h ŒÆØªø . . . ‹ F, ‹ Œ Ø åÆØH åÆºŒåØø

ÆŒæı Æ ¼ªÅÆØ, Kº Ł æ qÆæ IæÆ. But the pain I feel for the suffering to come is less for the people of Troy, less even for Hekabe and king Priam and my brothers . . . than my pain for you, when one of the bronze-clad Achaians carries you away in tears and takes away the day of your freedom.53

Hector’s vast care for his wife is what gives his dilemma depth.54 For when Andromache begs him to remain inside the city walls and twice entreats him to take pity on her and Astyanax, he is indeed moved by her appeal.55 He feels a genuine pull, both emotional and moral, and one that will not dissolve after he rejects her: he knows he is doing something he is reluctant to do and he will have to live (and die) with that knowledge.56 But in his action, Hector is resolute. Ultimately, as certain as he is that he is hurting his wife and son by ﬁghting, he is just as certain that ﬁght he must.57 Like Odysseus’, Hector’s decision is in this way predetermined: Iººa º ÆNø ÆN ÆØ "æHÆ ŒÆd "æø ﬁ Æ ºŒ Øºı, 51

Schein 1984: 174. Cf. Zanker 1994: 55. Iliad 6.441: q ŒÆd Kd Æ º Ø, ªÆØ (‘Wife, all that you say is surely in my mind also’). 53 Iliad 6.450–5. For the use of this ‘ascending scale of affection motif’, see Schein 1984: 174. 54 Though his regard for his family is intimately linked with honour and shame: see 6.447–65, 476–81. 55 She opens and closes her speech with an appeal to ‘pity’ (Kº Ææ Ø at 6.407, 6.431). That Hector actually feels pity is made explicit at 6.484: Ø KºÅ (‘her husband took pity’). Cf. 22.78, 22.91, where Hector is described as unmoved by his parents’ call for pity (22.59, 22.82). 56 Cf. Iliad 24.725–45, particularly Andromache’s lament at 742: Kd b ºØÆ º º ł ÆØ ¼ºª Æ ºıªæ (‘But it is I who will be left the greatest pain and misery’). 57 On the way in which shame and honour override considerations of family in this scene, see Zanker 1994: 53–6. 52

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ÆY Œ ŒÆŒe S çØ IºıŒÇø ºØ· P Łıe ¼øª , K d Ł ÆØ KŁºe ÆN d ŒÆd æØØ a "æ Ø å ŁÆØ, Iæ Ææ ªÆ Œº Ke ÆPF. But I would feel terrible shame before the men of Troy and the women of Troy with their trailing dresses, if like a coward, I skulk away from the ﬁghting. Nor is that what my own heart urges, because I have learnt always to be brave and to ﬁght in the forefront of the Trojans, winning great glory for my father and for myself.58

He offers two reasons, one societal and one internal. To excel in battle is expected of him by both the community and his own conscience. Intuitively, Hector’s situation has the shape of a disquieting dilemma. He loves his wife dearly, but he has obligations to Troy as well as to himself, qua hero. The circumstances are such that he is going to hurt someone no matter what he chooses. In the last analysis however, for Hector as for Odysseus, to die with the honour which comes from fulﬁlling his duty as hero is deemed better than to live without it. What makes this ascription of ‘better’ different from the pluralist ‘better’ I outlined earlier (I.3.C, II.4.C) is that attaining honour exists for the Homeric hero as a universal and a priori principle of behaviour.

Achilles Hector’s dilemma can be read as one between kin and community or even as one between kin and hero. The tension between hero and community, however, is explored in the Iliad through the character of Achilles. While Hector’s story expresses conﬂict within the value system, Achilles’ is one of conﬂict with the value system.59 In his response to Odysseus in the embassy scene of Book 9, Achilles is given critical distance from his ethical situation. He is made to question both the content of the code under which he lives as well as the method of conﬂict-resolution heroes are required to employ.60 58

Iliad 6.441–6. Cf. 22.105. Redﬁeld 1975: 245 n. 22. On the paradox that stems from a hero’s relationship with his community, see Whitman 1982: ch. 1 and Grifﬁn 1995: 27. 60 This reading of Achilles’ great speech is not without contention. See e.g. Zanker 1994: 79–80; Rutherford 1996: 52; Gill 1998: 136–54. On Achilles’ perspective in Book 24 as a complement to his attitude in Book 9, see Macleod 1982: 26–7 and Rutherford 1992: 25–6. Segal argues (1996) that Odysseus too has a critical perspective on his relationship to kleos. 59

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Unlike Hector, who never questions why the world is the way it is, Achilles’ speech consists of a kind of second-order reasoning that allows him to reﬂect on and to challenge the aims and rules of the ‘heroic code’.61 Self-exiled to the margins of the society that determines and sustains that code, he can now ask what honour is and why it must be paramount. He can, if only temporarily, deny the import of Sarpedon’s speech in Book 12 and renegotiate the traditional reasons why heroes act as they do, as well as the traditional relationship between hero and community:62 YÅ EæÆ Ø, ŒÆd N ºÆ Ø º ÇØ·| K b NB ﬁ ØB ﬁ Mb ŒÆŒe M b ŒÆd KŁº ·| ŒŁÆ ›H ‹ I æªe Icæ ‹ ººa Kæª (‘Stay at home or ﬁght your hardest— your share will be the same. Coward and hero are honoured alike. Death does not distinguish do-nothing and do-all’).63 This in turn leads him to question the life he has chosen.64 Achilles’ ‘dilemma’ between a long life with no glory and a short one with imperishable glory is articulated by Thetis from the beginning of the Iliad.65 For heroes, the resolution of this conﬂict is obvious. But here Achilles is made to question why he must sacriﬁce the former for the latter, and he is allowed, if only for an instant, to contemplate leaving the bloody battleﬁelds of Troy for the illusion of quiet happiness in Phthia.66 His dissection of the Homeric code is shocking (his listeners are described as ØøB ﬁ FŁ IªÆ Ø), and it is revealing of some of the difﬁculties inherent within it.67 But, in the ﬁnal analysis, what Achilles has to say is inconclusive. His

61

Gill 1998: 133. For Achilles’ speech as the inversion of Sarpedon’s at 12.310–28, see Redﬁeld 1975: 105 and Gill 1998: 131 ff. 63 Iliad 9.318–20. This is taken a step further at Odyssey 11.489–91: ıºÅ Œ Kæıæ Kg ŁÅ ı ¼ººø ﬁ , | I æd Ææ IŒºæø ﬁ , ﬁz c ºf YÅ, | j AØ Œ Ø ŒÆÆçŁØØØ I Ø (‘I would rather work the soil as a serf on hire to some landless impoverished peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead’). All translations from the Odyssey by E. V. Rieu (1991). For the view that we should not take this as a root-and-branch rejection of heroic ethics, see Rutherford 1996: 25–6. 64 On the fact that Achilles is making a full-ﬂedged choice, see Gaskin 1990: 9–10 and Zanker 1994: 82–3. 65 See Iliad 1.416; 9.410–16; 18.94–6. Zanker is particularly good on stressing (1994: ch. 4, passim) the fact that Achilles is unique amongst the Homeric heroes in his deﬁnitive knowledge of his own death and the difference this makes in terms of his relationship with honour. Hammer, however, draws attention (2002: 206–7) to the complexity of Achilles’ relationship with death (further bibliography at 206 n. 10). 66 Iliad 9.356–63, 401–16. 67 ‘They all stayed silent, shocked by his words’ (Iliad 9.430–1). 62

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speech is only a ﬂeeting survey of the difﬁculties of abiding by a heroic morality that dictates what one’s goals must be from someone who is not fully outside of it. It is, in other words, an internal critique. Achilles will never be able to reject wholesale the norms of his society; he will, in the end, choose to stay and choose to die. As Richard Rutherford observes, ‘his disillusionment does not lead him to abandon his way of life, even though he now has doubts about its value’.68

D. A Homeric disagreement So far we have limited our discussion to moral dilemmas, that is, to conﬂicts that occur within the breast of a single individual—the so-called ‘tragic choice’. We will now consider brieﬂy moral disagreements, conﬂicts of value between two people or two groups of people.69 The most notable moral disagreement in the Iliad is the great quarrel that takes place in Book 1 between Achilles and Agamemnon.70 The causes and consequences of the rift are well known to students of Homer: indeed, they form the backbone of the epic. Here we must concern ourselves with questions of right and wrong. The conﬂict between the two heroes is, in a way, simpliﬁed as the issue at stake on both sides is the same: honour. We are not asked to weigh two different values or principles against one another, but only two claims emanating from a single value.

68 Rutherford 1992: 26. See Iliad 18.98 ff. Cf. Grifﬁn 1980: 96. Similarly, Achilles’ depiction in Book 9 is still infused with concerns of honour (e.g. 9.186–9, 328–33, 334, 344, 367, 646–8). 69 On the nature and complexities of ‘moral disagreements’, see Gowans 2000. This distinction between intra-personal moral conﬂicts, referred to as ‘dilemmas’, and inter-personal conﬂicts, referred to as ‘disagreements’, was already broached with regard to Herodotus (V.2 and V.3 above) and will be addressed more thoroughly at VII.3. 70 The chief moral disagreement in the Odyssey is even less ambiguous than its counterpart in the Iliad. We are never in doubt that, in their quarrel with the suitors, Telemachus and Odysseus are right. We can grant the suitors the valid point that Penelope has been stalling rather duplicitously and that it is high time she gets on with her choice. But we are never tempted into believing that this somehow justiﬁes their outlandish behaviour—their parasitic, excessive, and extensive use of another man’s livelihood. The competing sides of the conﬂict are given verbal expression at the assembly in Book 2. In Odysseus’ disagreement with his companions (a second, less central, and not quite moral conﬂict), it is less clear who is in the right. See Rutherford 1986: 150–3.

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And yet, the disagreement is not exactly straightforward in that reasons can be accrued for and against each man’s behaviour. On the one hand, both parties appear to have some support for their actions. Achilles has called the assembly at the bidding of a goddess and in response to a plague which is clearly beleaguering the army. Moreover, he has earned his prize and is rightfully distressed by threat of its loss. But it is equally true that, as king, Agamemnon is Achilles’ superior and that he should not be without a ªæÆ (‘prize’) himself. On the otherhand, Nestor articulatesthecounts on whichboth men have erred: f IªÆŁ æ Kg IÆæ ŒæÅ, Iºº Æ, u ƒ æHÆ Æ ªæÆ ıx åÆØH· P, —Åº & Å, Ł º KæØÇ ÆØ ÆØºBœ IØ Å, K d h Ł ›Å æ ØB ŒÅFå ÆØº , ﬁz Z f ŒF øŒ . You, great man though you are, do not take the girl from him, but let her be, as the sons of the Achaians gave her to him in the beginning as his prize. And you, son of Peleus, do not seek open quarrel with the king, since there is no equality with the honour granted to a sceptred king, whom Zeus has gloriﬁed.71

Agamemnon agrees that this interpretation is ŒÆa EæÆ (‘as is meet’, ‘right’), but argues that Achilles has overstepped his bounds. Achilles is enveloped by his anger and severs himself from the rest of the Greeks. The argument comes to a close. In Homeric terms, there are certain respects in which both men are right and both wrong.72 But the poem makes quite clear that the overriding wrong from a moral point of view, at least in the ﬁrst instance, is Agamemnon’s.73 Commentators have been quick to see this: ‘In taking Briseis from Achilles, Agamemnon is of course acting outrageously.’74 ‘In robbing him, Agamemnon has violated the normal social “code” to which everyone in the poem would 71

Iliad 1.275–9. The ethical terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are used here contra Gagarin 1987, who argues the disagreement should be understood in the framework of legality rather than morality. Cf. Lloyd-Jones 1987. 73 Cf. Nestor’s reaction at Iliad 9.103–13, Poseidon’s at 13.111–14, and Odysseus’ at 19.181–3. Macleod observes (1982: 30–1) how the quarrel in Book 1 is echoed by the dispute between Antilochus and Menelaus over a prize in the funeral games of Book 23. There, however, the ‘correct’ model of resolution is adhered to. Cf. p. 32 n. 1 for the speciﬁc parallels between the two scenes. 74 Redﬁeld 1975: 14. Cf. p. 105. 72

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subscribe . . . ’.75 ‘Achilles is undoubtedly in the right.’76 This is something that Agamemnon will later admit and repent for: he was prevented from doing the right thing, he avows, by Atē (‘the goddess of reckless conduct’), and he takes limited responsibility for such an ethical lapse.77 There is a turning-point, however, at which the moral blame shifts onto Achilles.78 The famous embassy is spurned in Book 9 by the hard-hearted hero, the offer of Agamemnon’s compensation gifts rejected. This is wrong, and Achilles knows it: ‘The compensation is satisfactory in terms of the heroic code.’79 After Ajax sets out the correct response to such an offer, Achilles speaks thus: Æ Ø ŒÆa Łıe K Æ ıŁÆŁÆØ· Iºº Ø N ÆØ ŒæÆ Å å ºø ﬁ , › Œ ø ÆØ, u IçÅº K æª ØØ æ æ & Å, ‰ Y Ø IÅ ÆÅ. All that you have said seems much after my own feelings. But my heart swells with anger whenever I think of that time, how the son of Atreus treated me with contempt in front of the Argives, as if I were some migrant without rights.80

Like Agamemnon, Achilles may have been prevented from acting one way rather than another by some force (in Achilles’ case an internal one, in Agamemnon’s an external one), but he is still made to see and declare that what he is doing, in the larger scheme of things, is wrong. Akrasia exists in Homer and so does the concept of a unique and determinate answer which it presupposes.81 75

Schein 1984: 100. Lloyd-Jones 1971: 13. Cf. Yamagata 1994: 133 (‘an exceptional blunder’). Zanker reviews (1994: 58 n. 8) recent opinions. 77 See Iliad 2.375–8, 9.115–61, 19.86–94, 19.137–9. On this pattern of error in Homer, see Finkelberg 1995a: passim. It should be especially noted that Agamemnon admits his error as early as Book 2, a fact that is ‘not always remembered’ (Lloyd-Jones 1971: 14). 78 Cf. Whitman 1951: 182 and Lloyd-Jones 1971: 18. For a different view, see Lateiner 2004: 22 n. 31, 25 79 Grifﬁn 1995: 19. See also Lateiner 2004: 25 n. 33. Good judges consider Agamemnon’s offer generous and satisfactory (Nestor at Iliad 9.110–13, 9.164–73, Phoenix at 9.515–19). But cf. Diomedes at 9.696–702, who thinks Agamemnon should have never sent the gifts in the ﬁrst place. 80 Iliad 9.645–8. 81 Homer’s characters are made to experience akrasia. See Iliad 3.383 ff., 9.644 ff., 22.136 ff. Cf. Gaskin 1990: sec. 4; Finkelberg 1995a: 21–5; Gill 1998: 175 ff. For ancient philosophical discussions of akrasia, see Plato, Gorgias 491d, Protagoras 352b–c, Republic 430e–431d, and Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1417a34 ff. Cf. III.4.B above. 76

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E. Weak pluralism: Homer versus Plato Homer as weak pluralist It seems, then, that Homer is capable of presenting both moral dilemma and disagreement. And yet there is an important sense in which what we ﬁnd in his epics are neither dilemmas nor disagreements at all. This calls for a brief word of explanation. How can we consistently claim that the heroic code is itself ambiguous and yet at the same time insist that the conﬂicts it gives rise to are illusory because resolvable by reference to a single end? As ever when values are plural, conﬂicts may ensue. As Malcolm Schoﬁeld observes, to take one example, ‘the warrior may ﬁnd his heroically impulsive pursuit of martial glory opposed by his heroic good judgement’.82 In other words, for the Homeric agent who is willing to listen to reasons for or against an action, it is possible that such reasons may translate into advice which, if followed, would prompt behaviour incompatible with what is honourable. So too, it is possible that those reasons may dictate a course of action governed by any number of values (justice, prudence, pity) other than honour. Accordingly, we can agree with Schoﬁeld, contra Finley, that ‘it is not true that [these other values] can register with us only when they also represent the claim of honour’, although many distinct values are connected, perhaps inextricably so, with honour in this way.83 But while we can admit, as we have above, that other virtues exist in the world of Homer, that they can ‘register’ with the heroes, and that they are important for the meaning of the poem, this is not to say that they can override considerations of honour.84 Euboulia may exist as a value in the Homeric scheme, but this is not to say that, in moments of conﬂict, it will possess any signiﬁcant or determinative moral weight.85 Indeed Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector all

82

Schoﬁeld 1986: 16. Achilles’ pity for Priam, for instance, in Book 24 is connected throughout with his acquisition of honour and glory. See esp. Iliad 24.53, 110. Cf. also 9.301–3. Zanker illustrates (1994) the way in which the honour/shame element of Homeric ethics can work with emotional and cooperative values. Cf. e.g. p. 24: ‘the affective and moral elements in pity are standardly buttressed by appeals to aidô s . . . and honour.’ 84 Macleod, whose reading of Iliad 24 is extremely sensitive to the role of cooperative virtues, captures (1982: 16) this tension perfectly. 85 So too with º (‘pity’), which can affect a hero, but which must be ‘suppressed when working against ŁØ, ÆN , and Ø’ (Yamagata 1994: 181). 83

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meet some form of disaster precisely because they ignore prudent advice: considerations of good judgement, it would seem, are shelved in each case to accommodate the pursuit of honour. If we want to expand the substance of heroic ethics to encompass such virtues as euboulia or justice or loyalty, we must realize that, as values, these will have a determined relationship with honour. By marshalling evidence that euboulia and other ‘cooperative’ values deserve a place in the heroic code, Schoﬁeld shows that yes, logically, the potential for conﬂicts must exist within it: good judgement may contradict the pursuit of martial glory. Theoretically this is, of course, correct, as the case of Hector exempliﬁes. And yet, tellingly, Schoﬁeld himself seems to vacillate on this point. In his more abstract discussion of the heroic code as such, he eloquently defends the view that it is ambiguous. But when expounding the plight of Achilles and Hector as moral agents in the narrative, he describes them as guided, and unambiguously so, by honour. Because honour, for Achilles and for Hector, is the supreme (meaning: overriding) goal.86 The difﬁculty seems to be that while we want to draw attention to the tensions in the heroic code and the inevitability of their existence from a philosophical point of view, we realize that in the literary world of Homer the conﬂicts have a special status: they exist, but only in a restricted way. We may recognize the outlines of a dilemma or disagreement in the narrative, but its content is somehow stripped of meaning by being completely resolvable, in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, within the framework of the poems.87 On the one hand we can legitimately claim, for instance, that Hector does not really experience a dilemma because he is ultimately compelled by overpowering social demands to opt for one horn rather than the other, and that, in this way, he has no choice.88 And yet, on the other hand we could also claim that there is a way in which he does experience that dilemma and experience it richly: he is still made to endure the painful clash of values it generates. This is a crucial point. For while his characters are always armed, in the last analysis, with a means of 86 So he can say things such as: ‘The logical structure of Hector’s pursuit of honour is much better expressed by the idea that other values must surrender to honour . . . ’ (1986: 20–1, original emphasis); ‘his overriding goal is the achievement of glory . . . or . . . the avoidance of further dishonour’ (p. 21); ‘rightly convinced that honor is Hector’s overriding goal . . . ’ (p. 21). 87 Cf. MacIntyre 1981: 129. 88 Cf. Gill 1998: 96.

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deciding, Homer appears fully at home with the contours and consequences of being pulled in two competing directions. It is this unlikely sensitivity, I think, which makes Homer unique. He is able to illustrate poignantly how the moral code under which his characters exist necessitates the loss of important and cherished values, while at the same time clinging to the idea that only one course of action is right or appropriate. Indeed, it is this paradox from which the tragedy of Homer derives.89 Both Hector and Achilles expose the difﬁculties and ambiguities inherent in the heroic code—Hector the conﬂicts which inevitably occur within it, and Achilles of having to live by a single and rigid system of ethics. But neither is able to break out of it as no alternative exists for him.90 Consequently, both men knowingly and willingly sacriﬁce something of value in order to secure what they must: honour and glory. Hector his family, Achilles his life. The tragedy lies in the men’s awareness that they are making a sacriﬁce;91 it stems from a deeper understanding of the complications of the heroic code itself.92 It is the portrayal of this awareness that makes Homer’s Iliad particularly interesting from a moral point of view. He can illustrate, as pluralists believe, that tragedy is endemic to our moral lives, but ultimately deny that values are plural in any deeply meaningful sense. This is what I referred to above as ‘weak pluralism’.

Incommensurability and love Platonic philosophy provides a useful point of comparison here. Plato too believes that moral conﬂicts can be solved and a single ‘right’ answer discovered, but he denies that sacriﬁces must be made in order to achieve this. That is, he believes that moral conﬂicts can be solved without remainder.93 This is the difference between weak pluralism and monism. Contrary to the import of the Homeric poems, Plato is at pains to downplay the ‘truth’ that, as Berlin 89 By tragedy here I am referring to the loss engendered by a conﬂict of values discussed above and not the narrower sense of tragic action expounded by Aristotle. See Redﬁeld 1975: ch. 2 and pp. 106 ff. 90 Cf. Schein 1984: 71. 91 Whitman articulates (1982: 27) this well. 92 Cf. Redﬁeld 1975: ch. 3 and Grifﬁn 1980: 43. On the relationship between these two texts on this particular issue, see Schoﬁeld 1986: 21–2 and Zanker 1994: 88 n. 25. 93 For this important idea, see Williams 1973: ch. 11.

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declared, ‘we cannot have everything’.94 He is at pains to downplay the fact that subscribing fully to one hierarchical system of values, be it the life of the hero or the life of the philosopher, will inevitably generate missed opportunities and lost values. As we saw in the Protagoras (III.3–4 above), Socrates attempts to convince us that we can have everything—everything good, at least— by disavowing the existence of akrasia and propounding the hedonistic calculus. For Socrates, all values can be reduced into quantities of pleasure and pain and, consequently, by the logic of his argument, good and evil. With such a reduction, genuine moral dilemma and disagreement become impossible, their resolution a simple matter of arithmetic. For if the alternatives in conﬂict can both be expressed in a single currency, they can be measured against each other and one option can outweigh the other in the sense discussed above. The ‘right’ answer is then that option which produces more or greater good. The wrong one, because it has been infallibly (because mathematically) deemed lesser, will not be missed: no sense of loss or regret ensues from choosing an alternative we know is worse. For Plato, by resolving our disputes about values in the same way we do when we bicker over number or size, we can succeed in removing entirely the sting of ethical conﬂict. Intractable moral conﬂict and tragic decisions, on this theory, are a chimera.95 Even though Homer resolves conﬂicts in a way which is conceptually similar to the one Socrates advocates, his heroes still feel the effects of conﬂicts between incommensurable values.96 They suffer a profound loss from the choices they make, a loss whose existence, while discredited by Plato, infuses Homeric morality with a tragedy of its own. Another point of contrast between Homer and Plato is apt. Despite the fact that moral alternatives are ultimately commensurate in Homer, the poems have a noteworthy relationship with the pluralist notion of incommensurability—a concept which Plato is keen to eradicate. In fact, it is conceivable to claim that, in a certain sense, 94

Berlin 1969: 170. See Nussbaum 1986: 114. Homeric heroes employ a different method of conﬂict resolution from Socrates in the Protagoras. Instead of a common currency, they seem to use a more principled approach. Their conﬂicts can be resolved by answering the question: which of these options will maximize my honour? The answer to that question is then determined by the strictures of the heroic code. On this type of means–end or rule-based reasoning, see Gill 1998: 53 ff., 133 ff. See also I.3.B above. 95 96

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both the Iliad and the Odyssey are based on its existence. That is to say, the perception of a lover/spouse as distinct, and thus incommensurable with others, is a major driving force in the plot of both epics. We need only recall Epictetus’ observation that if Menelaus was able to consider Helen as readily substitutable ‘gone would have been the Iliad and the Odyssey as well’.97 In this way, the Trojan War in general is the result of a man’s obsession with one, irreplaceable woman. But the poems depend upon the truth of incommensurability for their more particular storylines as well. Achilles’ deprivation of Briseis sets the events of the rest of the Iliad in motion. For Achilles, there is something unique about this woman.98 He wants her back and her alone; no substitute will do. And so Ajax can legitimately complain: d ¼ººÅŒ ŒÆŒ | Łıe Kd Ł Ø Ł d ŁÆ

¥ ŒÆ ŒæÅ | YÅ· F Ø a Ææå å IæÆ, | ¼ººÆ ºº Kd B ﬁ Ø (‘But the heart the gods have put in your breast is implacable and perverse, all because of a girl, one girl—but now we are offering you seven, the very ﬁnest, and much more besides them’).99 In this instance, seven is not more appealing than one;100 more is not always better, in a way that would be anathema to the Socrates of the Protagoras. Achilles’ reaction to being stripped of Briseis also illustrates the incommensurability of honour itself (we are reminded of Berlin’s two concepts of liberty). Slighted by Agamemnon in this way, Achilles feels he must lose one manifestation of honour in order to regain another: the two are not here compatible.101 He must forgo honour on the battleﬁeld to maintain it vis-à-vis the commander-in-chief. As Finley acutely puts it, he is ‘pulled in two opposing directions, and though one way pointed to victory in a great war and the other to a triﬂe, one captive woman out of thousands, the tremendous conﬂict lay precisely in the fact that honour was not measured like goods in a

97

Epictetus 7.24. For Achilles’ special relationship with Briseis, cf. Taplin 1992: 214–16. Similarly, Ismene highlights the irreplacability of Antigone to Haemon (Antigone 568, 570), a uniqueness which Creon quickly denies (569). 99 Iliad 9.636–9. For Ajax’s general assumption of commensurability in his speech, see Zanker 1994: 11. 100 In the same way that a thousand material gifts would never compensate for the absence of an apology or for a life (Iliad 9.401–9, 22.349–50). Cf. Grifﬁn 1995: 19–20 and Seaford 2004: 301–3. 101 Cf. Iliad 1.354–6, 1.490–2. 98

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market, that the insult was worth as much as the war’.102 Achilles’ special relationship with Patroclus should be noted here as well. It is desire for revenge for this particular man’s death that ﬁnally compels the sulking hero from his tent, ensuring not only the death of Hector but that of Achilles himself.103 The presence of incommensurability is similarly felt in the Odyssey. Odysseus meets several extraordinary women on his travels homeward, but he prefers none of these to his wedded wife, even though, signiﬁcantly, they may be better or more beautiful than her in some objective sense. In this way, he is able rationally to say to Calypso: r Æ ŒÆd ÆPe Æ º , o ŒÆ E æçæø —Å º ØÆ

r IŒØ æÅ ª Ł NÆ N ŁÆØ· b ªaæ æ KØ, f IŁÆ ŒÆd Iªæø· Iººa ŒÆd S KŁºø ŒÆd Kº ÆØ XÆÆ Æ YŒÆ KºŁ ÆØ ŒÆd Ø qÆæ N ŁÆØ. I too know well enough that my wise Penelope’s looks and stature are insigniﬁcant compared with yours. For she is mortal, while you have immortality and unfading youth. Nevertheless I long to reach my home and see the day of my return.104

The idea that a man could feel special attachment to a lover in the way that both Achilles and Odysseus appear to is one with which Plato is overtly unhappy. His project of casting doubt on the existence of incommensurability, begun in the Protagoras in respect of values, recurs with full force in the Symposium in respect of lovers. In discussing the ascent of the young lover, Diotima tells us that he must ultimately learn that the beauty in any one body is ‘a brother’ (I ºç ) to the beauty in another body; and that if he must pursue the Form, it is inane not to consider the beauty of all bodies to be one and the same (210b). ‘The teacher leads him, makes him see (210c7), until at last he is able to conceive of the whole of beauty as a vast ocean, whose components are, like droplets, qualitatively indistinguishable.’105 The goal here is either to render instances of the beautiful completely interchangeable (in this case, contrary to Achilles, seven lovers would certainly be better than one) or, failing that, to arrange that they may differ from one another in respect of 102 104

103 Finley 1999: 117. Cf. Hammer 2002: 216–18. 105 Odyssey 5.215–20. Cf. 7.255–8. Nussbaum 1986: 180.

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their quantity only. Gauged, then, against the ultimate standard of ‘the beautiful’ (e ŒÆº ), one can decide with ease which instance is more or greater, and this calculation, in the last analysis, is all one needs to know. One must presume that Plato believed, contrary to Odysseus, that a lover who is more beautiful is the one that should be sought.

3. TRAGEDY AND TRAGIC CONFLICT

A. Tragedy as meta-ethics Homeric ethics form the bedrock of both the Greek poetic tradition and the Greek philosophical tradition. The Iliad and the Odyssey were a paramount inﬂuence on the development of both genres. It was not unusual in early Greek thought for philosophers to express their ideas in verse, nor for poets to convey philosophical, particularly moral, sentiments. The great quarrel between poetry and philosophy was made conspicuous by Plato, and that did not occur until the fourth century bce.106 Before Plato imposed his schism on history, however, archaic cosmologists such as Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles had no difﬁculty presenting their theories in the mode and diction of Homer. Indeed, they believed that this was the best way to establish credibility as educators. Similarly, the lyric poets concerned themselves with ideas and themes we might now consider the domain of philosophy (cf. I.4.C above). The same could be said of the tragic poets. And yet, when we come to the tragedians, it is more accurate to say that they concerned themselves with philosophical—particularly moral and political—problems. In this way, the tragedians of the ﬁfth century took quite a different attitude from their predecessors towards the truism that poetry and morality are intimately bound. Their interpretation of this truism is another key to understanding the relationship between tragedy and pluralist conﬂict. The ethical content of poetry and the role of the poet as moral teacher are well-trodden ground: ‘poetry always had been a medium for communicating ethical teaching . . . the distinction which we now make between poets and moral philosophers is not one which would 106

Although he himself calls it an ancient quarrel (Republic 607c).

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have occurred to Pre-Platonic thinkers.’107 For the ancient Greeks, poetry is ethics. But where tragedy perhaps differs from didactic or paraenetic poetry, even from epic poetry, is that rather than being moralizing, it is exploratory.108 That is, tragedy does not simply preach or admonish by articulating or promoting contemporary morality. Rather, it probes, questions, and challenges that morality.109 It is more similar to meta-ethics than to ethics itself.110 Contrast, for instance, the force and form of the Hesiodic sentiment, ¼Œı ŒÅ Å o æØ Zç ºº ·| o æØ ªæ ŒÆŒc ØºﬁH æﬁH (‘Listen to justice and do not promote insolence, for insolence is bad for a poor man’),111 with the Euripidean one, N AØ ÆPe ŒÆºe çı ç Ł –Æ, PŒ q i Içº Œ IŁæØ æØ (‘If the good and the wise were the same thing to everyone, there would not be disputatious strife amongst men’).112 What is more, tragedy is especially ‘good’ (informative, interesting) meta-ethics, conveying the relationship between values or valuations in a way that both allows them their full emotional impact and plays their confrontation out to an all too ‘real’ conclusion—features lacking in ordinary philosophical examples. As Mary Whitlock Blundell describes it, tragedy frequently dramatises particular cases of the kind of problem that moral philosophy attempts to solve, and in doing so may help to shed light on such issues by placing them in a new perspective. It offers us a concrete, particular and urgent enactment of a crisis, encouraging us to identify with the subjective viewpoint of particular ﬁgures, without preventing us from judging them. At the same time it is free to avoid the

107

Murray 1986: 18. See also Nussbaum 1986: 12; Goldhill 1986: 140–1; Blundell 1989: 4–7; Dover 1994: 16. 108 For the traditional view of poetry, cf. Plato, Protagoras 326b. Blundell makes the distinction well (1989: 13) in respect of tragedy between moralizing and exploratory poetry. 109 Cf. Pelling 1997: 219–20 on the extent to which poetry could comfortably challenge the ‘everyday assumptions’ of the audience despite its acknowledged moral role. See also Goldhill 1986: 77–8; Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 33; Blundell 1989: 12–16, 272–3; Holt 1999: 687. For a critique of this interpretation of the role of tragedy, see Heath 1999. 110 Meta-ethics is concerned with the foundation of ethics. Where ethics is concerned with ‘ﬁrst order’ practical or normative statements, statements that make direct value judgements such as ‘X is good’ or ‘Y is right’, meta-ethics is a ‘second order’ activity that investigates the concepts and justiﬁcations involved in ethics and the relationship between different ethical statements. 111 Works and Days 213–14. 112 Phoenissae 499–500.

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kind of trivial particular that may blur the dilemmas of real life, thus prompting reﬂections extending beyond the speciﬁc situation.113

Or, as Nussbaum explains: ‘A whole tragic drama, unlike a schematic philosophical example making use of a similar story, is capable of tracing the history of a complex pattern of deliberation . . . As it does this, it lays open to view the complexity, the indeterminacy, the sheer difﬁculty of actual human deliberations.’114

B. The tragic moment: epic versus tragedy The genre of tragedy, then, is a unique fusion of poetry and ethics. It is unique in that it problematizes ethics: it explores current morality and mines it for contradictions. Contradictions between what? In order to answer this question, it is helpful to consider an aspect of how Greek tragedy developed and what its purposes were. Tragedy was an art form that thrived in a very speciﬁc context:115 it was the special ethical landscape of ﬁfth-century Athens that inspired the ‘tragic’ conﬂicts and ‘tragic’ consciousness which were to deﬁne it.116 This ethical landscape, as we have seen in our discussion of Protagoras, was characterized by ‘debate and doubt and conﬂict over the belief-system of ancient Greeks’.117 What was it about ﬁfthcentury Athens that allowed the dramatization of serious ethical tension to become a focal point of its civic identity? What was the moral climate like there such that conﬂict was intimately wrapped up with community? The answer lies in the nature of the conﬂicts dramatized. And to understand the nature of those conﬂicts, we must return to Homer. 113

Blundell 1989: 7. Nussbaum 1986: 14. 115 Tragedy most likely began in the late sixth century bce, but its pinnacle was during the ﬁfth century. On the uncertainty of the early chronology, see West 1989 and Parker 1996: 92–3. 116 What follows is essentially Jean-Pierre Vernant’s idea of ‘le moment tragique’ (see Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: ch. 1). For descriptions and defences of aspects of this thesis, see Lloyd 1979: 236–64, 1990: especially 58–67; Gould 1983: 34–5; Goldhill 1987, 1992: 16–18, 1997: 334–6; Irwin, at Kraut 1999: 58–61. The political (as opposed to economic) basis of the thesis and its chronological accuracy are challenged by Seaford 2004: 175–89. Rhodes contests (2003) the democratic basis. 117 Gould 1983: 35. The contrast and conﬂicts between city and individual and present and past, and their importance for tragedy, is well elucidated by Shirley A. Barlow in her introduction to the Euripides series of Aris &Phillips. 114

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As mentioned in the previous section, the Homeric poems set important precedents for tragedy in both their subject matter and their presentation of heroic ethics. Indeed, ‘tragedy’s rewriting of ancient tales develops a speciﬁc ﬁfth-century awareness and questioning of its relation to Homeric values’.118 The characters of the great epics found their way onto the stage of ﬁfth-century Athens and so did their moral substance and strategies. In tragedy, the epic hero is resurrected and made to stand, often uncomfortably, against the backdrop of the polis. The tension between the two, embodied in, among other ways, the contrast between chorus and actor, gives a large number of the plays their shape.119 The purpose of this juxtaposition of past and present is to address several difﬁculties between the individual and community—between the honour-centred ethics of epic and the more cooperative ethics of the polis—difﬁculties that evolved from the way in which Homeric morality was incorporated into a ﬁfth-century civic framework.120 As Goldhill summarizes Vernant’s thesis: ‘The form of tragedy, with its interrelation of hero and chorus, on the one hand, and its structural basis in the agôn, on the other is uniquely suited to the expression not merely of conﬂict within a system of ideas, but also, more speciﬁcally, of conﬂict that stems from a tension between individual and collective responsibilities and duties . . . ’.121 This last conﬂict is one that comes to a head in the distinct democratic and social milieu of ﬁfth-century Athens. The conﬂicts of tragedy are in this very important way linked with the conﬂicts of Homer. And it is this link which is particularly important for our understanding of pluralism in Sophocles. There are four prongs to the relationship between Homeric conﬂict and Sophoclean tragedy. First, Homer’s Iliad provides a paradigm of ethical deliberation that will be both adopted and adapted by Sophocles. The ‘monism’ of the Homeric hero is revived in the Sophoclean tragedy in an exaggerated form. Ajax, Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes all face a dilemma in which the alternatives before them are both incompatible and incommensurable, in which by opting for one way 118 Goldhill 1986: 146. For good discussions of the relationship between Homer and tragedy, text, and tradition, see MacIntyre 1981: 132–45; Goldhill 1986: ch. 6; 1992: 8–53; Hesk 2003: 31–2. 119 Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 33 ff. For a different view of the role of the chorus, see Gould 2001: 378–404. 120 Cf. MacIntyre 1981: ch. 11 and Whitby 1996: 36. 121 Goldhill 1997: 335.

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rather than the other, something concrete—and of fundamental signiﬁcance—will be ignored or lost. In a theoretical sense, the conﬂict resists easy adjudication. But it is resolved by each with little or no regret (the extent to which this is true for Ajax and Antigone will be discussed below). In the same way that the principle of honour was found to be determinate for the heroes in Homer, so too it functions on Sophocles’ tragic stage. In both authors the demise and death of the hero (when it occurs) serves to illustrate the tragedy inherent in monistic deliberation, as well as the tensions built into the heroic code. Where they differ most importantly, however, is that while the epic gives the sense that the hero is, in the ﬁnal analysis, doing the ‘right’ thing or making the ‘best’ decision, the tragedy provides no such comfort. The second way in which Sophocles draws on Homer is by his use of conﬂicts that are already present in epic. Ajax’s dilemma, for example, is a re-enactment of the situation faced by Hector in Iliad 6. But while Sophoclean dilemmas are usually monistic as in Homer, Sophoclean disagreements tend to be pluralist. That is to say, the clash between two ethical perspectives, as instantiated in two characters and (in certain cases) crystallized in the agōn, is not presented as singularly or determinately resolvable. Both Ajax and Philoctetes, for example, address the tension between the heroic ideals of Achilles and Odysseus, a tension which is never explicitly articulated in epic but always present. These two men represent distinct, and sometimes competing, versions of the Homeric hero. In the hands of Sophocles, the conﬂict between them is left insoluble, as we shall see. So too, Electra’s dilemma harks back to Homer’s presentation of Agamemnon and Orestes. The question of the sacriﬁce and the matricide—suppressed in the epic—are brought to life in ﬁerce form by the disagreement of a daughter and her mother. The third way in which Homer is instrumental for appreciation of Sophoclean pluralism is through the code of ethics the epic poems enshrine. This heroic system returns in tragedy as a competitor for ﬁfth-century morality. Antigone is a showcase for how the values of the heroic individual, motivated by concerns of personal honour, can clash sharply with those of the polis. Antigone and Creon represent two irreconcilable systems of belief. The play closes with no unambiguous indication that one is universally better than the other. This large-scale conﬂict is also prominent in Philoctetes in the form of the disagreement between Neoptolemus and Odysseus, as well as that

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between Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, where heroic ideas of anger and honour are pitted against values of loyalty and friendship. Finally, taken together the Homeric poems also set a precedent for Sophocles, indeed for tragedy generally, in what it is that actually constitutes the tragic. We saw how much of the pathos of the Iliad stems from the sacriﬁce the heroes are forced, by virtue of their own heroism, to make; from the loss and pain they suffer, and suffer knowingly, as a result; from the fact that they are forced to extreme circumstances, in many instances death, because of their unbending subscription to certain ethical standards; and from the inevitability that other people, who are often cast in a sympathetic light and who are representative of the values the hero must ignore, are seriously hurt. The Sophoclean tragedies we will now examine incorporate and interweave these distinct Homeric precedents. In doing so, they move beyond weak pluralism to create plays with strongly pluralist meaning.

VII Ajax: moral certainty 1. SOPHOCLES AND HOMER The attitude towards moral dilemma and disagreement that we found in the Iliad is not fully developed. As one scholar expresses it, Homer ‘planted seminal ideas in his poems without cultivating them further’.1 This observation about the poetic limitations, or perhaps expectations, of the epic genre is our starting point for an understanding not only of the Sophoclean inheritance of Homer, but also of the tragedian’s relationship with pluralism. Sophocles is Homer’s most important cultivator in this respect. That is to say, his plays are devoted to the philosophical implications and consequences of those questions of value conﬂict and incommensurability that Homer set in motion. Unlike Homer, Sophocles had a discrete position on such questions, a position which his tragedies were, at least in part, designed to articulate. It is the argument here that Sophocles moved beyond the weak pluralism of Homer in favour of a stronger pluralist approach, but, at the same time, that Homeric morality played an important role in deﬁning his perspective. To comprehend fully the pluralism of Sophocles, then, we must grasp how and at what points he departs from Homer. This is not a straightforward task, for at ﬁrst glance Sophocles appears to pull away from his epic predecessor in two contrary directions. On the one hand he seems to surpass Homer in the monism of his protagonists. On the other, his plays are even more focused on expressing and exploring grave moral conﬂict between characters.

1

Stanford 1992: 7.

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What follows is an attempt to reconcile these two positions and to show that both dramatic tendencies work towards the same goal—the ﬁrst indirectly and the second directly—such that, taken together, they constitute a pluralist message. Our investigation of the Homeric epics revealed the author’s unique perspective concerning the nature of moral conﬂict. Through the portrait of heroism drawn in the Iliad, the idea that deep-seated ethical dilemmas and disagreements are endemic to life was given evocative expression. And yet so too was the belief that, ultimately, such conﬂicts are resolvable in terms of the very ‘code’ which delimits what it means to be a hero. For Homer, heroism is intimately linked with a certain sort of conﬂict-resolution: what we have earlier described as monism. That is to say, by virtue of the fact that he will live and die as a hero, a character is forced to adopt a monistic approach to decision making, in effect, to deny the existence of genuine moral dilemma. As we saw above, men such as Odysseus and Hector are quite capable of going through the motions of deliberation. Indeed, it is the description of these mental processes that alerts the reader as to what is at stake on both sides of an issue (and is ultimately why we categorized Homer as a weak pluralist). But the choice a Homeric hero makes, the action he takes when push comes to shove, while ostensibly an outgrowth of that process, has in actuality been predetermined: not simply, as has been so readily assumed, by the gods alone or by internal, appetitive forces, but rather by the binding norms of epic society: the interlocking considerations of honour and shame. As Cedric Whitman says of Achilles, ‘his grief and death are not foreordained by an external fate; they are foreordained by that innermost quality known to Homer—aretē’.2 There is a paradox, then, in heroism. ‘The heroes are prepared to sacriﬁce everything, even life, to their principles, to the maintenance of their standards’, and it is such a sacriﬁce, we learned earlier, which constitutes an important source of their tragedy.3 To know, however, that in the last analysis one is ready and willing to sacriﬁce everything to a single principle is to mitigate the effects of sacriﬁcing anything at all. It is to dampen the sense of loss and regret that genuine value conﬂict will inevitably generate.

2

Cf. Whitman 1951: 60.

3

Winnington-Ingram 1980: 10.

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One of the main reasons for including the Iliad as a prelude to our discussion of Sophoclean tragedy is to draw attention to this infrequently noticed fact that heroism and monism go hand in hand.4 The intransigence, blinkeredness, and blind adherence to principle which characterize the most heroic of heroes are the lifeblood of a monistic moral attitude. It was Homer who introduced us to this kind of hero and this kind of attitude. It is the contention of this chapter, however, that Sophocles was a pluralist or, at any rate, a proto-pluralist; that his plays reﬂect the overlapping relationship set out above (VI.1) between the pluralist view of conﬂict and tragedy as sacriﬁce and loss; and that, consequently, his conception of the tragic is based on such a reﬂection. Yet Sophocles is known as the most Homeric of the tragedians and as the creator par excellence of the ‘heroic temper’.5 How do we explain this apparent inconsistency? The following section answers the question by examining how Sophocles uses and abuses Homeric models of ethics. It will be argued that the point of drawing such stark and stubborn heroes is twofold. First, it is to underline the internal contradictions in the heroic moral code in a way that moves beyond Homer. And secondly, it is to explore the uniquely tragic consequences of living and dying by reference to a single, preordained end. It is, in other words, to illustrate that ‘tragedy is inherent not only in the human condition and the individual destiny, but in the very standards of heroism’.6 For Sophocles, as for all pluralists, tragedy is an integral feature of the world because irresolvable conﬂict is an inescapable part of our moral existence.7 Sophocles’ genius is to show dramatically—and powerfully—that failing to recognize this fact can be the source of an even more profound tragedy.

4

Cf. Knox 1964: 10–11 and Winnington-Ingram 1980: 9. On ‘most Homeric’, cf. Life of Sophocles 20. See also Kirkwood 1965; Easterling 1984: 1; Farmer 1998: 24–33. The idea of a ‘heroic temper’ is, of course, the subject of Knox 1964, although the Sophoclean protagonists’ set of shared attributes has been noticed by many. Cf. esp. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 307ff. and Goldhill 1986: 154ff. 6 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 311. 7 Cf. Sicherl 1977: 93 for the idea that the Sophoclean view of tragedy is one of ‘inescapable conﬂict grounded in the structure of the world’. 5

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2. AJ AX: HEROISM AND MONISM It is by now a commonplace to suggest, with the ancient moralist Polemo, that Sophocles was the tragic Homer.8 Much scholarly analysis has been devoted to the task of discovering and developing the links between these two great poets and, in particular, into excavating the echoes, both verbal and symbolic, of the Iliad in Ajax.9 For it is this play of Sophocles, set at Troy and concerned with several of Homer’s principal characters, which is often considered the most Homeric of all. But we must be careful in how we are to understand such a characterization of Sophocles’ relationship with Homer. For ‘neither Trojan war themes nor the use of Iliadic characters necessarily implies Homeric imitation or reminiscence’.10 More importantly, perhaps, nor does it imply acceptance of the Homeric ethical perspective. So while Sophocles has in some sense adopted the notion of the Homeric hero and incorporated him into his tragic world, this is not to say that such a hero fulﬁls the same moral role on the ﬁfthcentury stage as he did in the earlier epic. We must assume, as P. E. Easterling observes, that Sophocles ‘is likely to be transmuting his sources into something new and distinctively his own’.11 Easterling and others have shown how parallels may be drawn between the value conﬂict of the Iliad and that of Ajax. In doing so, they have concentrated mainly on the substance of those conﬂicts, analysing the similarities and differences between Hector’s dilemma, as articulated before Andromache as well as his parents, and Ajax’s, in relation to both Tecmessa and Telamon.12 But comparatively little has been written about Sophocles’ interest in the Homeric method of conﬂictresolution, that monistic paradigm of decision-making we outlined above in which claims of honour are paramount and deterministic. The relevant questions then become: ‘How do Sophoclean heroes make moral decisions?’ and ‘What is the larger import for Sophoclean tragedy of the inclusion of such a decision-making style?’

8

Diogenes Laertius 4.20. See, in particular, Kirkwood 1965; Easterling 1984; Garner 1990: 49–64; March 1991–93: 9ff.; Farmer 1998; Hesk 2003: 24–34, ch. 4 passim. 10 Farmer 1998: 25. 11 Easterling 1984: 1. Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 16 and Goldhill 1986: 155–6. 12 Iliad 6.403–93, 22.38–130. 9

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A. Beyond Achilles The Sophoclean hero is a creature of extremes. He is born from the hard-hearted characters of the Iliad—the relentless pride of Achilles, Hector’s unwavering resolve—but closer consideration reveals that he transcends even these men in his heroism.13 The Sophoclean hero is in this way an exaggerated form of the Homeric hero. He ‘offers an extreme representation of the heroic code’ that ‘does not simply reﬂect a Homeric model but offers a speciﬁc depiction, distorted in its extremism’.14 This is particularly true of Sophocles’ Ajax, who is ‘not just the typical Homeric, the Achillean, hero, but rather one who carries the implications of the heroic code to the extreme possible point, as no one in Homer, and perhaps no one in real life, ever did’.15 For our purposes, the most important implication of this relationship between the heroes of Sophocles and those of Homer is the affect they have on the moral (or, more accurately, the meta-ethical) import of the respective authors’ poetry. If Ajax is, in a certain sense, a caricature of Achilles (for example), then it follows that he must be even more monistic than him, he must approach conﬂict with even less ﬂexibility and less recognition of the claims of competing values.16 A brief examination of the ﬁrst half of Ajax will illustrate that this is precisely the case.

B. Ajax’s dilemma: a monistic approach Sophocles’ Ajax, then, is an especially Homeric-styled character, clearly and deliberately moulded from the literary clay of the Iliad. In this way, we can say that his ethics are Homeric ethics, his values Homeric values.17 But for Ajax, an extreme version of the Iliadic hero, the pull of honour and glory must be even stronger and more motivating than they were for his Homeric analogue.18 How does

13

Cf. Knox 1964: 50–2; 1979: 135, 144, 146; Blundell 1989: 9 n. 28. Goldhill 1986: 156. 15 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 19. Cf. Knox 1979: 135, Gould 2001: 165–6; Hesk 2003: 32–3, 140–1. 16 Ajax himself judges his own worth in relation to Achilles: Ajax 441–4. 17 See Zanker 1992 and Gellie 1972: 10. 18 See esp. Ajax 430–40 and 473–80, the latter of which has been described (Farmer 1998: 28) as ‘one of the most striking statements . . . of the heroic creed in extant Greek tragedy (or epic)’. Cf. also Blundell 1989: 71–2. 14

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this manifest itself in Ajax’s tragedy? Achilles and Hector, as we have seen, were acutely aware of the contradictions ingrained in the moral system under which they lived. They were made sensitive to the reality of value conﬂict and to feel, if only brieﬂy, its discomfort. Ajax, on the other hand, is ruthless in his denial of such conﬂict in a way that foreshadows Plato’s attitude (see VI.2.E above): ‘At every point we see Ajax—the Sophoclean Ajax—rejecting anything which might mitigate his ﬁerce concentration upon the pursuit, the maintenance, and the restoration, of his prestige.’19 It is obvious that Ajax’s dilemma in the play is closely akin to Hector’s in the epic.20 For both men, the demands of being a hero, of securing or reinstating one’s honour, come in to sharp conﬂict with the demands of his philoi (‘friends’, ‘family’). To choose to die, be it on the battleﬁeld or on the beach, is to fail to protect your family from the outrage it will suffer, once you are gone, at the hands of your echthroi (‘enemies’).21 Similarly, both men are faced with plaintive appeals from their dependants. But while both ultimately reject such appeals (as they must), the way in which each hero registers and reacts to them is signiﬁcant.22 We saw above how Hector felt a genuine pull emanating from those values which Andromache represented—values of family, loyalty, love. He felt a responsibility to acknowledge their claim on him and, it can be argued, sadness (or at least regret) at the prospect of not fulﬁlling them. Can we say the same for Ajax vis-à-vis Tecmessa (and the chorus)?23 How does his deliberation process and attitude toward his ‘dilemma’ differ from those of Hector? After the livestock has been slaughtered and the madness has subsided, Ajax is mortiﬁed by his actions. More accurately, he is devastated by his failure to accomplish what he had set out to accomplish (372–6): the destruction of the Greek host in retaliation 19

Winnington-Ingram 1980: 19. See esp. Zanker 1994: 64–71. On the centrality of the theme of friends and enemies in Ajax, see Knox 1979: 141, passim; Blundell 1989: ch. 3; Goldhill 1986: 85–8. 22 For the deﬁnition of a hero as one who resists ‘the blandishments of women and old men . . . ’, see Grifﬁn 1995: 27. Cf. Iliad 6.258ff. (Hecuba), 6.359ff. (Helen), 6.429 ff. (Andromache), 11.717ff. (Nestor’s father), 22.317–92 (Priam and Hecuba); Odyssey 2.357ff. (Penelope), 4.271–89 (Helen), 5.203–24 (Calypso). 23 Both Tecmessa’s (392–3) and the chorus’ (136–40) dependence on Ajax is explicitly expressed before the ofﬁcial deliberation takes place. Cf. 518–20, 1211–16. On the chorus’ interdependence with Ajax, though, see Hesk 2003: 48–9. 20 21

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for the outrage he felt at being denied Achilles’ arms. Sane again, he is even more miserable than before (271–7), for now the full perplexity of his circumstance begins to dawn on him. He has been made to look a fool not once but twice, dishonour stacked upon dishonour, and he will most likely be killed for his betrayal (408–9).24 What can he do to rectify the situation, to regain the honour he so desperately craves (457): ŒÆd F åæc æA (‘And now what must I do’)? Ajax makes a series of three speeches in response to this question, but we must note that the seeds of his resolve to die can be found even earlier.25 The outcome of his ﬁrst speech (430–80) therefore, made before Tecmessa registers any of her appeals, is predetermined.26 Indeed, it feels here as if Ajax lists and rejects his options almost for rhetoric’s sake, similar in a way to Odysseus in Iliad 11. By the time Tecmessa even has an opportunity to dissuade him, he has proffered a seemingly unshakeable expression of the heroic code and of what he must do. Going home in shame, failing to meet his father’s expectations (460–5), bringing happiness to his enemies (466–9)—these are patterns of behaviour antithetical to what it is to be a hero, and he dismisses them all in turn, in unmistakably vehement language.27 It is unlikely that Tecmessa can contribute anything to change his mind. She does, contrary to what some critics maintain, attempt to speak to him on his own terms:28 allowing your philoi to be dishonoured brings dishonour upon you (492–505).29 She begs him not to shame his parents and does so, again, with words carefully chosen

24 Ajax describes himself as ¼Ø (‘without honor’) at 426–7 in respect of murder gone wrong, and again at 440 in respect of the denial of his rightful prize. Cf. IØı (‘dishonor’) at 98. For Ajax as the champion of the timē (‘honour’) standard, see Zanker 1994: 65–7. 25 See 326–7, 361 (Iºº ı Ø, ‘join in killing me’); 391 (º ŁØØ ŒÆP , ‘[how might I] ﬁnally die myself ’); 416–22. 26 Cf. Blundell 1989: 78. 27 PŒ Ø hæª ºÅ (‘That is unbearable’, 466); PŒ Ø ÆFÆ (‘These things are not possible’, 470). Cf. Iºº P b æª ÆFÆ ŁæÅ EŁÆØ Å (‘There is no reason to lament these things fruitlessly’, 852). For the signiﬁcance of the link between father and honor and shame, see Gellie 1972: 10–11; Farmer 1998: 29 n.32; Hesk 2003: 60–1. 28 See, for this view, Gellie 1972: 11 and Reinhardt 1979: 19. Cf. Holt 1981: 278–9 and, for the literature, Hesk 2003: 171 n. 34. 29 For the idea that one’s own timē is diminished if one’s family and friends are harmed, cf. Gagarin 1987: 290 and Yamagata 1994: 137–8.

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for their chance of resonating with him (506–9);30 to pity his son (510–13);31 and ﬁnally to consider her own plight, she who has been kind to him in the past (514–24).32 Yet, taken together, these pleas make very little impact on Ajax.33 Appeals to pity the weak and to respect the aged, claims for gratitude for services done in the past, all of these fall on deaf ears though, as R. P. Winnington-Ingram points out, ‘they were appeals to which a hero might respond.’34 When such ethical considerations come into conﬂict with honour, for the Sophoclean hero they are easily ranked.35

C. Deception and irony So far Ajax has appeared the perfect monist. He has articulated the ethic or principle which must govern his behavior as an Pª —Iºº j ŒÆºH ÇB j ŒÆºH ŁÅŒÆØ e Pª B åæ (‘It is necessary for the noble man to either live well or die well’, 479–80)—and he has made his decision in light of it.36 He has embraced honor (the byproduct of ŒÆºH ÇB) as an absolute standard by which to make alternatives commensurable and has remained blind, immune, to the existence of any competing values or obligations.37 But then comes that enigmatic speech at 646–92, the so-called deception 30 Iºº ÆY ÆØ b ÆæÆ e e . . . ÆY ÆØ b ÅæÆ . . . (‘Feel shame before your father . . . feel shame before your mother’, 506–7). Cf. Iliad 24.486–94. 31 Cf. Iliad 22.490–8. 32 Cf. Iliad 6.411–30. 33 He does, of course, suggest in his second speech alternative arrangements for Eurysaces (562–3) and for his parents (567–71). But these suggestions serve to divert Tecmessa’s appeals rather than to take them on board. His immediate concern for his son does not show a softening, but rather a conﬁrmation that his mind is made up. Ajax’s main care, as always, is his honour both in life and in death. Eurysaces is now responsible for the continuation of that honour. Cf. Taplin 1979: 125 n. 12. 34 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 19. My emphasis. It should be noted that, although a hero might ‘respond’ to such appeals, he could never be persuaded by them if it meant sacriﬁcing his honour (so, for example, Hector). 35 Euripides’ Heracles makes an interesting contrast with Ajax’s attitude towards suicide (Heracles Furens 1349–60), Heracles who is an Odyssean-styled hero. See Finkelberg 1995: 10. 36 On Ajax’s preoccupation with eugeneia (‘nobility’), see Holt 1981: 276–8 (for the latent fear of aidōs, see 279 n. 10) and Gellie 1972: 14, 27. For his goal as kleos, cf. Ajax 769. 37 Or even competing interpretations of what the values and obligations are that should be considered. This is most appositely illustrated by Tecmessa’s attempt and failure to shift the meaning of Pª (520–4). Cf. Cairns 1993: 233–4.

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speech, where we are prompted to question such an interpretation of Ajax. Perhaps our protagonist is not, after all the, single-minded man we thought he was. Perhaps, like the Homeric hero, he is more sensitive to the contingencies and conﬂicts of life than we had previously imagined. Every critic of Ajax has noticed the centrality of this speech to a sound interpretation of the drama at large: ‘The key to an understanding of this harsh and beautiful play is the great speech in which Ajax debates his course of action and explores the nature of man’s life on earth . . . ’.38 And yet there is no clear consensus on what it actually means—that is, what dramaturgical function it fulﬁls.39 Is Ajax deliberately deceiving his friends? Has he really entertained the idea of not killing himself? Is his language purposely ambiguous? Is the pity he professes for Tecmessa grounded in true feelings?

A reversal of values Fortunately, there is a sense in which we can distance ourselves from this constellation of fraught issues as well as from the overarching question of whether Ajax’s purpose here is to dupe or not. For the present argument, two aspects of the speech, taken together, must be given precedence—one is concerned with its content, the other with its import. The ﬁrst is the fact that what is voiced at 646–92 is a reversal of the values Ajax has espoused in the ﬁrst half of the play. That is, his language here ‘echoes values of Odysseus, Tecmessa and the chorus for which he elsewhere shows nothing but scorn’.40 Whether he is lying or not, speaking in cryptic or in clear language, it is undeniable that the sentiments Ajax voices on emergence from his tent touch precisely upon those considerations that the heroic code, as expressed by Ajax himself, disallows as motivation for action. The second signiﬁcant aspect of the speech is its relationship with the sequence of the plot. For it is undeniable that Ajax ultimately 38

Knox 1979: 125. Cf. Jebb 1896: xxxiii. On the host of different and conﬂicting interpretations of the speech, see Sicherl 1977; Goldhill 1986: 181ff.; Hesk 2003: 74–6. For bibliography, see Blundell 1989: 83 n. 116; Crane 1990: 89 n.1; Farmer 1998: 19 n.1. 40 Cf. Blundell 1989: 82. She goes on to enumerate these values as the alteration of the human mind with time (648f., 594f., 1361), pity (652; cf. 121, 510, 525, 580), softening under the inﬂuence of friends (650–2; cf. 330, 594f., 1353), yielding to the gods (655f., 666f.; cf. 112f., 589f., 766–75). For the view that Tecmessa invokes the quieter virtues in her speech, see Adkins 1960: 44 and Garvie 1998: 169. 39

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rejects the considerations he has raised either in duplicity or sincerity (815–65).41 The crux of the matter in this respect is that Ajax chooses to die. This is a dramatic and mythological certainty. Whether he was at one point moved to pity or not, whether he truly recognized the mutability of the world or not, in the last analysis he does not abide by the norms he outlines in his speech, for it is impossible, we know well, for a hero to do so. ‘When we next see Ajax, it is as preparing to kill himself, with curses on the Greek leaders, and with no indication of any hesitations in his extreme attitudes of hatred and regard for his honour.’42 He falls on his sword having reasserted his old ethic, his mind as ﬁxed on and by the heroic code as it ever was.43 These two aspects of the deception speech raise only the question of whether Ajax has rejected this alternative set of values once or twice.

Changes in intention, changes in mood And yet, the answer to this question does have relevant implications, and this is the sense in which we must take a position on the deception issue. For if we are to claim that Ajax is more monistic than Hector, we must illustrate that he is less sensitive to the conﬂict at hand—the clash between honour and kin with which we are so familiar from Iliad 6—and that he is indeed less responsive to the moral pressures that his philoi might otherwise exert over him. In this way, the present argument is somewhat dependent on whether Ajax is in fact moved to pity, ‘torn with imaginative compassion’ as Hector so strikingly was.44 It is dependent, that is, on whether he undergoes a change in mood even if not a change in intention. One of the most interesting recent interpretations of the Trugrede focuses on its similarity not with the famous farewell scene of Iliad 6 but with Hector’s deliberative soliloquy in Book 22.45 There are clear parallels, Mark Farmer contends, between Homer’s depiction of Hector’s deliberations preceding his death and Sophocles’ depiction of those of Ajax. To analyse the deception speech as an analogue to any of the deliberative monologues of the Iliad is instructive, as it creates a 41

Cf. Knox 1979: 134. Goldhill 1986: 190–1. 43 Cf. Kirkwood 1958: 47; Knox 1979: 151; Reinhardt 1979: 28; WinningtonIngram 1980: 51–2. 44 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 16. 45 Farmer 1998. Hesk also makes the point (2003: 60). 42

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framework in which to orchestrate a comparison between the Homeric reaction to value conﬂict and the Sophoclean one. We can readily see the similarities between the two men’s surrounding circumstances. Like Hector, Ajax views his entire plight through the prism of honour, bound as he is by the heroic code; he will resolve his conﬂict in these terms. And like Hector, Ajax ultimately rejects any course of action that will result in shame. But it is the differences that are more telling. Both men fail to fulﬁl a fundamental aspect of the traditional code of heroic values—the support and protection of dependent philoi—but only Ajax disregards it.46 Only Ajax fails to meet this obligation and fails to acknowledge that it still applies to him. This blindness is a fundamental part of his character.47 In respect of the deception speech, therefore, we cannot conclude with Farmer that, ‘[l]ike Hector in his soliloquy, Ajax is uncertain and undecided as he explores, contemplates, and maps out his next step’.48 Nor can we agree with C. M. Bowra, who maintains that ‘we must take his words to mean what he now thinks. Their poetry is too genuine, their emotion too strong for them to be a calculated piece of deceit’.49 Nor with Richard Jebb, that Ajax ‘has been touched by Tecmessa’s pleading; he does feel pity’.50 To clarify, there are three logically distinct issues here. The ﬁrst is whether Ajax undergoes a change of intention. On this point, I think the rhythm of the text is rather clear: Ajax does not change his mind and then change it back again—especially with no explanation.51 The second issue is whether he is deliberately deceiving Tecmessa and the chorus, and on this, for the present, we can say that he was, at least to some extent (more on this below).52 And even if, as several learned 46 It is worthwhile drawing attention to the obvious point that Hector fails his philoi in the process of trying to protect them in some larger sense. 47 On character in Sophoclean tragedy, see Easterling’s chapter in Segal 1983; Blundell 1989: 16–25; Goldhill and Easterling in Pelling 1990; Hesk 2003: 133–6. 48 Farmer 1998: 41. 49 Bowra 1944: 40. 50 Jebb 1896: xxxiii. Original emphasis. For others who advocate the view that Ajax was truly softened, see Kitto 1939: 121; Moore 1977: 61; Taplin 1979; Easterling 1984; Crane 1990: 94; March 1991–3: 19; Gill 1998: 211; Garvie 1998: 197. 51 Goldhill helpfully observes (1986: 181) that ‘the debate of earlier critics as to whether Ajax has changed his mind or not has hardened into a general opinion that his intention to commit suicide does not waver . . . ’. 52 This too is a ‘majority’ opinion. I recognize that I am being dogmatic here but it seems that there is a general consensus on these two points, on which cf. Knox 1979: 134ff. and Winnington-Ingram 1980: 47.

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scholars have argued, the speech is a soliloquy, intended for the ears of nobody but the audience, the result is that the characters feel deceived: Tecmessa bemoans that she was MÆÅÅ (‘deceived’, 807), the chorus admit Kªø › Æ Œøç , › ¼Ø æØ, | ŒÆÅºÅÆ (‘I, deaf to all things, ignorant of all things, I was heedless’, 911–12).53 But the third issue is the most relevant, and unfortunately most vexed, and this is the question of whether Ajax undergoes a change in mood. It is interesting that even those commentators who agree that Ajax never wavered in his resolve to die and that he was in fact lying believe that his pity for Tecmessa is genuine.54 ‘But’, as Blundell insightfully observes, ‘if the speech is a deception, then the entire ruse is predicated on the speaker’s alleged pity, which suggests that the pity itself is a lie. Further, pity is one of a complex of values accepted by others but rejected elsewhere by Ajax. Why should it be the only sincere element in the speech?’55

Irony and the presentation of Ajax To understand that Ajax was never moved to pity, that he never dithered in either intention or mood, we have to ask the key question: why? Not simply, why does he deceive—an undeniably logical answer is available here.56 But rather, why is he made to give expression— perhaps we could say, pay lip service—to the set of values which he has spurned in the past and which he will spurn at his death less than a couple of hundred lines later? Why is he made to articulate so poignantly and arrestingly a vision of the world which is the opposite of how he has thus far conducted his life?57 It is entirely conceivable 53 For the speech as monologue, see, esp., Sicherl 1977: 89 n.92; Knox 1979: 136ff.; Farmer 1998: 33–45. Cf. also Stevens 1986: 328ff. 54 For this interpretation, see, among many others, Jebb 1896: xxxviii. 55 Blundell 1989: 82 n.104. Cf. also Cairns 1993: 334 n.3. 56 Which is the fact that he wanted to get away unmolested. Cf. Blundell 1989: 84 n. 122 and, in contrast, Knox 1979: 135–6, who makes the valid point that Tecmessa and the chorus are in no position, physically, to offer any real resistance to the bulk of Ajax. Both critics agree that there must be a more profound reason for not only the deception but the philosophy of the speech. See also Stevens 1986: 330. For a different view on the function of the speech, which sees it primarily as the answer to a dramatic problem, see Lesky 1965: 102. 57 For Ajax as the embodiment of permanence (as opposed to the changeability he talks about in his speech) and for the signiﬁcance in the play of the concept of I (‘always’), see Knox 1979: 14ff.

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for Ajax to have spoken something quite different from this and to have still managed to ‘trick’ his companions. The reason he says what he does and says it in the way that he does is, I think, because the speech is deeply ironic.58 The tone of the speech is as uncharacteristic as is the content. It is written in a lofty, abstract style and not one we would readily expect from the mouth of Ajax,59 the man who, in the Iliad, reasoned with Achilles in a short burst of pragmatism,60 and who, in the Odyssey, remained remarkably, famously silent;61 who, in Pindar, was described as ¼ªºø (‘uneloquent’);62 and most importantly, who, in Sophocles, has from the very ﬁrst been portrayed as a person of action and not of words.63 58 Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 47 n. 109 and Blundell 1989: 85, who note ironies within the speech but do not elaborate on them or suggest that the speech, as a whole, is ironic. On a ‘deeper irony’, see also Kitto 1939: 121. My interpretation of the irony of the speech perhaps comes closest to Gellie’s (1972: 13ff.) and Reinhardt’s (1979: 25). It is, I think, an example of what Rosenmeyer calls (1996: 503 and 513) ‘structural irony’ and, more speciﬁcally, ‘Godot’. See also Lardinois (in De Jong and Rijksbaron: 2006), who argues that the speech has a different meaning at the level of the internal and external addressees. On his view, Ajax does not lie or deceive—his audience fails to understand. 59 Stanford (1981: 143) describes it as the ‘high philosophical style’. Kitto (1959: 188) calls the poetry ‘more weighty, more spacious yet than anything we have heard’. For him, though, as for Bowra quoted above, this somehow means that the sentiments ‘must carry conviction’. Buxton (in De Jong and Rijksbaron 2006) describes the speech as having a ‘special register’ unlike anything before. 60 Iliad 9.624–42. We should recall that Ajax does not even want to make a speech at ﬁrst. He tells Odysseus they should be going (9.624–6). Cf. Grifﬁn 1995: 22 (‘a short, bluff speech, it strikes the right manly note’) and Kirkwood 1965: 61, who describes Ajax’s speech in the embassy as one ‘of a soldier, not an orator’. Cf. also Ajax’s words of exhortation to his comrades in battle (Iliad 15.502ff., 561ff., 733ff.), which are ‘superb in their terse boldness’ (Stanford 1981: xiv). 61 Odyssey 11.541ff. Cf. Longinus, On the Sublime 9.2 and Stanford 1981: x–xi. On the ambiguous line that Odysseus could have drawn Ajax into conversation despite his (Ajax’s) anger, see Rutherford 1996: 94–5, who argues that Odysseus is here presenting himself in the best light possible. 62 Nemean 8.24. Knox, however, citing this line, believes (1979: 138) that Ajax has undergone a real transformation in character, that ‘the man whose hands had always spoken for him ﬁnds a tongue, and it is the tongue of a great poet’. On Pindar and Ajax, see Hesk 2003: 36–8. 63 His brawn (as opposed to his brains) is repeatedly emphasized by the others in the play, often in the context of warning: 127–30, 758–61, 1077ff., 1250–3. On Ajax’s massive size and strength in the Iliad, see Stanford 1981: xv n. 16, who enumerates references to the hero’s physical build and cf. Odyssey 11.556–67, 24.17–18. There remains, however, Athena’s sentiment at 119–20. About these lines I agree with Kirkwood’s observation (1965: 62), that ‘it would be wrong . . . to take these words as evidence of special skill as a counselor. What Athena’s words suggest is that Ajax has in the past shown himself to be no fool, in contrast with his present folly.’

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Indeed, we have seen Ajax playing nothing but the inarticulate, inelegant warrior from the onset: ﬁrst the frenzied murderer, raving with whip in hand over the decimated farm animals he has been deluded into thinking are men. Next the tormented outcast who sits in silence amongst the corpses (308–11) before resorting to inhuman shrieks (317ff., 334–6).64 Finally the blunt logician who lists and rejects his options in quick and very unpoetical succession (460ff.).65 Having thus revealed his character, it is Ajax himself who insists that his ethos cannot be schooled (595). Surely it is pointed that this is one of the last things we hear from him before he launches into the deception speech.

Irony and philosophy Both Sophocles’ own presentation of Ajax and the hero’s mythical reputation make it hard to take the speech at 646–92 at face value.66 I do not see how the audience would have done so. And it is even more troubling to see how the characters in the play would have, they who knew Ajax better than anyone, although certainly they could (and probably did) delude themselves into belief.67 The great deception speech, then, is not simply a catalogue of lies or half-truths designed to meet the exigencies of the dramatic situation. Rather, it should be understood as a vehicle used by Sophocles to make a more profound point, an exercise in irony in both the ancient sense that ‘something contrary to what is said is to be understood’ and also in

Furthermore, we should notice that her words are included to emphasize the power of the gods (as evidenced by 118)—their ability to turn a man from sanity to madness— rather than any special wisdom on Ajax’s part (contra Stanford 1981: xxviii n. 40). 64 ŒÆd e b w º E ¼çŁªª åæ (‘He sat speechless for most of the time’, 311). Ajax is then described as lıå (‘quiet’, 325). On Ajax’s relationship with words and language in this respect, see Segal 1981: 133–5 and Hesk 2003: 56–7. 65 In addition, he has been deliberately portrayed as curt (not to mention succinctly dismissive) to Tecmessa throughout. Cf. 293, 369, 585–95. 66 On the mental slowness and inarticulateness of Ajax in myth, see Stanford 1981: xvii–iii. Following this tradition, Shakespeare has Ajax described as ‘a beef-witted lord’ and ‘the lubber Ajax’ at Troilus and Cressida 2.1.12 and 3.3.139. 67 This was probably the case for the chorus (911–12,) but less clearly (although still possibly) so for Tecmessa (807).

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the more modern sense that it has ‘a signiﬁcance unperceived at the time, or by the persons involved’.68 Once we accept the speech’s large-scale irony, the deception question comes into sharper focus. There are three possibilities. The ﬁrst is that Ajax was not intending to deceive, for, as in modern parlance, his irony may have been completely divorced from any notion of deceit. This interpretation would satisfy critics who are uncomfortable with the Achillean Ajax resorting to what would be out-of-character lies.69 The second possibility is that he was indeed intending to deceive: in the ancient Greek world irony is very often linked with deception.70 And ﬁnally, there is the possibility that the speech operates on two levels. On the one hand it is meant to have an effect on the characters within the play, and in this way it may be purposely designed to deceive them or it may be deliberately ambiguous so as to give them at least the opportunity to understand. On the other hand, however, the speech has a special meaning for the audience. For us, it is ironic in that we know Ajax is saying the opposite of what must be understood, it is ironic in a grander philosophical sense that we shall consider now. Sophocles chooses to include such an ironic reversal of values because he is interested to show the supreme monist reﬂecting on the method of conﬂict-resolution he denies; to draw attention to the cognitive dissonance we feel when a man such as Ajax voices concern for a morality he has scorned all his life; to underline the contrast between how an extreme hero thinks and how he does not.71 The dramatic stroke of genius lies in the fact that this philosophical digression comes from Ajax himself—for such a juxtaposition of 68 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 9.2.44: ‘contrarium ei quod dicitur intellegendum est.’ This also explains the heavy use of ambiguous phrasing. If Ajax were saying one thing in order to mean the opposite, linguistic ambiguities would be appropriate. Second deﬁnition is from Chambers Dictionary. 69 For the view that it is ‘demonstrably false’ that deception is per se ‘incompatible with Ajax’s character’, see Blundell 1989: 82–4. Ajax was of course planning to slaughter the Greek army under the cover of darkness, an undeniable dolos (‘deceit’). See also Stevens 1986: 328. 70 For a demarcation of three different types of irony and the difference, in terms of intention to deceive, between modern conceptions of irony and ancient ones, see Vlastos 1991: 21–5. 71 A powerful parallel can be found in Electra’s ironic remark to Aegisthus at Electra 1464–5, ﬁH ªaæ åæ ø ﬁ F å, u ıçæ Ø E Œæ Ø (‘I have ﬁnally come to my senses: I side with the stronger’), where she is ‘pretending to do what the Sophoclean hero never does’ (Lloyd 2005: 79).

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character and language makes the point all the sharper. To have the audience hear Odysseus reciting these most awe-inspiring lines about the transience of the world and to then apply them to the plight of Ajax would be good drama.72 But to have Ajax speak them and to speak them with all the force and feeling he does, to speak them as if he wants to believe that they apply to him but simply cannot, is brilliant drama. And the only way such brilliant tragedy would be possible, given the ethos of Ajax which he himself conﬁrms is unschoolable (595), is to have him speak the opposite of what he means (lies for those in the play who do not want to believe him; irony for the audience), and to do so in a way that should make his words transparent to anyone who understands who he is. For when Ajax speaks falsely of softening and of compromise, when he talks of attending to values which clash with the ideals around which he has constructed his entire existence, this is when we come to realize most profoundly that what he is saying is an impossibility.73 With the deception speech, Sophocles does not merely show us that Ajax’s tragedy lies in his inability to exist in a world of change and conﬂict, that is to say the real world. He has Ajax show us. As Albin Lesky puts it, ‘if the words of Ajax should hide a deeper signiﬁcance . . . then it could only be this, that the hero critically surveys modes of possible behaviour which are alien to his nature and to which he cannot become reconciled’.74 On this view, the great deception speech, the rumination on the power of time and the mutability of nature, is put into Ajax’s mouth in order to highlight the fact that the world he himself describes, the world we recognize as our own, is one in which the hero cannot possibly live. It is a decidedly unheroic place in which the conﬂicts of one’s own morality must be addressed, where friends become enemies and enemies friends, where the community make claims which clash with one’s own interest. The world Ajax deﬁnes is a tragic world where change produces conﬂict and conﬂict generates loss. In this way, the words of the deception speech must be viewed as an ironic commentary on tragedy itself. For the tragedy of Ajax is not the same 72

The sentiments of the deception speech are in fact echoed by Odysseus elsewhere in the play. Cf. particularly 678–83 with 1359 and 1377. Cf. also 121–2 with 652–3. 73 Ajax exclaims that he was ‘womanized’ (KŁÅºŁÅ) at 651. Surely this must be ironic after he has just spoken so harshly of women and the female plight (293, 580). 74 Lesky 1965: 102.

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as that of Hector. Ajax does not sacriﬁce anything except his life, and this is a life which is no longer worth living. He loses nothing of value: in fact, his death is a salvation (692), it is a æ (‘pleasure’, 967). We learn from the deception speech that the tragedy of Ajax is not Ajax’s tragedy. Rather, it is the tragedy of those he leaves behind. It is the fact that there is little room for the grandeur of heroes in the ﬂux of the real world, as monism is not a successful approach for living (as opposed to dying) in a world where tragic conﬂict is endemic. Such a fact Sophocles may lament, but he knows it to be true.

D. Conclusion To conclude, we must ask: what was Sophocles’ dramatic—indeed, ethical—aim in drawing his protagonist as he did? If we are to insist that he has pluralist aims, why does he centre his play around this unmitigated monist? The answer is that just because Ajax’s ethics are Hector’s does not mean that Sophocles’ are Homer’s. Indeed, Sophocles’ stiffer, more blinkered version of the Homeric hero, let us say his caricature of him, serves a purpose. Ajax, faced with the decision between dying and salvaging his honour or protecting his family but losing face, chooses the former and does so, crucially, with no regrets. In his eyes, the options on offer are commensurable with one another and his ‘dilemma’, if we can call it that, becomes easily resolvable in terms of the moral code he unequivocally espouses. This pattern of deliberation is designed to emphasize the internal contradictions of the heroic code—that one cannot always maintain one’s honour and protect one’s family, that one cannot always harm one’s enemies and help one’s friends—a code which Sophocles knows is unworkable: as we saw above, all codes of ethics are bound to harbour conﬂict and the heroic one is no exception. 75 By making his central character an even more single-minded species of the epic hero, one who is even more resistant than was Hector or Achilles to the pull of competing values, Sophocles is underlining the tensions of the epic morality in a way that is different from Homer. Both authors would agree that Ajax’s choice to die and to maintain his honour does not conjure away the obligations he chooses against, to render all that Tecmessa represents unreal. But the 75

See Knox 1979: 128, 144.

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tragedy as a whole does not create the sense that, ultimately, Ajax did the ‘right’ thing in the way that the epic does. This is the difference between weak and strong pluralism. Ajax’s monism is pushed to the extreme possible point so that we can see even more clearly that his denial of the existence of alternative courses of action is both inhuman and destructive.

3. FROM DILEMMA TO DISAGREEMENT

A. Antilogiai: Sophocles and Protagoras The pattern of monistic deliberation that Ajax presents us with is not a one-off. In the majority of the seven extant plays of Sophocles, the protagonist is cast in a mould similar to Ajax.76 And yet, while it is true that Sophocles’ main characters are virtually always monists when it comes to the resolution of intra-personal dilemmas, the crux of many of his tragedies is to depict what happens when conﬂicts become inter-personal disagreements. That is, Sophocles has a particular fondness for exploring moral conﬂict by personifying values or sets of values and then pitting them against one another. Such a practice has the effect of emphasizing the nature of both the speciﬁc conﬂict and of conﬂict more generally. Instilling deﬁnitive moral views in the intricacies of a personality—or, to put it in a different way, linking considerations of value and depiction of character— allows for a fuller and deeper analysis of both sides of an issue. To see one person struggling with alternatives can be illuminating. Ajax, for example, could have been portrayed as more torn than he was. His heated and agonizing deliberations between honour and family could have formed the core of the tragedy. But this is not Sophocles’ way. It is an approach that would have taken the playwright only so far, for it is much more dramatically practicable to list intra-personal options (as Ajax does at 460ff.) than to enact them. 76

For a sensitive summary of the similarities as well as the differences between the seven Sophoclean heroes, see Winnington-Ingram 1980: 304–17. This feature of Electra, Antigone, and Philoctetes will be discussed in the following chapters. It is perhaps Electra (see VIII.2.A above) in whom we ﬁnd the closest parallel to Ajax in terms of the importance of honour (for herself and Agamemnon) as a deterministic principle.

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To depict each horn of a dilemma in its entirety and to show thereby the real effects of moral tragedy, Sophocles instantiates conﬂict in two people: he gives it, as it were, life (or perhaps we should say lives).77 The claims of honour, for example, are represented by Ajax and the claims of family by Tecmessa; those of the oikos (‘home’) by Antigone, the polis (‘city’) by Creon. Furthermore, it is often the case that at least one of the people involved in a Sophoclean moral disagreement is cast as the most extreme form of the position available, is cast, in other words, as the monistic hero. The purpose of the hero in the inter-personal situation (as opposed to in the intrapersonal one) is to heighten the tension of the conﬂict. The idea that there are two sides to every argument, both of which can be given full and morally sustainable expression, is not unique to Sophocles. As we saw in Chapter II, this was the explicit thesis of the sophist Protagoras, who taught º ªı r ÆØ æd Æe æªÆ IØŒ Øı IºººØ (‘There are two arguments standing opposed to each other on every issue’), who claimed to be able e e lø b º ª Œæ ø Ø E (‘to make the weaker argument the stronger’), and who wrote two books of antilogiai (‘opposing arguments’).78 There is good reason to believe that Sophocles’ style of argumentation, his ‘clear and pointed expression of opposing speeches’, shows the inﬂuence of the sophistic movement and of Protagoras more speciﬁcally.79 Now Protagoras and Sophocles were certainly contemporaries, and it is easy, as many commentators have, to see the philosophical inﬂuence of the former on the latter, particularly in respect of the two-logoi doctrine. But I think it can be argued further that the two shared a broader intellectual outlook. They were both linked with the radical statesman Pericles.80 And their extant work reveals a more speciﬁc literary overlap. Both wrote 77

The obvious example of this is to be found in Electra, where each horn of Agamemnon’s dilemma at Aulis is instantiated in a character, one side in Electra and one in Clytemnestra. 78 DK80 A1, DK80 A21. 79 Finley 1967: 77–81. Cf. De Romilly 1998: 76. Cairns begins (1993: 215) his discussion of Sophocles by placing him in a Protagorean context, commenting that ‘conﬂicts of values, sometimes irreducible, underlie much of the tragic force of Sophocles’ plays . . . ’. 80 For the connection between Protagoras and Pericles, see Plutarch, Pericles 36. Cf. Kerferd 1981: ch. 3 and O’Sullivan 1995. For that between Sophocles and Pericles, cf. Whitman 1951: 13 and Kerferd 1981: 19. Podlecki reviews (1998: 121–4) the ancient evidence. For Herodotus and Pericles (for the sake of completeness), see

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of the course of man’s progress and the powerful consequences of human craft.81 Taken together, these biographical points of contact can be used as a backdrop against which to view the two men’s common concern with the plurality of value and the reality of contrasting ethical perspectives. We saw earlier how Protagoras avowed, contra Socrates, that far from being a unity, the different parts of virtue could and did conﬂict with one another. That to be just was, after all, not necessarily to be pious or to be courageous. We also saw how Protagoras believed that man was the measure of value, that each human being is capable of determining what value is and, therefore, that morality is bound to differ from person to person as well as from community to community. These are pluralistic ideas we will also be attributing to Sophocles, in whose work the meaning of certain values is constantly shifting as between Ajax and Tecmessa, Antigone and Creon, Electra and Clytemnestra, Odysseus and Philoctetes. In this way, Sophocles’ use of tragic inter-personal conﬂict picks up where Protagoras’ programme of value plurality left off (at any rate, where our knowledge of it comes to a halt). For, like Protagoras, Sophocles appears to believe that two competing and equally compelling positions on a single issue can exist. It remains to be seen if, by denying the ultimate commensurability of the alternatives (or values) in question, he deems certain conﬂicts between them irresolvable.82

B. Incommensurability and irresolution in Sophocles To substantiate further my thesis that several of Sophocles’ tragedies contain pluralist inter-personal conﬂict, I must illustrate that, when he displays such collisions of value or perspective, he does not offer a uniquely or externally ‘correct’ answer to them. In dramaturgical terms, this means that there is no single correct interpretation of a Sophoclean tragedy as to who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’, at least

Ostwald 1991: 141–3. On the relationship between Protagoras and Sophocles, see Whitman 1951: 43 and Finley 1967: 106. 81 Plato, Protagoras 320cff., Sophocles, Antigone 332–71. Cf. Morrison 1941: 13– 14; Goldhill 1986: 203–5; Crane 1989: 108–11. 82 I have argued above that it is likely that Protagoras denies commensurability in certain moral scenarios (III.4.C).

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from a moral perspective.83 Using the parlance set out earlier, we must show that Sophocles takes care to depict that the two sides of the disagreement are incommensurable with one another and, therefore, that both can be, in some sense, ‘right’. Such a claim, of course, will need to be individually justiﬁed for the plays in question, taking on board the speciﬁc characters, plot, and ethical construction of each.84 But there are two general and interconnecting considerations that can be discussed at the outset, applicable to all four of the plays I will be examining.85 The plays of Sophocles have been the object of an unusual breadth of interpretation by brilliant critics, both ancient and modern. But what is more striking than the multiplicity of readings the plays have engendered—and this is the ﬁrst point—is the conspicuous lack of agreement amongst them.86 If we subscribe to the belief that one always reads and always understands with the preoccupations and within the framework of one’s own time or even of one’s own mind, this is hardly surprising: the play will speak to what is relevant and alive in each of its manifold readers. But we can explain the disagreement in another way which is both simpler and more telling—a way, it should be warned, easily denounced or denied by those who seek to conﬁne literary ‘meaning’ as something singular. That is, we can say that the disagreement about the play’s meaning is but a reﬂection of the play’s meaning.87 More accurately, the disagreement about the plays’ meaning is a reﬂection of the plurality of moral meanings the

83 The idea of pluralism as applied to literary criticism was discussed brieﬂy in respect of the Protagoras (III.5). 84 And even if we are successful in this small-scale enterprise, we must recognize the limits of such a success. It would be intellectually dubious to broaden our claim to the whole of the Sophoclean corpus, as there are too many plays the speciﬁc content of which we do not know. 85 Ajax, Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes have been selected because they are most explicitly concerned with the relevant cluster of issues. On the pattern that they all follow, see Winnington-Ingram 1980: 312–13. 86 Consider Winnington-Ingram 1980: 1, 11 (on Ajax), 217 (on Electra); Steiner 1984; Griffth 2001: 44–5; Blondell 2004: 45 (on Antigone). 87 This idea, here applied to dramatic interpretation, is highly reminiscent of the ‘disagreement thesis’ currently at play amongst moral philosophers. The disagreement thesis uses the (empirical) fact of widespread and deep moral disagreements that appear resistant to rational resolution to challenge the notion that there exists a single right solution to them. See Gowans (2000: Introduction) for a thorough analysis of thinking for and against this position. For an ancient expression of this sentiment, see Euripides, Phoenissae 499–500.

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plays embody. For one critic, Ajax is the rightful recipient of the arms; for another, it is Odysseus. For one critic, Antigone’s loyalties may be right; for another, it is Creon’s.88 Each drama under investigation expresses a trenchant ethical conﬂict to which the play itself offers no answer or, at least, no deﬁnitive answer. In this way, as we saw was the case for Herodotus (V.1.C above), the possibility of multiple and discordant interpretations of who is right is somehow built into the very text. On this view, the irresolution of the tragedy is a cause (not merely a by-product) of its inability to produce a unitary moral reading. The second consideration has to do with what we mean by irresolution. I am taking it as my starting-point that several of Sophocles’ works have no resolution and that this is one key reason why there is no single, universal interpretation of them. While, certainly, we must acknowledge they are concluded—Sophocles has created dramas which are brilliantly complete in their action (æAØ)—they remain dramas which are never resolved.89 What does that mean? How can a play be concluded but not resolved? The answer, crucial for our understanding of their ultimate ambiguity, is that while plays such as Antigone and Philoctetes are dramatically closed, ethically they are left wide open. The four plays of Sophocles in question are enactments and explorations of a moral conﬂict. But it is a conﬂict of a special sort. It is a clash, I will argue in each case, between values that are incompatible and incommensurable—a clash which, as we have seen, by its nature can never be wholly resolved.

C. Ajax versus Odysseus We can here return to Ajax. I think it is fair to say that Sophocles’ ﬁrst concern in the play is with Ajax himself. For it is through this character that Sophocles is able to explore the connection between heroism and monism and to draw attention to one of the main frictions inherent in Homeric morality: that between individual honour and familial responsibility. And yet already in this play we see developing the seeds of an interest in inter-personal conﬂict. 88 This phenomenon is perhaps supported by the lack of agreement by critics over who counts as the ‘main’ protagonist in any given play. For the view that the demand for a single hero has failed, at least in respect of Antigone, see Blondell 2004: 40. 89 Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1450b25ff.

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Compared with the clash of personality in Antigone or Electra (which will be discussed in the next chapter), for example, where the conﬂict between the two chief characters forms the centrepiece of the tragedy, the contrast between Ajax and Odysseus is in an embryonic stage: . . . a comparison between this situation and a later [one] . . . shows how the Ajax belongs to quite a different, earlier stylistic phase. Each stands alone, each holds his own fate within himself, each is self-sufﬁcient, separated from the other—not seen in relation to him. Sophocles was able to make characters stand out in contrast with each other before he could relate them to each other and involve them with each other.90

But still, the relationship is there lurking in the text and, still, it serves a point. As G. M. Kirkwood observes, ‘we cannot properly understand the tragedy of Ajax without observing the contrast between him and Odysseus’.91 Ajax’s own dilemma, as we have seen, was resolved without remainder: he experienced no sense of guilt, of regret, or of loss in the fact that his decision to die ignored the claims of his philoi. The ‘conﬂict’ between Ajax and Odysseus, however, although the characters never exchange a word, is much more complex. The reason is that it is not drawn by Sophocles as resolvable in this way. Rather, the clashing moral perspectives of Ajax and Odysseus, to be elaborated below, are portrayed as incommensurable with one another and, as such, their portrayal is dedicated to the same project as Ajax’s intrapersonal dilemma. That is, Sophocles employs the dichotomy between Ajax and Odysseus to uncover yet another set of contradictions in the heroic code. For embodied in these two Sophoclean characters we ﬁnd the vestiges of two types of Homeric hero, heroes whose pursuits and strategies were not, as they will never be, completely compatible with one another. Many critics note that Ajax is a drama of two distinct parts, a diptych.92 Furthermore, that after the death of the main character there is a sense in which the play moves out of the world of heroes and

90

Reinhardt 1979: 15. Whether the fact that Sophocles made the characters in Ajax ‘stand out in contrast with each other’ rather than ‘involve them with each other’ was a matter of ability or volition is unclear. 91 Kirkwood 1958: 47. 92 See, among others, Jebb 1896: xxviii–xlv; Kirkwood 1958: 42–5; Stanford 1981: lxiii n. 82.

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into a more recognizably ﬁfth-century landscape. The squabbling of the Atreidae and Teucer (1040–1315), the political theory of Menelaus (1052–90), the ‘enlightened self-interest’ of Odysseus (1318– 1401) all resonate, in one way or another, of peculiarly ﬁfth-century concerns if not of sophistic inﬂuence.93 And yet, while there is surely a transition in ethical context here, the second half of the play remains with one foot, as it were, in the Homeric age. It remains wrapped up in concerns of honor, status, revenge, and enmity.94 The contrast between Ajax and Odysseus, between the virtues on display in the ﬁrst half of the play and those in the second half, ‘is often presented as a chronological one . . . but both begin with Homer’.95

Two types of hero The contrast begins with Homer in the shape of the tension between Achilles and Odysseus, where, as we have already seen, the Sophoclean Ajax is a deliberately Achilles-styled ﬁgure.96 The contrast begins, then, as one between the man of brute strength and the man of golden tongue, between the one’s brawn and the other’s brains. But this is only its most superﬁcial expression, for the contrast is also one between stubbornness and ﬂexibility, between death and life, between, as Whitman so insightfully observes, the one and the many.97 Already in Homer, Odysseus is the more rounded of the two, the ‘most versatile and adaptable hero’.98 ‘Resilience, elasticity, concentration, these are the qualities that maintain his [Odysseus’] temperamental balance. In contrast the Ajax-like hero was superﬁcially ﬁrm and strong. His code of conduct and his heroic pride 93

The phrase comes from Knox 1979: 149. The relationship between Homeric and ﬁfth-century morality is complex. There are, of course, continuities between the two that make it impossible to delineate where one is at work in the play and where the other. Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 69. 95 Blundell 1989: 100 n. 195. 96 A quarrel between the two heroes is mentioned at Odyssey 8.75–81. Nagy views (1979: 42–58) Odysseus’ inclusion and role in the embassy at Iliad 9 as a further enactment of both the antagonism between the two and the theme of biē (‘force’) versus mētis (‘cunning’). On the contrast between these two heroes in general, see Rutherford 1992: 16–27, espe. 23–4 and Finkelberg 1995. On Ajax and Achilles, see, among others, Knox 1979: 135. 97 Whitman 1951: 150. On Ajax and the word monos (‘alone’), see March 1991–3: 12. 98 Stanford 1992: 7. 94

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encased his heart like archaic armour.’99 Odysseus is the man who is ºæ (‘much turned’, ‘wily’), ººÆ (‘much enduring’), ºÅØ (‘of many councils’), and ºıåÆ (‘of many resources’, ‘inventive’).100 He is the man of many ways, of many tricks and of many turns, the one who possesses more of the heroic virtues than any of the others.101 It is he who is able to manouvre his way out of perplexing situations in a way that Achilles would not be (for example, the Cyclops); who can manipulate others through thoughtfully tailored rhetoric (for example, Nausicaa); who will deceive to achieve his goals in a way that Achilles despises;102 who rejects the ‘harm enemies’ clause of a fundamentally heroic ethic, an attitude quite different from Achilles’ initially ruthless treatment of the corpse of Hector and sacriﬁce of the twelve Trojan boys;103 who was much better able even than Hector to balance his self-interest—his quest for glory—and his responsibilities to his philoi, in the form of both his companions and his wife; and who endures disgrace to achieve his goals in a way that Achilles would not stand.104 Perhaps most importantly, it is Odysseus and not Achilles who survives: ‘The Odyssey implies that some such resourcefulness [as Odysseus alone exhibits] is necessary to overcome the trials of human life in general.’105 Across the two great epics, then, there exists a contrast between Odysseus, who is continually portrayed as a man whose personality harbours multiple (and potentially conﬂicting) virtues, and the Achilles/Ajax type, who is depicted as much more rigid and consistent.

99

Ibid. 78. Odyssean epithets alone (with the exception of old men) have the preﬁx ‘poly-’. For the idea that this implies variety rather than degree, see Stanford 1992: 74, 247 n. 2. 101 Some of these virtues, however, alone or in combination with others have shades of the unheroic in them. More on this below. 102 Iliad 9.312–13: KåŁæe ªæ Ø Œ E ›H & Æ ºﬁÅØ | ‹ å æ b Œ ŁﬁÅ Kd çæ , ¼ºº b YﬁÅ (‘I hate like the gates of Hades the man who hides one thing in his mind and speaks another’). 103 Odyssey 22.407ff. Cf. also Odysseus’ pity for his ‘enemy’ Ajax at Odyssey 11.548–67 and Ajax 121–2. 104 Stanford makes the point (1992: 74) that there are several of Odysseus’ experiences (with the Cyclops, as a beggar) which neither Ajax nor Achilles would be willing to undergo. This topic is treated more fully in the context of Odysseus’ role in Philoctetes (IX.1 below). 105 Stanford 1992: 74. Cf. also Rutherford 1992: 26. 100

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This contrast between the two hero types we ﬁnd embedded in the Homeric texts is echoed and then elaborated by Sophocles.106 We have already addressed the relationship between Sophocles’ Ajax and Homer’s Achilles. We must now turn our attention to the two Odysseuses. The Odysseus of Ajax, like the Odysseus of the Odyssey, is a multi-faceted hero who recognizes the transience of human fate (121–6)107and the impossibility of adhering rigidly to a single ethical maxim (121–2, 1338–45, 1359, 1376). He too is adaptable, persuasive (1318–73), and the possessor of a temperament which will allow survival in a community in a way that the temperaments of Ajax and Achilles will not.108 But by juxtaposing him with Ajax, Sophocles not only draws attention to the ways, already present in Homer, in which Odysseus is not the typical hero: he also draws attention to the ways in which Odysseus is not a hero at all (as that word is usually understood).109 In fact, ‘[t]he case could be argued that Odysseus has too much ﬂexibility for a real hero . . . ’.110 What is unique in the Sophoclean presentation of the dichotomy between Ajax and Odysseus is that, through the lens of his tragic critique of heroism, we are able to see more clearly than we could in Homer how this ostensible failure (being unheroic) can actually be construed as a beneﬁt.111 For if, as Ajax’s plight has made clear, there is a real way in which heroism leads to tragedy, than perhaps there are virtues to playing the anti-hero.

106 In a discussion of the lost plays of Sophocles in which Odysseus features, Kiso concludes (1984: 107) that ‘Odysseus, in whatever mixture of his archetypal characteristics he may appear in one or other of his [Sophocles’] plays, must stand in polar opposition to these proud lonely people of uncompromising virtue [the heroes]’. So too, mention of Sophocles’ dependence on the Odyssey (Vita 20) and his frequent appearance in Sophoclean tragedies suggests a strong relationship between the playwright and this character. 107 It is the much-enduring, much-suffering Odysseus who is made to understand in Homer, more than any other epic hero, the twists and reversals of human fate. Indeed, this theme colours all of his false tales in the second half of the Odyssey. See Rutherford 1992: 22 for examples. Cf. Gould 2001: 165 (who cites Odyssey 18.129ff.). 108 Cf. 1361: ŒºÅæa KÆØ E P çØºH łıåc Kª (‘I am not accustomed to praising an unyielding soul’). See also Knox 1979: 148. 109 For the many ways in which Odysseus is an untypical Homeric hero, see Stanford 1992: ch. 5, passim and Finkelberg 1995: 2–3. 110 Whitman 1951: 151. Cf. Goldhill 1986: 159 and, esp. Segal 1996: 220. 111 There is, for instance, in epic no prestige attached to the unheroic aspects of a character such as Paris.

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In other words, through the contrast between Ajax and Odysseus Sophocles is able to show us the qualities and defects of both the heroic ideal and the atypically heroic (or even unheroic) ideal.112 That is, he exhibits the excellence of Odysseus but at the same time he does not vilify Ajax nor devalue his virtues.113 ‘ . . . If this interpretation is right, Sophocles is saying to partisans in the Ajax–Odysseus controversy, “Look: you don’t have to blacken one or whitewash the other. As Homer showed, both were men of high merit. Odysseus was the good citizen, the “safe” man, Ajax the headstrong hero, the individualist. We can admire both, each in a different way.”’114

Two great men The Homeric greatness of Ajax is manifest throughout the play:115 Sophocles has here re-created ‘a magniﬁcent heroic ﬁgure’.116 Iliadic epithets indicating martial valour and prestige are attached to him throughout: ŁæØ (‘impetuous’, 212, 1213), Œº Ø (‘famous’, 216), ÆYŁø (‘ﬁery’, 221), æçÆ (‘renowned’, 229), ŁæÆ (‘courageous’, 364), PŒæ Ø (‘stout-hearted’, 364), ¼æ (‘fearless’, 365), åæØ (‘serviceable’, 410), æ º (‘a defence’, 1212), ¼ºŒØ (‘valiant’, 1319).117 And if that is not enough, Teucer helpfully reminds us of his brother’s ﬁnest moments at Troy (1273–87).118 Yet it is only at the end of the drama, when such greatness is conﬁrmed by Ajax’s worst enemy, that the hero is truly exalted.119 It is Odysseus himself who praises Ajax as ¼æØ (‘the best’, 1340, 1380), KŁº (‘good’, 1345), and ª ÆE (‘noble’, 1355), and who deems Ajax’s Iæ (‘excellence’) as stronger than his, Odysseus’, hatred (1357)—an extraordinary calculation. It is Odysseus who ensures the fallen hero’s receipt of proper burial—a most important 112

Knox 1979: 145. Cf. Stanford 1981: x–xi. Blundell 1989: 100. Cf. Stanford 1981: x and xxiii. Stanford 1981: lvii. 115 On the ªÆ (‘great’, ‘powerful’) theme, see Stanford 1981: xxvii n. 37; March 1991–93: 11–12; Hesk 2003: 28–9, 48. 116 Stanford 1981: xi. 117 For other indications of Ajax’s greatness, see 438–9, 456, 502, 550–1, 636–7, 923–4. 118 Cf. Iliad 15.415ff. (see Stanford 1981: 215 for the differences in the details), 7.38–312. 119 For Odysseus as Ajax’s special enemy, see 18, 104, 1341. 113 114

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privilege that earlier renditions of the myth denied him.120 And yet, while Ajax is certainly portrayed as a great man, he is also, as we have seen, ‘stubborn’ ( ıæ º, 913; æ çæø, 926), ‘thoughtless’ ( ıº ªØ, 40; Içæø, 355; Içæ ø, 766), ‘harsh’ (TŒæÆ, 205; TE . . . K Ø, 548; T Łı, 885; T çæø, 930), and pitiless (113).121 Odysseus is depicted, to put it simply, as both less and more than Ajax.122 His refusal to face the madman at the beginning of the play is described by Athena as ‘cowardice’ ( ØºÆ, 75), but cast in the light of prudence and sympathy by Sophocles (74–80). He is shown to be humble before the gods (34–5, 86) and pitying toward Ajax’s plight (121–2).123 He is accused by the chorus of being a dirty liar (148–9, 187–9) but is, of course, telling the truth. He is castigated over and over again by Ajax (380–1, 388–9, 445) and thought by the chorus to be exulting in Ajax’s death (955–6), yet is the one who secures his burial. In response to such magnanimity and ﬂexibility, he is called ç (‘wise’, 1374) by the chorus and ¼æØ (1381) and KŁº (1399) by Teucer—epithets which replicate the language Odysseus himself used to extol Ajax. And yet, as many critics have noticed, Odysseus is still somehow bereft of Ajax’s grandeur: ‘he is no hero, and therefore does not blur our impression of the magniﬁcence of Ajax.’124 In this way, the play illustrates the value of Ajax and of Odysseus: it shows us that ‘the two are incommensurable, and each has its place’.125 The presentation of the Atreidae conﬁrms this by highlighting the goodness in both men. Compared to Ajax, they are lesser men.126 But so too in comparison with Odysseus.127 120

2–4.

On the epic cycle’s treatment of this aspect of the myth, see March 1991–93:

121 Cf. Iliad 11.556–65 and Kirkwood 1958: 102. For the view that Ajax’s savagery is a Sophoclean emphasis, see Hesk 2003: 53–4, 70–1. 122 Cf. Holt 1981: 282. 123 Odysseus’ piety is in deliberate contrast to Ajax (91ff., 589–90, 764–77; cf. 1058), whose arrogance in this respect is quite un-Homeric. On Ajax’s relationship with the gods, see Stanford 1981: xxxix–xlii and lii–liv and Hesk 2003: 140. 124 Kirkwood 1958: 48. 125 Blundell 1989: 100. This fact is, I think, corroborated by the disagreement amongst commentators over the relative signiﬁcance of Ajax’s and Odysseus’ roles (cf. Stanford 1992: 106–7), as well as by the symbolic gap between Ajax and Odysseus which is left forever unbridged when Teucer refuses Odysseus a role in his brother’s burial (1393ff.). Cf. Kirkwood 1958: 109. 126 Cf. 145–61, 1114; Kirkwood 1958: 107–10; Kitto 1959: 183. 127 Agamemnon implicitly defends the Odyssean character, claiming that intelligence is more important than brawn (1250–4).

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The dispute over the arms The dispute (as opposed merely to the contrast) between Ajax and Odysseus also ﬁnds clear roots in Homer.128 In this way, the Sophoclean version is but an extension of the aftermath of the ancient ‹ºø ŒæØ (‘judgement of the arms’): who gets the arms, the better ﬁghter or the better talker? Ajax was the best of the Achaeans after Achilles, but we must presume that such an accolade was awarded in recognition of his valour, not his guile or resourcefulness or rhetorical prowess.129 Yet, as we have come to expect, there is something novel too in Sophocles’ treatment of this famous enmity. For the tragedian is particularly concerned to elicit its meta-ethical implications. The worth of Sophocles’ Ajax in this respect is that it demonstrates that the dispute over the arms is insoluble. The play as a whole brings to the forefront the larger conﬂicts within the concept of heroism itself, conﬂicts that the Homeric epics, taken together, exposed as potentially problematic, but the repercussions of which the texts themselves never addressed. As Jon Hesk has put it, ‘ . . . Sophocles moves beyond the Pindaric issue of whether or not Ajax deserved Achilles’ armour in order to pose a much more deep-rooted and difﬁcult question: how do we make sense of competing claims and conﬂicting criteria concerning what makes Ajax good or bad, right or wrong . . . ’.130 If the virtues of Ajax are incommensurable with those of Odysseus, if greatness and stubbornness and martial valour are incommensurable with prudence and ﬂexibility and divine submissiveness, if both sets of values need the other set to illustrate their worth, then in a very salient sense the dispute over the arms is irresolvable.131 And so too is the quarrel between Ajax and his enemies. For they will never agree with one another on the criterion, the common standard, by which to judge who gets the prize; that is, which aspect of heroism makes the 128 Particularly, of course, in Odyssey 11, where the two heroes meet in the underworld and Ajax’s enmity is reafﬁrmed. 129 Cf. Iliad. 2.768–9, 7.288–9, 17.279–80 and Odyssey 24.17–18. Odysseus admits at Iliad 19.217ff. that he is inferior to Achilles in martial valour, but superior in judgement. Achilles admits at Iliad 18.106 that others are superior to him in counsel (presumably referring to Odysseus). See also Alcaeus 387 and the drinking-songs at Campbell 1997 898, 899. 130 Hesk 2003: 39. 131 Ajax’s burial is only secured by Odysseus’ perception of the instability of the categories of friends and enemies and Odysseus only gets the opportunity for praise through his respect for the heroism of Ajax.

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hero deserving of it.132 And unless a standard can be invoked, the dispute surrounding Achilles’ arms will never be singularly, determinately resolved. The play concludes with the burial of a hero, but by depicting the incommensurable merits of both Ajax and Odysseus, Sophocles pointedly denies us a resolution to the disagreement between them.

D. Monism versus pluralism? Earlier we mentioned in passing Whitman’s observation that the conﬂict between Ajax and Odysseus can be cast in terms of an opposition between the one and the many.133 In this way, Ajax is particularly interesting for the present argument because it is at once an example of pluralist conﬂict—of two incompatible and incommensurable sets of values or ethical perspectives working against each other—and also one of conﬂict between characters who represent themselves, broadly speaking, the stances of monism and pluralism. Ajax, as we have discussed above, is monism personiﬁed. His story, especially as viewed through the ironic lens of the deception speech, showed us how a person who clings to a single and unchanging vision of reality, who embraces a principle and adheres to it unswervingly, cannot persist in a world that is characterized by contingency and change. It is this heroic monism which is the cause both of Ajax’s downfall and of the ‘tragedy’ in the play. Odysseus, on the other hand, is cast as someone who sees the point in ﬂexibility, in balance, in recognizing value conﬂict and accepting it: he knows that he and Ajax represent competing virtues but, as in Odyssey 11, this does not undermine his respect for the great man.134 And he knows that pursuing one’s enmity to its logical extreme can conﬂict with other ‘rights’ (c ŒÅ, 1334–5; cf. ŒÆØ, 1344–5), not to mention divine laws (1343–4). Consequently, it is Odysseus who is suited for the 132 Not only does the play make clear that Ajax and his enemies will never agree on a criterion by which to judge the contest, but it also illustrates that they will never agree on a general view of justice. See Blundell 1989: 88–90. 133 Cf. also Gellie’s comment (1972: 15), that ‘Sophocles wanted [in Ajax] the world of the many to have its case put, and not only the world of the one’. 134 There, we recall, Odysseus informs Ajax that the Greeks mourned his death as greatly as that of Achilles (Odyssey 11.556–8) and that he wishes he himself never won the arms (11.548–51)—a rather unexpected sentiment.

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world Ajax describes. Ajax in this respect is Sophocles’ attempt to reconcile pluralism with heroic monism:135 to show that it is only pluralism (Odysseus) that can salvage the hero’s place in society and that, while the hero can survive with his honour intact, it is only as a relic.136 But perhaps in arguing for a pluralistic Sophocles it is loading the question to claim that Odysseus is himself representative of a pluralist perspective, where Ajax is representative of a monistic one, and it is Odysseus’ perspective that Sophocles is advocating.137 If we were to assert that one stance in the disagreement between the two characters was preferred, offered up to us as the ‘right’ moral posture, would this not detract from an overall pluralist reading of the conﬂict? That is to say, would it not compromise the moral gridlock and irresolution the play has been shown to emphasize? Indeed, it seems that we must retain our conviction that Sophocles sees—we could even say, celebrates—the different and often competing merits of both characters, and of both approaches to decision-making. Perhaps, then, the salient observation becomes the fact that it is the pluralist character who survives and who is more likely to survive.138 In other words, it is not simply, as Whitman mocked, that ‘for Sophocles, the world belongs to the little people who want to be safe’, but that the world is often only habitable for those people who are prudent and adaptable enough to persist.139 As one critic puts it, ‘[a]s distinct from the Iliadic hero, who sets an example of how one ought to die, all Odysseus’ life-experience demonstrates how one ought to live’.140 Both safety and survival may be disparaged by the hero, who will choose death over either. But this is not the point of the drama writ large. The point is that monism leads—almost inevitably in the world of Sophocles—to a tragedy of some proportions (as for Electra and Philoctetes) or to death (as for Ajax and Antigone). Similarly tragic is

135

Cf. Kiso 1984: 107–9. See Carter 2007: 100–2, however, for the ways in which the heroic idea(l) was incorporated into a ﬁfth-century framework. 137 The same could be said for Chrysothemis and Electra, Ismene and Antigone. 138 And perhaps this is particularly true in a ﬁfth-century context. Carter argues (2007: 102) that Odysseus’ abilities in the play make him ‘purpose-built for city living’ and ‘a more realistic example of citizenship than Ajax’. 139 Whitman 1951: 9. On the theme of bigness versus smallness in the play, cf. Hesk 2003: 48, analysing the choral sentiment at 134ff. 140 Finkelberg 1995: 10. For a similar sentiment, see King 1987: 48–9. 136

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the fact that the monist pursues his principle at the expense of the important relationships in his life. Ajax is willing to make his son fatherless and his wife husbandless, despite their wishes. He leaves the light in full knowledge of what his family will most probably suffer at his departure, that is to say, slavery or death.141 Odysseus (and Ismene and Chrysothemis), on the other hand, are ﬁt to survive. They care about their friends, as well as, to some extent, their enemies and act accordingly. In the ﬁnal analysis, for these ‘lesser’ people life is worth more than the ruthless pursuit of principle. It is worth more than the idea of honour. ‘The minor characters do not demonstrate the force of character we so often associate with the heroic stature, but they do underscore the inadequacy of those who may seem to be secure in their ability to encompass the variety of human experience into precise rules.’142 With whom, then, are we to sympathize: hero or foil? What can we conclude is the role of the ‘moderate’ (çæø), pluralist-oriented character in the tragic framework of the Sophoclean play? Is it to expose the excess of the protagonist as problematic or is it to condemn the lack of (self-)understanding on the part of the other bit-part players? The answer to this question lies, I believe, in the fact that Sophocles felt deeply the greatness of his heroes. He admired them; we could even go further and say that he was wistfully nostalgic for their age—a claim that accords with aspects of the ‘classic view’ of the playwright.143 In this way, it is ‘too simple to characterize [him] as totally rejecting Homeric values or the world of the past’.144 But the answer also lies in the fact that this respect for the past does not make Sophocles ‘the last great exponent of the archaic world-view’.145

141 Electra destroys what is arguably the most signiﬁcant familial relationship there is, the bond between mother and child. She alienates one sister (Chrysothemis) and completely disregards the murder of another (Iphigenia). Antigone is willing to break the heart of both her sister and ﬁancé. 142 Saxonhouse 1992: 64. 143 The ‘classic view’ of Sophocles has its ancient roots in Aristotle and Aristophanes (Frogs 76–82, 786–94, 1515–19) and its modern epitome in the edition of Richard Jebb. See also Bowra 1944; Letters 1953: 43, 49, 118; De Romilly 1998: 16. The view is well explicated by Whitman (1951: ch. 1). For its development in the secondary literature, see 22–8. Cf. also Blondell 2004: 31, 36, who remarks that Whitman’s view is now considered as quaint as Jebb’s. 144 Goldhill 1986: 161. 145 Dodds 1951: 49.

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Sophocles sought in his tragedies to challenge not only the ability of the hero to exist in the current landscape of the polis, but the threat inherent in him doing so. For Sophocles, the hero was at once problem and paragon; monism was at once devastating and romantic. In the tragic world he created, heroism had its merits. It had its allure. But it was the real world in which the pluralist perspective was more ﬁtting, or perhaps we could say, of which it was more reﬂective. Now whether this (monism leading to tragedy, pluralism as suitable to survival) is something Sophocles was content with or something he had merely resigned himself to, we will never know. What we can know is that some of his plays take care to demonstrate the incommensurable value of both hero and foil, and to question the limitations of each.

4. AJAX AND THE OTHER PLAYS Ajax is an inchoate version of moral disagreement. We will come to see in the following chapters that Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes all offer, in different ways, more evolved explorations of inter-personal conﬂict. Antigone and Electra use three characters to move beyond the relatively rigid dichotomy of Ajax and Odysseus, exploring even further the dramatic tension between monism and pluralism. Where Odysseus was both antagonist to Ajax (albeit never formally) and embodiment of the çæø stance to living, Electra and Antigone each have two separate people to take on these roles. Both have a foil to show up their monism (Ismene and Chrysothemis) and both have an adversary to put forward a competing principle (Creon, Clytemnestra). It remains to be seen what impact the presentation of these characters has on the overal moral reading of the plays. While Ajax is a play that is mainly focused on the problems internal to heroism, it certainly points ahead to Sophocles’ concern with the relationship between the morality of heroism and that of the ﬁfth century. This is somewhat inevitable: the conﬂicts already found in Homer were to become all the more conspicuous in their new environment, as some of those more cooperative values which were repressed in the epics are in the polis given the opportunity to exert

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inﬂuence.146 In this way, Antigone and Philoctetes are also explorations of incompatibilities between these two whole ethical schemes. Each play sheds some light on the conﬂicts that developed between the often overlapping ethical concerns of Homer and those of the ﬁfth century. At the same time, with Electra, each dramatizes once again the tragic effects of a monistic brand of heroism. Sophocles’ aim in these tragedies is to explore the vexed interaction between the two worlds, to show that their relationship does produce value clashes of an incommensurable (and so uniquely insoluble) nature, and, ﬁnally, to draw out the consequences of such incompatibilities. 146 Such an overlap explains crossover characters such as the Odysseus in both Ajax and Philoctetes, who represent an intersection of Archaic and ﬁfth-century values. On the continuing relevance of Homeric values for the ﬁfth century, see Gould 2001: 167.

VIII Antigone and Electra: moral conﬂict The templates of monism and pluralism that were introduced in the military milieu of Ajax recur with full force in the domesticmeets-political arena of Antigone and Electra. These plays offer two paradigms integral to our continued understanding of Sophoclean pluralism. First of a highly monistic heroine, who settles ordinarily grueling dilemmas with unwavering resolve, and with the interests of honour (both for herself and her kin) made paramount: like Ajax, both women ﬁnd tragic results in their inability to be swayed from their course. And secondly of a strident disagreement between moral positions which are not only incompatible but incommensurable. Unlike in Ajax, where the clash between Ajax and Odysseus was never developed as an express antithesis of values, Antigone and Electra make the ethical differences between the characters a primary focus of the drama.

1. ANTIGONE: THREE CONFLICTS

A. Antigone’s dilemma What is Antigone’s dilemma? The prologue sets it out dramatically. The play begins with the two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, in intimate conversation.1 Antigone is the ﬁrst to speak, and her opening words reveal a sharp tension. On the one hand there is the shared misfortune of these Labdacid women, sole remnants of a cursed and 1 Cf. the string of successive terms of affection and the pointed use of the dual. See Goldhill 1986: 90 and Foley 1996: 52.

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tested family. On the other, there is the reality of a political situation. The two are, of course, ﬂip-sides of the same coin. Antigone and Ismene have suffered the loss of their two brothers as a direct result of Thebes’ military engagement with Argos the previous day. At line 20 we learn that Creon, Antigone’s uncle, has deemed one of these brothers worthy of burial, the other not. His edict has made distinct two men Antigone considers the same: ‘for Antigone . . . the brothers are an inseparable entity.’2 Ismene crystallizes the potential impasse (44): q ªaæ E Ł Ø ç , I ææÅ º Ø; (‘Do you intend to bury him, when it is forbidden by the city?’). The exchange immediately following (45–8) reveals that, for Antigone, no such impasse exists. `V . e ªF K , ŒÆd e , j f c ŁºﬁÅ, I ºç · P ªaæ c æ F ±ºÆØ. . t å ºÆ, ˚æ I ØæÅŒ ; `V . Iºº P b IıﬁH H KH < > Yæª Ø Æ. AN .

Of course [I intend to bury] my brother and yours, if you are unwilling to do so. I will not be caught betraying him. IS . Wretched girl, even when Creon has forbidden it? AN . It is not for him to separate me from my own.

The situation is clear. Despite the decree forbidding the city to do so, a decree that has promised death by stoning for its transgressors (36), Antigone has decided to bury her brother. The conﬂict that Ismene articulates above is certainly a ‘tragic’ one, in the sense that it involves a choice between incompatible and incommensurable alternatives. The options available to the sisters— uphold one’s perceived religious duty by administering the proper funeral rites to a kinsman or, in breaching the law of the polis, suffer death—clearly draw on conceptually different moral attachments. However we specify those attachments exactly—as familial versus civic duty, as religious versus political commitment—both would appear to make a compelling claim on a deliberating agent. As we have already seen (I.3.B), a decision between indeterminately rankable options such as these will always result in loss: the circumstances are such that, whichever a person does, she will irreparably damage one or more of the important aspects of her life.

2

Knox 1964: 80.

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Ismene Ismene is able to process this inevitability. Often recognized as Antigone’s foil, she provides a paradigm of how one could conceivably respond to the harsh reality Sophocles has dramatized for her sister.3 Her conversation with Antigone reveals that she understands what is at stake in the dilemma and that she perceives the twin claims inherent in it: she is concerned to ﬁnd a way not to dishonour the gods whom Antigone claims to be respecting, while at the same time not to act in deﬁance of the citizenry (65–8, 78–9; cf. her ‘split’ response to Antigone’s resolve at 98–100); indeed, she thinks it appropriate and possible to be afforded ªªØÆ (‘forgiveness’, 66) in this regard.4 Her immediate reaction to the conﬂict, then, is entirely natural: confusion. , t ÆºÆEçæ, N K Ø, Kªg ºı i YŁ –ıÆ æŁ Å º (‘If these are the circumstances, what more could I do, poor sister, by tightening or loosening the knot?’), she challenges Antigone (39–40).5 E Ø ŒØ ıÆ (‘What sort of venture/danger?’), she wants to know (42). Ismene loves her brother, she is sensitive to the chain of misfortunes which have befallen her family (49–57), but, unlike her sister who never once makes mention of the fact that burying Polyneices is breaching a Theban law, Ismene refers to such a transgression four times (44, 47, 59, 79).6 In her initial response to an unsettling ethical scenario, Ismene too makes a decision. It is a decision, however, that shows itself aware of the complexities and ambiguities such a decision necessarily entails.7 And yet, the conﬂict that Ismene identiﬁes is completely undercut by the blinkeredness of her sister’s vision. It has been but a short time since the situation emerged, but Antigone has already made this

For the idea that this foil is more ‘pluralist’, see VII.3.D above. Cf. Chrysothemis’ similar sentiment at Electra 400. 5 Cf. Grifﬁth 2000: 129: ‘a quasi-proverbial “polar” expression for “whatever I may try to do”.’ 6 Antigone does refer to herself as ÆıæªÆ (‘acting wickedly’, 74), though she qualiﬁes it as a holy crime. Brown comments (1987: 141) that this is surely sarcastic and not an acknowledgment of guilt. 7 Cf. Saxonhouse 1992: 70. Moreover, we later learn (at 536ff.) that her decision was only a tentative one. Unlike Antigone, Ismene retained a sufﬁcient ﬂexibility to change her mind, in the face of emotional and personal circumstances, within 400 lines. Chrysothemis also undergoes a change, but it is nowhere near as profound as Ismene’s: Ismene actually wants to die with Antigone (544–5), whereas Chrysothemis still endeavours to live. 3 4

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life-altering decision ﬁrm and ﬁnal. Unlike her sister, Antigone denies any such difﬁculty or loss in making her choice. Unlike her sister, she appears neither unnerved nor hesitant. In dramatic terms, it is telling that she is not even afforded a desperation speech such as those spoken by some of her fellow monists (Ajax, Philoctetes).8 Antigone would rather die by betraying the city than risk what in her view constitutes the most profound betrayal of all, not burying her brother: Iºº r , the heroine avows with a daunting certainty, IæŒı x ºØŁ ± E åæ (‘But I know that I am pleasing those whom I must please most’, 89). Herein lies her motivating principle. With this, she is able to render the dire alternatives she must confront commensurable and eliminate the tragedy of her decision. For Antigone ‘duty to the dead family is the supreme law and the supreme passion. And Antigone structures her entire life and her vision of the world in accordance with this simple, self-contained system of duties. Even within this system, should a conﬂict ever arise, she is ready with a ﬁxed priority ordering that will clearly dictate her choice.’9

Antigone’s use of heroic language From the outset, Antigone’s language echoes this priority ordering. ‘In her devotion to the family’, Bernard Knox explains, ‘she ignores completely the rights of the polis. The ﬁrst six lines of her opening speech, in their syntax as in their vocabulary, imply . . . a mentality which is conﬁned within the limits of the blood relationship.’10 This linguistic phenomenon continues throughout the ﬁrst half of the play. It is the central literary tool with which Sophocles illustrates Antigone’s deployment of what we might term her summum bonum. Or put another way, Antigone’s manipulation of language serves to bring to the fore the one-sidedness of her thinking. All standard ethical terms are redeﬁned in relation to her supreme good, her duty to the dead family: whether Ismene is Pª (‘noble’) or ŒÆŒ (‘base’) depends on her willingness to bury her brother (38);11 it is ŒÆº (‘good’) for Antigone to die burying her brother 8

9 On Electra, see below. Nussbaum 1986: 64. Knox 1964: 82. 11 These are the same terms both Ajax (579–80) and Electra (237, 257) use to explicate their behaviour. 10

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(72); there is nothing ÆNåæ (‘shameful’) in burying one’s mother’s own son (511).12 Indeed, this is the path towards earning a Œº

PŒº æ (‘more famous reputation’, 502). The ideas of justice and law are likewise restructured. As the chorus indicates, Antigone is a ‘law unto herself’ (ÆP , 821), and it is therefore unsurprising that she can process questions of justice only through her own conceptual ﬁlter. In her eyes, then, the brother who received proper burial was treated justly and by custom (24), as an ‘honoured man’ (Ø, 25), while the other was utterly denied these. ˜ŒÅ (‘the goddess Justice’) is simply the justice that lives with the gods below (451; cf. 853–5) and ŒÅ (‘justice’) is unwilling to allow Ismene, because she initially refused to bury Polyneices, the share in Antigone’s fate she so desperately desires (538). A similar realignment occurs in respect to piety. Antigone claims her actions to be righteous despite the fact that others view them as criminal (74, 300–1, 514, 924): if she is guilty, it is of ‹ØÆ (‘pious things’, 74). Yet if Ismene does not bury her brother, she will be ‘dishounoring what the gods honour’ (a H Ł H Ø IØÆ å , 77)—something that Ismene immediately denies (78). Perhaps the most striking distortion of language occurs at line 46 where Antigone equates not burying Polyneices with ‘betrayal’ (æ F ). So narrow is her ethical perspective that she has even appropriated a polis term to describe her anti-polis activities.13

Antigone as monist In the course of the ﬁrst half of the play Antigone is subjected to a tragic conﬂict in which, no matter what course of action she chooses, a wrong will be done or an evil suffered. As we saw above, the concept of incommensurability carves out conceptual room for such a phenomenon: it allows that a person can wrong another or suffer an evil without failing to perform a better action. And yet, Antigone herself rejects the notion that her choice is so constituted. Rather, whether consciously or not, she makes her decision predicated on the monistic conception that there exists but one right answer to the problem she faces and that she is in possession of a mechanism by which to identify it. Put simply, she stubbornly makes a choice and neither 12 13

On Antigone’s redeﬁnition of aidōs in this line, see Cairns 1993: 219–21. Antigone’s self-description as ØŒ (852) is perhaps similarly pointed.

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looks back at the mitigating factors nor forwards at the consequences. In this way, Antigone is not interested in the ramiﬁcations of her decision as she is not interested in exploring its competing alternative. Antigone opts to bury her brother and to accept her premature death with no reﬂection on what it will mean for those she leaves behind, those who love her.14 Like Ajax, she may console herself with thoughts about how welcome death is as respite from her calamitous life (72, 460–6), and in this way her death too might be considered a æ (‘pleasure’) in addition to a Œæ (‘gain’, 462). But this is little consolation for those people whom her downfall will directly affect.15 Not only does she motivate Haemon to his own untimely death, but she will have irrevocably devastated her sister (548, 566), a member of the very family which she swears to prize above all else. As it was for Ajax, Antigone’s death is, at this point in the play, not a tragedy in and of itself. The monistic hero’s downfall is most tragic to those who are left behind in the wake of such an ethical approach to living (and dying).

B. Antigone versus Creon The central conﬂict of Antigone, however, is not Antigone’s but the disagreement between Antigone and Creon. Each character faced a dilemma in the ﬁrst half of the play that was reduced into a readymade course of action.16 Each remained ‘unconcerned with, and mostly scornful of, what is other, what makes the world multiple rather than one’.17 What we are invited to contemplate in the second half of the play is the relationship between the moral position of Antigone and that of Creon. In posing the question, ‘who is right?’, this is precisely what we are trying to pinpoint: should the claims of the oikos, of ‘blood-ties’ and ‘family’, prevail or those of the polis, civic 14 While Antigone is quick to aver that it is in her nature ‘to join in love’ (ıçØº E, 523), she seems unaware or unconcerned that other people may share this sentiment. Cf. Goldhill 1986: 98. 15 Even though she expresses hope that her death will be æçØº (‘pleasing’) to those of her family that are already dead (897–9). 16 Creon was also faced with a tragic conﬂict, which he simpliﬁed by reference to a single principle: maintaining the stability of the polis. See Nussbaum 1986: 54–63; Blundell 1989: 115–30; Foley 2001: 183–9. His moral language is restructured in a way similar to Antigone’s. 17 Saxonhouse 1992: 64.

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stability and order?18 To justify a decision between these value sets, we would have to ﬁnd a way to demonstrate that one was more or less valid than the other. But we cannot. The concerns of each highlight the importance of the values the other has refused to take into account: Antigone needed the city to complete the task of burial for her (1101, 1199–1204), Creon needed his family to feel alive (1325).19 The fate of each shows the tragic ramiﬁcations of such a refusal: Antigone is killed by the law of the polis; Creon is emotionally crippled by the deaths in his oikos. To justify a unique decision in favour of one of these perspectives as opposed to the other, we would have to invoke some kind of monistic tool, a common standard or principle, with which to assess them. But the play offers us none. For it becomes increasingly clear as the action unfolds not only that, as we have alluded to above, Creon and Antigone are employing different ethical vocabularies (consider Antigone at 499–501: ‰ Kd H H º ªø Iæ e P , Å Iæ Ł Å , oø b ŒÆd d ¼ IçÆ çı,‘There is nothing pleasing to me in your words and may there never be! And mine are likewise displeasing to you’), but that, ﬁguratively, they are occupying different worlds. In this way, the clash between them represents a clash between separate (though here intersecting) moral codes, and moral codes, it turns out, that are incompatible on the issue in question: ‘The conﬂict between two individuals represents the conﬂict between two different complexes of social and religious loyalties, one expressing the moods of the past, the other of the present.’20 Antigone, metaphorically speaking, is a member of a more archaic world of kinship; Creon a citizen of the ﬁfth-century polis. What each perceives as ‘right’ is contingent on the moral framework of the world they inhabit. This is why ‘right’ is constantly shifting throughout the play and why, in the single episode where Antigone and Creon come into direct contact, they are incapable of speaking to one another.21 The one’s exclusive loyalty to the blood relationship clashes painfully with the other’s 18 I am using the terms oikos and polis to represent whole constellations of political, religious, social, and cultural values and not in an effort to isolate the more speciﬁc substance of the conﬂict between Antigone and Creon. For a breakdown and discussion of the different contradictions in the play, see Grifﬁth 2000: 43–54. 19 See Foley 2001: 182 n. 31: ‘Eurydice dies on the altar of Zeus Herkeios, the very god whom Creon neglected; Creon also becomes a suppliant to his rejected son (1230).’ 20 Knox 1964: 102–3. 21 Cf. ibid. 90. See also Blundell 1989: 145–6.

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equally exclusive loyalty to the polis in a way that resists compromise or reconciliation.22 Sophocles is not exploiting here a tension here that is novel in Greek tragedy. In line with their meta-ethical role of questioning moral concepts and usage, the tragedians would often rework mythical material in a way that would challenge the discourse of the polis and that would allow it to examine itself through a dialogue with another system of values. The friction between the Homeric-styled individualist Antigone, with her excessive ﬁdelity to ties of blood and ceaseless thirst for personal timē (‘honour’), and the Periclean-styled stratēgos (‘general’) of the Athenian city-state, with his excessive patriotism and craving for public timē, must have felt keenly relevant to the audience. As Jean-Pierre Vernant recognizes, ‘[t]he legends of the heroes are connected with royal lineages, noble gene that in terms of values, social practices, forms of religion, and types of human behaviour, represent for the city-state the very things that it has had to condemn and reject and against which it has had to ﬁght in order to establish itself ’.23 The character of Antigone and all that she embodies would have posed a real and immanent threat to the concerns of the ﬁfth-century city-state as instantiated in the character of Creon.24 The answer, then, to the question ‘who is right?’ is that both Antigone and Creon are right: they represent incommensurable moral standpoints, moral standpoints that cannot be determinately compared in a way which yields a single outcome.25 The chorus highlights this duality, as their comments toward the end of the play reveal the ways in which both characters have erred: Antigone’s ŁæÆ and ÆP ªø Oæª (‘daring’, 853; ‘self-resolved anger’, 875); Creon’s failure to see c ŒÅ (‘justice’, 1270).26 Hegel saw 22

Knox 1964: 91. Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 26–7. Easterling, however, questions (in Pelling 1997) the ability of this socio-political model of mass versus elite to explain tragic situations. 24 Cf. Gould 2001: 167–8, whose observation about Ajax is equally applicable to Antigone: while in one sense he is an archaic and outmoded ﬁgure, in another he is ‘an image of an absolute “morality of honour” which has lost nothing of its relevance for the contemporaries of Alcibiades’. 25 The claim that Creon is as right as Antigone may no doubt rufﬂe some scholarly feathers, but it will become clear that I am making it in a limited, meta-ethical sense. 26 The limitations of the chorus’ vision and comprehension (211–14, 278–9, 332–75, 582–625, 681–2) as well as their fence-sitting ( s ªaæ YæÅÆØ ØºB ﬁ , ‘there are good points on both sides’, 725) further solidify our understanding of the 23

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that Antigone and Creon were both right (and both wrong), yet he believed that their principles would ultimately coalesce into some sort of higher unity.27 But Sophocles is not a Hegelian: synthesis in Antigone, as Mark Grifﬁth has observed, is a problem.28 Teiresias may tell us that Creon’s actions are disapproved of by the gods (1068–73),29 but this neither vindicates Antigone on a personal level nor invalidates the claims of the polis, when they are correctly administered.30 Creon’s mistake was the misapplication of his own principle, not necessarily the principle itself.31 As we will see in respect of Clytemnestra (below 2.B) and the Odysseus of Philoctetes (IX.1), the fact that the moral stance Creon represents is ultimately articulated and enacted in a less than savoury way does not nullify its overall validity. Indeed, ‘we miss much of the story, and much of the achievement of the Antigone, if we make Kreon merely impious in issuing his proclamation and Antigone merely noble in defying him’.32 In the last analysis, ‘the moral issues, of right and wrong, responsibility and blame, remain open to analysis and debate, both during the progress of the play and after it is over’.33

indeterminacy of the conﬂict. Moreover, the fact that the complexity, ambiguity, and multilayered nature of their songs cannot (and should not) be reduced to a single, privileged interpretation could be seen as emblematic of the play’s plurality of meanings on a larger scale. See Nussbaum 1986: 68ff. and Grifﬁth 2000: 18. 27 On Hegel and the Antigone, See Vickers 1973: 526ff.; Steiner 1984: 19–42; Nussbaum 1986: ch. 3, passim; Oudemans and Lardinois 1987: 110–17; Gellrich 1988: 44–71; Grifﬁth 2000: 49. 28 Grifﬁth 2000: 49. See also Goldhill 1986: 106. 29 On Creon’s errors, see Foley 2001: 185–7, 197. 30 Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1989: 146–7. For the view that Antigone herself is not wholly vindicated by the divine pronouncement, see Hester 1971: 39; Brown 1987: 7–10; Sourvinou-Inwood 1989: 143. For admonitions about reading the tragedy backwards and so judging Antigone and her moral position by the action of the later stages of the play, see Sourvinou-Inwood 1989: 135–6 and Holt 1999: 672, 686. 31 For defences of Creon and his importance, see Calder 1968; Hogan 1972; Sourvinou-Inwood 1989. Cf. Demosthenes 19.247 (with Antigone 175–90). Holt 1999: 667–8 makes the point that ‘in ﬁfth-century terms Kreon is within his rights as the leader of the polis, and his ban on burying Polyneikes is a reasonable sanction. In ﬁfth-century terms, Antigone’s deﬁance of that ban is seriously, perhaps even shockingly, out of line . . . ’. For some of the ambiguities surrounding the issue of non-burial, see Cerri 1982; Easterling, at Pelling 1997: 26–8; Grifﬁth 2000: 29–32. 32 Holt 1999: 684. 33 Grifﬁth 2000: 33. My emphasis. For enduring ambiguity, see also Oudemans and Lardinois 1987 and Foley 1995: 142–5. Hester surveys (1971: 14–17) those who have taken, to varying degrees, a ‘Hegelian view’ of the play.

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C. Monism versus pluralism (again) Antigone confronts the audience with a ﬁnal, more subtle, conﬂict. This is between the way in which Antigone and Creon initially handled their dilemmas and the way we should be compelled to read the play’s larger disagreement. It is a meta-ethical question about how we must understand value conﬂict: it is a choice between monism and pluralism.

The second half of the play Sophocles, in presenting examples of both of these perspectives, artfully sets them against each other. In the ﬁrst half of the play Antigone and Creon were both portrayed as monists. That is, each of them embraced an absolute value or principle and used it to order determinately the options that faced them. Consequently, each of them was able to render the alternatives of their respective dilemmas commensurable and ﬁnd the ‘right’ answer. Antigone, we recall, chose to bury her brother despite the political consequences because she perceived her duty to honour the dead family an overriding one. Creon chose to punish Antigone for her crime despite their familial connection (see especially 486–90) because he considered the stability of the city to be paramount. In the second half of the play the tragedy of monism emerged. With Creon (1261ff.), we were made to witness the danger such a myopic world-view creates, the danger of being over-rigid (710) and relying unduly on rationality (çæ H ıçæ ø ±ÆæÆÆ, ‘mistakes of an ill-thinking mind’, 1262).34 The putative commensurability that Antigone and Creon each thought s/he had engineered broke down as neither was able to minimize emotionally or practically the repercussions of what was sacriﬁced. So too, the absolute and abstract values s/he employed to do that engineering were revealed to be, instead, conditional and personal.35 We need only consider Antigone’s kommos (801–82, reiterated at 917–20), where she acknowledges for the ﬁrst time that her decision

34 On the ways in which rationality is undermined by passion in the second half of the play, see Blundell 1989: 130–48. 35 On these reversals generally, see Oudemans and Lardinois 1987: 186–201.

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to bury her brother has painful consequences. Not only the end of her life, but an end which is pointedly cruel in its prematurity and isolation: Antigone mentions her unmarried and unwept-for status no fewer than twelve times in her last hundred or so lines. This realization of loss is underlined by her new-found acknowledgment of the polis (842–9, 937), its gods (938), and its laws (907). So too Creon. He is similarly struck down by the ramiﬁcations his monistic, absolutist attitude has obscured. He ﬁnally sees the importance of family, in all of its manifestations. At the end of the play we ﬁnd him on the verge of psychological collapse, broken by the twin suicides of his wife and son.36 In Creon’s kommos (1264–1351) he repeatedly bewails his self-inﬂicted fate: the faults and folly in his previous thinking (1261–9). In the space of eighty-seven lines he utters exclamations of grief no fewer than nineteen times.

Antigone as weak pluralist? Antigone’s recognition of her loss requires further consideration, for it is the only example amongst the four tragedies under examination where the monistic hero expresses regret about his or her decision.37 This has important implications, because it forces us to reassess whether the label still applies; in other words, to ask whether it becomes more accurate to describe Antigone as a weak pluralist than as a monist. Perhaps she is not, like Ajax, a caricature of the Homeric hero, but rather her own tragic version of his pattern of deliberation (VI.2.E above). Like Hector, Antigone makes the only decision she thinks possible given her value constraints.38 Like Hector (and unlike 36 Cf. Neuberg 1990: 75: ‘The irony is immense. Creon’s çºØ are dead; he is robbed of his marriage; and the deaths of his son and wife spring from their cleaving to the very ties which Creon has sought to deny Antigone the chance to cleave to— Haemon dies to reassert the marriage-tie (to Antigone) against the blood-tie (his father), Eurydice dies to reassert the blood-tie (to Haemon) against the marriage-tie (her husband).’ It is also ironic that it was Creon’s familial connection that gave him the power in the ﬁrst place to lay down the law against burial (174). 37 Unless we take Ajax’s deception speech to be real sentiment, which I do not (see VII.2.C above). Even if we did, this would not be an articulation of remorse after a decision has been made, but a putative change of heart, which of course does not come to fruition. 38 It is interesting that Antigone is the only one of the tragic heroes examined that isn’t animated and/or fuelled by anger—another way in which she is like Hector (as opposed to Achilles).

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Electra, for example), not only does she suffer as a result, but she admits and bewails that she so suffers. Her ﬁnal exchange with the chorus crystallizes this phenomenon of weak pluralism, the fact that she is both ‘aware of what she has sacriﬁced, but nevertheless remains committed to her original choice’.39 As Helen Foley describes Antigone’s unique position, ‘she expresses pain over the loss of marriage, the unexpectedly horrifying punishment of a living death, and the seeming indifference of the gods and everyone else to her conception of justice, but she never doubts the correctness of her actions’.40 What, then, is the point of this regret for Sophocles, this chink in the true monist’s armour? The most likely explanation hinges on the fact that this play is the only one of the four that takes care to portray two monists, whose similarly blinkered methods of deliberation come head to head with one another. Antigone’s regrets, when coupled with Creon’s, powerfully expose the problematic nature of overly simplifying hard choices. Both characters, in experiencing the loss that incommensurability ensures—a loss that they attempted to deny—were catapulted into a more profound tragedy than s/he would have faced otherwise. As a result, both experienced a twin tragedy: the tragic conﬂict the circumstances foisted upon them, as well as the tragic consequences of denying that conﬂict.41 The fact that, in the end, they accepted the reality of this loss makes for a particularly poignant, not to mention pointed, comment on the nature and source of their tragedy—more so than if the tragedy were left to speak for itself, as it is elsewhere in Sophocles (Electra, for example).42 In this way, the second half of the play uses this comment to bring the relationship between monism and pluralism to the forefront in a way that we do not explicitly see on such a large scale in the other dramas.43 39

Foley 2001: 175 n. 11. Ibid. 177 n. 16, arguing against those who ﬁnd the ‘reversal’ in Antigone’s ﬁnal speech too inconsistent for comfort. On this issue, see further Neuberg 1990. 41 Ismene’s fate shows this implicitly. 42 Antigone’s speech of regret has an impact on the audience similar to that of Ajax’s deception speech, where the irony of Ajax expounding on a moral world he cannot live in heightens the poignancy of his decision. It would be interesting to know whether the more complicated and nuanced presentation of monism found in Ajax and Antigone is a product of those tragedies being signiﬁcantly earlier than Electra and Philoctetes, where the monism of the hero is portrayed in a much more straightforward way. 43 We see it more implicitly in the character contrasts, e.g. between hero and foil. 40

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For as we, the audience, watch Antigone and Creon suffer doubly as a result of the ambition to simplify their value commitments, we are left to come to a pluralist understanding. Not only is a monistic approach to decision-making problematic, but the positions Antigone and Creon respectively clung to were themselves incompatible and incommensurable with each other. And, in turn, we come to realize that when the moral scheme of the Archaic world collides with that of the ﬁfth-century polis, because each represents a distinct value system which, in and of itself, is valid, one can never prove uniquely, universally superior to the other.

Conclusion, resolution It is important to take a moment here to distinguish this meta-ethical conclusion from any dramatic one (see VII.3.B). The actions of the play’s two main characters (as opposed to the value clusters of their representative moral schemes) do not have to be likewise understood as equally valid. It is possible, for instance, for Antigone to have made a pragmatically ‘better’ choice (as indicated by Teiresias) than Creon, even though she was making it through an equally faulted process of deliberation, an equally distorted meta-ethical vision. As Foley notes, ‘matters of content do not prevent an audience from observing in a critical fashion the way each character presents an argument . . . ’.44 In this way, even if we think that Antigone’s actions proved ‘right’ and those of Creon ‘wrong’, we must interpret this as a dramatic conclusion, not as evidence that Antigone’s ethical attachments were theoretically ‘right’ and those of Creon ‘wrong’. In a future conﬂict between the moral positions, it is possible for a different conclusion to be reached. Indeed, this is the effect of the revelation that the motives of both characters were personal and not abstract: at 904–20,45 where Antigone bemoans the loss not of family in general, but of a brother speciﬁcally, and at 734–61 (cf. 525, 578–9), where the issue is not somebody’s disobedience to authority but a woman’s disobedience to Creon. It is a mark of Sophocles’ brilliance as a 44

Foley 2001: 185 n. 40. Foley, however, examines the differences between Antigone and Creon in terms of their ethical modes of deliberation. 45 On the authenticity of these lines, see Hester 1971: 55–8 (useful survey of opinion); Neuburg 1990; Grifﬁth 2000: 277–9; Blondell 2004: 34–6, who concludes that ‘in the course of the last century . . . the overwhelming trend has been increasingly towards acceptance’.

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dramatist to be able to conclude satisfactorily the troubles of the play without necessarily resolving them on a grander scale. As we saw with regard to Ajax (VII.3.D), we must take care in concluding from all of this that Sophocles is blankly asserting the superiority of pluralism over monism. Rather, we should understand it as a more subtle illustration of how a pluralistic stance concerning serious conﬂict can be much more conducive to survival and the avoidance of tragedy and of how two competing moral systems can both have legitimate values to offer. Indeed, Sophocles goes so far in this play as to give pluralism a perfect articulation, one that if heeded earlier would have perhaps prevented the tragedies from unfolding in the ﬁrst instance. As Haemon warns his father, ı £ qŁ F K ÆıﬁH ç æ Ø, ‰ çc , ŒP b ¼ºº, F OæŁH å Ø (‘Do not hold only one way of thinking in your heart: that what you say, and nothing else, is correct’, 705–6; cf. 687).46

2. ELECTRA: THREE MORE CONFLICTS

A. Two dilemmas The ﬁrst The ﬁrst dilemma we encounter in Electra, through a powerful lyric dirge,47 is a ‘choice’ already made,48 one concerning not a particular action but a general emotional condition.49 Since Agamemnon’s 46 The word OæŁH recalls Protagoras’ and Herodotus’ similar use of the term (IV.2.B above). For the view that, in teaching Creon to yield (1029) and to follow conventions (1113–14), Teiresias is urging him to accept ‘a rich plurality of values’, see Nussbaum 1986: 81. 47 For the idea that this supplanting of the more formal parados allows us direct insight into Electra’s mind, see Whitman 1951: 155. 48 Cf. 1049: ºÆØ ŒÆØ ÆFÆ ŒP ø Ø (‘These things were decided by me a long time ago, not just now’). 49 Electra’s display of emotion, however, may be understood as tantamount to action in that it is the only way, as a woman, she would be able to avenge her father. This is implied at 115–16, 349–50, 355–6, 399. On words as action, see 254–60, 350, 355–8. Cf. Whitman 1951: 166 and Winnington-Ingram 1980: 222–3 n. 22. The conﬂict underpinning Electra’s choice—a conﬂict of no small magnitude—is eventually made express by Sophocles in brilliant dramatic fashion: N H c º Ø ª ø, KÆFŁÆ ł Ø ŁÆ Ł ºı çªª æ łﬁÅ, ÇHÆ K ŒÆÅæ ç E ªﬁÅ åŁe B KŒe Ø ŒÆŒ (‘If you will not stop these laments, they will

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death ten years ago, Electra has been operating in a state of excessive emotion.50 Anger at her mother and sadness over her father have fused together into an all-consuming desire to avenge the dead king. These feelings have not only come to control her but have paralysed her to the point that she is unable to pursue the things in life a girl of her age and status would normally concern herself with. As her name implies, it is a deﬁning characteristic of Electra (‘unbedded’) that she is unwed and childless.51 This is a fact she laments (164–5, 187–8; cf. 1183).52 So too, she laments her existence as a slave in her own home, the shameful garments she is forced to wear, the bare table she is compelled to dine from (189–92).53 But, as Chrysothemis demonstrates implicitly54 and the chorus expressly,55 Electra is living a life she despises due to her own stubbornness.56 It is a life she has chosen because she is simply unwilling to cease her mourning, unwilling to curb her desire for vengeance.57 Unwilling, in short, to strike a middle ground (cf. 140). Desperate circumstances call for desperate send you to where you will never see the light of the sun and, living in a covered dwelling outside of this land, you will sing continually of your ills’, 379–82). Where before we could only speculate that the alternatives facing Electra never constituted a dilemma in any real sense, here, several hundred lines later, we can conﬁrm it. Electra’s immediate response to the prospect of Aegisthus entombing her, what for most of us would be a gruelling decision, reveals her mind perfectly: Iºº KŒØ F ª o Œ K å Ø (‘May he come for this reason quickly’, 387). 50 All of Electra’s emotions are extreme. In addition to her grief (she cannot even weep as much as she would like: 285–6!), which will be discussed at present, her ecstasy at her brother’s return is so pitched that both Orestes and the old slave urge her to cool it down (1236–8, 1259, 1296–9, 1322, 1326–38, 1353, 1364). Cf. Choephori 233 but also 265–7, where it is Orestes who is being shushed. 51 Cf. Aelianus, Var. Hist. 4.26. 52 Though, unlike Antigone, not in the context of expressing remorse. 53 Cf. 207–8, 264–5, 597–600, 814–16, 911–12, 1192, 1196. 54 Chrysothemis still enjoys the beneﬁts of palace life (360–4). She has her freedom (339–40, 406 versus 911–12; Electra implies otherwise: 970–1, 988), although she too has been deprived of the opportunity to marry and procreate (961–6, 971–2). Indeed, this is the carrot Electra waves to convince her to help in the murders. On the different kind of liberty Electra and Chyrsothemis possess, see Blundell 1989: 154 (and n. 20). 55 214–19: P ªÆ Yå Ø K ¥ ø j a Ææ ; NŒ Æ N ¼Æ j K Ø oø ÆNŒH; j ºf ªæ Ø ŒÆŒH æ Œø, j ~ ﬁ Æ ıŁø ﬁ Œı ÆN d j łıå~ ﬁÆ ºı (‘Do you not know from what things the present circumstances arise? Do you tumble so shamefully into evils of your own doing? You have acquired through your own fault much more suffering [than need be], always bearing strife in your dispirited soul’). Electra can bear strife but not children. Cf. 122–3, 137–44. 56 Cf. the choral remarks on Antigone’s behaviour at 821–2, 875. 57 It is a repeatedly emphasized feature of Electra’s character that she will not stop grieving. She makes this explicit on numerous occasions (104–9, 132–3, 166–7, 231–2,

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measures, our heroine reckons, and in the present situation she will not temper her self-destructive ways (221–4); she will not practise moderation, for it is impossible for her to do so: h øçæ E . . . æ Ø (‘It is not possible to be moderate’, 307–8). For Electra, the bottom line is that there is no moderation when it comes to honouring her father.58 Electra chooses to grieve, to exhibit an unfaltering devotion to Agamemnon, despite the consequences. In the great opening kommos, she repeatedly brushes aside the chorus’ attempts at moderation and rationalization. She acknowledges that it is she herself who is to blame for her pitiable condition—her excessive behaviour and unmasked loyalty the dead king make her an obvious threat to the incumbents—but she sees no alternative. For her, there are no answers apart from her own to the questions she poses at line 237, H Kd E çŁØØ I º E ŒÆº ; (‘How is it good to disregard the dead?’), and 257–8, H ªæ, lØ PªÅc ªı, ÆæﬁH ›æHÆ Æ , P æﬁÅ ¼ (‘How could any noble woman not do these things, seeing the troubles in her father’s house?’).59 To consider alternatives would be to yield, and to yield is unacceptable (359–61, 396–7)—it is simply not her way (PŒ Kf æ ı, 397).60 So adamantly does Electra believe this that she is incapable of grasping how any thinking person could feel otherwise (226–8). The rhetorical questions cited above reveal the force—the principle, insofar as we can say she has one—which is driving Electra to this extreme position. The questions reveal that, for Electra, retaining Agamemnon’s honour and redressing the shame associated with his death (101–2, 205–6) are overriding concerns.61 As is her own

239–44) and is berated for it by both the chorus (see above note) and Chrysothemis. For Electra, her troubles are such that they are insoluble (230) and without cure (876). 58 The large part that honouring Agamemnon plays in Sophocles’ Electra is probably an outgrowth of the ﬁrst half of the Choephori, particularly the kommos at 306–455, a section which is described by the chorus as a ÅÆ (‘an honouring’, 511). 59 Even though the chorus offer several, plausible counter-reasons: no matter how many prayers and laments Electra issues, Agamemnon will not rise from the dead (137–9); Electra is not the only one suffering (153–63); there is a danger in being ‘angry beyond measure’ ( æåŁ , 177). 60 Refusal to yield is, of course, a predominant trait of the Sophoclean hero. See Knox 1964: 17–19 and Lloyd 2005: 79–80, 96. Cf. Creon at Antigone 1102–6, who does yield. 61 240–4, 355–6, 399, 444.

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honour and ‘reputation’ ( hŒº ØÆ, 973).62 That, as they were for Ajax,63 the strictures of what is ŒÆº (237) and what constitutes an

PªÅc (257) are determining and determinate factors.64 Indeed, they are norms which have become an insurmountable Æ (‘force’, 256, 620, 1192) and an IªŒÅ (‘necessity’, 221, 256, 309, 620, 1193) by which she feels she has, literally, been compelled into her present state.65 In this way, Electra has not, strictly speaking, ‘chosen’ the life she suffers. She sees such behaviour as an inevitability.66 And so her 62 See esp. 240–3, 973–85, 1035, 1214, 1426–7 (although she does not recoil at the prospect of the public abuse: 518, 638–42). Electra’s declaration at 1043 is deﬁning (cf. Ajax 594–5, Philoctetes 94–5; cf. also Electra 1320–1). In answer to Chrysothemis’s rather true statement that even justice sometimes brings harm, Electra answers: Ø Kªg ÇB E Ø P ºÆØ (‘I do not wish to live according to these laws’). Electra will act according to what she thinks is right, damned be the consequences to herself or anybody else. The chorus extol her for her attainment of honour in this sense (1074–89). Orestes is similarly concerned with reputation and honour (60, 64, 71). On the role of honour in Electra more generally, cf. Segal 1966: 510–13 and Winnington-Ingram 1980: 240–1. Cf. Antigone’s similar concern (502–4). 63 See Ajax 594–5. 64 For Electra, the moral terms of approval all support Agamemnon’s cause. This is particularly true of words to do with the shame and injustice (e.g. 102, 113, 206, 444, 559) surrounding his death and the dishonour in not avenging him (1035). She feels that any attempt to avenger her father’s murder, whether the outcome is salvation or death, would be kalos (1320–1). The chorus mirror Electra’s usage at 1070–89. Nobility to them is constant mourning and fearlessness in the face of death. To live otherwise would be base, it would shame a good reputation. Now Electra’s life of tears will bring her prestige and will earn her ‘the reputation of being both wise and best’ (ç IæÆ ÆE Œ ŒºBŁÆØ; cf. Philoctetes 119). The meaning of the expressions for living well (354, 1083), doing well (1026), and thinking well (345–6, 384, 429, 890, 920, 992–4, 1013, 1038, 1054, 1055–6) are similarly contingent on the speaker. 65 Cf. Whitman 1951: 166: ‘Electra feels a necessity, a strong inner necessity, for revenge, wherein alone lies the honor.’ Compare this necessity with that felt by Agamemnon at Aulis. There the necessity was the act of choosing between two evils rather than the compulsion to choose in one particular way. See Segal 1966: 509. 66 This is not to say that she does not feel any regret at what she has chosen. It is only to say, with Blundell (1989: 171), that ‘Electra never suggests . . . that the course of action she has rejected has an equal moral claim . . . She is doomed by moral “necessity” to shameful and excessive behavior, but she has no doubt whatsoever that this is the lesser of the two evils.’ Electra acknowledges that her grief is excessive; she is shamed by this fact in at least one instance (the other instance is embedded in a rhetorical response to her mother so is difﬁcult to assess for integrity). More accurately, she acknowledges that she may appear to overly grieve (254–5; cf. 222, 309, 616–18). But she is clear that this is by necessity and this makes her sentiment signiﬁcantly different from Antigone’s. On Electra’s ‘qualms’ and recognition of her own impiety, see Sheppard 1918: passim. The lack of weight in Electra’s expression of shame/regret is highlighted by a comparison with Euripides’ Electra (1182, 1197–1200, 1226). Cf. Orestes 285–93, 396–8 (Orestes); 194 (Electra).

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ﬁrst choice—the decision to live the miserable life she does—is not really a dilemma with which she has grappled. To her mind, the options available are easily measurable (and have been easily measured) against one another.67

Chrysothemis Electra’s conversations with her sister highlight this point. Chrysothemis serves as a foil to Electra in much the same way that Ismene does to Antigone.68 The use of the supporting cast here, employed by Sophocles to great effect in this as well as his other plays, has important implications. As Jebb remarks, the pair embody a contrast between ‘the heroic and the commonplace’.69 Jebb, I think, brandishes this as insult. But, as we have discussed at length in respect of Ajax, for Sophocles there is something uniquely tragic about Electra’s brand of heroism.70 Chrysothemis represents an alternative approach to the same set of circumstances which face the more reckless sister, but it is an approach which, while less heroic, achieves a preferable practical result.71 Her role in this way is not as straightforward as Jebb makes out: we must take care not to conﬂate sensibility and commonality. Chrysothemis, through both words and actions, illustrates that Electra is the author of her own discontent. She too is vexed at the state of affairs in Mycenae (332–3). She even recognizes the justice of Electra’s cause (338–9).72 67 Cf. MacLeod 2001: 60: ‘Electra reveals a capacity for recognizing a hierarchy amongst the virtues and various aspects of them, which rank some as more important than others.’ 68 See, among others, Kamerbeek 1974: 10; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 241; Lloyd 2005: 41, 50. 69 Jebb 1894: 52. Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 239. The opinions regarding Chrysothemis are mixed. To Whitman (1951: 156) she is ‘weak and shallow’, but he relays with incredulity the number of critics and readers who have been won over by her, who think that she is right and that Sophocles is speaking through her. Sheppard calls her (1927: 6) ‘not unlovable in her weakness’. Chrysothemis is not depicted as particularly meek or weak: she often gives as good as she gets (e.g. 330–1, 995–6, 1017–57). The fact that Electra says she will not be frightened by her implies at least that she is viewed as a potential threat (1045). 70 It was Ajax’s monistic approach to the undeniable conﬂict before him, we recall, and his consequent inability to live in the real world that formed the crux of his tragedy. 71 In a way similar to the Odysseus of both Ajax and the Odyssey. 72 Whereas Electra gives no credence to Chrysothemis’. This is made clear at 1028–9. The chorus think there is Œæ (‘proﬁt’) in both opinions (370).

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But what makes Chrysothemis particularly interesting is that, despite this, she realizes, in true pluralist fashion, that justice sometimes brings harm: Iºº Ø ŁÆ åM ŒÅ º Å çæ Ø (‘But there are times when even justice brings harm’, 1042).73 The moral state of play is not, nor can be made, clear-cut. That ŒÅ does not always entail good (or perhaps even ‘right’), is a bold statement indeed: it is akin to something Protagoras would argue for (III.3–4 above). Similarly, Chrysothemis is acutely aware of her own limitations: she is in agreement with the chorus when she says she can affect no revolution against those in power (Cf. 340, 1014 with 219). This is a matter of sheer strength (333–4, 997–8) and also a matter of likely repercussions (1000–2, 1009–10).74 Presented with the same conﬂict as Electra—live without misery and with privileges or overtly mourn for her dead father—Chrysothemis chooses the former. She is not moved by her sister’s attempt to recast the clash in her own, loaded terms (345–6). Her choice is made by taking into consideration both sides of the issue, balancing them against one another, and then opting for the more prudent course (as judged by the standards of life and death).75 So too, it is about realizing that there are different ways to mourn and show respect. Most signiﬁcantly, Chrysothemis is aware that a choice made through such a process does not insulate her from the pain and remorse of what she has not chosen (332–40). Nor does it prevent her from changing her mind on aspects of her position (466–71).76 Perhaps Chyrsothemis’ most trenchant effect is to introduce the possibility that Electra’s behaviour is not an example of aweinspiring heroism, as has been so readily believed, but rather of blind intransigence (or, less generously, of rash stupidity). She does this by revealing four ways in which Electra’s interpretation of events 73 Chrysothemis’ recognition of this reality is particularly interesting in light of the fact that Electra has trouble accepting the contradictory nature of her plan (the idea that while it is just in her eyes it still carries shame). On the chorus’ recognition of this contradiction (1082–9), see MacLeod 2001: 148–52. Chrysothemis also realizes that it is not sensible for two people to wrangle over e ŒÆØ (‘what is just’, 466–7). For this translation, see Winnington-Ingram 1980: 219 contra March 2001: 63. 74 Cf. Ismene at Antigone 61–4, 68–9, 78–9, 90, 92. 75 This practical and judicious air about Chrysothemis is echoed at 885–6, 889–90, 916–19, 923, 1030, 1032. 76 Chrysothemis even asks Electra to change her mind at 1046, a reasonable course for herself though impossible for her sister. Haimon puts forward a similar request to Creon (Antigone 718), which is ultimately heeded though not at the time it is made and not in the circumstances it should have been.

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and her behaviour surrounding them can be criticized. First, as the chorus make clear (153–7), Electra is not the only one who has lost her father at the hands of her mother. The simple fact that Chrysothemis shares the exact same blood relations to both Agamemnon and Clytemnestra as Electra does and chooses to act differently is important in its own right. This point is underscored by the chorus as they describe Chrysothemis on her arrival in terms laden with the sisters’ shared familial heritage: c c ‹ÆØ, KŒ Ææe ÆPF çØ, 'æı Ł Ø, Œ Åæ (‘your sister Chrysothemis, child from the same father and from the same mother’, 325–6).77 Secondly, Chrysothemis suggests that Agamemnon would understand if his daughters had to accommodate their behaviour in order to survive: Æcæ b ø, r Æ, ıªªÅ å Ø (‘Our father, I know, has forgiveness for these things’, 400).78 This potential challenges Electra’s notion that moderation necessarily translates into dishonouring their father.79 Thirdly, Electra is convinced that her grief is a bona ﬁde means of avenging Agamemnon (349, 355–6, 399). But Chrysothemis asks whether (and to what extent) such grief is in fact painful to those it is aimed at punishing (336). Is Electra hurting those she is trying to hurt or only herself (cf. 999–1006)?80 And ﬁnally, Chrysothemis brings to our attention how small a chance of success Electra’s new plan actually has (997–1004, 1026; cf. 944). Even if we can condemn her for refusing to participate in a form of disobedience that is within her power, can we really do so for rejecting the idea of undertaking the murders herself?81

The second It is the consequences of this ﬁrst dilemma, a choice between two lives, which create the necessity of the second: whether Electra should undertake to kill her mother.82 The decision to exist as she does—in 77

Cf. Antigone 1, 513. See Blundell 1989: 157 and March 2001: 161. Cf. Antigone 66. 79 For which, see 341–6, 398–9. 80 The threat Electra poses is deeply bound with the prospect of Orestes’ return. Cf. 293–99, 773–7, 1154–6. And even if Chrysothemis herself considers Electra’s behaviour to be a source of distress (784–7; cf. 379–82, 556–7, 654), how damaging is this in comparison to what Electra herself is suffering? 81 Blundell calls (1989: 160) Electra’s plan ‘suicidal’. 82 Cf. Whitman 1951: 168. 78

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ever-growing hostility with those in power, deprived of material as well as emotional nourishment—has been costly to Electra. Such a decision has, we noted above, resulted in a lack of husband, children, freedom; it threatens to result in banishment and imprisonment (380–2). But the decision has also taken a devastating physical and emotional toll on her ability simply to persist. Grief of the kind which Electra has fed on can be maintained for only so long. By the time we meet her, she is on the verge of collapse: Å ªaæ ¼ª Ø PŒØ øŒH | ºÅ Iææ ¼åŁ (‘I am no longer able alone to bear the counterpoising burden of grief’, 119–20). She has no strength left (186).83 It is this fact that creates the need for Orestes’ imminent return, the only conceivable antidote to Electra’s seemingly irreversible project of self-immolation. But Orestes’ return is not imminent, at least in comparison with Aeschylus’ version. Rather, Sophocles leaves the recognition scene late in a way which is unprecedented.84 In this way, Electra is made to experience the reality of her brother’s death and all that this entails. And it is by entirely stripping her of the prospect of Orestes’ return, the hope that has fuelled her for so long (809–12, 832–5, 1127–8), that Sophocles forces Electra into a second, striking dilemma.85 Displaying hatred for her father’s murderers is one thing, an appropriately feminine way to demonstrate both disapproval and loyalty. But actually to complete the vengeance herself by killing her own mother is quite another.86 The second conﬂict brings into sharper focus issues the ﬁrst obscured: what exactly is Electra’s gripe with Clytemnestra? Does she see no justiﬁcation for her mother’s actions? What is her perspective on what Agamemnon has done? These questions will be discussed below in respect of the disagreement between mother and daughter. For now, however, we Electra is often described as ‘wasting away’ (Œø, <123>, 282, 835; ÆPÆH, 819); she is ‘destroyed’ (I ººıÆØ, 304, 674, 677, 808, 831; ØçŁæ , 306). 84 The recognition in Choephori begins at 223 and is conﬁrmed at 235 (this is about two-ﬁfth of the way through). In Sophocles, it is delayed until 1224 (about four-ﬁfth). See Vickers 1973: 566ff. In Euripides’ Electra it comes about a third of the way through (577). 85 Foley 2001: 164 calls the decision to undertake the murders ‘the only ethical choice undertaken in the course of the drama’. 86 Aeschylus’ Electra is never confronted with a similar conﬂict. She is never put into a position where she has to decide to commit a crime: Orestes’ arrival comes far too early. Euripides’ Electra, on the other hand, is the primary mover and shaker when it comes to the matricide (Electra 275–7, 279, 647, 965, 968, 982–4, 1142–6, 1224–5). 83

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must consider Electra’s internal dilemma, her choice to undertake the double murder herself. Presented with the ‘fact’ of Orestes’ death (673), Electra realizes that she is now the only remaining vehicle of vengeance. For years she has been waiting for her brother’s arrival, expecting, hoping that he would one day enact the revenge she had been enacting (perhaps preparing for) through her ongoing disobedience. With the false report of Orestes’ demise, Electra is put into the position of having to decide whether she will take matters into her own hands. She is confronted with what appears a moral dilemma: F b E åæc º E; (‘But now where must I turn?’, 812). And yet, her question is not cast in the formula we ﬁnd in Ajax and Philoctetes.87 Electra is not here asking what she should do; she is asking to whom she should look to support. Bereft of her father and brother (813–14), she wants to know who it is that can, that will, help her now. This interpretation, that Electra is not really at a moral impasse but simply concerned with the mechanics of her situation, is strengthened by the ensuing conversation with Chrysothemis, who is now considered a potential ally where before she was a thorn in her sister’s side. By the time the two women come face to face, Electra’s resolve has, unsurprisingly, already stiffened: ¼Œı ı ﬁ w º ıÆØ º E (‘Listen now how I will accomplish what I have planned’, 947). Orestes is not coming, Electra tells her sister, so I look to you to help me kill Aegisthus (954–6).88 When Chrysothemis refuses the offer and begs her sister to see reason, Electra responds as we would expect: Iºº ÆP å Øæ Ø ﬁ Å æÆ hæª (‘The deed then must be done by my own hand alone’, 1019–20).89 Chrysothemis is ‘in the wrong’ (KÆÆæ Ø, 1039), and that is the end of the matter. In response to the question, P b ıº ﬁ Å ºØ; (‘will you not change your mind?’, 1046), we are greeted with a resounding ‘no’.

87

Ajax 457, Philoctetes 969, 1350. On the blatant silence in respect of Clytemnestra here, see Kirkwood 1947: 88–90 and Blundell 1989: 100 n. 46. This omission does not mean that Electra did not have matricide in mind. 89 The use of the verbal adjective æ is telling. Like Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and in line with her earlier feelings of compulsion, Electra feels the harness of necessity upon her shoulders. But this time the necessity is linked to a particular course of action. 88

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Electra’s approach to conﬂict recalls Ajax’s: she experiences life ‘with utter commitment to a single idea . . . a single mood’.90 This heroic, Iliadic temper, as it was for Ajax, is tightly bound up with a monistic attitude towards moral dilemma.91 The inclusion of the monistic hero here serves the same function as it did earlier: that is, it underlines how a certain brand of heroism is intimately connected to a certain sort of decision-making which, in turn, is responsible for a large part of the self-same hero’s tragedy.92

B. The disagreement The clash between Clytemnestra and Electra is the moral centre-piece of Sophocles’ play.93 We have just discussed the ‘monism’ of Electra,94 how she made her decision to maintain her father’s honour (and thereby her own) at all personal cost, with little to no consideration of alternatives. When pitted against her mother, another facet of Electra’s monism, alluded to above, comes into focus. In choosing loyalty to Agamemnon over Clytemnestra, which factors, if any, does Electra take into account; which does she suppress? How does she feel

Segal 1966: 512. It also, of course, recalls Antigone’s stance in the ﬁrst half of Antigone. 91 Cf. Whitman 1951: 167: ‘The choice of adversity and suffering for a moral reason is only a slight variant of Achilles’ heroic choice of an early death and eternal kleos.’ Indeed, Electra’s obsessive, blind desire for vengeance is redolent of Achilles’ attitude in Iliad 16–22. 92 We will consider below where the tragedy of Electra lies. As with Ajax, the tragedy of Electra is not necessarily Electra’s tragedy, although we can agree with Kamerbeek (1974: 20) that Electra ‘remains “tragic” notwithstanding her triumph’. Electra’s contentment in the face of matricide is redolent of Ajax’s in the face of death. Cf. Segal 1966: 484–5: ‘Electra, too, for all her triumph over her enemies, is deeply tragic in a way that approximates other Sophoclean heroes . . . Her victory is her tragedy.’ Sheppard 1918: 85–6: ‘it is true that . . . Electra, when the murder is actually happening, eggs on the avenger and shows no trace of tragic ruth. Exactly; this is the tragedy.’ See further Foley 2001: 168 n. 106. 93 Contra Whitman 1951: 157–8. Cf. Segal (1966: 474 n. 5) for the tendency to dismiss the importance of the matricide as a moral issue. Lloyd points out (2005: 85, 92) that scholars’ interpretations of the character of Electra in this scene vis-à-vis Clytemnestra reﬂect their interpretations of the play as a whole (on which see the next section). 94 The role of the monistic hero in the inter-personal conﬂict, as we noted in respect of Ajax, is to heighten the tension. Clytemnestra’s mode of deliberation is not illuminated in the way that Creon’s is. 90

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about Agamemnon’s sacriﬁce? What of her dead sister? Unlike in the Oresteia, Electra treats these issues explicitly. The penetrating agōn between mother and daughter at 516–633 brings to light how Electra came to her present position/condition and offers a new perspective on aspects of the myth the children of the Aeschylean trilogy have conveniently ignored.

Arguments for the mother Let us consider Clytemnestra’s posture ﬁrst. She is portrayed throughout as a villain by her bitter daughter, a mother in name only (273–4, 597–8, 1154, 1194), but Sophocles’ presentation is more generous.95 The Clytemnestra he introduces to us is more reactive than proactive, more fearful than malicious,96 more maternal than her daughter gives her credit for.97 This point—Clytemnestra’s depiction as a mother—is worth exploring further, since it is the perversion of the mother into a non-mother that forms the crux of both Electra’s and the play’s tragedy, at least from the audience’s perspective. The most relevant facet of our assessment of Clytemnestra in this respect is that she has taken up Iphigenia’s cause—a cause Electra is oddly dismissive of. But it is also illustrated by her relationship with Orestes. Clytemnestra is despondent about Orestes’ death in a way she is not about Agamemnon’s (769 versus 549–50): where she feels ‘dispirited’ about the one (IŁı E), she is unfazed by the other (PŒ . . .

Łı). 98 Perhaps this is indicative of her view of the relative importance of the relationship between husband and wife, on the one hand, and mother and child on the other—a privileging of the blood tie over the conjugal tie (not an implausible position to take, as

95

Is the portrayal of Clytemnestra consistent with Electra’s previous description of her? For the earlier reported exchange as ‘far more vitriolic, at least on Clytemnestra’s part, than anything we actually observe’, see Blundell 1989: 163. For the opposite view, cf. Kamerbeek 1974: 11. Many commentators view Clytemnestra as the epitome of evil. See, among others, Whitman 1951: 153, 163; Kamerbeek 1974: 11; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 232; MacLeod 2001: esp. ch. 4. This seems to me to be overstated. 96 See 426–7, 635–6, 767–8. Cf. Whitman 1951: 158, 164. 97 Euripides’ Clytemnestra is portrayed even more sympathetically in this regard (Electra 27–8, 60–1, 658, 998–1138). See too her concern for Iphigenia’s marriage: Iphigenia at Aulis 607–16, 691–4, 730–41. 98 See Blundell 1989: 151. Cf. Orestes 621–6.

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Antigone makes clear);99 so too, of why she felt it possible, and legitimate, to take (exchange?) her spouse’s life for the loss of her daughter’s. Her reaction to the news of her son’s death is painted in much more sympathetic colours by Sophocles than it is by Aeschylus. Initial reaction: she wants the facts (681). The lengthy excursus on the chariot race gives Clytemnestra time to process the news, the painstaking detail inevitably conjures up feelings which might have been left latent without such a description. After the messenger is done, Clytemnestra is confused, conﬂicted: is her son’s death PıåB (‘fortunate’) or is it Ø but Œæ Å (‘terrible but a gain’, 766–7)? Hers is not a straightforward reaction, as the circumstances themselves are far from straightforward. Indeed, it is a painful thing to save one’s own life at the expense of one’s own misfortunes, she reckons (768). Clytemnestra is struck by the moral complexities of the situation.100 Like her husband experienced at Aulis also in respect of the loss of a child, she is in a lose–lose scenario. Children, Clytemnestra muses, are strange things. Even when they treat you badly, you cannot hate them (770–1). She restates the paradox in a slightly different way at 775–6. Orestes was born from her own body, nursed at her own breast, but now he is exiled, a foreigner. Where once he was so close, now he is a stranger to her. Not only is he a stranger but he is a stranger who has threatened her life. Unsurprisingly—because of his absence from her daily existence and Electra’s (omni-)presence—the fact of Orestes’ death is more relevant to her in the result it will have on Electra (783–7); it is Electra who is the Çø º Å (‘greater harm’, 784). In this way, the messenger is rewarded not for his news of the demise of her son, but for the fact that he has managed to silence her daughter (797–8). Clytemnestra feels she is justiﬁed in feeling relief because she is ﬁnally free, after years of sleepless nights, from a consuming fear of death and the drain of Electra’s constant abuse (777–87).101 99

The differing value of blood versus connubial relationships is considered by Antigone as well (Antigone 904–20), assuming these lines are genuine. Not insignificantly, Antigone opts for the blood-tie, though her marriage-ties are only hypothetical. 100 The fact that Clytemenstra is made to express any ambivalence and emotional confusion is a poignant contrast to Electra’s moral one-sidedness. The mother’s justiﬁcation of fear is much more human/realistic than the daughter’s invocation of ‘necessity’. 101 That Clytemnestra’s reactions are genuine, see Jebb 1894: xxxv; Wilamowitz 1917: 181 n. 1; Kells 1973: 7–9; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 232; Blundell 1989: 151

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In a way similar to Chrysothemis, Clytemnestra challenges several of the main tenets that Electra lives and laments by. If nothing else, she gives us food for thought: we cannot take Electra’s values as obviously paramount, her arrangement of the ‘facts’ as true.102 Indeed, the ﬁrst thing Clytemnestra says turns on its head Electra’s guiding principle of honour. In behaving the way she does, Clytemnestra avows, Electra is actually ‘disgracing’ (ÆØå Ø) her ‘family’ (çºı), not exalting them (517–18; cf. 615, 622).103 This sentiment, of course, turns on who constitutes the çºı in question, but it also underlines the reality that Clytemnestra is Electra’s mother and should, under normal circumstances, be treated with respect. It paves the way for her next point, which is that it is Electra who has initiated the enmity between them. According to Clytemnestra, Electra is keen to tell everybody that her mother is a cruel and unjust tyrant (521–2). The abuse Clytemnestra deals out, by contrast, is responsive: ŒÆŒH ºªø ŒÆŒH ŒºıÆ æe Ł ŁÆ (‘I speak badly of you because so often I am spoken of badly by you’, 523–4). Even Electra admits that she is usually the instigator (552–3). As to Electra’s unswerving devotion to her father, Clytemnestra has much to say. She fully admits to the murder (526–7), but makes the case that she did it with justice (528, 538).104 Has Electra forgotten that the father she so incessantly mourns (530) was the only one of the Greeks who was brash enough to sacriﬁce her sister (531–2)?105 Sophocles puts into the mouth of this putative villain the point that the Electra and the Orestes of the Choephori are quick to obscure. It is the point that levels n. 6. Contra March 2001: 190 and MacLeod 2001: 119–23. Electra, as we would expect, casts doubt on her mother’s reaction: the grief and distress were a sham (804–6), really she went away ‘gloating’ (Kªª ºHÆ, 807). 102 Contra MacLeod 2001: 84–5. 103 This idea is echoed at 612–15. Clytemnestra feels it is the height of ‘shamelessness’ (ÆNåÅ, 615) for a daughter to treat a mother in such a way. Electra agrees (616–18) but is ‘compelled’ (KÆÆªŒÇ Ø, 620; cf. 256) to do so. 104 This is very similar to the Clytemnestra of Agamemnon, down to the phrasing. But whereas Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra attributes joint responsibility to the alastor (‘avenger’, Agamemnon 1501), Sophocles’ does so to the personiﬁed value of justice. Here, I believe, we are not so much urged to thinks she is shunning agency but rather proffering justiﬁcation in the strongest language possible, deliberately echoing and altering the Aeschylean implication. 105 Note how she does not refer to Iphigenia here as her own daughter but rather as Electra’s ‘sister’ (c c ‹ÆØ, 531), using the possessive adjective to stress Electra’s disloyalty. Contrast Antigone’s fervent loyalty to her sibling. Clytemnestra’s use of the verb ºÅ (‘dared’) seems to be deliberately mocking the description at Agamemnon 224.

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the playing-ﬁeld. Clytemnestra then enumerates, in a string of sophistically styled rhetorical questions, the reasons why Agamemnon’s actions were not only heartless but deeply offensive (535–48). All have aspects of legitimacy: Iphigenia was not only Agamemnon’s daughter (536); why were Menelaus’ children exempt, Menelaus who was the reason for the expedition in the ﬁrst place (537–43)? Did not Agamemnon love his daughter, was it not a thoughtless, evil decision to take her life (544–6)?106 By way of answer, Clytemnestra makes her most striking point: the dead girl would herself say ‘yes’ (548). In doing so, she raises the possibility that the family could, in theory at least, be even further divided. These are the reasons why Clytemnestra did what she did. She is perfectly happy to accept that Electra sees differently (547),107 and urges her to cast aspersions only when she has viewed the matter in full, with justice (550–1).

Arguments for the daughter Electra, unsurprisingly, views this speech as ºıÅæ (‘hurtful’, 553). Clytemnestra, she feels, at least in this instance, is certainly initiating the insults (552–3). Her ﬁrst utterance in defence brilliantly reveals her inability to get beyond the fact of her father’s death. Reasons do not matter to Electra, justice/justiﬁcations do not matter, all that matters is the inescapable reality that Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon.108 There is nothing ‘more shameful’ than this (ÆNåNø, 558–60): end of story.109 She does, however, in good oratorical fashion, offer a set-piece 106

For a full discussion of the merits of these arguments, see Blundell 1989: 164–6. Euripides’ presentation of Clytemnestra’s justiﬁcations are even more plumped out in regard to Iphigenia (cf. Electra 1018–29). See also Agamemnon 1417–18. His Iphigenia at Aulis dramatizes the sacriﬁce in all its complexity: Agamemnon’s special relationship with Iphigenia (631–90); Clytemnestra’s horror at the prospect of her daughter’s death (876ff., 1146–1209). 107

ŒH , N ŒÆØ B åÆ ªÅ ºªø (‘I think so, even if I say something different from your opinion’, 547). Cf. 556–8, where Clytemnestra is content, indeed welcoming, to hear Electra’s opinion. 108 The mention of justice in this context is tantamount to offering an explanation. Electra is not interested in justice in the sense of justiﬁcation. And so too Clytemnestra admonishes her daughter not to blame her before acquiring ªÅ ØŒÆÆ (‘just opinion’, 551), i.e. an opinion which takes into consideration all of the factors. 109 Electra and the chorus repeatedly condemn Clytemnestra’s actions as ‘unjust (113, 521, 561), “unlawful” (494), hubris (271), a “most disgraceful outrage” (487; cf. 559), “evil villainy” (1387; cf. 126) and an affront to both aidos and reverence (249; cf. 124, 1383)’. Blundell 1989: 162.

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rebuttal. While she levels several of her own accusations as well as at least one potentially potent counter-argument—the idea that Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon for the sake of her lover, Aegisthus, is particularly damning (561–2, 586, 591–4; cf. 114, 196, 493–4)110—the most important point she makes concerns the events at Aulis. Electra is the living embodiment of the alternative that Agamemnon actually opted for.111 Both her actions thus far as well as her justiﬁcations here are predicated on the blind acceptance that he did the right thing, indeed the only thing he could. This is an acceptance which, evidenced by her strangely dismissive attitude towards the death of her sister (!), leaves no room for regret about what Agamemnon sacriﬁced (both literally and metaphorically).112 Her father, so she has been told, offended the goddess Artemis while hunting in her sacred grove (566–71).113 The Greek army was made to suffer as a result, and Agamemnon’s daughter was demanded as compensation for his own transgression,114 as payment for fair winds (571–2). The word Electra uses for ‘compensation’ is telling and particularly signiﬁcant from a monistic point of view. ÆŁ means ‘equal in weight’ and not only implies that she perceives the two options as commensurable but 110

Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 231. In this way, Agamemnon’s presentation in the play is important to our interpretation of Electra (as well as Clytemnestra), who identiﬁes herself with the dead king (205–8). Segal’s view (1966: 536 n. 84) that ‘the reference to Agamemnon in the ﬁrst lines of the play and later at 694 suggest that the Aeschylean prideful ﬁgure [see Agamemnon 577–9, 782–7, etc.]’ seems to be correct. 112 The poignant idea that Iphigenia herself—if she had a voice—would object (548) is an interesting comment on the pluralist nature of Agamemnon’s decision in the ﬁrst place. And evidence that, as the alternative chosen against, the sacriﬁced child (Isaac too) would certainly have cause for complaint (see VI.1 above). 113 The detail that she has heard the story secondhand (‰ Kªø Œºø, ‘as I heard’) is important (566), contra March 2001: 177. It is included by Electra, it would seem, to draw attention to the fact that her father was killed immediately on his arrival home from Troy, before he had a chance to explain. But it is included by Sophocles, I think, to further stiffen the picture of Electra. She is here dismissing the murder of her sister—a cold fact—on the basis of the (necessarily) tendentious (perhaps biased?) evidence she has garnered from others (presumably Agamemnon’s supporters and those who reaped the beneﬁts of the sacriﬁce). Moreover, we should note that Electra gives two reasons here as to why Agamemnon was put into the moral bind in the ﬁrst place. It is difﬁcult to say if she thinks these are mitigating (or, indeed, exculpating) factors. No such reasons are offered in Agamemnon. On the signiﬁcance of, and controversy surrounding, this point in Aeschylus, see Peradotto 1969, Dover 1987: 140–1, and Goldhill 1992: 62. 114 Predicated on Electra’s attitude are we to presume that she would have happily offered herself up as Menoeceus did in Phoenissae and Iphigenia in Iphigenia at Aulis? 111

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that she thinks they are equivalent.115 On her view, in sacriﬁcing one for the other, there will be no remainder.116 These, Electra says with an air of frank pragmatism, are the facts of her sister’s sacriﬁce: P ªaæ q ºØ ¼ººÅ æÆﬁH æe r Œ P N ”ºØ (‘for there was no other release for the army either to home or to Troy’, 572–4).117 These are what caused Agamemnon to do what he did, and to do it ‘under compulsion’ ( ØÆŁ , 575). In the last analysis, she gives no adequate response to the objection that he could have acted otherwise. Presumably she feels that her father was compelled to act as he did in the same way she considers herself compelled to act as she does (256, 620). The excuse she used to skirt the reality of her dilemmas applies to him as well. Both Electra and Clytemnestra claim justice for their actions. Both have legitimate points to make and both have their faults. Clytemnestra’s cause is not without merit, but it remains the case that she has killed her husband and has made one of her surviving daughter’s life hellish. Electra is melodramatic and stubborn, brash and selfdestructive, but she displays an amazing capacity to endure and an admirable will. Like Ajax, she is unmistakably grand. So what does the play as a whole make of the conﬂict between them? Is a resolution achieved that vindicates one position over the other? In terms of the narrative, is the matricide sanctioned because Electra is right or condemned because she is wrong? These questions have been the source of immeasurable controversy.118 It has even been remarked that Sophocles, at least in this work, ‘was not fully comprehended 115

Cf. 119–20 for another example of Electra’s tendency to weigh in quantity only (and see Kells 1973: 89–90). 116 Whether Agamemnon believes this to be true is another matter. Interestingly, Electra says that Agamemnon did struggle with the decision and performed the sacriﬁce reluctantly (575–6), which is unlike the approach she takes to her own situation. But it is unclear whether this is Electra’s interpretation of what happened or her informants’. Euripides’ portrayal of the process of Agamemnon’s decision is even more strikingly ambivalent. See esp. Iphigenia at Aulis 1–162. The sealing and resealing of the letter is particularly poignant (37–8, 110). 117 Mention of æe r Œ is curious. Does this strengthen her point by indicating that the whole army would be stranded at Aulis rather than merely prevented from carrying on to Troy? Jebb remarks (1894: 84) that ‘the weather, which stopped the voyage to Troy, would also hinder some of the islanders from going home; but most of the allies from the mainland could have reached their respective ports with less difﬁculty’. 118 See Whitman 1951: 152; Segal 1966: 473–5; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 217; Blundell 1989: 178 n. 11; March 2001: 16–20; Lloyd 2005: 99.

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even by his contemporaries’.119 Indeed, it has been a hallmark of Electra that its ending is perhaps the most perplexing and misunderstood of all of Sophocles’ extant tragedies. Now, this fact is, in and of itself, signiﬁcant. As I have suggested above (VII.3.B), the lack of agreement about who is in the right should be seen as reﬂective of the plurality of meaning built into the text. On this view, critics cannot agree over the moral victor in Electra because no such victor unambiguously exists. To say, as one commentator does, that ‘Electra’s right is as absolute as Clytemnestra’s wrong’ is far too facile,120 for even if we ﬁnd Clytemnestra herself to be unlikeable, as we might have similarly found Creon, this does not invalidate altogether her position. The ethical stances of the two women are, in this way, incommensurable with one another and thus the clash of the values each represents precludes a single, harmonious resolution.121

C. The ending A new import The fact that criticism of the play has been so devilishly divided does not, on its own, demonstrate that the pluralist reading of the play should be accepted. We must sustain such a reading with an exploration of, on the one hand, the play’s dramatic conclusion (as opposed to its ethical (ir)resolution) and, on the other, how such a conclusion ﬁts into the mythical tradition as a whole. The glaring difﬁculty with Electra is the ‘happiness’ of its ending.122 The play closes with the death of a mother at the hands of her children, with no overt sense of a problem. The chorus speak of triumph and freedom (1508–10), the Furies have not arrived. Left on the stage is a stainless Orestes with no prospect of punishment and a gloating Electra. Consequently, it is a common line of argument that Sophocles’ Electra is derived from the 119

Whitman 1951: 159. Kamerbeek 1974: 11. For other proponents of the view that Electra’s victory was total, see Wilamowitz 1917: 184–6. 121 We can read Electra as a response, perhaps a critique, of Aeschylus’ all-too-easy reconciliation. 122 Some commentators have bypassed the difﬁculty by removing the matricide as the moral focus, a view which is supported by the reversal of the traditional orders of the murders: Clytemnestra’s death is no longer the climax. On why this is mistaken, see Kirkwood 1947: 90–4. 120

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Homeric vision. So Jebb can conclude that, ‘like the poet of the Odyssey, Sophocles regards the vengeance as a deed of unalloyed merit, which brings the troubles of the house to an end’.123 Furthermore, we are told, this is not surprising, ‘since Sophocles was frequently . . . dependent upon Homer for his ideas of heroism and aretê . . . ’.124 And yet, we must recall (VII.1 above), that Sophocles’ relationship with Homer, his use of epic ethical paradigms, is not as straightforward as it might ﬁrst seem.125 We have already noticed how the Sophoclean protagonist, modelled on his Iliadic prototype, is exaggerated to illustrate the tragic consequences of a certain sort of relentless heroism. It would be more surprising, we should argue, for the Sophoclean adoption of Homeric myth in its entirety to be itself without a new import. The question becomes: what is this new import? What has Sophocles done with this tale of matricide that differentiates it from the Homeric account (as well as the Aeschylean one)? Where is the tragedy of Electra to be found? The ﬁrst point to make is that there must be some signiﬁcance for the overall ‘meaning’ of the play in the shift of focus onto Electra. In this way, the pursuit of Orestes by the Furies is no longer the centre of attention, its omission not necessarily remarkable. Perhaps, then, the question should be recast: where is Electra’s tragedy to be found? The curtain closes over a seemingly triumphant heroine. But how blissful is she really? As we have already mentioned, Electra has spent the best years of her life, her prime, coddling a spirit-destroying hatred. In her seemingly endless state of ‘waiting’ (æı , 164, 303), she has not only been wasting away but wasting time. Gone is her beauty and prospects for a family of her own. Gone are years of unfulﬁlled potential she can never get back. And if that is not bad enough, she has, by her own standards, been living in impiety and disgrace.126 123

Jebb 1894: xxxix–xl. On different points of contact between Electra and the Odyssey, see Davidson 1988. Lloyd, however, warns (2005: 21–2) of an overly simplistic reading of Homer in this respect: ‘ . . . it would be mistaken to conclude that Homer does not know about the matricide or implies that it is justiﬁed because he emphasizes the positive in Orestes’ feat . . . If the matricide were really unproblematic [for Homer], then he would not have needed to take such care to avoid dwelling on it.’ 124 Whitman 1951: 165. 125 Cf. Sheppard 1927: ‘in the Odyssey there is no oracle, and therefore no religious problem; no Electra, and therefore no tragedy of Electra; no matricide, and therefore nothing relevant to our enquiry.’ 126 Electra admits that she is acting with impiety (308) and disgracefully (221–5, 254–7, 307–9, 616–21).

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When her waiting ﬁnally comes to an end, so consumed by hatred is she that even her greatest moment of joy is tempered. Even in the ecstasy of reunion, Electra is forced to remember her enmity and her purpose (1249–50).127 The hatred has implanted itself so deeply into her being that her face will not, indeed cannot, reveal this strange new state of joy (1310–12).128 And ﬁnally, when it comes time to do the deed, Electra cannot even relish it: it is a ‘release’ (ºıæØ, 1490) more than anything else.129 Her disconcerting cry at 1415—ÆE, N Ł Ø, ØºB (‘strike, if you have the strength, a second blow’)—is indicative not only of her impatience for her mother to be dead and her desperate need for assurance that it is so, but the depths to which her bitterness has sunk.130 Like Philoctetes, Electra’s well-rehearsed attitude, her ‘monism of hatred’, accomplishes for her what she wants. But, as with Philoctetes, what she wants is not unambiguously glorious (see IX.2 below). This paradox is smoothed over for Philoctetes by the timely intervention of Heracles. For Electra, however, there is no divine agent to remove the tragedy from her triumph. ‘The closing scenes of the play give us no full or easy resolution of Electra’s condition.’131 The new import is a different perspective on Electra’s tragedy, one that distances it from the search for the tragedy in Electra.

Optimistic, pessimistic The optimistic, that is to say the Homeric or light, reading of Electra has been well documented and can be easily supported by the apparent shape of the drama.132 If nothing else, the last three lines of the play lead in this interpretational direction.133 But as Charles Segal has insightfully pointed out, ‘a three-line choral tag cannot lift the weight

On the importance of ‘not forgetting’, see 145–6, 167–8, 177, 341–2, 1245–50, 1251–2. Cf. Segal 1966: 517. 128 A reference to her mask of sadness but also a true metaphor. See WinningtonIngram 1980: 230 n. 44. On the role of ‘joy’ in the play writ large, see Wright 2005. 129 Perhaps like Agamemnon’s ºØ at 573. 130 Cf. Agamemnon 1343–5. 131 Segal 1966: 519. 132 See Wright 2005: 172 n. 1 for bibliography and Lloyd 2005: 99–102 for discussion. 133 On the Kº ıŁ æÆ (‘freedom’) of line 1509 as referring to Electra and not the house of Atreus, see Segal 1966: 529–31. If this is right, it has huge implications: Electra’s freedom from her self-imposed prison is quite a different thing from the cease to a generations-old family curse. 127

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of a ﬁfteen-hundred-line meditation on waste and death’.134 In this way, the onus of proof falls on the pessimistic or ironic interpretation.135 His object is not to negate the purely optimistic reading but rather to temper it. For anything that chips away at such a reading is signiﬁcant indeed. As one pessimist has argued, ‘the pursuit of Orestes was an established part of the legend. If Sophocles had wished to rule it out, he could hardly have done so superﬁcially, but he could at least have avoided anything which would positively suggest it to the minds of his audience. This he has not avoided.’136 Several considerations will support this assertion. (1) The dramatic irony of 580–3 is obvious and is ‘alone enough to cast doubt on any straightforwardly optimistic interpretation of the play’.137 When she admonishes Clytemnestra, N ªaæ Œ F ¼ºº I ¼ººı, f Ø æÅ ŁØ ¼, N ŒÅ ª ıªåØ (‘if we were to kill someone for the sake of someone else, you would certainly be the ﬁrst to die, if you were to get your just desserts’), Electra draws attention to the obvious implication that, in killing, she too will be subject to a just death.138 (2) Aegisthus is not a very prominent character, but he does make two comments at the end of the play that should weigh heavily on the minds of optimists. First, he reminds us, even if only obliquely, of future evils to come (1497–8).139 And secondly, he raises the question of whether the deed is ŒÆº (1493), casting at least a modicum of doubt in the ﬁnal moments.140 (3) This conditional inevitably recalls Orestes’ cryptic remark at 1424–5, that ‘all is well in the house, if Apollo prophesied well’ (K ØØ b ŒÆºH, ººø N ŒÆºH KŁØ ), a striking lack of conﬁdence at a crucial moment about whether the divine enjoinder was just in the ﬁrst place. So too, a

134

Segal 1966: 545. The most convincing pessimist approaches to the ending of the play are Segal 1966: 519–45; Winnington-Ingram 1980: ch. 10; Blundell 1989: 178–83. What follows is much indebted to all three. See Wright 2005: 172 n. 3. for further bibliography and Lloyd 2005: 102–15 for discussion. 136 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 226. 137 Blundell 1989: 168. Cf. Kitto 1939: 133; Segal 1966: 537; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 221. 138 Mirroring the statement of the lex talionis at Choephori 312–13, 400–4. 139 Cf. Blundell 1989: 176–7 and Winnington-Ingram 1980: 226, 227 n. 35. 140 On the ambiguity of the moral terminology in the play generally, a further sign that all is not harmonious, see Kirkwood 1958: 137–43, 240–1; Segal 1966: 534–5; Blundell 1989: ch. 5 passim. On these two passages and their importance for the pessimistic or ironic reading, see Lloyd 2005: 105–10. 135

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reference perhaps to the Euripidean and Aeschylean Apollos who did not get it quite right after all.141 (4) Electra ﬁnishes when the human portion of the conﬂict has come to an end. But as we well know, the next avengers are goddesses. It is typical of Sophoclean characters to have only limited understanding of their predicament, of Sophoclean choruses to rejoice prematurely.142 (5) Electra is not without reference to the Furies: there are four (112, 276, 491, 1080; cf. 1388). These allusions illustrate that the concept of pursuit and punishment was not absent from Sophocles’ mind.143 (6) Electra closes with no celebration, no procession, no lights as at Eumenides 903–1047. The ‘happiness’ of the play is connected more to the moment of recognition than to the success of the murders.144 Moreover, the ending of Sophocles’ version is shrouded in darkness (1494, evils unseen 1497), with the so-called victors returned to the polluted house of their previous misery.145 ‘Far from celebration and triumphant resolution, the tragedy ends in further suffering, emotional turmoil (or even madness), and death.’146 Taken together, these observations cannot help but cast doubt on an easy interpretation of the play.

141

In Euripides’ Electra, the ambiguities surrounding the role of the divine are brought to the fore. The perversity of the prophesy’s content is made a topic of discussion: its wisdom called into question (971, 1190–7) and rejected (981, 1246, 1302). On Apollo as responsible, cf. Orestes 29–30, 75–6, 276, 285–7, 416–18, 591–9. On overt condemnation of the oracle, cf. Orestes 161 (¼ ØŒ, ‘unjust’), 194 (P ŒÆº , ‘not good’). On Aeschylus’ Oresteia, cf. Lloyd 2005: 106: ‘his [Apollo’s] oracle is shown to be only partially correct, and he appears in a somewhat unﬂattering light in Eumenides.’ 142 Ajax 693–718; Antigone 1115–54; Oedipus Tyrannos 1086–1109. See Blundell 1989: 178. 143 See Winnington-Ingram 1980: 226 (discussion of and response to this idea at Lloyd 2005: 104–5). Cf. also the reference to Amphiaraus at 837 f., whose son, Alcmaeon, was pursued by Furies for killing his mother. 144 Cf. Blundell 1989: 177 and Winnington-Ingram 1980: 10. Wright argues (2005: 193) that ‘Sophocles has used emotions [particularly of joy] to create a distinctly pessimistic and troubling mood’. 145 Segal makes the further point (1966: 511): ‘The terms . . . Orestes uses to describe his stratagem—dolos, kleptein, kruptein (37, 55, 56, etc.)—are precisely those which, elsewhere in the play, describe the murderous act of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (114, 125, 197, 229, 279, 490, 638).’ This parallelism highlights the fact that both sides are equally punishable. On the role of dolos more generally in the play, see MacLeod: 2001. 146 Wright 2005: 193.

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Conclusion, resolution (again) On the ending of this most vexing play, one of the most learned of all Sophoclean scholars has remarked, ‘it would have been hard for Athenians, familiar with the lyric and the dramatic Oresteia, to feel that the story, as told by Sophocles, reached a true conclusion’.147 This sentiment captures some of the ambiguity, of the dissatisfaction, we experience at the close of Electra. And yet, it misconstrues it in a way which harks back to our distinction between conclusion and resolution (VII.3.B above). I think what Jebb is getting at here is that the story failed to reach a true resolution, not a true conclusion. As the preceding sections illuminate, the tragedy of Electra is a tragedy after all. Negatively put, there are several strong indications that Electra and Orestes are not on the brink of running off into the sunset together. More positively, the play ends with the children in the dark, returned to the blood-stained house of Atreus, with the prospect of the inevitable ills to come hanging in the air. Their victory is not unalloyed. The incommensurability of the conﬂict between mother and children is felt even in the last scenes. Clytemnestra is dead but her cause has been well presented and will be, we get the sense, vindicated: ‘Sophocles has weighed the victory and the loses in his balance with excruciating exactitude, and we feel the pull on both sides.’148 Because it is a single play and not a trilogy, Electra shows but one stage of a potentially interminable conﬂict: ‘although the action of the play represents just one climactic moment, the feud has clearly been under way far longer, without any hope of resolution.’149 Its interest is to be found in precisely this fact. While it does not point ahead to the future, neither does it harp on the past. It simply focuses on one drawn-out moment in time and on the character most affected by this moment. It is the portrayal of Electra’s tortured life that forms the real import of the drama: indeed, her tragic success is where the true

147

Jebb 1894: xli. Segal 1966: 543. Blundell 1989: 163. The persistence of the debate is made clear in Electra’s recollection of an earlier argument between her mother and herself (287–302). There the preponderance of verbs of abuse in the present tense emphasizes the progressive/ repeated nature of the conﬂict. Similarly, Clytemnestra’s language draws attention to the constancy of the ﬁghting: Æs (‘again’, 516; cf. 328); I (‘always’, 517, 525, 530); 520; ŁÆ (‘frequently’ 524). See Blundell 1989: 163 n. 51 and 52. 148 149

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ambiguity lies. Sophocles does not end his play on the overtly ambiguous note struck in Choephori because he did not have Eumenides waiting in the wings: ‘he achieves an ending that is swift and full of action; and in doing this he avoids any pause for reﬂection after the action—reﬂection that must be concentrated on Orestes, in view of the known sequel of the story, which concerns him greatly and Electra not at all.’150 Sophocles’ ambiguity is much more subtle. Electra concludes as one phase of this theoretically relentless cycle comes to an end, is ‘completed’ ( º øŁ, 1510). The ﬁnal, triumphant cry of the chorus may not be an echo of the uncertainty at Choephori 1075–6, but it is an echo of the choral sentiment at Choephori 941ff., which is the corresponding point in the Aeschylean play.151 This is not to say, however, that the ending offers a resolution. There are no Furies, but this does not mean a happy ending. ‘No pursuit by the Furies; then no Delphi; no Athens; no Areopagus; no acquittal, and—above all—no reconciliation of the Furies by persuasion of Athena.’152 In this way, by leaving out of his play the arrival of the Erinyes, so too Sophocles leaves out the assurance of an Aeschylean remedy: the play can close, but the uncertainty of the aftermath leaves it hauntingly unresolved.

D. A pluralist ending? As mentioned above, the mere fact that the moral positions of Electra and Clytemnestra—as presented in the agōn—are theoretically incompatible and incommensurable with another is not enough to secure a pluralist reading of the play. An overall ‘pluralist’ reading of the play is contingent on how the dramatic action resolves, or fails to resolve, this incompatible, incommensurable conﬂict. In other words, does the portrayal of the way the conﬂict plays itself out come down determinately on one side or the other? It is just this question, as we have seen, that has hugely divided commentators of this tragedy. The two prevailing interpretations of the play discussed answer the question in different ways. The afﬁrmative approach can be described as ‘monistic’ in and of itself. For those who embrace this reading, the play clearly favours one side over 150 152

151 Kirkwood 1947: 93. See ibid. 95. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 227.

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the other. The justice of Electra’s choices and actions deﬁnitively outweighs any claims of justice that Clytemnestra might make. The pessimistic reading—or, rather, those readings which emphasize the darker elements of both the matricide and the future prospects of those who commit it—is pluralist in the sense that it recognizes the moral difﬁculty inherent in the action. So too, this reading acknowledges the play as a whole as a showcase for the conﬂict which inheres in the matricide: that between justice and shamefulness.153 Perhaps, as it was for the hero/foil contrast, it is question-begging here too to mark the pessimistic reading as the ‘right’ one. And yet it seems that a sound and thorough interpretation of the play can no longer fail to ignore its deep-seated complexities. 153

The extent to which Electra herself recognizes the reality of this conﬂict is debatable.

IX Philoctetes: moral complexity Philoctetes is the most philosophically demanding of Sophocles’ extant works.1 Its plot, characterization, and dramatic structure are all shaped—determined even—by a series of profound and overlapping moral conﬂicts.2 The previous chapters have shown how other plays of Sophocles are also comprised of multiple conﬂicts: how, in addition to the individual moral dilemmas the protagonists each faced, the tragedies themselves often turned on a larger clash, a grave disagreement between two overarching ethical perspectives. Further, we saw how this disagreement can be reﬂective of a schism within a single moral system, as well as between an older, heroic morality and a newer, more civic one. In Philoctetes, Sophocles directs his attention to a similar constellation of concerns: the tragedy inherent in a certain approach to dilemma, the tensions within the heroic code, the collision between the ethics of Homer and those of the ﬁfth century. We would expect something novel from this late play, and in this Sophocles does not disappoint.3 His unprecedented introduction of Neoptolemus into the mythical framework creates a dramatic situation in which the opposition of personality and principle is able to move beyond the rather rigid polarity of, for example, Antigone and

1

Cf. Easterling 1978: 38; Blundell 1989: 184; Heath 1999: 151. At the outset we can draw attention to the preponderance of ‘dilemma markers’, that is, expressions of perplexity mainly with the deliberative subjunctive: 757, 895, 908, 949, 963, 969, 974, 1063, 1350. Philoctetes includes this formula more frequently than any other extant tragedy. Cf. Roisman: 2005: 61, who comments that ‘the multiple repetitions of the question [‘What Shall I do?’] highlight the uncertainties of the characters as they face dilemmas with no ideal solutions’. 3 Philoctetes is ﬁrmly dated at 409 bce. 2

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Creon.4 Instead, what we have in Philoctetes is the dramatization of a three-way relationship, a relationship which is remarkably dynamic and whose moral import is constantly shifting within and between the characters involved.5 This triad of relationships, we shall see over the next three sections, is above all designed to bring to life the complex nature of the contemporary moral scene, not only by enacting on stage those value conﬂicts inherent in the ethical fabric of ﬁfthcentury Athens, but by drawing out their consequences.

1. ODYSSEUS

A. Odysseus as villain? Like Creon and Clytemnestra, the Odysseus of Sophocles’ Philoctetes is generally regarded as the villain.6 The most common characterization of him in this regard is that he was purposely created to mirror the qualities of a ﬁfth-century sophist, or perhaps one of the new breed of politicians for whom the sophists provided an intellectual justiﬁcation.7 Such an analogy, however, leaves room for multiple constructions. As we saw in respect of Protagoras, the itinerant peddlers of ‘virtue’ known as ‘sophists’ were not a homogeneous group.8 In this way, the Odysseus of Philoctetes has been denounced variably—as a verbal trickster, a self-interested opportunist, a hardhearted pragmatist, or an unscrupulous relativist—sometimes,

4 See Dio Chrysostom 52.15. On the three tragic versions of the play, see Kieffer 1942 and Kirkwood 1958: 36–40. For the view that the opposition of values in the Sophoclean Philoctetes is very different from that of Aeschylus or Euripides, see Zanker 1994: 71 n. 29. 5 Aristotle tells us (Poetics 1449a18–19) that it was Sophocles who introduced the third actor. See further Kitto 1939: 155–6. 6 See e.g. Webster 1936: 56, 69; Kitto 1939: 156; Dover 1974: 16; King 1987: 77. 7 On this type of politician, see Connor 1971. For Odysseus as this type, cf. among others Whitman 1951: 179; Kitto 1959: 109; Webster 1974: 7; Rose 1976: 81–5; Knox 1964: 124–7; Kamerbeek 1980: 21; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 282; Rankin 1983: 126; Blundell 1987: 236, 307, 329; Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 172; Roisman 2005: 73–5. 8 Although there were, of course, common characteristics, intellectual afﬁnities, and methodologies linking them. See Guthrie 1971: ch. 3 vis-à-vis ch. 11, and Kerferd 1981: ch. 3 vis-à-vis ch. 5.

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indeed, as all of the above, depending on which aspect of sophism, or which sophist, the critic has in mind. And yet, there are two important threads that bind together these categorizations of the Sophoclean Odysseus. The ﬁrst is that they all impute to him the negative traits of a sophist/politician, even if there is disagreement over what precisely those traits are. The second common thread uniting those who want to see Odysseus as, in some sense, sophistic concerns chronology. To cast Odysseus in the mould of a sophist or Athenian demagogue is to place him in a particular historical context.9 It is to say that the values Odysseus represents in the play, the virtues he embodies (or fails to embody), are those of a speciﬁc time, the time when men such as Protagoras and Thrasymachus walked the streets. And this determination is where we confront a serious obstacle to baldly characterizing Odysseus as ‘sophistic’ and, in turn, to branding him a villain.10 It is the argument here that the model for Sophocles’ Odysseus is rather older than many commentators have imagined: that Sophocles’ Odysseus is deliberately linked with Homer’s.11 That is to say, he ‘ . . . is essentially the same ﬁgure as the hero of the Odyssey’.12 Indeed, the prologue of Philoctetes works to demonstrate this.13 It 9 The acme of the sophists in terms of both importance and activity was about 460–380 bce. See Kerferd 1981: 42. According to Connor (1971: 4) the trend of Athenian statesmanship started in 462 bce and reached its full development in 412 bce. 10 For more approving views of his character, cf. Dio Chrysostom 52.16, where Sophocles’ Odysseus is described as ºf æÆ ﬁ æ ŒÆd ±º æ (‘much gentler and more sincere’) than Euripides’. Easterling draws attention (1978: 38) to Odysseus as an ambiguous ﬁgure who is ‘by no means the simple embodiment of evil that he seems to Philoctetes’. See also Beye 1970: 68–9; Gellie 1972: 132–3; Kiso 1984: 105–6; Stephens 1995; Heath 1999: 145–7; Hesk 2000: 188–99; Tessitore 2003: 66–72. Roisman sees (2005: 40, 72–6) him as a complex character who does not ﬁt into the mould of either the Homeric hero or the Pindaric trickster. 11 Though there are senses in which he is sophistic. The Odysseus of Philoctetes combines elements of the older form of heroism, for which his name is a byword, with a more contemporary sophism. Such a combination demonstrates the ways in which Homer’s Odysseus is not only a forerunner of a certain ﬁfth-century type but is constitutive of him. 12 Kirkwood 1965: 66. Cf. Lesky 1965: 212. 13 The Homeric connection is underlined at the end of the prologue, when Odysseus invokes the patron goddess of epic, Athena, who is not only his fellow conspirator (see Odyssey 8.492–5; 13.303, 372–3) but the one who ﬁÇ Ø I (‘saves me always’, 134). On Athena and Odysseus, cf. Odyssey 3.221–2, 13.300–1, 20.45–8; Iliad 23.782. See, though, Tessitore 2003: 66–7 on the unusual aspect of this invocation.

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conjures up a strong sense of the Homeric world by re-enacting a speciﬁcally Homeric conﬂict: that epic contrast between Odysseus and Achilles we explored at length in respect of Ajax (VII.3.C above).14 The nature of this conﬂict, often overlooked in analyses of the play, has important implications for its overall tenor.15 Indeed, it becomes crucial for identifying the Sophoclean Odysseus with the Odysseus of Homer and, consequently, for showing us that his actions, while deceitful and perhaps less than savoury from our own ethical vantage-point, are still ﬁrmly grounded in the tradition of heroism.

B. Odysseus in the prologue: a Homeric hero and a Homeric end Despite the vast attention he has received from critics, Odysseus is only on stage in Philoctetes for less than 160 lines, making but four relatively brief appearances. In attempting to understand his dramatic function, therefore, we must take each of these appearances on their own grounds, resisting the temptation to read into the Odysseus of lines 1–134—the character’s longest scene—the qualities we think we discern in the Odysseus found at the end of the play.16 As he was in Ajax, the trickster of legend is given a prominent position in the prologue. Casting aside preconceptions, we might be prompted to recall the role of Odysseus in that earlier tragedy, his magnanimous spirit, modesty before the gods, and open-mindedness.17 His ﬁrst speech from the shore of Lemnos gives us no reason to suspect that we are dealing with a radically different character. Rather, it might even conﬁrm the suspicion that we are dealing with the same one. Our speaker is respectful to his fellow heroes, referring to Achilles as ŒæØ Eººø (‘the mightiest of the Greeks’, 3); he offers what appears to be a valid explanation for Philoctetes’ expulsion to the

14 This conﬂict was also a sophistic topic. Cf. Plato, Hippias Minor 365b3–4, where Hippias and Socrates agree upon a description of Achilles as IºÅŁ ŒÆd ±ºF (‘true and sincere’) and Odysseus as ºæ ŒÆd ł ı (‘crafty and lying’). 15 Disregarded, for instance, by Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 307. 16 Cf. Gellie 1972: 132. Blundell argues (1987: 318–22) that Odysseus’ moral attitude is inconsistent between the prologue and his later appearances, but that such incongruities can be accounted for in a variety of ways. 17 For the date of Ajax, see Stanford 1981: appendix G, and Hesk 2003: 14–16.

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island (6–11),18 whilst carefully removing himself from the ambit of responsibility (6); he prepares the young Neoptolemus for his role in the stratagem (15–16, 24–5); and describes the exile’s living-quarters rather sweetly (16–21). If we take Odysseus’ portrayal here at face value, there is nothing overtly negative in it. Even after the plan to abscond with Philoctetes has been relayed— the most problematic aspect of a positive assessment—what we witness throughout the prologue is an Odysseus who approaches the challenge at hand with the consummate skill and foresight we would expect from his namesake in the Odyssey. If we consider his character in the light of Homeric ethics, that is, in the light of what is acceptable and indeed required behaviour for an epic hero who is both a great doer of deeds and speaker of words, Sophocles’ Odysseus looks rather irreproachable.19 It is clear that he has considered his options, taken stock of the situation and account of the variables—most importantly the nature of the man in question (Philoctetes)—and he has hatched a promising plan.20 Indeed, the plan Odysseus devises here embodies in spades his ancient penchant for both calculation21 and creativity.22 In terms of calculation, Odysseus is correct in his belief (13, 46–7, 75–6) that Philoctetes nurtures a special hatred for him.23 He is careful, therefore, to prevent the abandoned hero from detecting his 18 See Stephens 1995 for a discussion of just how off-putting Philoctetes’ wound might have been. Cf. also Beye 1970: 66. 19 Cf. Iliad 9.443. For Odysseus as a complete hero in this sense, see Odyssey 16.241–42, 22.226–30. 20 The plan only fails because of Neoptolemus’ inability to bring it to fruition. See Easterling 1978: 31 ff. 21 For Odysseus as a man of calculation in Homer, in terms of both foresight and planning, see Odyssey 9.299 ff. (his careful consideration of how to overcome the Cyclops, where several references are made to the weighing of options and the sifting of information so as to emerge with the best plan, 302, 318, 420–2), 10.151–5 (his internal debate on arrival at Aeaea of what course of action to follow). Also, of course, his monologue (discussed at VI.2.C above) at Iliad 11.403–10. 22 For Odysseus as the pre-eminent strategy maker, see Odyssey 8.492–5 (the wooden horse); 14.478–505 (the story of how he tricked Andraemon out of his cloak); 16.267 ff. (the cunning plot against the suitors, with particular care concerning the use of weapons, 16.282–98, 19.3–13); Iliad 10 (his role in the Doloneia). Cf. also the descriptions at Odyssey 9.19–20, 12.211–12, 13.332. 23 257–9, 264–5, 314–16, 321, 384–5, 405–9, 428–30, 791–5, 984 (before Philoctetes knows that Odysseus is involved in the new ruse), 1020–4, 1035–6, 1285–6, 1354–7 (where Philoctetes’ hatred for Odysseus is sharpened because of the latter’s ‘corruption’ of Neoptolemus).

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presence on the island and to use Neoptolemus instead (70–4).24 Moreover, he has predicted Philoctetes’ state of mind to a tee. The episode with the false merchant illustrates, as Bernard Knox points out, that ‘the plot has been brilliantly successful’.25 Indeed, it elicits a perfect reaction from Philoctetes, who, on hearing the carefully conveyed taunts of Odysseus, is up and ready to leave (628 ff.). In terms of creativity, the content of the story Odysseus unveils (55–65) is well conceived, a çØÆ (‘scheme’, 14) comparable in sophistication and efﬁciency to any we may ﬁnd in the Odyssey. He knows Philoctetes will respond to the fact that Neoptolemus is the great Achilles’ son,26 a hero with whom Philoctetes shares (or at least believes he shares) both a value system and a way of life.27 He knows the potency of the enmity Philoctetes harbours towards him. And he knows that a hero of the Achillean variety will be deeply affected by Neoptolemus’ claim to have been illegitimately deprived of his father’s arms.28 Most striking is the fact that Odysseus is willing to endure his name being slandered (64–5) for the successful execution of the strategy. Such a concession is pointedly redolent of those which Homer’s Odysseus is content to make in order to win his way home.29 By Homeric standards, the mechanism Odysseus contrives to take Philoctetes is suitable. Indeed, it is even admirable for its high

24 Compare this cautious protection of identity for a greater good with Odysseus’ behaviour at Odyssey 13.333–8, 16.301–8, 17.158, 17.360–6, 21.193–8 (all of which illustrate Odysseus using his disguise to gather information and ‘test’ his family and servants). 25 Knox 1964: 130. Cf. Kitto 1939: 302. 26 Consider Philoctetes’ reaction to the death of Achilles and the other worthy heroes at Troy (331–40, 414–52). 27 This is particularly implied through Philoctetes’ treatment of Neoptolemus and his moral expectations of him. See below. 28 403–11. Mention of Ajax at 410–11 brings to mind that Achillean hero’s devastating reaction to deprivation of the arms. 29 I am thinking primarily of his willingness to pose as a beggar at Odyssey 17.212–53, 374–480. The theme of enduring disgrace for an end, however, is a constant one in the Odyssey, particularly in the latter half. See 4.245–50 (Odysseus enters Troy as a beggar to acquire information); 9.365–7, 408–9 (goes nameless to the Cyclops, with which cf. Iliad 1.293–4 and Odyssey 19.116–18); 13.306–10 (Athena tells him he must submit to indignities as part of the plan); 16.274–7 (Odysseus tells Telemachus the same thing); 17.17–38, 20.178–89 (is humiliated by Melanthius but endures it); 17.446–67 (by Antinous); 18.390–6 (by Eurymachus); 19.65–88 (by Melantho); 20.299–302 (by Ctesippus); 20.6–21 (Odysseus encourages himself to abide, recalling that he has suffered worse to accomplish his goal); 24.156–63 (the suitors describe what Odysseus had to put up with at their hands).

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chance of success. But what can we say about the actual purpose for which it is designed? Shall we recoil from the prospect of returning an exiled man to Troy or from the use of an initially unwilling innocent to do so? The answer, at least at this point in the play, must be no. It is nothing but normal in Homeric terms for a man in Odysseus’ situation to stress to his young companion the need to subordinate himself to his superiors (53) and to work for the goals and good of the Greek army (66–7).30 The object of the whole exercise—and this is pivotal—is the sack of Troy (68–9): the capture of Philoctetes is but a necessary step along the way. It is the sack of Troy that is the ŒÅ (‘victory’, 81) Odysseus will dangle before Neoptolemus’ eyes in an effort to convince him to act against his nature; it is the Œæ (‘gain’, 111) and the e øŁBÆØ (‘salvation’, 109) he deems all-important. What more signiﬁcant end exists for a hero at this time? What more appropriate, intrinsically worthwhile aim can one invoke to galvanize an aspiring hero? The men of Homer’s world spend ten years trying to take Priam’s city, the fall of which is their raison d’être and the means through which each can achieve his own personal goal: the acquisition of ‘honor’ (timē) and ‘renown’ (kleos). On Lemnos the two goals, public and private, happily coalesce. Odysseus’ desire for personal glory can be, as can Neoptolemus’, accommodated within the purpose of the Greek army as a whole. Victory for the one is here victory for the many. That is to say, in pursuing the fall of Troy both Odysseus and Neoptolemus have the opportunity to distinguish themselves individually, to win timē, to be aristos (‘the best’). This idea of personal glory is signiﬁcant in our effort to delineate Odysseus’ character, for, as was alluded to above, he has been castigated for acting not out of loyalty to the Greek cause, but from ‘self-interest’ or a desire for personal gain.31 When we remember, however, that it was natural for epic heroes to strive both for a larger cause and for a personal glory, Odysseus’ own motivations begin to look more benign. Achilles, after all, arranged

30

This reminds us of Odysseus’ role at Iliad 2.182–210. Blundell 1987. She remarks (p. 312) that is it unclear which ethical motivation is actually driving Odysseus, self-interest or a broader utilitarianism, but implies that, if it is the former, this is a negative thing. But for personal interest as the keystone and driving force of Homeric ‘morality’, see Gagarin 1987. 31

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for his own army to be routed in order to salvage his individual sense of honour.32 Even if we are prepared to admit that the aim of Odysseus’ plan is permissible or, at least, understandable given the circumstances, what of the explicit choice of deceit as a means to accomplish it:33 Odysseus tells Neoptolemus that he ‘must orchestrate this plot so that you can steal the invincible weapon’(Iºº ÆPe F E çØŁBÆØ, Œº f ‹ø ª ﬁ Å H IØŒø ‹ºø, 77–8). From a modern moral perspective this might be problematic. Perhaps even from a ﬁfthcentury point of view it may rub consciences the wrong way. But in the world of Odysseus, the world of heroic or competitive ethics, this behaviour was a way of life.34 Neoptolemus asks Odysseus if he thinks it is ‘shameful’ (ÆNåæ ) to ‘lie’ (e ł ı B ºª Ø, 108). Surely, there must be some irony in such a question when posed to myth’s most famous and dexterous liar.35 Surely, the hero of the Odyssey would not be able to answer ‘yes’. It was, in fact, a brilliant catalogues of lies that saved Odysseus in the Odyssey.36 And it is perhaps unsurprising that Sophocles’ Odysseus replies in line with his Homeric prototype,

32 See esp. Iliad 1.407–12 and Book 9 passim, where Achilles pursues his own honour at the expense of his companions and repeatedly relegates the interests of the army at large to his own pride. 33 Interestingly, critics of Electra, especially those who support an afﬁrmative reading of the play, often have no qualms about the fact that Orestes’ plan of matricide involves a dolos (‘deceit’, 32–7). 34 Cf. Kirkwood 1965: 66. Guile was a prevalent Odyssean trait in Homer. We can note that the false merchant’s damning description of Odysseus’ deceitful capture of Helenus (604–9) mirrors Odysseus’ antics in Iliad 10. Pratt outlines (1993: 56–63) different ways in which lying and deception can lose the negative connotation that normally attend to them in archaic literature and ‘become positive representations of intelligence, persuasive power, inventiveness, imagination, and verbal dexterity’ (p. 57). The idea of taking advantage of one’s competitors or enemies is good, but can be problematic if someone ‘pretends to be a friend to disguise hostile intentions’ (p. 58). This is perhaps true of Odysseus, but the notion of who constitutes a friend in Sophocles’ plays is a slippery subject indeed. 35 We need only to consider Athena’s description of her protégé at Odyssey 13.291–5. 36 See Odyssey 13.253–86 (to Athena); 14.192–359 (to Eumaeus); 16.91–111 (to Telemachus); 17.415–44 (to Antinous); 19.165–202, 270–307 (to Penelope); 24.235–314 (to Laertes). There were also, of course, those lies that were not strictly directed at salvation—those that were either unnecessary or took on a rather cruel dimension. Odysseus needlessly lies to Athena (13.253–86), opts to lie to Eumaeus without being told to do so by Athena (cf. 13.404–11), reveals the truth to his son only on order (16.167–8), and, of course, heartlessly tests his father after both hearing from Eumaeus how piteous his condition is (15.351–7) and noticing it for himself (24.226–34).

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‘no, not if the lying brings salvation’ (PŒ, N e øŁBÆ ª e ł F çæ Ø, 109). Odysseus chooses deceit because he feels this is the only course of action that will work.37 He has good reason to believe that persuasion and force are not viable options (103): he knows the nature of both Philoctetes and the bow (cf. 75–6).38 Not only are we without reason to doubt Odysseus now—if nothing else, he is shrewd—but the remainder of the play vindicates him, revealing him as a man of penetrating foresight. In fact, ﬁve attempts are made to persuade Philoctetes through the course of the play.39 Only one of these is successful, and this comes in the form of a divine intervention bordering on injunction. And only one can act as a real gauge of Philoctetes’ reaction.40 At 622–5, Philoctetes’ response to the prospect of Odysseus persuading him is unequivocal: q Œ E, AÆ º Å, N åÆØf þ Æ º E; ØŁÆØ ªaæ z ŒI ( AØ ı ŁÆg æe çH I ºŁ E (‘Has that man, nothing but mischief, sworn to bring me to the Achaeans by persuasion? I would just as well be persuaded, having died, to come up to the light from Hades’).41 Similarly, we are given a test-case of Philoctetes’ reaction to the use of force (1296–8).42 When Odysseus says explicitly that he will convey him to Troy ‘by force’ ( Æﬁ), Philoctetes immediately draws his bow and threatens to release an arrow (1299). As Odysseus has surmised, both persuasion and force prove ineffectual, validating his earlier assertion that it can only be lying (ł F ) which will bring deliverance (e øŁBÆØ).43

On the ‘necessity’ of deceit in this situation, see Hesk 2000: 193–4. Force and persuasion are juxtaposed throughout the play: 563, 594–5, 617–18, 983–4. 39 Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 292–3. 40 Both Neoptolemus’ (915–26, 1310–47) and the chorus’ (1095–1100, 1116–22) efforts are tarnished by their prior dishonesty. Odysseus at 986 ff. hardly counts as persuasion. See Kitto 1959: 121 ff. 41 Cf. Blundell 1989: 203. His embittered reaction to the prospect of Odysseus convincing him to come to Troy continues at 628–34. Philoctetes’ special disgust at the thought of Odysseus as the agent of persuasion also serves to further validate Odysseus’ decision to use Neoptolemus and to have him sever all connections with himself or the Atreidae. 42 This seems like one of the main dramatic purposes of Odysseus’ strange re-entry here. 43 Cf. Knox 1964: 119–20 contra Roisman 2005: 130 (n. 3). 37 38

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C. Odysseus and Neoptolemus: a Homeric conﬂict What we might ﬁnd offensive about Odysseus’ plan, however, lies in its tension with the temperament of his young companion: our feeling of distrust, Pat Easterling observes, takes ‘its cue from Neoptolemus’ reactions in the prologue’.44 Initially, the pure phusis of the son of Achilles recoils from the prospect of trickery (79–80). And yet it is unclear why are we supposed to sympathize here so readily with Neoptolemus.45 Evil scheming, he tells us, is not in his nature (88–9). Nor was it in his father’s.46 With this remark we are immediately made to recall Achilles’ unambiguous denunciation of deceit to Odysseus at Iliad 9.312–13.47 As it was for his father, the issue for the son is not the end—he and Odysseus are on a quest, after all, to achieve the ‘ultimate renown’ (Œº æÆ, 1347)—but the means: Iºº Y E æe Æ e ¼ æ ¼ª Ø ŒÆd c ºØØ (‘I am ready to take the man by force, not by deceit’, 90–1). This line is pivotal.48 On his own volition, Neoptolemus admits that where he is unwilling to take Philoctetes by treachery, he is happy to do so by force. His further comment, that Philoctetes will be helpless to resist in his footless state (91–2) is even more jarring. Neoptolemus’ choice of force over deceit ushers the Achilles/Odysseus conﬂict centrestage. As we have seen in our analysis of Ajax (VII.3.C above), the contrast between the Achilles ﬁgure and the Odysseus ﬁgure was already an important Sophoclean theme.49 There, the stout-hearted, single-minded, bia-oriented Ajax was artfully set against the more ﬂexible, submissive, verbally dexterous Odysseus. The conﬂict itself was revealed to be pluralist, as the virtues of both characters were gloriﬁed in their own ways. Odysseus brings this to our attention in Philoctetes when he reminds Neoptolemus that there is more than

44

Easterling 1978: 30. See also Beye 1970: 69. Calder offers an analysis (1971) that casts Neoptolemus in a more negative light. 46 Cf. Whitman 1951: 176. 47 Although Achilles, who pledges to speak IÅº ªø (‘bluntly’, 9.309), continues in that scene to make a speech replete with ironies and half-truths (9.314–429). For qualiﬁcations of Achilles’ stance on deception, see Heath 1999: 142–3. 48 We should note the repetition for emphasis of the phrase æe Æ (‘by force’), at line 92. 49 On the contrast between the heroic ideals of Achilles and Odysseus, see Rutherford 1992: 23–7 and Finkelberg 1995. In this play, cf. Roisman 2005: 58–61. 45

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one way to be ‘noble’ (ª ÆE, 51). In this way, what we are presented with in this tragedy is not simply a clash between a noble yet corruptible young man and a sophistic villain, but rather an ancient antithesis that was well established in the mythical tradition. An irresolvable tension between the man of force and the man of tricks, between an able ﬁst and an able tongue. This initial conﬂict, though underdeveloped, has a signiﬁcant dramatic function: it is Sophocles’ way of indicating yet again that, at this point in the play, we are still in the world of Homer.50 Because the conﬂict is the familiar one of disparate and competing conceptions of heroism, we are unable simply to empathize with Neoptolemus at the expense of Odysseus and to adopt uncritically the former’s ethical perspective. We cannot do this for the same reason we were shown in Ajax not to believe there is a simple winner in the quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus, nor, in the dispute over the arms, between Ajax and Odysseus. We cannot do this for the same reason that there is no universal agreement on the identity of the greatest Homeric hero.51 Philoctetes, in this way, contributes to Sophocles’ pluralist project, begun in Ajax, of exposing and exploring tensions intrinsic to epic morality. That we are still in the realm of Homeric ethics can be gleaned in a further way. For although they represent different aspects of it, we learn through the course of the prologue that both Odysseus and Neoptolemus are guided, in a larger sense, by a similar heroic morality. That is to say, both men are motivated by concerns of honour, glory, and shame (see VI.2.B above). Odysseus capitalizes on Neoptolemus’ Achillean concern with his reputation. After relaying his scheme to the boy with a special emphasis on the sweetness of victory, he makes the following remark: ŒÆØØ ÆsŁØ KŒçÆ ŁÆ. F N IÆØ b æÆ æ æÆåf Ø Æı , ŒÆ ﬁ # Æ e ºØe åæ ŒŒºÅ ø P Æ æH (‘We will appear to be just men another time. For now give yourself to me for a shameful 50 To further underline the source of the value clash here, Odysseus casts the dichotomy as a matter of age (96–9) in exactly the same way as at Iliad 19.216–19 and he does so in relatively non-pejorative terms. He speaks of ‘the tongue’ (ªºHÆ) and of ‘the hand’ (å EæÆ), not of lies and of violence. This juxtaposition sets up the contrast, to be discussed below in respect of Heracles, between deceit and persuasion (as verbal activities), on the one hand, and force on the other. That ªºHÆ carried hostile implications in the ﬁfth century, though, see Heath 1999: 147. 51 See Rutherford 1992: 20.

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portion of a day and for the rest of time you will be called the most pious of all mortals’, 82–5). These lines require particular attention, as they are often cited by critics as evidence of Odysseus’ own belief that what he is proposing is IÆØ (‘shameful’).52 Rather, what the sentiment reveals is Odysseus’ full awareness of the factors at work in the moral conscience of his young friend and, more generally, his understanding of the rival, Achillean mentality.53 Lines 82–5 can be construed as what he already knows Neoptolemus thinks of the ruse; his comment in this way can be read as pre-emptive. He has only just begun his attempt to persuade the son of Achilles—someone who, he is well aware, is not meant by nature ØÆFÆ çø E Å b åAŁÆØ ŒÆŒ (‘to say such things [lies] and to contrive such evils’, 80). His challenge is to ﬁnd a way to convince him to act against his instincts, to endure the momentary moral discomfort for a longer-term reward. Essentially, what Odysseus must do is to instil in Neoptolemus his own historic attitude towards shame and reputation, that is, to persuade him that it is the result that matters.54 He accomplishes this by convincing the younger man that what he is about to do will appear good to others—if not today, then soon. In doing so, he again proves himself a man of considerable insight. Realizing that justice itself may not be what matters most to Neoptolemus but that a reputation for being just is what he craves, Odysseus manages to merge for the moment two considerations which will later pull against each other in the boy’s mind: doing the ‘right’ thing and having a reputation for so doing. Odysseus continues, therefore, by emphasizing how their mission will later ‘appear’ (KŒçÆ ŁÆ, 82) just, and by stressing what they will later be ‘called’ (ŒŒºÅ, 85), because he knows this is what will appeal to his heroicminded companion; because he knows these are the terms in which the moral decision will be made. Or, rather, these are the terms he assumes will be most pressing in the present situation. Such 52

See e.g. Blundell 1987: 313. Cf. Roisman 1997 140–1. 54 The hero of the Odyssey, as we have already noted, is content to undergo shortterm disgrace for the greater good. Such an attitude is, of course, unique to Odysseus (and contributes to the paradox associated with him of the unheroic hero). See King 1987: 48–9 and Finkelberg 1995. The fact that he gives Neoptolemus free range in insulting him before Philoctetes (64–5) is emblematic of this attitude. Achilles was far more concerned with the immediate threat of disgrace. This difference was noted in antiquity: Horace, Odes 4.6, Cicero, De Ofﬁciis 1.113. 53

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assumptions are conﬁrmed by Neoptolemus himself: in the prologue, Neoptolemus expresses concern at being called a traitor (ŒÆº EŁÆØ, 93–4); he agrees to the plan after being told that he will be called (Œ ŒºB ﬁ , 119) both ‘good’ (IªÆŁ ) and ‘wise’ (ç );55 and he resolves to cast aside ‘all shame’ (AÆ ÆNåÅ, 120) and to do the deed, implying that the idea and deﬁnition of shame is what his conscience is struggling with most. We shall see below how Neoptolemus conﬁrms these assumptions as the plot progresses, before his conception of the signiﬁcance of reputation begins to change.

2. PHILOCTETES AND THE MONISM OF HATRED

A. Philoctetes: an Achilles-styled hero In the process of exculpating Odysseus (or at least mitigating the charges against him), I have argued that Philoctetes is a play concerned with heroic ethics and that Odysseus’ actions, particularly in the prologue, can be explained in regard to this older matrix of values. Now, despite the fact that he is a Homeric-based hero, Odysseus is certainly not the hero of this tragedy. This is true for two discrete reasons. First, because the character of Odysseus, as we saw in the last chapter, is not typically heroic.56 That is to say, there are ways in which the adaptability and wiliness of his traditional persona—reﬂected in some of the behaviour-patterns of the ﬁfth-century sophist/ politician—fall out of the ambit of what had, by the time Philoctetes was produced, become the common, preferred conception of heroism.57 Secondly, and more importantly, he is not the hero of the play in question because he does not ﬁt the mould of a ‘Sophoclean hero’. As was discussed at length in my analysis of Ajax (VII.2) and witnessed in both Antigone (VIII.1.A) and Electra (VIII.2.A), perhaps

55 With this promise, we are again reminded of the difference between Achilles and Odysseus and the notion of the complete hero described by Phoenix at Iliad 9.443. Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 283; Blundell 1987: 322; 1988: 138. 56 On this point, cf. also Reinhardt 1979: 165. 57 Pindar is a good indicator of this mind-frame: see Nemean 7.20–31, 8.23–8. Cf. Knox 1964: 121–2. Roisman points out (2005: 39) that Euripides also ‘treats Odysseus’ deviousness and rhetorical skill as morally reprehensible’. Odysseus’ character had already begun to be denigrated in the poems of the epic cycle. See Stanford 1992: ch. 5.

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the deﬁning feature of Sophocles’ extant protagonists is that they are each animated by a moral intransigence and single-mindedness that extends above and beyond that of their prototype, Achilles. It is this exaggerated inﬂexibility and blind adherence to principle—earlier linked with the concept of monism—which, it will be recalled, contributes to the tragedy each experiences and which is used at times by the playwright to explore tensions and difﬁculties in the ethical expectations of heroism. Philoctetes, by contrast, is an undisputed possessor of the heroic temper, a monist of the highest order.58 What remains to be seen, however, is the more speciﬁc nature of his monism and what part, if any, it plays in his tragedy. Marooned for ten years on an uninhabited island, left to fend for himself with rotting foot and enraged spirit, he is certainly one of Sophocles’ most pathetic ﬁgures. He is also the one whom we most want to acquiesce to the forces that oppose him.59 We pity his situation, we may even share his resentment, but in being made to experience the agony of his suffering (730–826) we become emotionally invested in the fact of his cure and compensation. Unfortunately, for Philoctetes himself, hatred and healing are mutually exclusive alternatives. So great and so bitter is his enmity towards the Atreidae and towards Odysseus that he is willing to forgo the glory of sacking Troy and the relief of cure in order to avoid helping them in any way. This reconstruction of heroism into a philosophy of hatred has important implications that we must now consider. For a hero cast in the Sophoclean mould, such magnitude of anger is not surprising.60 Achilles, of course, was the great exemplar of this mindset, the man who coddled his anger at the expense of the entire Greek army because his prize had been taken and his precious pride wounded.61 Ajax and Electra, we recall, are similarly animated by an intense, irrepressible anger.62 Philoctetes’ ordeal, however, is in a class by itself.63 As soon as we meet him, he makes clear the extent of both 58

Cf. Lucas 1950: 158; Knox 1964: ch. 5; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 282. On the difference between Philoctetes and other Sophoclean heroes in this respect, see Knox 1964: 117–19. 60 On heroic wrath as a traditional theme, see Rutherford 1996: 31 and 53 n. 6. 61 Cf. esp. Patroclus’ description of Achilles’ rage at Iliad 16.29–31. 62 Like Ajax, Philoctetes’ anger is directed at the Greek army; like Electra, he wallows in his own misery and uses it as a launch-pad for revenge. 63 Grifﬁn’s observation (1995: 20) about the uniqueness of the Iliad applies equally—if not more—to the Philoctetes: ‘The old and evidently familiar story-pattern 59

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his misery and of his ire. He is wretched, he tells us, alone, friendless and the object of maltreatment (227–8). At the next opportunity, we are taken through the terrible story of his bite (266–7) and of his abandonment—how he woke on the shores of Lemnos after a ﬁt of pain to ﬁnd himself deserted by his comrades (265–73, 276–84). We are also given an evocative description of the current state of his provisions and his methods of survival (274–5, 285–99).64 Finally, we are left in no doubt of his feelings towards ƒ KŒ Æº Iø (‘those who impiously cast him out’, 257).65 This is clearly a very bitter man. His hatred has advanced to such a degree that, upon discovering Neoptolemus’ own grievances with the Atreidae and with Odysseus, Philoctetes feels bonded in friendship with the young man, founding their relationship not on a common respect but on a mutual enmity (389–90, 403–4; cf. 585–6). Indeed, throughout the play Philoctetes makes no effort to conceal the powerful hostility he feels towards the leaders of the Greek army, as well as his ever-present desire for revenge (275, 315–16, 791–5). The fact of his hatred becomes a recurring motif and the deﬁning characteristic of our eponymous hero. Philoctetes is an Achilles-styled hero not only in the quality of his anger and his rejection of reconciliation: Sophocles takes care to link the two men also by casting them in a web of shared ethical beliefs.66 That is, the playwright goes out of his way to make explicit moral connections between the two men qua heroes. Philoctetes’ own attitude towards Achilles and the Achillean variety of hero is obvious from the onset. As soon as he learns that Neoptolemus is the great man’s son, he calls Achilles çºÆÆ (‘most dear’, 242) and assumes that Neoptolemus will act favourably to him because of the boy’s lineage (933, 950, 971, 1371–2).67 He expresses heartfelt distress at Achilles’ death (332–8) and the death of those like him (414ff.),

of the hero’s withdrawal and triumphant return takes on a new intensity and a darker atmosphere.’ 64 This is, of course, meant to contrast with Odysseus’ rather positive description of the same situation (16–21). Cf. also Neoptolemus’ more objective account (29–39). 65 Notice that Philoctetes’ hatred is voiced before Neoptolemus mentions his own (fake) grievances. Cf. 314–16. 66 On the resemblance between Achilles and Philoctetes, see, among others, Beye 1970 and Roisman 2005: 58–9. 67 For other praise of Achilles as ‘the best/ﬁnest’, see 1284 (¼æØ), 1313 (XŒı’ ¼æØÆ).

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drawing a stark line between those men he considers a b ŒÆØÆ ŒÆd a åæ[Æ] (‘the just and the good’, 449–50) and those he considers a b ÆFæªÆ ŒÆd ÆºØæØ B (‘the wicked and the knavish’, 448).68 He feels that the unjust distribution of Achilles’ arms would not have occurred if Ajax had been there to prevent it (410–11). And in the ancient quarrel between force and guile, Philoctetes sides with Achilles: he expressly disdains the use of deceit as well as those who use it (407–9, 967–8, 1281–3) and implicitly advocates force (945–8, 1299). Furthermore, Philoctetes is portrayed as embracing the same values as Achilles, particularly his nobility and strong sense of pride. Mortiﬁed by the fact that Neoptolemus has not heard of him and his plight (254–6) and the prospect that his enemies are mocking him (257–8, 1123–5),69 Philoctetes exhibits throughout the play a Homeric concern, shared by both Antigone and Electra, for his honour and reputation.70 Similarly, he uses the prospect of a noble reputation in his attempts to persuade Neoptolemus, a boy whom he expects to embody the same ethical ideals as both Achilles and himself.71 Philoctetes tells Neoptolemus that if he takes him on board his ship he will gain e åæ PŒº (‘a good reputation’, 476) and º E

PŒº Æ ªæÆ (‘the greatest prize of renown’, 478), whereas if he refuses he will acquire Z Ø P ŒÆº (‘bad disgrace’, 477). That, if he deceives him, he (Neoptolemus) will bring down on himself æE Z Ø (‘the reproach of mankind’, 968). Moreover, in his description of both father and son, Philoctetes employs a traditional 68

On the one side Achilles, Ajax, Antilochus, Patroclus; on the other the Atreidae, Odysseus, Diomedes, and Thersites. This line, to some extent, reﬂects the Achilles/ Odysseus contrast. Diomedes’ inclusion in the second group puts the stress on deceit, as he was Odysseus’ partner in the Doloneia. 69 Cf. Ussher 1990: 2–3, 120 nn. 254–5, 257–8. Philoctetes’ attitude here is in tension with the Sophoclean Odysseus’ willingness to be slandered (64–5) and the Homeric Odysseus’ initial willingness to go nameless in the episode with the Cyclops (Odyssey 9.365–7, but cf. 9.501–5). 70 See Antigone 502–4 and Electra 973–5. Cf. 1028, where Philoctetes describes himself as ¼Ø (‘dishonoured’), the same word the heroic-minded Ajax uses to lament his fate (426–7, 440) and that Electra uses to describe Agamemnon’s death (444) and her fate (1038). 71 He makes express reference to this common morality at 1009. For Philoctetes and Neoptolemus as men who fundamentally understand each other, who share their disgust for Odysseus (389–90, 405 ff.), and who possess a token of heroic understanding similar to Oedipus and Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus, see Whitman 1951: 180–5. Cf. Lucas 1950: 159; Kirkwood 1958: 146; Blundell 1989: 206.

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and heroic moral vocabulary.72 He repeatedly praises Neoptolemus as ª ÆE (‘noble’, 799, 801, 1402) and both men as Pª (‘noble’, 336, 874). He believes it is in the nature of both to help an KŁº (‘good, ‘noble’, 905), which he considers himself to be.73

B. Philoctetes and Odysseus: a second Homeric conﬂict Linked in this way with Achilles, it is unsurprising that the conﬂict between Philoctetes and Odysseus will be a trenchant one. Indeed, it has been described as more severe than that between Antigone and Creon, a description which contains, as we know from the previous chapter, no light import.74 It is clear that, despite his particular enmity towards Odysseus, Philoctetes is bound to come into conﬂict with any character drawn as an overt contrary to Achilles.75 Even if Odysseus had no part in deserting Philoctetes, the two would still represent opposite poles of the heroic spectrum. As it happens, however, the tension between them is heightened not only by their history, but by their present vying for the mind of the impressionable young Neoptolemus.76 In terms of the past, Philoctetes is as disgusted by Odysseus’ efforts to shirk his military duty (1025–8) as Odysseus was by Philoctetes’ noisome wound and ill-omened cries (6–10). He is at every opportunity abusing Odysseus for his penchant to trick and to lie, referring to him repeatedly as the son of Sisyphus (416–18, 625, 1311).77 In terms of the immediate situation, their contrasting desires for Neoptolemus is a constant, perhaps the main, theme of the play.78 72 That being said, the heroic nature of the content of that vocabulary will be discussed below. 73 Philoctetes is referred to by the chorus as æøª ø (‘high-born’, 180) and by himself as PŒæ Ø (‘stout-hearted’, 535). 74 Reinhardt 1979: 185. 75 For the idea that Philoctetes is an Achillean and Odyssean ﬁgure, though, see Whitby 1996: 38. Cf. Odyssey 8.219–25, where Odysseus and Philoctetes are linked together as great archers. But on archery as a less valiant martial skill, see Stanford 1992: 71; Rutherford 1992: 7; Finkelberg 1995: 2; Roisman 1997: 148–9. 76 Roisman 1997 is an excellent discussion of this conﬂict, situating it in the context of the sophistic nomos–phusis debate. 77 On Sisyphus as the epitome of cunning, see Iliad 6.153 and Aristophanes, Acharnians 391. For references to Odysseus as his son, see Ajax 189 and Euripides, Cyclops 104. 78 Cf. Kitto 1939: 297.

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In general, both men attempt to use Neoptolemus for the accomplishment of their own goals—Odysseus for capturing Philoctetes, Philoctetes for getting home—and hope to mould his nascent phusis into the most conducive shape for doing so. More speciﬁcally, Sophocles includes in the text several pointed overlaps of motifs, as well as small-scale clashes of value, that bring to light the tension between the two men vis-à-vis Neoptolemus. ‘The virtues that Philoctetes has praised in him [Neoptolemus]—arete (669), nobility (874), piety (662)—are incompatible with those that Odysseus used to tempt him (82, 85, 119). The two older men also represent incompatible perspectives on treachery and loyalty (93, 757, 910 f.), courageous endurance (82, 111, 475, 481, 869–73) and renown or reputation (81–5, 119, 476).’79 Odysseus wants Neoptolemus to endure a day of shamelessness, whereas Philoctetes wants him to endure a day of unpleasantness (83 versus 480). Odysseus wants Neoptolemus to be ª ÆE in the sense of loyalty and cunning (50–3); Philoctetes in the sense of pity and withstanding discomfort (473–6). Their moral conﬂict is made tellingly explicit at 971–4. Believing that he knows the boy’s true phusis, Philoctetes proclaims that Neoptolemus is not in fact ŒÆŒ (‘bad’) but merely a student who has learned ÆNåæ lessons from ŒÆŒH men. This prompts Neoptolemus to ask: æH (‘what are we to do’)? In the very next line Odysseus enters, asking Neoptolemus exactly the same question (N æÆE, ‘what are you doing?’) and referring to him as ŒŒØ . In true pluralist fashion, we have reached an impasse: the two men are at complete odds with one another as to what behaviour constitutes e ŒÆŒ . Odysseus thinks that Neoptolemus is the epitome of evil for doing precisely what Philoctetes thinks is the opposite of evil. In this way, Philoctetes’ conﬂict with Odysseus is a restatement of the contrast aired in the prologue between Odysseus and Neoptolemus. It is Sophocles yet again commenting on the incompatible and incommensurable facets of heroism, and the potential severity of the consequences when they come up against one another in practice.80

79

Blundell 1989: 205–6. Roisman illustrates (2005: 84–7) how the play goes about exposing the limitations of both Odysseus and Philoctetes. 80

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C. Philoctetes’ (mis)use of heroic language According to the run of the argument so far, the clash between Philoctetes and Odysseus echoes, in some sense, the more encompassing contrast between Achilles and Odysseus. On this reading, Philoctetes and Odysseus (like Neoptolemus and Odysseus in the prologue) are both, essentially, ‘heroic’ ﬁgures although of different varieties. That is, they both largely subscribe to a system of Homeric or competitive ethics that emphasizes personal honour, shame, and winning, and they both employ the traditionally heroic vocabulary suited to it.81 Where they differ, then, must be where the ‘heroic code’ itself comes apart. There are several ways of explicating (as well as simplifying) this. One is to say that Odysseus represents the ‘help friends’ aspect of the heroic code and Philoctetes the ‘harm enemies’; another that Odysseus embodies the glory-hunting element, while Philoctetes is more concerned with pride; or a third, that Odysseus is pursuing a public goal whereas Philoctetes is harbouring a private resentment. But if we examine more closely the way in which Philoctetes employs moral language, we will notice that his conﬂict with Odysseus runs even deeper than we may initially have thought. We will notice that while Philoctetes’ moral language is indeed heroic in form, it is not actually (or wholly) heroic in content. That is to say, while the vocabulary he uses is resonant with epic notions of praise and blame and is comprised of typical epithets which attach to Homeric ﬁgures (words such as KŁº , Pª , PŒæ Ø, ª ÆE), the behaviour such words dictate is quite different from what is expected of an epic hero—or what a warrior in the Iliad might understand by them. Rather, Philoctetes has been introducing somewhat surreptitiously into the ethical landscape concepts such as pity and justice, concepts which, while clearly present in Homer, were little regarded (or bore relatively little ethical weight). He is masking this fact, however, by dressing them up in strikingly Homeric clothing. In effect, what Philoctetes is doing is proffering ‘persuasive deﬁnitions’.82 He redeﬁnes ª ÆE, ÆNåæ , hŒº ØÆ, ŒÆº (475–8);83 he equates Iæ with returning

81 For the view that Odysseus’ general ethical vocabulary is inconsistent, though, see Blundell 1987: 318–22. 82 On the concept of a persuasive deﬁnition, see Adkins 1960: 38–40. 83 Cf. Rose 1976: 68, against which see Cairns 1993: 254–5.

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the bow and thwarting the mission (667–70); he links being ª ÆE with his death and, therefore, a failure to sack Troy (799–801); to be

Pª , according to him, is to endure his shrieks and putrid smell (874–6). Sophocles accomplishes two things by making Philoctetes use language the way he does. First, he draws attention to the confused state of contemporary moral usage, demonstrating that, while moral expectations can themselves evolve, the terms in which to express them may persist: in other words, that terms such as ŒÆº and IªÆŁ , earlier linked with speciﬁc competitive virtues, can become empty vessels into which a speaker may pour any number of moral patterns of behaviour.84 This phenomenon is, after all, what Socrates’ persistent questioning of ordinary Athenians revealed. If nothing else, the earlier Platonic dialogues demonstrate that there was no consensus in the second half of the ﬁfth century on the meaning or application of ordinary virtues such as courage, piety, or justice. Rather, these concepts were elastic: they would change to accommodate the particular moral bent of the given interlocutor. So, for Cephalus in the Republic, justice is telling the truth and paying one’s debts. For Polemarchus, it is giving a man his due. But for Thrasymachus justice is the interest of the stronger, a deﬁnition which harks back to a Homeric conception of ethical norms.85 In other words, Sophocles illustrates not only that tensions already present in epic morality have survived into the present, but that if moral language is to be trusted they have become more evident and more problematic. And secondly, Philoctetes’ use of moral terminology provides a framework in which to understand Neoptolemus’ moral transformation. That is, we will come to see how Neoptolemus is inﬂuenced not necessarily by Philoctetes himself but by Philoctetes’ use of language. Philoctetes ﬁnds no difﬁculty in expressing values of pity, fairness, and friendship in umbrella terms that originally excluded or 84

This situation is described with brilliant insight by MacIntyre (1981: 2) in reference to the modern ethical plight: ‘What we possess . . . are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack the contexts from which their signiﬁcance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension of morality.’ 85 See Plato, Republic 327a ff. At 334b Socrates challenges Polemarchus’ understanding of ‘help friends, harm enemies’, making explicit reference to how the contemporary interpretation of that moral tenet has moved on from the Homeric one.

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minimized such values. He has no qualms about manipulating a vocabulary he knows will appeal to Neoptolemus in order to serve his own aims: to secure his passage home, to further fuel his revenge. But for Neoptolemus such moral confusion will cause an impasse. The words Philoctetes uses and the behaviour he prompts, previously in harmony, will become incompatible. Those conﬂicts that were dormant in Homer—conﬂicts which stemmed from the existence of certain cooperative values such as ‘friendship’ (çØº Å) and ‘pity’ (º )—but which never came to the surface, become all too real for the young hero.86 Philoctetes’ own relationship with heroism and with what we would consider to be typically heroic ends sheds light on his strange use of its vocabulary. When Neoptolemus reveals to Philoctetes the real identity of their destination, the latter recoils in horror.87 Wait, Neoptolemus consoles him, it is not simply the fact that you must sail to Troy and to the Greek army and the sons of Atreus (915–16) but that you will be saved from your suffering and actually sack the city (919–20).88 These should be tempting rewards—ŒÆºc ŒÅØ (‘a ﬁne bonus’), according to Neoptolemus (1344)—but Philoctetes rejects them in the name of hatred. When Odysseus promises him a position among the ¼æØØ (997–98) and mentions the ªæÆ (‘prize’) and Ø (‘honour’) he will be losing (1061–62), Philoctetes is again unmoved.89 He is so adamant that he will never set foot near his enemies that he prefers to die rather than go to Troy (999–1003, 1197–1202, 1207–16). With this admission and his ﬁnal plea that Neoptolemus let him suffer what he must (1397), we realize that there is a sense in which Philoctetes, by clinging relentlessly to one aspect of the heroic code, is denying the importance (and relevance to him) of the rest of it. And in this way he differs fundamentally from both Odysseus and Achilles. In embracing a hatred that is even ﬁercer than

86 Zanker 1994: 13–27 is a good discussion of the role these moral concepts played in the Iliad. 87 The fact that Philoctetes rejects the idea of going to Troy before he knows what is in store for him there (628–32) is understandable. In fact, it emphasizes the sacriﬁce involved in his continued resistance once he ﬁnds out the beneﬁts awaiting him. 88 Neoptolemus does not expressly mention here the fact that Philoctetes is to be cured at Troy (a facet of the prophesy which is not revealed until 1329–35), but he implies it. Promise of cure and glory are repeated (and rejected) at 1344–7. 89 Neoptolemus also assures Philoctetes he will be Eººø Æ ŒæØŁ ¼æØ (‘judged the best of the Greeks’, 1344–5). Cf. Iliad 1.175.

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that of Achilles (Achilles, after all, ultimately accepted Agamemnon’s compensation as well as returned the body of Hector), Philoctetes rejects a crucial aspect of heroism.90 So strong is his hatred that he is uninterested in the quintessential heroic prize. So strong is his hatred that he would rather kill himself than compromise it. As we saw with Ajax, this is the mark of the Sophoclean monist. Like Ajax, Philoctetes has taken one aspect of the heroic code, the desire to harm one’s enemies, and has stretched it to such an extreme that it outweighs all other considerations, even those that are heroic.91 As R. P. Winnington-Ingram observes: ‘Philoctetes is still a hero, his isolation has intensiﬁed—and rendered wholly intractable—that heroic resentment of injury and hatred of enemies which we have seen to dominate the play. It has caused the negative aspect of the code to occupy the whole of his emotion so that he is bound to reject . . . even the prospect of heroic glory.’92 We recall that Achilles ultimately yielded in the face of the loss of his beloved compatriot. In fact, it was his desire to avenge Patroclus that inspired his return to the battleﬁeld at all. But Philoctetes will not yield: not even for the beneﬁt of his new-found friend Neoptolemus, a man who is willing to make serious sacriﬁces in Philoctetes’ name. In fact, our hero is so stubborn that he is willing to refuse the young warrior his due kleos, the best chance he will ever have for the acquisition of everlasting heroic greatness. Neoptolemus’ conception of philia (‘friendship’) involves pursuing the best for both friends (1381). It involves reciprocity: ‹Ø ªaæ s æA s ÆŁg KÆÆØ, Æe ªØ i ŒÆ Œæ ø çº (‘Whoever knows how, when he experiences good, to do good in return would be a friend better than any possession’, 672–3). Indeed, he cannot conceive how helping friends can be shameful (1383). But Philoctetes illustrates his complete blindness to this facet of morality (1383–8). The difference in the models of friendship exempliﬁed by Achilles and Patroclus on the one hand, and Philoctetes and Neoptolemus on the other, allows us to comprehend a further sense of just how exaggerated the Sophoclean hero is. For, in response to his anger, Achilles’ dream was

90

Cf. Iliad 9.378–97 with 19.146–9, 22.345–54 with 24.560–70. This is where Philoctetes differs from Ajax: Ajax’s desire to live nobly was pursued at the expense of overtly unheroic values. 92 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 297. 91

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that he and Patroclus would take Troy alone, just the two of them.93 Not that they would both forsake such glory and skulk off to Phthia together. Philoctetes’ pursuit of his hatred, by contrast, is ruthless. It makes no allowances for the pursuit of his own honour or that of the companion he claims to hold so dear. Again, we see how the Sophoclean hero is employed to illustrate the contradictions of the heroic moral scheme. The concept of harming one’s enemies has come into sharp conﬂict not only with helping one’s friends but with the utmost goal of winning glory.

D. Philoctetes’ dilemma The dilemma Philoctetes voices at line 1350 is in this way rhetorical, as was Ajax’s and as are the Homeric soliloquies examined in Chapter VI. When Philoctetes asks æø; (‘What am I to do?’), the answer is a foregone conclusion.94 This is particularly interesting and illustrative of the genius of Sophoclean dramatic technique because we know that Philoctetes must, at some point, acquiesce. But it will not, it cannot, be now. Instead, Philoctetes will use this principle of ‘harm enemies’ to make the only decision possible for him. He will put his options—go to Troy and win glory and health or take vengeance on his enemies—in the balance and he will choose the latter and do so with no moral remainder, residue, or regret. His moral options are clearly incompatible: ‘Philoctetes cannot preserve his resentment and win cure, glory and happiness.’95 Further, they are, in a sense, incommensurable, drawing as they do on quite distinct moral considerations (even though those considerations are parts of a single heroic outlook). But, for Philoctetes, they are indeed determinate. Not once does he himself mention the inevitable loss his decision entails, the fact that he will be forced to continue living the devastating life he has thus far endured on Lemnos. These sad considerations are left for the other characters in the play and the audience to contemplate, as 93

Iliad 16.87–100. Cf. Diomedes on himself and Sthenelus at 9.46–9. His expression of doubt here echoes that at 1063, where the dilemma is less perplexing as he has not sealed his friendship with Neoptolemus. It is this friendship which offers the most moral weight on the other side of the balance. Cf. 1350–1: H IØø º ªØ E F , n hı J Kd Ææﬁ (‘How can I disobey the words of this man, who has advised me in kindness’)? 95 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 298. Original emphasis. 94

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Neoptolemus points out: b b ÇB, u æ X Å ÇB ﬁ , ¼ ı øÅæÆ (‘[It is easiest for] you to carry on living as you have, without salvation’, 1395–6). Rather, for Philoctetes, the satisfaction of harming his enemies outweighs any other potentially valuable outcome. That is, it renders any other beneﬁt insigniﬁcant. In Philoctetes’ mind, cure is equated with the death of his enemies and not the healing of his foot:

N Y Ø Oºøº Æ ı, ŒE i B ı ç ıªÆØ (‘If I should see those men destroyed, I would think that I have escaped from my illness’, 1043–4)!96 He will go to Malis with festering wound and depleted reputation but, as long as those he hates will be deprived of their rewards, he will not feel the loss of cure and glory: compensation in kind is what he wants.97 The tragedy of Philoctetes is brought on by Philoctetes himself, his inability to see the consequences of his monism of hatred.98

3. NEOPTOLEMUS: A BREAK FROM HEROISM The ethos of Neoptolemus is the most malleable of all of the characters’ in Philoctetes. A young man whose moral conscience is not yet fully formed, the fatherless son of Achilles is exposed to, and variously falls under, the inﬂuence of two older men—both of whom, as we have seen, hope that he will fall in line with their respective worldviews.99 This section will map the ethical movements of Neoptolemus through the course of the play in order to understand more thoroughly the dilemmas and disagreements he experiences. For it is by charting the progression of his relationships—not simply with Odysseus and Philoctetes, but also with the background ﬁgure of Achilles—that we will see how, in his fumbling towards insight and 96 Even though Neoptolemus has presented another way of looking at the matter: Philoctetes should view the Atreidae as those from whom he will gain cure and compensation (1378–9). They will now be his salvation (1391). 97 Cf. 275, 315–16, 791–5, 1369. 98 The self-imposed nature of Philoctetes’ tragedy is highlighted by both Neoptolemus (1315–23) and the chorus (1095–1100). Cf. Winnington-Ingram 1980: 302. 99 Odysseus and Philoctetes both refer to him as ‘son’ at different points throughout the play (68 times altogether). See Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 168–9; Blundell 1988: 138; Whitby 1996: 39. Roisman 1997 is especially illuminating on the theme of ‘father and son’ in the play.

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moral maturity, Neoptolemus breaks rank with all three of these men, though in different ways and for different reasons.

A. Neoptolemus as the son of Achilles As we noted earlier in respect of Odysseus, there are unmistakable Homeric resonances in the atmosphere of the prologue. Neoptolemus has a clear role in this context as he is the great epic hero Achilles’ one and only child. Indeed, he is cast in this early scene by Sophocles as himself a hero of sorts, as someone who subscribes to those values his father held dear and as someone who has inherited his predispositions.100 He shares Achilles’ inability to lie and his disgust at those who do—it is not part of his nature, nor his father’s, to do anything ‘through an evil scheme’ (KŒ åÅ ŒÆŒB, 88–9). He shares his quickness to resort to force (90–1), as well as an instinctive desire to use any other means besides trickery to accomplish the task at hand (102 ff.). In fact, not once at this point in the play does Neoptolemus question the overriding purpose of the mission before him. As Achilles would, Neoptolemus sees the potential glory in bringing Philoctetes to Troy and is sucked in by the promise of a reputation for being both IªÆŁ and ç (119). Achilles was most certainly the ﬁrst of these adjectives, and, if falling short in respect of the second, this deﬁciency was something he regretted.101 Furthermore, and perhaps most strikingly, Neoptolemus shares with his father a willingness to sacriﬁce ‘winning’ in order to maintain his honour. That is, as Neoptolemus himself formulates the principle: ºÆØ . . . ŒÆºH æH KÆÆæ E Aºº j ØŒA ŒÆŒH (‘I would rather fail in acting nobly than win by doing evil’, 94–5).102 We recall that it is a variant of this principle that guided Achilles off the battleﬁeld and into his tent for the ﬁrst nineteen books of the Iliad. What we have here in this early sketch of Neoptolemus is ‘the Achillean ideal in its Odysseus encourages the young man as the ‘son of Achilles’ to be ª ÆE (50–1)—marking his belief that whatever virtues Neoptolemus possesses, he has inherited them. Cf. Blundell 1988: 137 and Roisman 1997: 130 n. 5. On the importance of the concept of phusis in Philoctetes and the idea that one’s nature is only a starting-point for one’s moral character, see Blundell 1988: esp. 145 and Halliwell at Pelling 1990: 47 and n. 22. 101 See Iliad 18.105–6. Cf. also 19.217–19. 102 The way in which the moral terms ŒÆºH and ŒÆŒH will ultimately be deﬁned, however, becomes a key issue as the course of action unfolds. 100

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limitations and its essential nobility: violent and primitive, yet, in its ﬁerce way, honorable . . . ’.103 But for all of their similarities—highlighted by this deliberate overlapping of characteristics—Neoptolemus is still morally inchoate. He possesses neither the self-assurance nor the status to, metaphorically speaking, sulk on the sidelines. He cannot, in other words, adopt the posture of the mature Achillean hero, who could sit in his tent and demand recompense as the war raged on around him, despite the losses for his fellow Greeks such a decision entailed. Rather, as we have observed earlier, Neoptolemus is very much concerned with what others think of him. He does not want to incur the aidōs (‘shame’) which results in appearing a certain way before his comrades.104 He does not want to be called a traitor (94). His need to serve his superiors is not surprising. Already here a tension in heroism is exposed: the sense of shame Neoptolemus feels at betraying his phusis (120) and the sense of shame he imagines at betraying the Greek army (93–4). Indeed, the concept of shame, as we will see, is complicated in both its content and consequences. In the end, however, the young man is won over by the prospect of being the complete hero his father strove to be, to be deemed both good and wise (119).105 The actual achievement of such a prospect, we shall discover, will be more complicated for Neoptolemus than it was for Achilles.

B. Neoptolemus as the agent of Odysseus Once he has agreed to take part in Odysseus’ scheme, Neoptolemus attempts to carry it out to the best of his ability. This largely involves suppressing any of the instinctual feelings that might get in the way of his efforts, feelings that were voiced in the prologue and that will, unsurprisingly, resurface later in the play. He tells the chorus to try to 103

Knox 1964: 123. Cf. Blundell 1989: 138. For a deﬁnition of the complicated moral term aidōs, see Cairns 1993: Introduction. 105 Roisman makes the interesting point (2005: 60) that the dichotomies between the Achilles-type and the Odysseus-type are not as stark in Homer as they are in Sophocles: ‘In Homer there is the overriding sense that each hero contributes his own special talents to the warrior club and that all their talents are valued and needed. This is not so in the Philoctetes. The play gives one set of values and traits to Philoctetes, the other to Odysseus, and brings in a third character, Neoptolemus, who must choose between them.’ 104

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serve the purpose of the moment (149), is unmoved by their pity for Philoctetes (169–90), and takes a pragmatic, guilt-free approach to Philoctetes’ plight—a plight, Neoptolemus asserts, which is heaven’s will (191–200). When he meets the man himself, Neoptolemus’ execution of the plan is brilliant (219–541).106 He achieves precisely the right reaction from Philoctetes and the two are instantly bonded in their hatred (389–90, 403–4, 585–6). In terms of his ethical perspective, Neoptolemus shows himself still wrapped up in the ideals of heroism. He remains concerned about shame and reputation (524–5), a preoccupation on which Philoctetes capitalizes (475–9). He believably laments the perishing of a åæÅ and the rule of the Øº (‘base’, 457)—where a åæÅ refer to those of the Achillean persuasion and Øº to those of the Odyssean. And he refers again to the fact that he is not ŒÆŒ (558) by nature. All is going according to plan. But then Philoctetes is struck by a brutal attack of his illness (730–826), to which Neoptolemus experiences a strong visceral reaction. It is through his emotional response to another man’s suffering that we begin to learn the true moral bent of the son of Achilles. Neoptolemus’ initial reaction of utter shock and confusion (730–57) serves to depict how unprepared he was for the reality of the man’s condition. Being told someone is ill and being privy to the extent of his despair are, we learn, two quite distinct things. But while his feelings towards Philoctetes are beginning to shift and values quite different from those on the cards earlier begin to make an entrance into the framework of the play, Neoptolemus’ resolve to bring the plan to fruition remains ﬁrm. A new piece of information has been added into the mixture, however, which causes the young man to view his conquest rather differently: Neoptolemus learns that it is not simply the bow that is needed but Philoctetes himself (610–13, 813, 839–42).107 It is the combination of this fact and his new-found understanding of the extent of Philoctetes’ pain that accounts for the ensuing change in Neoptolemus’ tactics and that ultimately will allow for the expression of his real ethical leanings.

106 On Neoptolemus’ early competence as a liar, cf. Knox 1964: 120, 129 and Roisman 1997: 151–2. 107 On the piecemeal revelation of the prophesy, see Easterling 1978: 29–33 and Gill 1980.

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C. Neoptolemus’ dilemma When Philoctetes’ episode has subsided and the spent man lies sleeping in his cave, the chorus urge Neoptolemus to take advantage of the situation (833–7, 844–64). They continue in the same vein as before, pushing for the successful completion of the mission and all it represents. But Neoptolemus is undergoing a change. In telling us that he is distressed at what Philoctetes is experiencing (806), we have our ﬁrst indication that Neoptolemus is feeling genuine pity and it is a pity which he has felt ‘for some time’ (ºÆØ).108 With the introduction of these emotions into the equation, Neoptolemus is struck with the ﬁrst stage of his moral dilemma: B

æﬁH Kªg PŁ ª (‘What should I do from here’, 895)?109 Neoptolemus is in a state of ethical perplexity, the state of aporia (897) that a Socratic interlocutor experiences when his moral holdings have been exposed as unclear or contradictory. Yet while Neoptolemus admits that he has abandoned his phusis and done things which were unﬁtting (902–3), he has not yet abandoned the plan to get Philoctetes to Troy. Neoptolemus has reached an intermediate stage in his moral transformation.110 On the one hand he is still guided by heroic aims, but on the other, such aims are now tempered by considerations of friendship and pity.111 Or, to put it a slightly different way, this stage of his dilemma leads him back to his initial concern with the means of the task at hand. He has not yet questioned its ultimate end. Neoptolemus cannot simply abort the plan because he is still concerned with how he looks and what is in store for him: he is still motivated by the prospect of the sack of Troy and his particular role in such an event; he is still under the sway of Odysseus; and he is still in the grip of an ‘obligation’ to the Greek army at large. He himself draws attention to the fact that he is still bothered by the prospect of ‘appearing’ (çÆFÆØ) ÆNåæ (906) and being ‘taken for’ (ºÅçŁH)

108 Cf. 965–6 where he uses the same expression, implying that these feelings have been lurking (but have been obscured?) for much longer than he has let on. 109 He reached an impasse previously at 757 but this was, at least overtly, a more practical quandary, as he did not know how to deal with the disturbing physical manifestations of Philoctetes’ sickness. 110 Cf. Kirkwood 1958: 148 n. 38. 111 Cf. Roisman 2005: 98.

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ŒÆŒ (908)—no mention of actually being either of these things.112 His statement at 925–6 also indicates that Neoptolemus continues to be, to some degree, heroically minded. After he reveals to Philoctetes that they are meant to sail for Troy and Philoctetes demands his bow back, Neoptolemus refuses. He cannot, for e ØŒ and e ıçæ compel him: both ‘justice’ and ‘expediency’. The value of justice is being given weight, but at this juncture only insofar as it coincides with expediency.113 Neoptolemus’ conception of justice, as is normal for somebody who is driven by honour and shame, is at least in part externally determined. Later in the play Neoptolemus will realize that the happy marriage between these two values is a chimera, as he will be forced to choose between them. The tension generated by Neoptolemus’ dilemma continues to escalate. He goes through several stages of moral confusion (908, 969), each building upon the next, until he reaches his ﬁnal expression of perplexity and he capitulates (1393).114 By this point in his deliberation he has done everything in his capacity to persuade Philoctetes to relent and to accompany him to Troy. But to no avail. He feels a clear bond with Philoctetes and genuine distress at his situation and suffering. As a result, the alternatives facing Neoptolemus are even more equally weighted than they were before (thus making his decision even more difﬁcult). The ideas of serving his superiors, of championing the Greek cause at large, and of winning personal glory are beginning to pale in comparison to putting an end to the pain of his new-found friend. His is now a true dilemma, unlike those of Philoctetes, of Electra, of Antigone, of Ajax, and of Odysseus in Iliad 11. It is a dilemma whose resolution is not foreordained by a single principle, but one which is shaped by emotion and by contingencies both internal and external. It is a dilemma in 112

Moreover, Philoctetes continues to speak to him in the language of shame (929–30, 968), although what he is to be ashamed about, according to Philoctetes, is quite different from the object of normal heroic shame. 113 As discussed earlier (V.2.B), this dubious partnership of values appears, in different combinations, in the speeches of Thucydides. See Winnington-Ingram 1980: 288 n. 31. 114 The fact that Neoptolemus actually changes his mind is in deliberate contrast to Philoctetes (as well as Ajax and Antigone) and in line with characters such as Ismene and Chrysothemis. Philoctetes (the epitome of stubbornness himself) had realized quite early on the potential for such a turn-about in the young man (961–2). The pointed and ironic reference to Neoptolemus’ sacrilege at 1440–54 underlines that even this choice is not permanent. Cf. Blundell 1988: 146.

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which the strength or priority of the alternatives has shifted as Neoptolemus has himself met with, and weighed, both old evidence and new.115 It is to this sort of pluralist dilemma, as we will see when we discuss the ending of the play, that Sophocles knew there is no single right answer. The exact nature of Neoptolemus’ dilemma deserves special consideration.116 We saw above the blinkered way in which Philoctetes dealt both with his dilemma and with the reality that he had forgone something very valuable. While Neoptolemus is faced with a moral decision similar to that of Philoctetes, he responds to its implications quite differently. He is not playing the role of monist. Unlike Philoctetes, who never acknowledges as much, Neoptolemus realizes that he cannot have it both ways: the alternatives which face him are both incompatible (in large part because of the nature of Philoctetes) and incommensurable (because they emanate from completely separate moral foundations and cannot be uniquely compared). In other words, Neoptolemus ‘cannot both respond to pity and serve his leaders, both maintain his standard of honour and win martial glory’.117 And he cannot, by choosing one course of action, fully compensate for what he will lose out on. In trying to convince Philoctetes to go, he speaks of the reward as ŒÆº (1344), of the prospect of being judged ¼æØ (1345), and of gaining Œº æÆ (‘the highest reputation’, 1347).118 These are rewards that he too will relinquish: for [h]owever much glory Philoctetes may personally bestow upon him for his honourable action, it will cost him his honour and reputation amongst the rest of the Greeks. It will beneﬁt him in neither heroic nor pragmatic terms. As he says himself, the easiest course would be to abandon Philoctetes as he found him (1395 f.). Yet he agrees to take him home, evidently in the belief that one should keep a promise, even one made under false pretences. This is apparently an altruistic decision,

115 That is to say, some pieces of information he had known all along but needed to witness, i.e. Philoctetes’ sickness. While other evidence, such as the exact strictures of the prophesy, have only gradually been revealed. 116 On the internal nature of his conﬂict, cf. Reinhardt 1979: 166–7. 117 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 298. 118 Cf. 352, where Neoptolemus similarly describes taking Troy as ŒÆº . Also Odyssey 9.264, where Agamemnon is described as possessing the ªØ ıæØ Œº (‘the greatest reputation under heaven’) for sacking so great a city.

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prompted by pity, friendship and a concern for moral consistency, and arising from self-respect rather than thoughts of reputation’.119

In the end, Neoptolemus yields (1395–1402). But he does so not without a struggle of conscience and not without regrets and lingering fears of blame and harm (1404–8).

D. Neoptolemus’ disagreements With Odysseus Through the different phases of Neoptolemus’ inner struggle, Sophocles illustrates how the boy breaks with all three of the men who have played some role in inﬂuencing him. When Neoptolemus and Odysseus re-enter in mid-conversation at 1222, the crux of their conﬂict comes into sharp relief. The antagonism toward Odyssean deceit and tactics that we were given a glimpse of in the prologue and that Neoptolemus has struggled with throughout the action is given full expression. Everything Neoptolemus has done before he now considers a ‘mistake’ (±ÆæÆ, 1224–5, 1249–50).120 The mistake is deﬁned as: IÆØØ ÆNåæÆE ¼ æÆ ŒÆd ºØ º (‘taking the man by shameful deception and trickery’, 1228). That is to say, the mistake is one of means, not of taking the man, but of using a deception which is ‘shameful’ (ÆNåæH) and ‘unjust (P Œﬁ Å) (1234). This assertion takes us back to the Achillean ideal and the initial tension between the two aspects of heroism. It underlines Neoptolemus’ return to his Achillean roots.121 The conversation which ensues illustrates the severity of the disagreement. Odysseus and Neoptolemus are speaking different languages. Not only is Odysseus wholly confused by what Neoptolemus means in general—answering him with a string of questions that reveal a fundamental misunderstanding (1225–37)—but the two are using the same ethical terms in contrary ways.

119

Blundell 1989: 220. Cf. 94–5. Neoptolemus will now give real content to what he considers ŒÆºH

æH KÆÆæ E. 121 To underline this rift between Achilles and Odysseus, Odysseus refers to Neoptolemus as ‘son of Achilles’ immediately after Neoptolemus calls his means of taking Philoctetes shameful and unjust (1237). 120

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The issue of exactly what the value of ç (‘wisdom’) entails comes centre-stage. Neoptolemus, we must remember, agreed to take part in the mission on the expectation that it would win him a reputation for being ç (119). But now he seems to realize that the virtue of wisdom is not monolithic. Odysseus, he thinks, while by nature ç is not speaking ç (1244). Or, as we might capture the distinction in English, while he is ‘clever’ he says nothing ‘wise’, Odysseus retorts by denying Neoptolemus any claim to çÆ (‘wisdom’) whatsoever, neither in word nor in deed (1245). He is here implying that, despite what Neoptolemus thinks, it is he himself who is in fact ç . Neoptolemus seems to accept that Odysseus has the right to deﬁne wisdom. Accepting that deﬁnition, he then rejects the entire value, proclaiming instead that it is outweighed by justice: Iºº

N ŒÆØÆ, H çH Œæ ø (‘But if [I speak] just things, that is better than wise things’, 1246). This is signiﬁcant: Neoptolemus is propounding that, if one acts with justice, this is better than acting with wisdom (or at least that species of wisdom under which Odysseus operates). Odysseus then challenges Neoptolemus’ conception of justice (1247–8). There is no agreement between these two on the meaning of either wisdom or justice: both claim the values for their own actions, while refusing to accept that the other has a similar claim. Altogether, the interchange at 1222–55 is a perfect demonstration of the pluralist and Protagorean belief that the virtues are not inter-entailing. Indeed, not only are the meanings of values such as justice and wisdom under deep scrutiny in the play, they are revealed as, at least in some instances, mutually exclusive.

With Achilles Neoptolemus and Odysseus, by the end of the play, are clearly contrasting characters. But so too, on closer inspection, are Neoptolemus and Achilles. If we have before viewed him in the Achillean mould, as the true son of his father, it follows that in changing Neoptolemus must somehow have moved away from the conception of heroic ethics for which Achilles is the paradigm. If we want to claim that, in taking Philoctetes home, he is now acting in accord with his true moral subscriptions we must also recognize the consequences of such a claim. The most important consequence is that Neoptolemus has evolved into a man signiﬁcantly different from Achilles. Philoctetes lauds Neoptolemus for showing c çØ . . . K w ºÆ (‘the

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nature from which you have sprung’, 1310–11) but, as has been noticed, there is a serious way in which Neoptolemus has failed to live up to the Achillean ideal.122 To be sure, like Neoptolemus, Achilles showed pity in the Iliad both to Patroclus and to Priam—but he did so only to a limited extent. Like Neoptolemus, he refused for some time to ﬁght, threatening to return home—but only because his heroic pride had been wounded and for the sake of his personal honour. Eventually Achilles returned to the battleﬁeld to reclaim the glory he deserved: to kill Hector and to put the Greeks that much closer to the ultimate prize of sacking Troy.123 Moreover, Neoptolemus differs from his father in that Achilles rejected the pleas of his friends in the embassy, whereas Neoptolemus ultimately acquiesces to Philoctetes. So too, Achilles had no qualms about harming his enemies (even those that started out as friends), whereas Neoptolemus refuses to hurt those who, by some standards, could be viewed as enemies (at varying times, Philoctetes and Odysseus). And, perhaps most importantly, Achilles had no concern for justice of an other-regarding nature, whereas Neoptolemus, in the last analysis, esteems it highly. It remains to be explained more thoroughly what kind of morality Neoptolemus adopts in place of the one he started with. With his introduction of the concept of justice as a motivating factor, Neoptolemus is no longer driven as exclusively by concerns of reputation, honour, and shame as he once was. Rather, he is now acting from a more internal sense of what is just and what is not. When Odysseus asks him if, in shirking his duty to the army, he does not fear the consequences (1250), Neoptolemus replies: no, he does not, because e ŒÆØ is on his side (1251). In Neoptolemus’ mind justice is no longer equated with serving the Greek cause, with taking revenge on Troy and punishing the offences of Paris—even though this is what all of his colleagues consider just. In short, for Neoptolemus, justice is no longer as easily paired with e ıçæ as it once was (cf. 925–6). Instead, his concept of justice is dictated by his own standards, as is his sense of shame (1228, 1234, 1383). The aidōs one experiences 122

See Blundell 1988: 143–4. This fact also causes us to reﬂect on the stability of one’s phusis. 123 Cf. Achilles’ pride at hearing of Neoptolemus’ successes at Troy (Odyssey 11.540). Roisman discusses (1997: 132–6) the ways in which Odysseus presents in this passage Neoptolemus as more akin to himself than to Achilles, while at the same time belittling the young man’s overall achievement.

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before others is no longer the prime motivator for Neoptolemus, nor is the timē he would be guaranteed in sacking Troy. Rather, the guilt he must come to terms with within his own breast is what determines his action, in addition to his newly acknowledged feelings of pity, friendship, and consistency.124 It is by disregarding his chance for glory in the name of this other set of values that Neoptolemus is, in the end, able to follow through on his commitment to Philoctetes.

With Philoctetes Finally, we can consider how Neoptolemus also breaks with Philoctetes. This is a strange claim at ﬁrst glance, as the two men certainly go off together in apparent harmony at the close of the drama. And yet there remains—and will always remain—an important discord between them. This rift is brought to our attention when Neoptolemus prevents Philoctetes from harming Odysseus (1300–2), the man who is his greatest enemy.125 Neoptolemus’ action here is not without consequence. Philoctetes makes this clear when he states explicitly that Neoptolemus has thwarted the execution of the principle by which he, Philoctetes, has structured the last ten years of his life (1302–3). With this recognition, the symbolic moral break between the two characters is exposed. Philoctetes, we saw above, rejected even the glory of sacking Troy because his enmity and desire for revenge was too strong; he rejected Ø (1062) and the utmost Œº (1347) because he served a single and exaggerated aspect of the heroic code. Neoptolemus, on the other hand, thinks that it is not ŒÆº at all to harm one’s enemies (1304). This is fair enough, but he also knows that by stopping Philoctetes from killing Odysseus, he is denying him his one and only chance for meaningful compensation. Neoptolemus, of course, will reject the same glory Philoctetes does, but he will do so because he is embracing a different moral code altogether, a moral code which pursues justice, pity, and friendship 124 On the contrast between shame and guilt, see Dodds 1951: 17–18, 28 ff.; Lloyd-Jones 1971: esp. ch. 1, passim; Redﬁeld 1975: 115 ff.; Williams 1993: passim; Cairns 1993: particularly the Introduction. While the division has been exposed as overly simpliﬁed and misleading, e.g. by Williams and Cairns, and subscribing to it is now unfashionable, I still think that it captures something signiﬁcant of Neoptolemus’ change. 125 This is, of course, reminiscent of the Odysseus in both Ajax (1332–45) and the Odyssey (22.407–16).

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for their own sake.126 We can note, therefore, that Neoptolemus’ change is not necessarily consistent with Philoctetes’ own morality but with Philoctetes’ earlier persuasive deﬁnitions. Neoptolemus’ evolution through the course of the play highlights how Philoctetes was dubiously employing heroic language ‘to commend a course of action which conforms to intrinsic moral standards rather than the approval of the community at large, and to humane cooperative values rather than the glory of martial accomplishment’.127 It highlights that Philoctetes, whether inadvertently or not, was advocating values which, although they existed in Homer (VI.2.E above), had gained much greater currency by the time Sophocles was writing. This creates an interesting paradox: while it was Philoctetes who, in one sense, inspired Neoptolemus’ metamorphosis by attempting to shame the young man into compliance, Neoptolemus only chose the way he did because of his own feelings of guilt and his own conception of justice. In the end, Philoctetes is not a role-model to Neoptolemus any more than is Odysseus or Achilles. Rather, it is Philoctetes’ use of language that furnishes Neoptolemus with the content of a new moral consciousness.

4. HERACLES: CONCLUSION VERSUS RESOLUTION The play, of course, does not end with Philoctetes and Neoptolemus sailing off into the sunset to Malis, willingly abandoning their chance for fame.128 Such an ending would not only defy the mythological tradition, but somehow leave the audience emotionally dissatisﬁed. And yet, what we do get, through a fascinating and dexterous use of the deus ex machina, is still a happy ending of sorts. As the two men set off together, bonded in their friendship now and not their hatred, the hero Heracles—who was made, with consummate artistry, a 126

A moral code which contains principles remarkably similar to the ones the ﬁfth-century Socrates was so attached. Cf. Blundell 1989: 211–12. 127 Blundell 1988: 142. 128 The meaning of the ending of Philoctetes is a notoriously complicated interpretational question. For doxography, see Blundell 1989: 220 n. 12; Cairns 1993: 263 n. 180; Roisman 1997: 162 nn. 51 and 52.

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leitmotif throughout the drama (262, 670, 778, 802, 943, 1131)— arrives to address his bow-bearer and trusted friend.129 In true heroic spirit, Heracles commands Philoctetes to go to Troy, where he will receive respite from his sickness and the ultimate prize of sacking the city. Philoctetes is destined, Heracles proclaims, for greatness, for

PŒº A (‘a renowned life’, 1422), to be deemed the ﬁrst of the army in Iæ (‘excellence’, 1425), and to gain the IæØ EÆ (‘prizes’, 1429). But it is not just Philoctetes who will live the hero’s life and reap the hero’s rewards. Neoptolemus and Philoctetes must achieve this together (1434–5), a fact which Heracles relays using a Homericstyled simile of two lions roaming together and protecting each other (1436–37).130 Heracles is here vindicating the heroic course of action that neither Neoptolemus nor Philoctetes, left to their own devices, would have chosen. The use of divine intervention and the existence of a second ending to Philoctetes accomplishes two tasks. The ﬁrst is, I think, a kind of vindication of Odysseus or, at least, a further set of reasons to believe he is not an unambiguous villain. On this view, Heracles represents the triumph of Odysseus in several ways.131 First, he gives credence to the content of Odysseus’ plan by himself ordaining the goal it was designed to serve. Like Odysseus (997–8), Heracles promises that Philoctetes will be judged the best among the army (1425). And like Odysseus (989–90), Heracles stresses the fact that Philoctetes’ going to Troy is a matter of fate (1415). Secondly, he condones the form of the plan. True, he does not use trickery to win Philoctetes over, but he does represent the primacy of ªºHÆ over å æ (‘tongue’ over ‘ﬁst’, 96–9). The means by which Heracles convinces Philoctetes is by the tongue, an instrument that can be applied to both persuasion and enjoinder. Furthermore, by including the point that Philoctetes’ 129

On the signiﬁcance of Neoptolemus physically supporting Philoctetes in their departure, see Taplin 1971: 27 ff. and Easterling 1978: 29. On the unique relationship between Heracles and Philoctetes, see Tessitore 2003: 73–4. 130 This line, by extolling an Iliadic-styled friendship such as that between Achilles and Patroclus, serves to implicitly denigrate Philoctetes’ earlier rejection of such a model. Cf. Iliad 10.297 (which, interestingly, refers to Odysseus and Diomedes). 131 See further Roisman 1997: 163–4. Tessitore 2003 85–8 and Roisman 2005: 109–11 both revive the interesting possibility, originally put forward by Ignancio Errandonea in 1956, that Heracles is actually Odysseus in disguise. This reading ‘effectively gives Odysseus the last word and implies that the play endorses his ethos of deception for the sake of victory’ (Roisman 2005: 111) and suggests ‘that Sophocles’ play offers a qualiﬁed vindication of Odysseus’ (Tessitore 2003: 85).

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going to Troy is foreordained (1415), he justiﬁes, at least implicitly, Odysseus’ choice of method. Deceit, we must remember, is the only method Odysseus felt would work for accomplishing Zeus’ will—the success of which is no small matter. He did not, after all, have recourse at the beginning to the power of a divine command. Thirdly, Heracles’ presence illustrates the need to obey one’s superiors and those who have helped one in the past. This ‘lesson’ vindicates the actions of both Neoptolemus, who was serving Odysseus, and of Odysseus, who was at the behest of the Greek army.132 Finally, it is worthwhile to point out that, whether deliberately or not, Heracles sympathetically links himself to Odysseus, the one Homeric hero whose many sufferings are as notorious as his own (1419–20). We should recall Heracles’ words to Odysseus upon their meeting in Hades in Odyssey 11: ˜Øª b ¸Æ æØ Å, ºıåÆ O ı F,| Æ#

º , q Øa ŒÆd f ŒÆŒe æ ªÅºÇ Ø, |‹ æ Kªg Oå Œ ÆPªa M ºØ (‘Heaven-born son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of strategems, unhappy man! So you too are working out some such miserable doom as I endured when I lived in the light of the sun’).133 Most signiﬁcantly, however, the appearance of Heracles also demonstrates ‘the impasse to which the characters have been brought by their various incompatible claims and convictions’.134 Throughout the play we have witnessed multiple conﬂicts and moral tensions within and between the characters. All of these conﬂicts are used to explore difﬁculties within the contemporary moral landscape. In our discussions of Odysseus and Philoctetes, we saw how the Odyssean and Achillean variants of heroism can easily come into irreconcilable tension with one another and how, at the same time, can each offer a legitimate ethical perspective. Sophocles’ use of the double ending, however, is concerned with the relationship between heroic morality as a whole and that of the ﬁfth century, the very subject matter of Neoptolemus’ dilemma. The arrival of Heracles brilliantly illustrates the irresolvability of this last, the most profound and complicated, conﬂict of the tragedy. Indeed, as we saw is a hallmark of pluralist disagreement, the god

132 A point Odysseus himself stresses as he makes his ﬁnal two exits: 1257–8, 1293–4. 133 Odyssey 11.617–19. On Heracles and Odysseus as kindred heroes, see Finkelberg 1995: 4–5. 134 Blundell 1989: 224. Cf. Beye 1970: 74–5.

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concludes the play but does not resolve it.135 By placing two endings side by side, one in which the characters fulﬁl their heroic duty and win their heroic rewards and one in which they do not, Sophocles appears to be justifying both. One ending does not nullify the other: ‘The play has two “endings” and it would contradict its whole trend and the whole artistry of Sophocles if the “second ending” deprived the “ﬁrst ending” of all its value.’136 The hunt for glory and the desire to win are important (and real) ethical aims, but they must be tempered by pity and friendship and justice. Both of these moral positions existed in the ﬁfth century, and it was becoming increasingly difﬁcult to separate one from the other: as in all societies, the substance and source of moral expectations are never easy to delineate. The paramount values of heroism—such as renown, nobility, honour—were taking on other forms. The more obscured values of heroism—such as fairness, affection, pity—were being allowed more practical weight. New ideas of behaviour—such as consistency, likemindedness, and altruism—were for the ﬁrst time being considered valuable.137 Philoctetes shows how all of these values, old and new, were prone to come into sharp and irresolvable conﬂict with one another, how perfect harmony is not a realistic condition of our moral lives. 135

Tessitore makes a very similar observation using different terminology (2003: 83): ‘The theoretical conﬂict that surfaces in the body of the play is eclipsed but not extinguished by the practical resolution of the dramatic action.’ Original emphasis. Roisman remarks (2005: 111) on Heracles that he ‘resolves the otherwise insoluble dilemmas the play poses’. 136 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 301–2. 137 On new ﬁfth-century values involved in the play, see Rose 1976: passim.

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Index Achilles 34, 204, 216, 219, 223–5, 225–7, 228–30, 232–3, 238, 241, 244, 245, 246, 252, 256, 263–4, 265, 268, 314, 316, 317–18, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325–6, 329, 331–2, 332–3, 334–5, 335–6, 337, 341, 342–4, 345, 347 Aeschylus 294, 297, 298, 304, 306–7, 309 Choephori 299, 309 Eumenides 307, 309 Oresteia 297, 308 Agamemnon 34, 182, 211–12, 216 in Homer 214–15, 225–7, 228–9, 232, 238, 332 in Sophocles 287–8, 289, 293, 294, 296–7, 299–300, 300–1 agōn 238, 297, 309 aidōs, see shame Ajax: in Homer 204, 227, 232, 261, 326 in Sophocles 194, 237, 238, 243–57, 258, 259, 261–71, 272, 274, 277, 279, 284, 290, 296, 302, 321, 324, 332, 333, 339 Ajax 56, 199, 238, 243–57, 261–73, 274, 287, 291, 295, 314, 320, 323 the deception speech 247–56 his dilemma 238, 243, 244–7, 256, 262, 339 Tecmessa 243, 245, 246–7, 248, 250–1, 256, 259 see also Achilles; Odysseus akrasia 102–3, 109, 227, 231 alētheia 31–3, 47- 51, 52 see also truth anachronism 3–7, 24, 26 Anaxagoras 25, 29, 49 Anaximander 26, 27, 127 Anaximenes 26, 27 anthrōpos 29–30, 45, 47–8 Antigone 16, 56, 134, 183, 238, 261, 262, 272–3, 274, 274–87, 323 Antigone 237, 238, 258, 259, 261, 270, 272, 274–87, 291, 297–8, 311–12, 326, 327, 329

Creon 238, 258, 259, 261, 272, 275, 279–82, 283–4, 285–6, 303, 311–12, 312, 327 dilemma(s) in 274–9, 283, 339 Haemon 47, 279 Ismene 271, 272, 274–5, 276–7, 278, 291 antilogy 52–4, 57, 70, 93 Plato on 54–6 Protagoras on 70–3 Antiphon 56 Archaic/lyric poetry 5, 31–4, 143–4 Archilochus 31, 34 Arendt, Hannah 46, 51, 87, 92 Aristophanes 53 Aristotle 36, 50, 54, 68, 72, 94, 107, 110, 130 Athens 81, 91, 118, 131, 154, 236, 237, 312 Bacchylides 32 Berlin, Isaiah 1–3, 7–8, 11, 25, 38, 39, 41, 42, 51, 73, 116, 117, 118, 119, 125, 230, 232 on deﬁnition of pluralism 8–10 on history 122, 139–40, 140–2, 143, 149, 152, 153, 191 on objectivity 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 ‘better’ decisions 21–2, 71, 74–6, 93, 105, 133, 181–2, 223 see also orthos Blundell, Mary Whitlock 235–6, 251 Burnyeat, Myles 59, 73 causation 117, 123–4, 137 in Herodotus 159, 160, 171, 173–7, 179, 179, 181, 196 in Thucydides 155–8, 159, 175, 176, 177 Cicero 45, 137 Clytemnestra 215 see also Electra conﬂict 4, 9, 11, 12, 79, 93, 115, 116, 137, 161, 178, 192, 203, 216, 250

376

Index

conﬂict (cont.) conclusion 21, 65, 269, 286–7, 308–9, 347–8 in Herodotus 132, 179, 182–6, 204 in Homer 213–34, 240, 245, 331 in Protagoras 51, 57–9, 64, 73, 77, 78, 96 (ir)resolution 21, 65, 261, 269, 270, 286–7, 302, 308–9, 347–8 in Sophocles 240–2, 244, 256, 257–9, 259–62, 269–72, 274–87, 287–303, 309, 310, 311–12, 314, 320–3, 327–8, 341–5, 347–8 tragic 13, 15–16, 18, 21, 209–13, 234–9, 275, 278 see also dilemma(s); disagreement(s) cosmos 29–30, 31, 47, 49 cultural pluralism, see pluralism democracy 86, 91–3 Democritus 25, 29, 36, 62, 109 De Romilly, Jacqueline 37, 48, 59, 130 Dewald, Carolyn 170, 178 dikē 86, 89, 133, 278, 292 dilemma(s) 11, 72, 100, 102, 124, 213, 231 in Herodotus 179, 181–6 in Homer 217, 219–25, 228, 229, 240, 241, 243 in Sophocles 237, 238, 243, 244–7, 256, 257–8, 262, 274–9, 283, 287–96, 302, 311, 333–4, 334, 338–41, 347 in Thucydides 186–91 disagreement(s) 11, 96–7, 104, 124, 134, 179, 213, 231 in Homer 225–7, 228, 229, 240, 241 in Sophocles 238, 257–9, 260, 269, 270, 274, 283, 296–303, 311, 334, 341–5, 347 diversity 79, 81, 83, 115, 122, 132, 136, 137, 152, 160, 179, 192–6 Dissoi Logoi 56, 82 education 86, 91–3 eikos (probability) 53–4, 148, 149 Electra 134, 262, 272–3, 274, 285, 287–310, 323 Aegisthus 301, 306 Chrysothemis 271, 272, 288, 291–3, 299 Clytemnestra 259, 272, 282, 294, 296–303, 306, 308, 309, 312

dilemma(s) in 238, 287–96, 302, 339 Electra 237, 259, 270, 272, 284–5, 287–310, 324, 326, 339 Furies 215, 303, 304, 307, 309 see also Agamemnon; Iphigenia; Orestes Empedocles 25, 29, 31, 49, 127, 234 the Enlightenment vii, 42, 117, 121, 137 euboulia 76, 218, 228, 229 expert(ise) 65, 69, 70, 100, 133 see also Protagoras Euripides 130, 235, 306–7 Finley, M. I. 218, 232–3 Foley, Helen 285, 286 glory/renown 217, 219, 230, 244, 278, 317, 320, 321, 332, 333, 334, 335, 340, 343–4, 348 Gorgias 30, 56, 94, 95 Gray, John vii, 17 Guthrie, W. K. C. 37, 38, 42, 59 Havelock, Eric A. 37, 41, 42, 91 Hecataeus 164, 167, 172 Hegel, G. W. F. 36, 281–2 Heraclitus 25, 27, 49 Herder, Johann Gottfried 2, 7, 117–18, 119, 121, 152, 154, 163, 165 Herodotus 3, 9, 20, 21, 23, 40, 82, 91, 112, 115, 116, 122, 124–5, 125–38, 142, 149, 152, 153, 155, 159, 186, 190, 191, 201, 211, 261 Artabanus 127, 180, 181, 182, 184 constitutional debate 92, 131 East versus West 163, 165, 203–6 Egypt(ians) 82, 132, 154, 162, 163, 165, 170, 179–80, 192, 197–8 Gyges 181–3, 186, 211 Halicarnassus 125–6 Lydia(ns) 82, 121, 199, 203 methodology in 160–79 Persia(ns) 82, 121, 132, 163, 165, 180, 197–8, 199, 203, 204, 205 Scythia(ns) 82, 132, 163, 165, 170, 192, 203 Solon 23, 134–5 Xerxes 165, 176, 179–81, 183–4, 186, 203, 205 see also causation; conﬂict; dilemma(s); incommensurability; objectivity;

Index orthos; pluralism; sources; truth; voice the heroic code, see Homer Hesiod 31, 32, 87, 120, 152, 235 Hippias 83–4, 109 Hippocratics/Hippocratic corpus 128, 141, 142, 143, 144, 151, 157–8, 176 Homer 16, 23, 32, 142, 152, 212–13, 214–34, 236–9, 240–2, 243, 244–5, 256–7, 261–9, 271, 273, 281, 284, 303–4, 305, 311, 313–14, 315, 318–19, 321, 326, 329–30, 331, 333, 335, 345, 347 Andromache 221–2, 243, 245 Hector 216, 221–3, 224, 228–30, 233, 238, 241, 243, 245, 249–50, 256, 264, 284–5, 332, 343 the ‘heroic code’ 34, 216–19, 224, 228–30, 238, 241, 242, 246, 248, 250, 256, 262, 311, 329, 331, 332, 333, 344 the Iliad 213, 214, 217, 219, 219–27, 232, 234, 237, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 249, 252, 266, 304, 329, 335, 339, 343 the Odyssey 214, 218, 219, 232, 233, 234, 252, 264, 269, 304, 315, 316, 318 Patroclus 228–9, 233, 332–3, 343 see also Achilles; Agamemnon; conﬂict; dilemma(s); disagreement(s); incommensurability; Odysseus; weak pluralism homo mensura, see man-measure honour, 187, 217, 219, 223, 225, 228, 229, 230, 232, 237, 243, 244, 247, 249–50, 256, 258, 261, 263, 271, 274, 281, 283, 289–90, 296, 299, 317, 318, 321, 326, 329, 331, 333, 335, 339, 340, 343–4, 348 human nature 19, 146–8 see also Thucydides imagination 20, 118 see also Vico incommensurability 9, 12–16, 17, 190, 192, 209–12 in Herodotus 175–6, 179, 203–6 in history 116, 119–20, 123, 124, 152 in Homer 214, 220–1, 231–4, 240

377

in Protagoras 78, 97, 104–7, 111–12 in Sophocles 237–8, 259–61, 262, 267, 268–9, 273, 274, 275, 278, 281, 285, 303, 308, 309, 328, 333, 340 Iphigenia 214, 297, 300, 301–2 James, William vii, 5 Jebb, Richard 250, 291, 304, 308 Kekes, John vii, 14 Kennedy, George 41, 42 Kerferd, G. B. 35, 37, 50, 57, 61, 62, 110, 112, 130 kleos, see glory Knox, Bernard 277, 316 Leucippus 29 Lloyd, G. E. R. 27–8 logos 52, 55, 178 man-measure 45, 47–51, 52, 61, 69, 76–7, 79, 83, 92, 101, 105–6, 111, 132, 259 see also Protagoras Machiavelli, Niccolo 2, 7 Melissus 26, 28, 31 meta-ethics 235–6, 244, 268, 281, 283 methodology 8, 115, 117, 136, 137, 161, 179, 192, 202 see also Herodotus; Thucydides monism 1–3, 8–9, 10, 10–11, 17, 23, 30, 46, 54, 57, 123, 124, 137, 179, 194, 230, 269–72, 274, 277, 280, 283–7, 309–10 in Archaic poetry 31–4 of hatred 305, 323–34 and heroes/heroism 237, 238, 240, 241–2, 243–57, 258, 261, 269, 274, 278–9, 296, 324, 332, 340 methodological monism 122, 123, 138, 153, 162, 179 in pre-Socratic philosophy 25–9, 128 see also Plato; Thucydides morality 111 common core/universal content 18–19, 89, 112, 133, 192, 196 Greek 4, 19, 150–1 Muses 31, 32, 144 national character 198–202, 203 nomos 82, 88, 91, 110, 132, 133, 149, 198, 199, 205, 206

378

Index

nomos (cont.) diversity of 88–90, 149 Nussbaum, Martha 100, 236 Odysseus 199–200, 261 in Ajax 248, 255, 262–71, 272, 274, 314–15, 320, 321 in Homer 215, 219, 219–21, 222, 223, 233, 234, 238, 241, 246, 263–4, 265, 314, 316–17, 318, 329, 339, 347 in Philoctetes 238, 259, 282, 312–23, 323, 324, 325, 327–8, 329, 331, 334–5, 336–17, 338, 341–2, 344, 345, 346–7 objectivity 9, 17–22, 23, 57–9 in Herodotus 169–72 in Protagoras 61–3, 63, 67, 68, 74, 77–8, 96, 106, 110, 111–12 one versus many 24, 25–9, 31, 79, 81, 83–4, 92, 263, 269 Orestes 215, 238, 294, 295, 297–8, 299, 303, 304, 306, 308, 309 orthos (correct) 73–4, 93, 132, 169–70 see also ‘better’ decisions Parmenides 25, 26, 27–8, 30, 39, 49, 234 Pericles 36, 70, 74, 92, 150, 201, 258, 281 Philoctetes 12, 238, 238–9, 261, 272–3, 295, 311–48 dilemma(s) in 333–4, 338–41, 347 Heracles 305, 345–8 Neoptolemus 12, 16, 238–9, 311, 315, 316, 317, 318, 325, 326, 327, 327–8, 329, 330–1, 332, 333–4, 334–45, 345–7 Philoctetes 239, 259, 270, 277, 305, 314–16, 317, 319, 320–3, 323–34, 334–5, 337, 339, 340, 342–3, 344, 344–5, 345–7 see also Achilles; Odysseus philoi 245, 246, 249, 250, 262, 264, 299 phronēsis 22, 71, 74 phusis 88, 89, 110, 132, 149, 199, 320, 328, 336 Pindar 32, 252 pity 189, 222, 228, 247, 324, 328, 329, 330–1, 337, 338, 340–1, 343, 344–5, 348 Plato 34–5, 36, 38–41, 46–7, 50, 54, 57, 58, 62, 67–9, 71, 72, 83, 107–8, 110, 136, 144, 234, 245, 330 Forms 38, 55, 72, 233

monism in 2–3, 25, 40–1, 230–4 the Cratylus 110–11 the Euthydemus 57 the Euthyphro 108 the Gorgias 55 the Meno 94 the Phaedo 56, 108 the Protagoras 33, 72, 78, 79–112, 131, 231, 232, 233 the Republic 88, 97, 108, 330 the Symposium 233 the Theaetetus 48, 60, 65, 68, 69, 77, 105 see also antilogy; monism; the Protagoras; Socrates pluralism 1–3, 7–8, 30, 46, 54, 57, 79, 86, 112, 115–16, 117, 119, 124, 130, 132, 137, 230, 234 in Archaic poetry 31, 34 cultural pluralism 82–3, 96, 116, 119–20, 125, 191–2, 196–8 deﬁnition of 8–23 in Herodotus 136, 137, 138, 160–79, 179–86, 191, 191–200, 203–6 in history 116–17, 123, 124–5 in pre-Socratic philosophy 25, 28–9 in Protagoras 49–51, 63–5, 69, 77–8, 87–91, 92–3, 93, 96–9, 110–11 in Sophocles 214, 237–9, 240–2, 256–7, 257–61, 269–72, 274, 283–7, 292, 303, 309–10, 320, 321, 328, 340, 342, 347–8 weak pluralism 16, 214, 228–30, 239, 240, 241, 257, 284–5 plurality 46, 47, 48, 77–8, 83, 87, 105, 111, 134, 136, 144, 161, 178, 194, 260–1, 303 of cultures 82, 119, 123 of truths 50, 57, 69, 70, 79 of values 9, 10, 12, 82, 94, 96, 112, 259 Plutarch 77, 130, 134, 191 polis 89, 118, 237, 238, 258, 272, 272–3, 275, 277, 279–81, 282, 284, 286 Popper, Karl 36, 38, 39, 41, 42 pre-Socratic philosophers 2–3, 5, 25–9, 30, 46, 126–7, 132, 141 Prodicus 80, 109 progress 86–8, 120–1, 142, 151–2, 153, 162 Protagoras 9, 21, 30, 36, 40, 70, 80, 83, 83, 84, 87, 95, 107, 108, 115, 119, 125, 136, 149, 236, 258–9, 292, 312, 313, 342

Index ‘Alētheia’ 49, 110 ‘Antilogiai’ 56, 66, 258 on conﬂict 65, 66–9 on decision-making 70–6, 100 as expert 75–6, 77 and Herodotus 130–4, 170, 181–2, 198–9 on naming 74, 109–10 non-contradiction 66–7, 68–9, 72 orthotatos logos 23, 73–5, 110 the weaker argument the stronger 53, 258 see also alētheia; antilogy; conﬂict; expert(ise); incommensurability; man-measure; objectivity; orthos; pluralism; the Protagoras; relativism; subjectivism; truth; two-logoi the Protagoras 33, 72, 78, 79–112, 131, 231, 232, 233 the ‘Great Speech’ 85–93 introduction 79–84 the unity of virtues 93–9 see also Plato; Protagoras; technē rationalism 127, 128, 142–3 reduction(ism) 115, 137, 152–9, 163, 187, 203 regret(s) 15, 209, 256, 262, 284, 301, 333, 341 relativism 10, 17, 20, 23, 57, 63–5 in history 119–20, 132, 192, 196–8 in Protagoras 59–61, 66–7, 68, 77–8, 111 Sextus Empiricus 50, 62, 67, 68, 73, 77 scepticism 17, 72, 133 Schoﬁeld, Malcolm 228–9 science: ethics as 107–8 general/universal laws 122, 123 and history 121–3, 128, 137, 138–52, 152–3, 158, 161–2, 163 prediction 121, 123 retrodiction 123 see also human nature; progress; Thucydides shame 86, 89, 133, 220, 246, 250, 278, 300, 321, 322–3, 329, 336, 339, 341, 343–4 Socrates 10, 35, 40, 41, 45, 80, 81, 83–4, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99–100, 107–8, 194, 204, 231, 232, 259, 330, 338

379

on commensurability 101–4, 104, 105–7, 108 the unity of virtues 23, 259 see also Plato; the Protagoras sophists 5, 35–7, 54, 57, 58, 79–80, 81, 83–4, 129–30, 136, 263, 312–13, 323 sophistic movement 35, 45 Sophocles 9, 11, 20, 23, 40, 47, 87, 112, 115, 125, 129, 191, 205, 206, 213, 214, 243, 253–7, 257–61, 266–7, 269–73, 274, 283, 285, 286–7, 291, 294, 299, 302–10, 311–12, 321, 325, 328, 329, 335, 340, 341, 345, 348 Ajax 56, 199, 238, 243–57, 261–73, 272, 274, 287, 291, 295, 314, 320, 321, 323 Antigone 16, 56, 134, 183, 238, 261, 262, 272–3, 274–87, 323 Electra 134, 262, 272–3, 274, 285, 287–310, 323 and Herodotus 134–5 and Homer 237–9, 240–2 Oedipus at Colonus 135 Oedipus Tyrannus 134–5 Philoctetes 12, 238–9, 261, 272–3, 295, 311–48 see also Ajax; Antigone; conﬂict; dilemma(s); disagreement(s); Electra; incommensurability; Philoctetes; pluralism sources 137, 159 in Herodotus 160, 165–7, 168, 171, 172–3, 174, 178, 179, 196 subjectivism 17, 63–4 in Protagoras 59–61, 66–7, 77 Thales 26, 127 technē 55, 100, 107, 259 metrikē technē 101, 103, 104, 105, 106 politikē technē 85, 88, 92 see also the Protagoras Thomas, Rosalind 130, 198 Thucydides 70, 115, 116, 124–5, 129, 136, 138–59, 161–2, 164, 178, 194, 203 Athens/Athenians 148, 149, 151, 156, 186–91, 200–2, 206 Archaeology 143, 149, 152, 155 the Corcyrean debate 57, 150, 186–7 dikaion (justice) 151, 187–91 general/universal laws 147–8, 149, 191

380

Index

Thucydides (cont.) and Herodotus 122, 135–8, 166, 168, 179, 206 human nature 146–8, 149, 191 the Melians/Melian dialogue 143, 189–90, 202 monism in 136, 138–59, 186, 202 the Mytilenean debate 187–9, 202 the Peloponnesian War 136, 138, 153, 154, 186, 194 prediction 142, 145–7, 149, 153 retrodiction 145, 149–51 Sparta(ns) 143, 149, 150, 156, 200–2, 206 the speeches 145, 149–51 xumpheron (advantage/expedience/ interest) 148, 151, 187–91, 203 see also causation; dilemma(s); monism; progress; reduction(ism); science; sources; truth; voice Thurii 126, 130, 131 timē, see honour the Trojan War 156, 232 truth 8, 30, 31–3, 48–51, 54–6, 57, 77, 104, 105, 111, 112, 136 Herodotus on 168–72, 173 and history 121, 122, 123, 128 Protagoras on 48–51, 81 Thucydides on 137, 143–5, 153, 168

as ‘what is’ 48, 49, 52 see also alētheia two-logoi 52–7, 66, 71, 79, 92, 111, 258 see also Protagoras Untersteiner, Mario 37, 93–4 value(s) 111, 112, 348 incompatibility of 11, 12, 209–12, 261, 269, 273 irreducibility of 10, 12, 17 unrankability of 14 see also incommensurability; pluralism Vernant, Jean-Pierre 40, 237, 281 Vico, Giambattista 2, 7, 116, 117–18, 119, 121, 152, 154, 163 voice 158–9, 160, 168–9, 179, 185 weak pluralism, see pluralism Whitman, Cedric 241, 263, 269, 270 Williams, Bernard vii, 6, 17, 22 Winnington-Ingram, R. P. 247, 332 Wolf, Susan 60, 64 Xenophanes 26, 127, 234 Zeno 28