If we believe Athenian authors of the fourth century BCE, Athens was a noisy, fractious place where certain people spoke often publicly in the law courts and in the Assembly (cf. e. g. Isocrates On the Peace 129–30; Antidosis 38). It was populated by troublemakers, such as Lysimachus, Teisias, Callimachus, and Cleon, in addition to other orators and sophists too numerous to name. These individuals would argue minor court cases on matters of finance and of wrongs against their opponents, offering specious teachings; and making speeches on political topics and topical concerns, and their often rambunctious audiences, misled by pleasure (cf. Thucydides 3.38.7 and 3.40.2–3), jostling one another, would cheer on their favourites or shout down those they did not like.1 Athens was a chaotic and disorderly place where business was conducted through the spoken word, and where the mob’s favour decided policy and legal outcomes. But not all public discourse was spoken from the orator’s platform. The two authors I consider in this paper, Isocrates and Xenophon, resisted the popular mode of public address in the city. As elitists, members of a minority privileged by wealth, status and education, they were “quiet Athenians”.2 They sought ways of expressing themselves as such apart from public speech. Accordingly, Isocrates and Xenophon along with other fourth-century authors such as Plato and Thucydides turned to the written word, which was the medium of the privileged few as public literacy was, according to William Harris, at only ten to fifteen per cent of the population.3 Even literary documents inscribed on stele or placed in the Mêtrôon might not have been intended to be read by the many so much as to signify that the document was a public one, that is, potentially available to
如果我们相信公元前四世纪的雅典作家，雅典是一个喧闹、易怒的地方，某些人经常在法庭和议会上公开发言（例如，Isocrates On the Peace 129-30；Antidosis 38）。这里挤满了麻烦制造者，比如利西马科斯、泰西斯、卡利马科斯和克莱翁，还有其他的演说家和诡辩家，不胜枚举。这些人会就财务问题和对对手的错误进行轻微的法庭辩论，提供似是而非的教义；以及就政治话题和热点问题发表演讲，他们经常脾气暴躁的听众被快乐误导（参见修昔底德3.38.7和3.40.2-3），相互推搡，会为他们喜欢的人欢呼或大声斥责他们不喜欢的人。1雅典是一个混乱无序的地方，通过口语进行商业活动，暴徒的支持决定了政策和法律结果。但并不是所有的公共演讲都是在演讲者的讲台上进行的。我在这篇论文中认为的两位作者，Isocrates和Xenophon，抵制了城市中流行的公共广播模式。作为精英主义者，他们是少数因财富、地位和教育而享有特权的人，他们是“安静的雅典人”。2他们寻求在公开演讲之外表达自己的方式。因此，根据William Harris的说法，Isocrates和Xenophon以及柏拉图和修昔底德等其他四世纪作家转向了书面文字，这是少数特权阶层的媒介，就像公共识字一样，3即使是刻在石碑上或放置在Mêtrôon的文学文献，也可能不是为了让许多人阅读，而是为了表明该文献是公共文献，也就是说，可能供
{"title":"Privileging the Written Word: The Constructions of Authority in Isocrates and Xenophon","authors":"Y. Too","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0011","url":null,"abstract":"If we believe Athenian authors of the fourth century BCE, Athens was a noisy, fractious place where certain people spoke often publicly in the law courts and in the Assembly (cf. e. g. Isocrates On the Peace 129–30; Antidosis 38). It was populated by troublemakers, such as Lysimachus, Teisias, Callimachus, and Cleon, in addition to other orators and sophists too numerous to name. These individuals would argue minor court cases on matters of finance and of wrongs against their opponents, offering specious teachings; and making speeches on political topics and topical concerns, and their often rambunctious audiences, misled by pleasure (cf. Thucydides 3.38.7 and 3.40.2–3), jostling one another, would cheer on their favourites or shout down those they did not like.1 Athens was a chaotic and disorderly place where business was conducted through the spoken word, and where the mob’s favour decided policy and legal outcomes. But not all public discourse was spoken from the orator’s platform. The two authors I consider in this paper, Isocrates and Xenophon, resisted the popular mode of public address in the city. As elitists, members of a minority privileged by wealth, status and education, they were “quiet Athenians”.2 They sought ways of expressing themselves as such apart from public speech. Accordingly, Isocrates and Xenophon along with other fourth-century authors such as Plato and Thucydides turned to the written word, which was the medium of the privileged few as public literacy was, according to William Harris, at only ten to fifteen per cent of the population.3 Even literary documents inscribed on stele or placed in the Mêtrôon might not have been intended to be read by the many so much as to signify that the document was a public one, that is, potentially available to","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"218 - 239"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43572969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Index","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46247769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-06DOI: 10.1515/tc-2018-frontmatter1
{"title":"Titelseiten","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-frontmatter1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-frontmatter1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-frontmatter1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42117914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Xenophon and Isocrates share paradigmatic and protreptic conceptions of virtue that are rarely presented in an abstract way, but rather as embodied in heroes and great men. Amongst these models, two can be compared and contrasted: Evagoras, the Cypriot king, and Agesilaus, the Spartan king. Two comparable speeches were devoted to them: both were composed at the same time, in the middle of the fourth century BCE (the Evagoras only slightly precedes the Agesilaus1). Both contribute to define a new literary genre, according to Isocrates:2 the praise in prose of a great contemporary man. This often leads to identify these works as forefathers of the genre of biography.3 Both praise a king, and through him, a form of political role-model as discussed, for example, in Plato’s Politicus. Both speeches have approximately the same length; both are inspired by the epitaphios logos. There is also a kind of stylistic proximity: the same rhetorical devices are used, as the incipit clearly shows, as well as the use of transitional sentences, or the use of a concise style,4 whose aim is to transmit clearly some virtues and ideas which could be sources of inspiration and imitation. Yet they also differ greatly from each other. Isocrates adopts a rather complex outline: Evagoras’ enkomion is embedded in a parenetic speech addressed to Nicocles, the king’s son; Xenophon directly addresses his audience. Evagoras’ virtues are expounded throughout the speech and illustrated by several anecdotes taken according to a rather flexible chronological order; Xenophon favours
{"title":"Praising the King’s Courage: From the Evagoras to the Agesilaus","authors":"P. Pontier","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Xenophon and Isocrates share paradigmatic and protreptic conceptions of virtue that are rarely presented in an abstract way, but rather as embodied in heroes and great men. Amongst these models, two can be compared and contrasted: Evagoras, the Cypriot king, and Agesilaus, the Spartan king. Two comparable speeches were devoted to them: both were composed at the same time, in the middle of the fourth century BCE (the Evagoras only slightly precedes the Agesilaus1). Both contribute to define a new literary genre, according to Isocrates:2 the praise in prose of a great contemporary man. This often leads to identify these works as forefathers of the genre of biography.3 Both praise a king, and through him, a form of political role-model as discussed, for example, in Plato’s Politicus. Both speeches have approximately the same length; both are inspired by the epitaphios logos. There is also a kind of stylistic proximity: the same rhetorical devices are used, as the incipit clearly shows, as well as the use of transitional sentences, or the use of a concise style,4 whose aim is to transmit clearly some virtues and ideas which could be sources of inspiration and imitation. Yet they also differ greatly from each other. Isocrates adopts a rather complex outline: Evagoras’ enkomion is embedded in a parenetic speech addressed to Nicocles, the king’s son; Xenophon directly addresses his audience. Evagoras’ virtues are expounded throughout the speech and illustrated by several anecdotes taken according to a rather flexible chronological order; Xenophon favours","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"101 - 113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42238936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper I wish to draw attention to a widespread rhetorical and literary structure that I think has only been partially accounted for and one in which both Isocrates and Xenophon can be seen to participate. Indeed, their texts in particular constitute some of the best evidence we possess for what I take to be the chief purpose behind this rhetorical mannerism: the creation of the illusion of a spontaneous moment in which the merit of the truth claim of the author is self-evident, one that thus permits the author to proceed to other claims that are subordinate to this major one, without having to question again the basic merits of that claim. The trope to which I refer is the deployment at or near the start of an oration or other literary work of the term θαυμάζειν, meaning “to wonder at” or, less frequently in this context, “to admire”. Sometimes the “wondering” belongs to the rhetor/author himself, and at other times, it is attributed to another, either an addressee or the imagined audience of the work. The effect of this trope is to draw attention to a hidden truth, a fact of the world that has gone unrecognized or misunderstood, but now, thanks to the author/rhetor’s intervention, is now to be seen in a new light; once seen in this way, the truth of the fact as the author/rhetor sees it becomes self-evident. Related to this rhetorical use of θαυμάζειν is the aim of Socratic dialectic, whereby the interlocutor with Socrates is made to recognize that which is self-evident and true; indeed, Hans Joachim Mette has spoken of the central role that the θαυμάζειν-concept plays in connection with Plato’s “maieutic philosophy”.1 I have tried to resist referring to this trope as the posing of a “rhetorical question” as opposed to a “genuine”, information-seeking question, and prefer instead to follow Hayden Pelliccia’s formulation: “problem-posing”.
在本文中，我希望提请注意一种广泛存在的修辞和文学结构，我认为这种结构只得到了部分解释，而且可以看到伊索克拉底和色诺芬都参与其中。事实上，他们的文本尤其构成了我们所拥有的一些最好的证据，我认为这是这种修辞风格背后的主要目的:创造一种自发时刻的幻觉，在这种时刻，作者的真理主张的优点是不言而喻的，这样，作者就可以继续进行其他主张，这些主张从属于这个主要主张，而不必再质疑这个主张的基本优点。我所指的比喻是在演说或其他文学作品的开头或接近开头时使用的“θα ο μ ν ειν”一词，意思是“惊奇”，或者在这种情况下较少使用的“钦佩”。有时，这种“疑惑”属于修辞家/作者自己，而在其他时候，它被归因于另一个人，要么是收件人，要么是作品想象中的观众。这个比喻的作用是把人们的注意力吸引到一个隐藏的真理上，一个没有被认识或误解的世界的事实，但是现在，由于作者/修辞家的介入，现在可以用新的眼光来看待了;一旦以这种方式看待，作者/修辞家所看到的事实的真相就变得不言而喻了。苏格拉底辩证法的目的与θα ο μ ειν的修辞用法有关，即使与苏格拉底对话的人认识到不证自明的真理;的确，汉斯·约阿希姆·梅特已经谈到了θα ο μ ν ειν概念在柏拉图的“maieutic philosophy”中所起的中心作用我试着不把这个比喻称为“反问句”，而不是“真正的”、寻求信息的问题，我更喜欢遵循海登·佩利西亚(Hayden Pelliccia)的表述:“问题提问”。
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Among surviving fourth century Athenian authors Xenophon and Isocrates stand out as the ones interested in Persia.1 Their degree of investment differs, and by one way of reckoning that of Isocrates is not actually very large across his whole surviving corpus (nor is Xenophon’s uniformly spread over his output), but Persia was part of what defined the environment of late classical Athens (and Greece) and any exercise in comparing and contrasting Isocrates and Xenophon must engage with the Persian dimension.
{"title":"Xenophon, Isocrates and the Achaemenid Empire: History, Pedagogy and the Persian Solution to Greek Problems","authors":"C. Tuplin","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Among surviving fourth century Athenian authors Xenophon and Isocrates stand out as the ones interested in Persia.1 Their degree of investment differs, and by one way of reckoning that of Isocrates is not actually very large across his whole surviving corpus (nor is Xenophon’s uniformly spread over his output), but Persia was part of what defined the environment of late classical Athens (and Greece) and any exercise in comparing and contrasting Isocrates and Xenophon must engage with the Persian dimension.","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"13 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43951661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
If it is not quite correct to say that the phenomenon of stasis – factional conflict within the polis, whether in the form of looming or actual violence – is central to Isocrates and Xenophon, it certainly plays a significant and recurrent role in their analyses of the ταραχή (“confusion”) consuming fourth-century Greece.1 Both authors had quite likely seen factional conflict firsthand during the reign of the Thirty, which became in the work of each a paradigmatic evil regime and was doubtless experienced as a contributing factor to the persecution of their shared mentor, Socrates.2 Moreover, as a leader of the Cyreans, Xenophon played a key role in what Isocrates understands as the first of many mercenary armies assembled in no small part from political exiles – for him the principal destabilizing side effect of continued factional conflict. Nevertheless, both writers employ standard analytical frameworks that understand stasis primarily as a byproduct of the struggle for hegemony between Sparta and Athens, turning their attention to it mainly as a subordinate element in advancing larger central themes: for Xenophon, a setting in which to stage model leadership able to unite communities of followers, including those divided by faction; for Isocrates, a dangerous byproduct of inter-polis warfare, whose causes and effects can be remedied only by a Panhellenic expedition against Persia. Curiously, although Xenophon lacks the larger programmatic framework into which Isocrates incorporates the problem of stasis, the predatory orientation of the latter’s proposed military crusade finds parallels in Xenophon’s equally
{"title":"Forging Unity, Exporting Unrest: Xenophon and Isocrates on Stasis","authors":"Richard Buxton","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0008","url":null,"abstract":"If it is not quite correct to say that the phenomenon of stasis – factional conflict within the polis, whether in the form of looming or actual violence – is central to Isocrates and Xenophon, it certainly plays a significant and recurrent role in their analyses of the ταραχή (“confusion”) consuming fourth-century Greece.1 Both authors had quite likely seen factional conflict firsthand during the reign of the Thirty, which became in the work of each a paradigmatic evil regime and was doubtless experienced as a contributing factor to the persecution of their shared mentor, Socrates.2 Moreover, as a leader of the Cyreans, Xenophon played a key role in what Isocrates understands as the first of many mercenary armies assembled in no small part from political exiles – for him the principal destabilizing side effect of continued factional conflict. Nevertheless, both writers employ standard analytical frameworks that understand stasis primarily as a byproduct of the struggle for hegemony between Sparta and Athens, turning their attention to it mainly as a subordinate element in advancing larger central themes: for Xenophon, a setting in which to stage model leadership able to unite communities of followers, including those divided by faction; for Isocrates, a dangerous byproduct of inter-polis warfare, whose causes and effects can be remedied only by a Panhellenic expedition against Persia. Curiously, although Xenophon lacks the larger programmatic framework into which Isocrates incorporates the problem of stasis, the predatory orientation of the latter’s proposed military crusade finds parallels in Xenophon’s equally","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"154 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45368374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In archaic and classical Greece, as long as poetic production was tied to specific occasions of delivery, the literary genres remained stable,1 but their stability should not mislead: what is constant is the social context, which is linked to the function that the work fulfilled. The identity and definition of the genre were derived externally, from the context of publication and consumption. On the other hand, internally, within the code of the genre, the authors were able to move with a certain freedom and make use of strategies that properly belonged to different genres. In the case of tragedy, for example, the poet could adopt epic strategies in the messenger speeches, or threnodic ones in some lyric passages. We should also pay particular attention to the overlapping of occasion with oral publication: written publication began to become established in the last quarter of the fifth century BCE, and it was in the decades immediately thereafter that some authors became conscious of the disconnect between works and occasions. I am referring in particular to Thucydides, Isocrates and Plato.2 The processes that I am trying to describe are actually much more varied and complex: it is enough to recall that the relation between works and occasions had been broken in the preceding decades through the introduction of prose. The earliest prose works go back to the second half of the sixth century, that is, around a century previously. We have very little information on the modes of publication of the first prose works (e. g. Pherecydes of Syros, Acousilaus of Argos, Hecataeus of Miletus), but their content itself makes
{"title":"Genre, Μodels and Functions of Xenophon’s Anabasis in Comparison with Isocrates’ λόγοι","authors":"Roberto Nicolai","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0010","url":null,"abstract":"In archaic and classical Greece, as long as poetic production was tied to specific occasions of delivery, the literary genres remained stable,1 but their stability should not mislead: what is constant is the social context, which is linked to the function that the work fulfilled. The identity and definition of the genre were derived externally, from the context of publication and consumption. On the other hand, internally, within the code of the genre, the authors were able to move with a certain freedom and make use of strategies that properly belonged to different genres. In the case of tragedy, for example, the poet could adopt epic strategies in the messenger speeches, or threnodic ones in some lyric passages. We should also pay particular attention to the overlapping of occasion with oral publication: written publication began to become established in the last quarter of the fifth century BCE, and it was in the decades immediately thereafter that some authors became conscious of the disconnect between works and occasions. I am referring in particular to Thucydides, Isocrates and Plato.2 The processes that I am trying to describe are actually much more varied and complex: it is enough to recall that the relation between works and occasions had been broken in the preceding decades through the introduction of prose. The earliest prose works go back to the second half of the sixth century, that is, around a century previously. We have very little information on the modes of publication of the first prose works (e. g. Pherecydes of Syros, Acousilaus of Argos, Hecataeus of Miletus), but their content itself makes","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"197 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45062878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Both Xenophon and Isocrates use the past to analyse and comment on political problems of the present, and to provide authority for political programmes of the present and for the future, through connecting them to revered past figures and mythologies. For both, idealised versions of historical Greek communities provide a counterpoint to the disappointments and decline of present-day politics and politicians. Figures from the distant past become exemplars for political action in the present, and their achievements, and the political and social arrangements under which those achievements were completed, models for political reform. Xenophon and Isocrates draw on the wider Greek politeia tradition of writing about political and social customs, educational practices, and institutions, seen in both free-standing pamphlets, and sections embedded within longer historical, rhetorical and philosophical works.1 With the exception of Xenophon’s Lacedaimoniōn Politeia, both Xenophon and Isocrates embed politeia elements in larger works. Similarities in approach and argument between Isocrates and Xenophon have led many to treat them together as critics of Athenian democracy.2 Certainly both assert the exemplarity both of individuals and of politeiai, particularly in the form of the patrios politeia or “ancestral constitution”.3 They share a didactic approach, in which they anticipate that readers can learn from these models of collective and individual excellence and even imitate them. Vincent Azoulay has identified this as evidence of a new direction in Greek political thought; Frances Pownall has shown its similarity to the didacticism of fourth-century historiography.4 This chapter explores how both Xenophon and Isocrates manipulate civic foundation myths and the politeia form to produce exemplary models for political reform, and consequently how they manipulate chronology and exploit the temporal ambiguities of the distant past to create stable exemplars to contrast with the present. For each, an imaginary version of the past provides an ideal political environment, the imitation of which might provide restoration from decline;
{"title":"Politeia and the Past in Xenophon and Isocrates","authors":"Carol Atack","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Both Xenophon and Isocrates use the past to analyse and comment on political problems of the present, and to provide authority for political programmes of the present and for the future, through connecting them to revered past figures and mythologies. For both, idealised versions of historical Greek communities provide a counterpoint to the disappointments and decline of present-day politics and politicians. Figures from the distant past become exemplars for political action in the present, and their achievements, and the political and social arrangements under which those achievements were completed, models for political reform. Xenophon and Isocrates draw on the wider Greek politeia tradition of writing about political and social customs, educational practices, and institutions, seen in both free-standing pamphlets, and sections embedded within longer historical, rhetorical and philosophical works.1 With the exception of Xenophon’s Lacedaimoniōn Politeia, both Xenophon and Isocrates embed politeia elements in larger works. Similarities in approach and argument between Isocrates and Xenophon have led many to treat them together as critics of Athenian democracy.2 Certainly both assert the exemplarity both of individuals and of politeiai, particularly in the form of the patrios politeia or “ancestral constitution”.3 They share a didactic approach, in which they anticipate that readers can learn from these models of collective and individual excellence and even imitate them. Vincent Azoulay has identified this as evidence of a new direction in Greek political thought; Frances Pownall has shown its similarity to the didacticism of fourth-century historiography.4 This chapter explores how both Xenophon and Isocrates manipulate civic foundation myths and the politeia form to produce exemplary models for political reform, and consequently how they manipulate chronology and exploit the temporal ambiguities of the distant past to create stable exemplars to contrast with the present. For each, an imaginary version of the past provides an ideal political environment, the imitation of which might provide restoration from decline;","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"171 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42752348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thucydides famously states in the methodological introduction to his history (1.20.1) that “people tend to accept uncritically oral traditions of the past handed down to them, even when these concern their own country”. As an example, he cites the popular but mistaken belief in Athens that Harmodius and Aristogeiton liberated the city from the Peisistratid tyranny by assassinating Hipparchus (1.20.2), and develops at length his refutation of this historical misconception in a flashback situated in a narrative context redolent not only of tyranny, but also of democratic power and imperialism.1 It is no coincidence that the so-called tyrannicides very early on became associated with not only the expulsion of the tyrants, but also with the foundation of democracy in Athens (inconvenient intervening events having been excised from the collective memory of the Athenians). After the brief oligarchical interludes at the end of the fifth century, the Athenian democracy was refounded in the wake of the polis’ liberation from a new set of rulers popularly identified as tyrants, the Thirty. It is in this late fifth-century historical context that the foundation narrative of the Athenian democracy privileging the role of the tyrannicides was newly enshrined,2 and public discourse on tyranny consisted generally of knee-jerk reactions of the demos, such as the
{"title":"Tyranny and Democracy in Isocrates and Xenophon","authors":"F. Pownall","doi":"10.1515/tc-2018-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2018-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Thucydides famously states in the methodological introduction to his history (1.20.1) that “people tend to accept uncritically oral traditions of the past handed down to them, even when these concern their own country”. As an example, he cites the popular but mistaken belief in Athens that Harmodius and Aristogeiton liberated the city from the Peisistratid tyranny by assassinating Hipparchus (1.20.2), and develops at length his refutation of this historical misconception in a flashback situated in a narrative context redolent not only of tyranny, but also of democratic power and imperialism.1 It is no coincidence that the so-called tyrannicides very early on became associated with not only the expulsion of the tyrants, but also with the foundation of democracy in Athens (inconvenient intervening events having been excised from the collective memory of the Athenians). After the brief oligarchical interludes at the end of the fifth century, the Athenian democracy was refounded in the wake of the polis’ liberation from a new set of rulers popularly identified as tyrants, the Thirty. It is in this late fifth-century historical context that the foundation narrative of the Athenian democracy privileging the role of the tyrannicides was newly enshrined,2 and public discourse on tyranny consisted generally of knee-jerk reactions of the demos, such as the","PeriodicalId":41704,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Classics","volume":"10 1","pages":"137 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tc-2018-0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42613304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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