Xenophon's Socrates and Democracy

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY Vivienne J.
Gray1,2
Abstract: This article surveys Xenophons evidence for Socrates views on democracy. It offers a more balanced and complete reading of the evidence in Xenophons Memorabilia, and takes account of new ways to assess the definition of what is democratic. It argues that Xenophons basic image of Socrates is democratic (dmotikos) in the broadest sense through an investigation of topics such as Socrates attitudes towards democratic laws, and the use of dokimasia and the ballot, as well as his views on oligarchic and democratic regimes of his time, the royal art of rule, the assembly and its decisions, and the role of the wealthy in democracy. It also argues against the general view that Xenophons own views on democracy as expressed in his other works show no support for democracy.
Introduction It seems to me that Xenophon had a democratic spirit in seeing in most people, including women and slaves, that capacity for superior virtue that constitutes the chief claim to leadership. Once virtue emerged, the community whether household, polis or empire would recognize and follow it because it included the virtue of looking to secure its success. Leadership in this way secured willing obedience that was given as long as the leaders interest in securing their success persisted. I think that Xenophon believed that this democratic co-operation of leaders and followers could appear in any form of constitution, from the rule of one to the rule of many. Xenophon applied his theory of leadership to the full range of different political communities and we cannot understand his views until its application over the full range of his contexts is taken into account.3 In my comments below on recent articles, I draw out some examples.4
1 Department of Classics and Ancient History, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. Email: v.gray@auckland.ac.nz 2 Authors Note: This article makes available the original English version (previously unpublished) of an essay that first appeared in French (V. Gray, Le Socrate de Xnophon et la Dmocratie, in Les crits Socratiques de Xnophon, ed. L. Brisson and L.-A. Dorion, Special Issue of Les tudes Philosophiques, 69.2 (2004), pp. 14176). Occasional requests for the original prompted its publication here, slightly revised, with a new Introduction that reviews some recent, important articles on the topic which have appeared since its first publication. No substantial changes have been made, in spite of some developments since 2004 in my views about the democratic impulses of Xenophons works. 3 See V. Gray, Xenophons Mirror of Princes: Reading the Reflections (Oxford, 2011). 4 I survey the political views of Xenophon in the general introduction to V. Gray, Xenophon on Government (Cambridge, 2007). For essays on Xenophons reconciliation with democracy and his wish to reform it for the better, see P. Gauthier, Le Programme
POLIS. Vol. 28. No. 1, 2011
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Ron Kroeker has most recently engaged with Xenophons political thought about democracy.5 With reference to my article (see note 2), he argued against what he showed to be still the consensus, which is that Xenophon is undemocratic, and he agreed that we cannot judge Xenophons views until we understand the normal range of Athenian democratic ideology. He applies the distinction between the immanent/internal critic and the rejectionist/external critic to Xenophons material with very interesting results. The internal critic reforms from inside and points out how society has strayed from its foundational ideals; the external critic holds up models of reform imported from outside. He finds the immanent critic of democracy in much of Xenophons work and the rejectionist critic by implication only when, in Constitution of the Spartans (hereafter cited as LP), after praising the laws of the Spartans, Xenophon declares that it is most amazing that everyone praises such practices, but no polis has the will to copy them (10.8). Xenophon uses such phrases elsewhere to underscore the hardship involved in following/imitating the best practices, without a rejectionist implication. For instance, in Hipparchicus, after describing the best practices of the cavalry commander, he ends with the statement: almost everyone knows these things, but not many have the will to persist in carrying them out (4.5). Nevertheless, our evidence certainly invites us take the comment in LP as aimed at the Athenians, but with this important proviso, that we appreciate that their democratic ideology easily accommodates the Spartan practices he has just described; and that highlights the question of understanding their democratic ideology. This accommodation is shown in the conversation in Memorabilia (III 5) in which Socrates is advising the younger Pericles how to make the Athenians militarily successful. Here they envisage producing in the Athenian army virtues that they explicitly associate with Sparta, and which are also found in Xenophons LP (respect for elders, body-building, obedience to commanders, homonoia above envy). They also agree that the Athenians are reluctant to imitate the Spartans (Mem . III 5.1516), which again echoes the comment in LP. Yet they do not for a moment envisage the end of democracy as I argue below. Moreover, though Xenophons idea that the Athenians should imitate the Spartans seems rejectionist because it imports the Spartan model, we notice that among the other models that Socrates offers for imitation in this conversation are the Athenian navy and Athenian choral and gymnastic competitions, as well as their own ancestral system, which
de Xnophon dans les Poroi (Xenophons Programme in the Poroi), and S. Johnstone, Virtuous Toil, Vicious Work: Xenophon on Aristocratic Style, reprinted in Xenophon (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies), ed. V. Gray (Oxford, 2010), pp. 11366. 5 R. Kroeker, Xenophon as a Critic of the Athenian Democracy, History of Political Thought, 30.2 (2009), pp. 197228.
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seems to suggest that the democracy has strayed from its foundational ideals in the way of the immanent critic,6 but even then has not strayed completely, as their cultural competitions and naval forces show. Kroeker sees the freedom of the individual as essential to democratic ideology, taking Pericles Funeral Speech from Thucydides as a guide, and he opposes to this view the lack of individual freedom endorsed in LP. I would argue rather that the ideological essence of the Spartan practices described in LP is the obedience to the laws that the preface points to as the secret of their success, and that Pericles shows this to be part of Athenian democratic ideology too when he praises the Athenians obedience to commanders and laws in his articulation of that ideology in the Funeral Speech. Both ideologies reflect Xenophons view that success is assured by obedience to the authorities and to law, no matter what the political constitution may be (see Mem . IV 4.16; Cyropaedia VI 1). 7 If such obedience is equated with a denial of personal freedom, then it already exists in Athens, in those significant parts of their organization that already show obedience to those in charge and good order ( Mem . III 5.1821). Spartan marriage laws infringed individual freedom more than Athenian marriage laws, but obedience to law is a higher ideology than mere personal freedom. Xenophons democratic tendencies in Hellenica and Poroi have also been recently addressed.8 Poroi is intended to reform the Athenian economy in order to relieve the poverty of the demos, but its evidently democratic endorsement has drawn special pleading to the contrary: that Xenophon wrote it in order to secure the favour of the demos for his return from exile, or that it conceals an attempt to disenfranchise the demos by making them dependent on welfare. John Lewis implicitly challenges the undemocratic interpretation when he finds the economic and political theory of JeanBaptiste Say in the work. Bernard Dobski focuses on Xenophons presentation of the restored democracy at Athens, where he has Thrasybulus endorse the qualities of the demos in order to justify the rule of the restored democracy ( Hel. II 4.4043). As with Poroi there have been attempts to explain away the endorsement in terms of Xenophons political opportunism. Dobski believes to the contrary that Xenophon is in dialogue with Thucydides about the nature of the best constitution in this episode and that he substitutes this restored democracy as the best government for the
Kroeker, Xenophon as a Critic, p. 201. For comments on the funeral speech, see V. Gray, A Short Response to David M. Johnson, Xenophons Socrates on Law and Justice, Ancient Philosophy, 24 (2004), pp. 4426. 8 B. Dobski, Athenian Democracy Refounded: Xenophons Political History in the Hellenika; and J. Lewis, Xenophons Poroi and the Foundations of Political Economy, in The Political Thought of Xenophon, ed. D. Gish and W. Ambler, Special Issue of Polis, 26.2 (2009), pp. 31638, 37088.
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government of the Five Thousand that Thucydides endorses as the best (VIII 97.2). He believes that this is because Thucydides best constitution arose from necessity, 9 whereas Xenophons is based on traditional authority, and he argues that Xenophon considers traditional authority to be best able to protect philosophy as represented by Socrates even though this is the democracy that put him to death. More important for me than the dialogue with Thucydides or connection with Socrates are the direct implications for what Xenophon thought about the restored democracy. The thrust of Thrasybulus comment is that superior virtue alone justifies rule: the oligarchs have shown themselves to be inferior in courage and wisdom and justice, and therefore should bow down to the demos. This idea that those who know themselves to be inferior should follow their betters turns out to be a general principle that can also justify non-democratic rule. Xenophon has Cyrus the Great express the same thought in the same shape and sentence structure as is used by Thrasybulus, but in order to justify the rule of the Persians over subject nations ( Cyr. VII 5.83). 10 This makes the restored democracy only one among many best constitutions, in all of which the ruling element demonstrates superior virtue. Other parts of what Thrasybulus says are also general principles that go beyond democracy, such as his idea that the oligarchs should know themselves in the Socratic way because they have proven inferior to the demos ( Hel. II 4.40). In Cyropaedia , Croesus the Lydian explains in similar terms how he came to know himself to be inferior in virtue when defeated by Cyrus, and he agrees that he must assent to his leadership as a result (VII 2). 11 Thrasybulus exhortation that the Athenians should keep their oaths and obey the ancestral laws also appears in other contexts where obedience is the key to political success (such as Mem . IV 4.16). His endorsement makes him one of those heroes mentioned in that passage who enforce the law and thus secure the success of their community. Another equivalent is Cyrus, who tells the Persians that they must continue to obey the rules that made them superior in virtue, since only such obedience can ensure their continuing virtue, which is the justification of their rule ( Cyr. VII 5.83).
9 See Dobski, Athenian Democracy Refounded, pp. 3367; cf. S. Hornblower, Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford, 2008), vol. 3 (arguing that Thucydides judgment here is based on the blending of the elements in the constitution). 10 See Gray, Xenophons Mirror of Princes, pp. 2434. 11 See E. Lefvre, Die Frage nach dem BIOS EUDAIMN. Die Begegnung zwischen Kyros und Kroisos bei Xenophon (The Question of the BIOS EUDAIMN: The Encounter between Cyrus and Croesus in Xenophon), in Gray, Xenophon, pp. 40117; see also Gray, Xenophons Mirror of Princes, pp. 14957.
XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY Xenophons Socrates and Democracy
Luccioni offers the most systematic evaluation of the attitudes of Xenophons Socrates towards the Athenian demos. He believes that Xenophon used Socrates as his mouth-piece and calls them both adversaires de la dmocratie, arguing that Xenophon had a prejudice towards the wealthy and Socrates taught him to support this through philosophy.12 The view has not changed in recent times and may even have hardened. Vlastos uses the same evidence as Luccioni to establish that Xenophons Socrates conception of the royal art of rule was undemocratic because its practice and its benefits were limited to an elite, whereas Platos conception was democratic because it was accessible to all.13 But he leaves the passage in which Socrates describes the assembly as superlatively weak and witless unqualified, whereas Luccioni at least noted Socrates recognition of their basic competence;14 and whereas Luccioni only tried to undermine the passage that proves Socrates obedience to democratic law, through questioning his motives, Vlastos dismissed it entirely as that curious piece of legal positivism which was unavailing against other evidence.15 This article offers a more balanced and complete reading of the evidence, and takes account of new ways in which the definition of what is democratic might be assessed.16 Xenophons Memorabilia provides the most evidence, with more occasional insights offered in Oeconomicus, Symposium and Apology of Socrates to the Jury. Xenophon here defends Socrates against his conviction at the hands of an Athenian democratic court on the official charges of not worshipping the gods of the polis, but introducing new ones, and corrupting the youth. He does not make Socrates directly address his dikastrion, as Plato does in his Apology of Socrates or as Xenophon himself does in his Apology, but he refutes the charges and presents the character of the defendant for posthumous judgment. The work can indeed be placed in the rhetorical tradition of the speech that defended the client against charges raised in the process of preliminary scrutiny for office (dokimasia) in the democracy. That speech can take the form of an argument in two phases:
12 J. Luccioni, Les Ides Politiques et Sociales de Xnophon (Paris, 1946), pp. 10838 (Xnophon et la Dmocratie Athnienne); quotations are at pp. 108, 114. 13 G. Vlastos, The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy, Political Theory, 11.4 (1983), pp. 495516; reprinted in G. Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 87108. 14 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 98; Luccioni, Les Ides, pp. 11418. 15 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 106; Luccioni, Les Ides, pp. 1302. A random example of recent scholarship confirms the negative image in a passing footnote: C.J. Rowe, Killing Socrates: Platos Later Thoughts on Democracy, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 121 (2001), pp. 6376, at p. 75 n. 43. 16 Ober is one of the leaders in this field: see J. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1998); see also L. Kallett-Marx, Institutions, Ideology, and Political Consciousness in Ancient Greece: Some Recent Books on Athenian Democracy, Journal of the History of Ideas, 55.2 (1994), pp. 30735.
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refutation of specific charges, then demonstration of wider virtue.17 Memorabilia accordingly uses rhetorical argument to refute the specific charges against Socrates (I 1.1 I 2.64), then goes beyond the charges and demonstrates the positive virtue of his teaching mainly through a series of short conversations (I 3 IV 8). Xenophon may encourage us to read Memorabilia as dokimasia at the point where he is about to begin the demonstration (I 4.1); for he invites the audience to test the evidence (dokimazontn). Certainly, he ends Memorabilia with the invitation: making a comparison with the character of others, with respect to this let him judge (krinet) (IV 8.11). I Xenophons Memorabilia as Evidence The rhetorical and defensive nature of Memorabilia could discredit its evidence and suggest that it is a complete whitewash of the historical Socrates, in the same way that Lysias might whitewash a clients oligarchic tendencies before a live courtroom. The form certainly dictates some accommodation with democratic expectations since the charges that it refutes include those for plain undemocratic conviction, such as Socrates opposition to the use of sortition in the selection of magistrates (Mem. I 2.911). Ober has argued that an accommodation is expected even where there is no live presentation, as when Isocrates in Antidosis pretends to be on trial in a democratic court in order to make an account of his own life and works: Isocrates is forced by the situation to show his audience that he is a loyal adherent of the democratic politeia. In the setting of a public trial before a demotic jury, he cannot be expected to contemplate the replacement of democracy with a politeia whose establishment might eliminate his own raison dtre.18 Certainly, Xenophons basic image of Socrates is democratic in the broadest sense; his central argument, in response to the implication of harm in the official charges, is that Socrates helped the polis rather than harming it. The speeches of Lysias also indicate that helping and not harming the demos is the general test of the democrat.19 This mostly takes the form of personal military service or financial support for the demos in the form of liturgies the equipping of a trireme, the production of a chorus, and so on but other kinds of assistance could be equally valid. Xenophon accordingly writes the first part of the work to prove that he did not harm the polis in his religious teaching or practice, or by encouraging or failing to restrain the bad desires of the young for sex and food, warmth and sleep, money and clothes (I 2.18, cf. the conclusion at I 2.64) which he takes to be the basis of corruption. He takes the
17 V. Gray, The Framing of Socrates: The Literary Interpretation of Xenophons Memorabilia (Stuttgart, 1998), pp. 8991. 18 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 287. Ober does not deal with Xenophon, but suggests that he and his Socrates are critics of democracy (p. 50 n.70). 19 See Lysias 25.4, 11, and passim.
charges to mean that Socrates harmed the community in the broadest sense rather than the constitution in the narrow sense.20 His alleged promotion of the beating of fathers, the dishonouring of relatives, and idle living (I 2.4961) is certainly more harmful to the general community than the constitution.21 He makes corruption a political issue when Critias and Alcibiades enter politics with their desires unrestrained, but these threaten the democracy and the oligarchy alike.22 The second part of Memorabilia confirms this emphasis on the general community when it argues that Socrates used his wisdom to help members of the polis to improve a range of the reciprocal relationships that brought cohesion to the community: between citizens and the gods (I 4 and IV 3), their families and relatives (II 23), their friends (II 410), and between the leaders and the demos itself (III 17); he even helped artists and prostitutes understand their profession (III 910).23 Yet, though Xenophon puts Socrates in a democratic frame, he may put the devil in the details. Ober calls Platos Apology a demonstration of an alternative and openly critical use of the ordinarily democratic genre of dicanic rhetoric,24 which undermines the democratic
20 The overtly political charges, such as Socrates opposition to sortition (I 2.911) come from those who make accusations beyond the official ones; the usual view is that they are developing the debate about Socrates; cf. Gray, The Framing of Socrates, pp. 6073. Xenophons support for other interpretations could be argued, but, for example, the evidence that Socrates corrupted the young by teaching them dialectic or making the weaker argument appear the stronger is limited to the conversation between Pericles and Alcibiades (I 2.4046). 21 The religious charges are understood in a similarly broad sense. T. Irwin, in Socrates and Athenian Democracy, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 18.2 (1989), pp. 184205, at pp. 18991, refers to the notion that Socrates impiety was indicative of what caused the disastrous outcome of the Peloponnesian War but there is nothing to support this. Xenophon defends Socrates as a believer who worshipped according to the custom of the polis and was very visible in his worship; his daimonion is also public knowledge (I 1.2, 10, 1718). He re-defines daimonion as consulting the gods in unreasonable ways, thinking that everything or nothing is within the grasp of men, and investigating heavenly daimonion (I 1.9, 12). Xenophon, at Apology 14, says that he incurred jealousy for his daimonion because the gods seemed to be honouring him more than others, another apolitical motive for the charge. Socrates teaches men to honour the gods without political reference (I 4 and IV 3). 22 Critias was most thieving, violent and murderous in the oligarchy, while Alcibiades was most uncontrolled, hybristic and violent in the democracy (I 2.12); both were most ambitious under either constitution, wanting to have everything in their hands (I 2.14, 24). 23 See Gray, The Framing of Socrates, pp. 1011, which focuses on references to this helpfulness. The programmatic I 3.1 identifies proving Socrates helpfulness as the main point of the second part of the work (I 3IV 8) and the conclusion recapitulates this as his chief quality (IV 8.11). At IV 1.1, Xenophon describes associating with Socrates as most helpful in whatever manner and wherever pursued; reported conversations make frequent references to Socrates helpfulness or how he established this as a goal for others. 24 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 177.
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c expectations of the law-courts, such as the production of children to elicit compassion.25 Some criticism of democracy is indeed expected from the historical Socrates. The accepted view is that he did not try to establish a position entirely independent of the beliefs and practices of his democratic community; but his position rests on much more than straightforward adoption of those beliefs and practices, for he gives a reasoned, reflective response to those beliefs and practices.26 The assessment of how democratic that response was depends ultimately on how acceptable it would have been to the citizens en masse. II Socrates and the Laws, Written and Unwritten Attitudes to democratic laws and institutions are major tests of the democrat.27 I therefore begin with the discussion between Xenophons Socrates and Hippias about justice and the laws (IV 4) taking into account Alcibiades conversation with Pericles on the same topic (I 2.4046), and moving on to the passage in which Socrates is said to have opposed the use of the random ballot to choose rulers in the democracy (I 2.911). Pericles defines law in democratic terms in his conversation with his ward Alcibiades, as the written agreements that the majority of the citizens (plthos) have gathered together to approve, which indicate what to do and what not to do (I 2.42). A further part of the definition is that laws make citizens do what is good and avoid what is bad. But Alcibiades uses dialectic to refute the definition; he proves that laws of all kinds of constitutions are not true law because they do not secure universal agreement but force citizens to obey them; the laws of a tyrant force all to obey, the laws of oligarchy force the masses, and the laws of democracy force the minority, which consists of the owners of property. Alcibiades arguments could be read out of context as the views of Socrates coming out in the pupil; but though Socrates has taught Alcibiades how to use the dialectic method, Xenophon introduces the conversation with the proviso that he was barely twenty years old at the time, which is short-hand for immaturity. Glaucon also attempts to advise the assembly at this age and is laughed off the speakers platform because of his immature ignorance (III 6.1). Alcibiades has the cleverness only of youth. Pericles does not refute him, but he does say that he could use dialectic just as cleverly when he was Alcibiades age, which confirms that it is characteristic of the young. The conversation is also placed in a section of the defence which takes the charge of corruption to mean that Socrates failed to control, or positively encouraged, bad desires in the youth, and which argues that though
Ibid., pp. 1757. C. Gill, Greek Political Thought (Oxford, 1995), p. 51. 27 See E. Wood and N. Wood, Socrates and Democracy: A Reply to Gregory Vlastos, Political Theory, 14.1 (1986), pp. 5582, at pp. 5965 (arguing in these terms against Vlastos).
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Socrates controlled Alcibiades and Critias in their early youth, they escaped Socrates control and lost their restraint in their later youth (I 2.1248). In this conversation then, Alcibiades is showing the lack of respect for his guardian that is typical of unrestrained desires, one of which is the desire to prove himself wiser than the father-figure.28 Alcibiades idea that laws are not valid unless they are based on the consent of those who live under them recurs in the other two passages relating to the laws, which reveal the mature views of Socrates himself. But Socrates is unlike Alcibiades because he defines justice simply as lawfulness.29 In the conversation with Hippias, he recommends obedience to two types of law: the laws that members of the polis have written down for themselves in agreement about what to do and what to avoid (IV 4.13), and the unwritten laws that are universally in force everywhere and because of that seem to come from the gods (IV 4.19). Here, whereas Pericles was defining the laws of the democracy (to plthos), Socrates defines the laws of any constitution (hoi politai). He does however have democracy in mind, as the earlier reference to how the new concept of justice will settle the disagreements among the votes of dikastai (IV 4.8) and as the subsequent reference to how obedience to the laws will win advantage in the dikastria (IV 4.17) show. Socrates position on law indeed puts him in the camp of Pericles, who as leader of the democracy made the same division and recommended the same obedience to both kinds of law: We do not act contrary to the laws, in obedience to those in authority and the laws at any time, and especially those designed for the assistance of the oppressed and the laws that though unwritten carry the agreed penalty of shame when broken (Thucydides II 37.3). Pericles endorsement of obedience to rulers who implement the law is also echoed, as we will see below, in Xenophons description of Socrates (IV 4.1). Socrates defends written laws even against the charge that citizens frequently scrutinize and change them (IV 4.14, using the word for testing which Pericles had used to Alcibiades). He thinks no less well of a man who obeys laws that are then changed than of a man who obeys military orders before the end of a war.30 He points out that those communities which exhibit the general habit of obedience to written law enjoy homonoia, that unity of purpose which brings political success and prosperity. He cites the obedience to the laws of Lycurgus in Sparta as one example of such success, but is still thinking of other constitutions, including democracy, since he goes on to
28 More general attempts at this same game are found in the subsequent section (I 2.4955). 29 See D. Morrison, Xenophons Socrates on the Just and the Lawful, Ancient Philosophy, 15 (1995), pp. 32947. 30 Plato allows that laws can be badly made (Hippias Major 284d), but the usual view was that laws should remain unchanged: see S. Todd, Lysias against Nikomachos: The Fate of the Expert in Athenian Law, in Greek Law in its Political Setting, ed. L. Foxhall and A. Lewis (Oxford, 1996), pp. 10131, at pp. 1301.
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describe the most successful cities in the plural as being the ones who have most respect for law: of the rulers in the cities . . . those are best who best cause the citizens to obey the laws, and the cities in which the citizens most obey the laws do best in peace and are invincible in war (IV 4.15). Rulers include the balloted magistrates of the democracy (I 2.9, discussed below). This homonoia is not restricted to the Spartans, though their homonoia was legendary (see III 5.16),31 for the reference is again in the plural: Homonoia also seems to the cities to be the greatest good and very often in them the councils of elders and the best men exhort the citizens to think alike (homonoein) and there is a law (nomos) everywhere in Greece that the citizens swear to think alike and everywhere they swear this oath (IV 4.16). Socrates goes on to interpret this oath as a law that required obedience to the laws and then to demonstrate the benefits of obedience, maintaining for example that the man who obeys the laws will have more victories in the dikastria and fewer defeats (IV 4.17).32 There were indeed oaths that required obedience to the laws, such as the bouleutic oath (I 1.18) and the jurors oath (IV 4.4). Moreover, Xenophon associates homonoia with the rule of law and identifies it as characteristic of the democracy that the Athenians re-established after their defeat of the oligarchs at the end of the Peloponnesian War. Thrasybulus, the leader of the democratic resistance, recommended that both parties live quietly in obedience to the former laws, and they subsequently swore oaths not to remember wrong (Hel. II 4.42).33 Xenophon expresses his admiration for the democracy of his own times when he notes that the two parties still conduct their polis in togetherness and remain by the oaths they swore. Lysias endorses this homonoia as the most democratic feature of the democrat: they think those most democratic (dmotiktatous) who, wishing you to think alike (homonoein), abide by their oaths and agreements as their salvation and guard (25.20, 23, 2829). Socrates attributes the encouragement of homonoia to what seem to be aristocratic elements, but the best men are operational even in democracy, as the case of Thrasybulus shows: Xenophon identifies him as good at his death (Hel. IV 8.31). Socrates does not spell out the relationship between written and unwritten law, and this leaves room for speculation about possible conflict, and leads to
31 See V. Gray, Xenophon and Isocrates, in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. M. Schofield and C. Gill (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 14254. 32 The dikastria failed to reach the right judgment in Socrates own case, but here he endorses their operations. His case was complicated by his refusal to offer a proper defence (see Apo. 4). 33 Citizens swore oaths in support of homonoia after the return and reconciliation of exiles to Mytilene in 324 (Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873), XII 2, 6, line 30); there is also a prayer and sacrifice that the reconciliation be respected (lines 389). See J. Jones, Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks (Oxford, 1956), Ch. 4 (Eunomia, Homonoia, Isonomia).
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the debate about whether Socrates is truly a legal positivist or an idealist.34 The same distinction in the mouth of Pericles has also been thought to contain a possible tension, and the possibility has been advanced there that his unwritten laws are undemocratic.35 However, Socrates examples of unwritten law are honouring the gods, honouring parents, the law against incest, and the law for repayment of favours, which was the foundation of justice (Mem. IV 4.2024). These are not aristocratic. Nor can one imagine any community endorsing incest in their written laws. Other evidence confirms that written law does confirm unwritten law, and reveals the kind of circumstances in which communities might write down unwritten law; that is, when it directly affected their political and constitutional interests. In a conversation in which he seeks to make his son repay the good care of his mother, Socrates says that the written legislation of Athens mostly overlooks ingratitude, but makes it a written law and inflicts the penalty of disqualification from office if a man does not honour his parents (II 2.13). The written law may then neglect unwritten law, perhaps culpably, where it is not relevant to political life in the narrow sense, but it does not gainsay it and needs to endorse it in cases where it is of importance to political life. Xenophon agrees, in his Cyropaedia (I 2.7), that ingratitude is seldom treated as a crime in law. The main differences between written and unwritten law are compatible therefore, rather than confrontational: unwritten laws are in force throughout the world in every land honoured in the same way (Mem. IV 4.19; Hippias gives this definition, but Socrates assents to it) whereas written laws reflect the unique arrangements of different communities; and the transgression of unwritten law brings its own penalty (IV 4.21), whereas in written laws the penalty has to be imposed. The advance Socrates makes on Pericles is that while he sees shame as the penalty for transgression, Socrates envisages disadvantage of a more tangible kind: the inbred children produced by incest, the lack of friendship consequent on ingratitude, and so on.36 A more important tension, not revealed in the conversation with Hippias, is the inability of law to deal with those cases where the same action could be just and unjust depending on the use to which it was put. Socrates conversation with Euthydemus reveals this (IV 2.1223), but does not relate it to the identification of the legal with the just; he is intent instead on proving that Euthydemus is merely ignorant of what justice is. Xenophons Cyropaedia
Morrison, in Xenophons Socrates, comes down on the side of legal positivism. Loraux attempts to show this, but in my view is not successful: see N. Loraux, LInvention dAthnes: Histoire de lOraison Funbre dans la Cit Classique (Paris, 1981), pp. 1856. 36 R. Thomas (Written in Stone? Liberty, Equality, Orality and the Codification of Law, in Greek Law, ed. Foxhall and Lewis, pp. 931) confirms that a distinction between written and unwritten law is expected in the process of developing a written code, but that the two types of law supplement rather than contradict each other; there was no need to translate into writing those laws that carried their own automatic penalties.
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(I 3.1617) raises a slightly different tension when his young Cyrus overtly challenges the identification of justice and law in his decision not to punish the boy with a cloak too small who took a larger cloak from a smaller boy. The law said that the big boys action was unjust, but the benefit produced shows the limits of the law in reaching a fitting conclusion. This suggests that law might not be sufficiently comprehensive to take in all the relevant aspects of a case. However, it is significant Cyrus accepts that his teachers were right to beat him for his decision, since he was meant to be judging whether a crime had been committed, not whether the fit was good. This might be another kind of situation in which the need for homnoia prevailed over law that was less than perfect. The written law of the democracy is not perfect, then, perhaps for reasons that Socrates does not press, perhaps because justice in its broadest sense is irreconcilable with the rule of written law. But the citizens may address such imperfections and change their written laws in agreement after testing them, perhaps even after being persuaded by politicians such as those educated by Socrates (see the discussion below). However, the higher interests of the common good of homonoia prevail in the final analysis, and citizens may not put their individual likes or dislikes of any particular law above the common good; to this end they swear to think alike. Alcibiades develops the need for persuasion too far, but it contains an essential ideal; the best that communities could do to implement the ideal was to agree to agree to the idea of obedience, even if not to each and every individual law. Unwritten law does not normally impinge on the interests of the polis, but it is not undemocratic, and is translated into democratic law where the interest of the polis is sufficiently strong, as in the case of the need to prove gratitude to parents in scrutiny for democratic office. The need to honour the gods was translated into written law in the charges against Socrates that he did not honour the gods of the polis, but introduced other new divinities. The law against incest might also be translated into approved law, where a community wanted to endorse a eugenic breeding programme. III Socrates Obedience to the Athenians Laws Xenophon demonstrates at the beginning of the conversation with Hippias that Socrates was scrupulous in his own obedience to the laws: in private life his dealings with others were lawful and helpful, and in public life he obeyed the rulers and whatever the laws instructed, giving obedience within the polis and keeping in order alongside the others in military campaigns (Mem. IV 4.14).37 It has not been noticed that this language recalls the ephebic oath, which survives in fourth-century inscriptions and is first mentioned in the
37 Socrates own practice is important. Irwin (Socrates, p. 197) distinguishes undemocratic conviction, such as criticism of government, from undemocratic activity, such as its overthrow.
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law-courts by Lycurgus (1.77).38 Ephebes also swore to obey the rulers and the laws, and not to abandon the man who fought alongside him. Socrates allegiance to this oath, which he had himself sworn as a hoplite, might well provide a firm basis for his allegiance to law. Lycurgus confirms that it held the democracy together (1.79: to sunechon tn dmokratian), and he goes on to claim that the archon, the juror and the private citizen take the oath as a pledge of lawfulness. It could certainly require citizens to obey even those laws to which they did not individually consent. Xenophon also notes that Socrates did not allow the people to put the vote about the proposal to condemn the generals of Arginousai en bloc because it contravened the existing law (Hel. I 7.15, 2026). He attributes this refusal to his bouleutic oath (Mem. I 1.18), but the ephebic oath also required the citizen to prevent others overthrowing the laws.39 Finally, he observed the jurors oath when he refused to appeal for favour at his own trial because this was also contrary to the law as is confirmed by Lysias: but if, though having no justice, they tell you to give them a favour, remember that they are teaching you to break your oath and disobey the laws (14.2022). Platos Socrates in his Apology (35bd) agrees that the jurors oath was to judge according to the laws, not to bargain for favour.40 Xenophon also includes in Memorabilia a brief statement of Socrates resistance to the illegalities of the oligarchy, which produces an important proviso on his attitude to laws. He says that Socrates disobeyed the instructions of the oligarchy to bring in citizens for summary execution and not to talk to the young. He calls their instructions contrary to the laws, which means that his disobedience is not unlawful, but it is not clear from this brief statement how their instructions are contrary to the laws, and there is a further difficulty if this statement is compared with the earlier account of his dealings with the oligarchs (Mem. I 2.3139); for Xenophon had there called the instruction about the young a law and called its author, Critias, a nomothets of the Thirty (I 2.31). The reason why Xenophon now includes that law as contrary to the laws can be found in the conversation that Socrates then had about that law with Critias and his fellow nomothets, Charicles. Socrates occupies his usual position when he begins his challenge by indicating that he is ready to obey the laws, but he seeks clarification about this laws precise meaning (I 2.34). He uses his dialectic method to bring these nomothetai to agree that what their
38 For the text, see P. Siewert, The Ephebic Oath in Fifth-Century Athens, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 97 (1977), pp. 10211. 39 Ephebes swore I shall not allow anyone to overthrow the laws, neither alone nor with others. Socrates opposed the people alone on this occasion, but with the help of the laws. 40 On the jurors oath, see D. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (London, 1978), p. 44.
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law intends is that he avoid (the word used to define law at IV 4.13) the cobblers, builders and metalworkers, which they agree further means avoiding justice and holiness and connected matters (I 2.37). Xenophon does not say here that Socrates disobeyed the law; he keeps that revelation for the conversation with Hippias. But it is clear that a law that keeps him away from justice in the sense of not being able to discuss it, also keeps others away from the justice they might have learned from his discussions of it, and therefore contradicts the definition of law, which tells people to pursue the good.41 Dialectic has tested this law and found it contrary to the definition of law. The testing and approval that Pericles says that democratic citizens must give to their laws would in its ideal philosophic form be the dialectic testing that Socrates uses here. The need for laws to meet the definition in order to have status as law is an important proviso on Socrates readiness to obey the laws. To judge by his attitude to oligarchic law, his chosen option where law failed the definition was to criticize and try to change the laws; if he failed to convince the law-makers, he honoured his oath to respect laws that were properly constituted. Socrates might disobey those improperly constituted, but evidence (discussed below) indicates that he would never resort to violence. The higher principle that citizens should obey laws in the interest of homonoia evidently does not apply to laws that defy the definition. Socrates might have found democratic law more just. Pericles maintains that the democratic majority makes laws that pursue justice and avoid injustice; that is, they are honestly intended. The democracy at least did not make conversation with the young illegal or licence summary execution as the oligarchs did, and the agreement of the majority meant that individual grudges could not be pushed through, nor indiscriminate massacre. An easier way of explaining why Xenophon calls the oligarchs instructions contrary to the laws might be that their laws were contrary to the previously existing laws of the democracy. Xenophon himself distinguishes between the oligarchs new laws and the democracys old laws (Hel. II 3.51, 4.42). There is also the possibility that he wrote this sentence without much thought, but this still leaves the problem in the earlier passage of the status of a law that obliges citizens to refrain from having discussions with the young that are designed to promote justice. IV Socrates and Democratic Ballot There is a need to consider in this context the accusers earlier allegations that Socrates taught his pupils to violate the established laws by declaring that it was foolish to choose rulers (archontas) by the process of sortition (Mem. I 2.9). The connection between contempt for the laws and opposition to
41
Cf. L.-A. Dorion, Xnophon: Mmorables (Paris, 2000).
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sortition is that the rulers chosen by sortition are despised because they have no necessary expertise. Since rulers tell you what to do and what not to do (III 9.11), which is the function of the laws (I 2.42, IV 4.13; cf. IV 4.15), contempt for them is synonymous with contempt for the laws. Much has been made of the fact that Xenophon does not deny that Socrates opposed sortition.42 Indeed, Socrates considers it one of a range of invalid devices for choosing leaders: neither sortition nor election, neither the bean nor the sceptre, can define the real ruler, said Socrates; the only valid test is knowledge (III 9.10). Xenophon however does go on to say that Socrates did not teach violent overthrow of the laws, but the way of persuasion, which implies the desire to gain the consent of the governed. This persuasion, which emerges from many other passages, is directed at the citizens through the democratic assembly; it is expressed in this passage as teaching the citizens (didaskein tous politas). The conversation with Hippias confirms that the citizens may change the established laws if they wish and this can be the result of persuasion. The conversation between Alcibiades and Pericles certainly shows the need for persuasion to make the laws valid. There is nothing inherently undemocratic about wishing to change the constitution with the agreement of the citizens.43 Until such time as persuasion works, Socrates worked within the system, defending the laws as a balloted member of the council for instance during the trial of the generals who fought at Arginousai (Hel. I 7). Sortition may be thought today too fundamental to abandon without destroying the democracy, but this is not in line with other evidence.44 Isocrates argues that it is essentially undemocratic because it allows oligarchs to reach office (Areopagiticus 223). Ober considers this argument specious,45 but Lysias (26.9) in a democratic law-court also qualifies the merit of sortition when he puts forward the argument that the process of dokimasia alone ensures the exclusion of oligarchs from balloted office, and then from the exalted heights of the Areopagus, into which archons passed at the end of their year in office. Socrates modifies the bad effects of the ballot in the same way when he argues in his conversation with Pericles that the Areopagus consists of those who have passed dokimasia, who, for this reason, in spite of their selection by the ballot, judge with justice and dignity and respect for the laws (Mem. III 5.20). His developed position on the selection of magistrates through the ballot then, if these two insights are combined, is that it was foolish, but that preliminary scrutiny limited the damage by preventing undesirable
Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 89. Platos Socrates also envisages two alternatives: obeying the laws of the polis, or persuading the polis what justice consists in. See M. Schofield, I. F. Stone and Gregory Vlastos on Socrates and Democracy, Apeiron, 34 (2000), pp. 281301, at p. 282. 44 H. Erbse, Die Architektonik im Aufbau von Xenophons Memorabilien, Hermes, 89 (1961), pp. 25787, at p. 261 (also finding reasons to soften the effect). 45 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 280.
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citizens from attaining power. Since this scrutiny represented the judgment of the demos (as is made clear at II 2.13), Socrates thinks that democracy mitigated the worst effects. Lysias shows that this was indeed the purpose of dokimasia. Xenophon does not offer this argument in mitigation of sortition in the original passage in Memorabilia (I 2.9) because of his greater focus there on the corruption of the youth and his concern to argue against the charge that Socrates taught political violence. Nor does he need to rehearse the drawbacks of sortition in the second passage (III 5.20), which focuses on proving how dokimasia ensures excellence. This is one of the problems in Memorabilia the evidence is contextualized within separate conversations with separate agenda. The gaps allow us to speculate that Socrates might have opposed sortition not only because of the need for experts, but also in the higher interests of obedience to the laws, on the grounds that people disobey the laws if those who implement them do not command respect.46 Socrates adds that those rulers in any constitution are best who best cause the citizens to obey the laws (IV 4.15). The ballot did not always secure such people. Socrates championed the laws against the demos when he presided as balloted member of the council in the trial of the Arginousai generals. In a curious way, this vindicates his criticism, since the demos did not respect him as their balloted officer or the laws he championed; they pushed the illegal motion through. Xenophon says that any other balloted person in this situation would have caved in to the demos (IV 4.2). V Socrates Views on Oligarchy and Democracy in Athens In the time of Socrates, the reaction of an Athenian to the oligarchic regime installed by the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War was a part of the test of the democrat.47 It has been argued that Socrates proved his hostility to democracy merely by remaining in Athens and presumably being enrolled as one of the Three Thousand.48 However, Lysias shows a more sophisticated appreciation of democratic behaviour. He defines misodmia as participating in this oligarchy (26.21), but his speeches do not automatically condemn a man who merely remained in the city under their rule; it depends on what he did there: particularly whether he served in their cavalry, or on their council, or co-operated in their persecutions (25.12, 1516). It is, therefore, significant
46 In his Constitution of the Spartans (8.1, 3), Xenophon indicates in a passage devoted to their obedience that the ephors needed to be able to terrify the citizens to achieve this end. 47 This attitude continued to be a test of the democrat for Isocrates (Areopagiticus 6469). 48 Schofield, Stone and Vlastos, p. 287; Wood and Wood, Socrates and Democracy, pp. 705.
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that Xenophon shows that Socrates gave them no co-operation, but quite the opposite. Indeed he suggests that Socrates did not leave Athens because he believed in critical engagement (Mem. I 2.2938); he desired to reform the oligarchs, and defied their instructions at risk to his life when they failed to respond. Socrates not only criticized their laws but the unrestrained lust of their leader Critias for Euthydemus and the entire nature of the regime, which murdered and corrupted the citizens and failed to meet the basic test of successful government, which was to make the citizens more numerous and more just (I 2.32; see Hel. II 3.114.42). Luccioni used a conversation between Socrates and the son of the great Pericles (Mem. III 5) to maintain that Socrates deplored the disorder of customs and ideas in the contemporary democracy.49 Yet in this conversation it is Pericles who describes the indiscipline of Athenians and Socrates who has faith that it can be remedied; moreover, indiscipline is among the hoplites and cavalry. Socrates appears to think that the lower economic classes do show discipline in their various corporate activities. This turns out to be that disciplined obedience to lawful authority which is the mark of the good citizen. The younger Pericles, who has been elected general, complains to Socrates about the quality of the armed forces. Socrates replies that they would improve if they emulated the achievements of their ancestors or other appropriate models (he means the Spartans) and he cites as proof of their ancestral military excellence the topoi that are traditionally found in the Athenian epitaphios (III 5.912).50 In response to Pericles further complaints that in contemporary Athens there is no respect for elders or exercise, no obedience and no homonoia such as is found in Sparta (III 5.1517), Socrates praises contemporary naval practices, athletic and choral competitions; how the Athenians are obedient to commands in the fleets, and obedient to commands and to authorities in gymnastic competitions, and how they obey
Luccioni, Les Ides, pp. 11819. The epitaphios praised the military strength of the Athenian ancestors. It often democratized earlier forms of government, and even praised contemporary democracy; but this praise regularly ignored features which might be considered definitive for democracy (such as the ballot, rotation of office and accountability), or the navy as in Thucydides version of Pericles epitaphios. See Loraux, LInvention dAthnes, pp. 175224. Socrates instances of ancestral achievement are: the judgment of the gods in the time of Cecrops (presumably in the dispute between Ares and Poseidon concerning rape and murder on Areopagus: see F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden, 192358), 239, 3); the birth and nurture of Erechtheus under the protection of Athena, and the wars he fought against his neighbours; wars subsequently fought on behalf of the Heraclids and those fought by Theseus; the Persian Wars; the autochthony retained through military excellence; the Athenians role as arbitrators of affairs of others and Athens as a place of refuge for the oppressed.
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their trainers in the choruses, no less than any others (III 5.18).51 This eutaxia is a quality Socrates himself showed on military campaigns (IV 4.1: eutaktn). In the polis too citizens had to obey such instructions as were issued by the overseers of their corporate activities, such as naval and choral activities. Pericles recognizes that Socrates is attributing this discipline to the common people when he laments that though men of that sort show the desired qualities, the cavalry and the hoplites, who are generally considered the cream of the citizens, do not. Socrates, in response to that complaint, points to the members of the Areopagus who have passed dokimasia (and are in that sense the best citizens) and who uphold the laws and justice with integrity. He uses this example to dispel Pericles final worries. This admiration for the discipline of ordinary Athenians seems remarkably different from the usual view of the ordinary people attributed to Socrates. References to the discipline of their navy are also exceptional. The hoplites and cavalry remained important in the democracy of Socrates time even though their roles gradually became more defensive52 roles that Socrates envisages them playing in this conversation (III 5.2528). Socrates faith in the discipline of contemporary democratic institutions should not of course be read out of context. He is arguing against a man who is disillusioned and needs encouragement. There is also some irony in having Socrates praise the Athenian ancestors to the younger Pericles since Thucydides had the father of this Pericles deliver praise of contemporary Athenians too. Thus there seems no real reason to question Socrates exemplification of obedience to the laws of Athens. VI Socrates and the Royal Art Vlastos has argued that the earlier Platonic dialogues offer the truest representation of the historical Socrates and reveal a royal art of government that is democratic because accessible to everyone making him dmotikos and philodmos, instead of misodmos.53 In Vlastos view, Xenophons version of the royal art is oligarchic because it restricts rulership to the few (stipulating the conditions of legitimacy of the tenure of political power), and produces political expertise rather than morality in the ruler, and material happiness
51 See [Xenophon], Constitution of the Athenians, 1.13 (showing that the poor did take part). 52 V. Hanson, Hoplites into Democrats: The Changing Ideology of Athenian Infantry, in Dmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, ed. J. Ober and C. Hedrick (Princeton, 1996), pp. 289312, at pp. 2959. 53 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 105. Wood and Wood (Socrates and Democracy, pp. 667) argue that Vlastos theory could not accommodate democracy before the masses completed their own education in this art, and ask: what are for Socrates the appropriate political arrangements before the happy day of universal virtue arrives?. See Schofield, Stone and Vlastos, pp. 2947.
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rather than virtue in the communities they rule.54 Yet this version does require dialectical knowledge of virtue, and it produces eudaimonia for the community which makes them virtuous, even if through habituation rather than true knowledge.55 Socrates teaches Euthydemus that the royal art (Mem. IV 2.11: basilik) requires knowledge of justice (IV 2), piety (IV 3) and the selfcontrol or self-rule that is the sine qua non for dialectic inquiry (IV 5, esp. 5.1112). The dialectic discussions that follow (IV 6) reveal the role of this inquiry in defining the virtues. As for its function in producing virtue in those under rule, Socrates uses Agamemnon to show that the good leader achieves eudaimonia for his community by feeding it, keeping it secure and ensuring that it defeats its enemies, but also by securing the best life possible, which suggests a moral dimension (III 2.14). His criticism of the oligarchs for diminishing the numbers of the citizens by executing good men and diminishing the moral qualities of those who remained by turning them towards injustice (I 2.32) confirms that good government means making citizens just. In an unfinished conversation designed to illustrate his method of dialectic rather than produce a full definition, Socrates defines the good citizen as one who makes the polis materially prosperous (IV 6.14), but this does not exclude the possibility that a more complete form of the conversation would require a good citizen to have knowledge of virtue and an ability to make the citizens virtuous. As for accessibility, Xenophons Socrates makes royal rulers out of women and perhaps slaves; in fact, when he declares that knowledge alone legitimizes rule, which is so often taken to be exclusive, Socrates extends the principle to women, who rule men in woolwork (III 9.1011). His belief that the same art was exercised in the polis as in the household or other associations made it accessible to a wide variety of people (III 4.16). Ischomachus explains to Socrates that he exercises the art in his household and invites his wife to exercise it too, not only over their household servants but also over himself (Oeconomicus 7.42). He further claims he has taught the art to slaves in his household, including self-control and justice and the other virtues, and that they in turn teach these same qualities to those they rule (9.1113, 12.115.1). Socrates appears to endorse the teaching of virtue to slaves when he blames the master for the greed and laziness of his servant (Mem. III 13.4: therapn). Their opposite qualities such as restraint of the appetites and endurance of toil are the virtues that elsewhere he requires of rulers (II 1.13).
Vlastos, Socratic Studies, pp. 96105. Dorion argues that the royal art does not amount to a savoir moral but rather a disposition morale which comes from self-control: see L.-A. Dorion, Socrate et la basilik tekhn: essai dexgse comparative, in Socrates: 2400 Years Since His Death, ed. V. Karasmanis (Athens, 2004), pp. 5162.
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V.J. GRAY VII Socrates and the Assembly
The relationship of leaders and followers is problematic for democracy.56 The division that Xenophons Socrates endorses between rulers and the ruled might produce an undemocratic relationship between the demos in Assembly and its leaders. Yet he insists that leaders should persuade the citizens to follow their policies, and this makes the rulers less than autocratic and the ruled more than authoritative. Moreover, recent opinion recognizes the greater executive activity of the wealthy and discrimination against thetes (the lowest class of citizens at Athens) as a pragmatic fact of life in Athens.57 One modern theory is that the demos were their own masters, learning the business of politics through their daily administration of the deme or council or their committees,58 but even in speeches addressed to the demos in the law-courts Lysias recognizes the wealthy as those who do politics (16.21: prattein ta politika, prattein kai legein huper ts poles), while the role of the demos is, in his view, to retain ultimate power as their judges (kritai). In the Assembly too those who spoke were men of wealth, but the demos had the final say.59 The poverty of the demos is a distinction that no amount of pay for office could remedy. Pericles even distinguished those whose care for politics is synonymous with care for their own affairs, from those who work for their living and are merely not deficient in understanding politics (Thu. II 40.2). He may further extend the distinction between those who do politics and those who judge them when he adds: We judge rightly or we reflect rightly.60
56 M. Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern (London, 1985), pp. 337, esp. pp. 1112. 57 P. Cartledge, Athenian Democratic Equality, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 17980: In practice, however, Athenian citizens neither were, nor were considered for all purposes to be, exactly equal, identical and the same, in all relevant respects. They were not so, most conspicuously, with respect to their executive capability, especially since political capacity was deemed to depend crucially on wealth. Hence the Athenians pragmatic resort to election rather than sortition for the greatest military and financial offices of government . . . The other side of this elitist pragmatism, perhaps, is the negative ideological discrimination against Athenians of the lowest socio-economic classes, the thetes. See K. Raaflaub, Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 139174, at p. 155, which refers to inequalities despite democracy. The theory is that thetes acquired power under the democracy because they rowed the ships and demanded equal privilege with those who served as hoplites, but the property qualification was retained for council; thetes appear not to have had a separate register of individual nauts either, as hoplites and cavalry did. 58 On the various roles the demos could collectively play, see S. Wolin, Transgression, Equality and Voice, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hendrick, pp. 6390. 59 See Finley, Democracy, p. 24. 60 See Loraux, LInvention dAthnes, pp. 1856.
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Xenophons Socrates makes the same distinction between those who do politics and those who judge it in his conversation with Charmides (Mem. III 7). He tells Antiphon that he educated some people to do politics rather than engaging in politics on his own because this had greater impact (I 6.15). To do politics required in its most illustrious form implementation of the royal art, which required the moral knowledge gained through dialectic and the practical knowledge gained through expertise. The demos ordinarily lacked this education and knowledge, but Xenophons Socrates believes that they were competent judges of those who addressed them in their Assembly. He describes them elsewhere as obeying the wisest of those who speak and electing those whom they believe to be phronimtatous in military matters too (Apo. 20). Their preference for the wise is evidently based on their ability to recognize wisdom, since Socrates sets it against any natural preference for their own relatives or others with less appropriate qualifications. For he declares that people do not turn to their relatives to cure their medical ills, but to those who know about such things (doctors), and the same applies in all walks of life, including politics (Mem. I 2.5155). Nor are members of the demos deluded in their preferences: the demos exercise right judgment against one who is not wise, rightly laughing the ignorant Glaucon off the speakers platform (III 6). Socrates seems to endorse their wisdom when he shows Glaucon to be ignorant of the income and expenditures of Athens, and of other things, that those possessing the royal art should know. They again quite rightly pass over the man with distinguished military service and choose Antisthenes as general, because he can collect revenue and manage choruses (III 4). Socrates again shows that the demos has chosen well, saying that Antisthenes has the kind of experience that will serve the army too. Socrates thinks that the demos in Assembly reaches correct opinion about its leaders through their experience of them. This is the case with Antisthenes and Glaucon. Socrates seems to reflect their experience when he wonders how Glaucon will ever persuade the polis to let him look after their collective estates, when he has not even been able to persuade his uncle to let him experiment on his (III 6.15). Another passage (I 7.34) confirms that experience will identify for the demos those who are unable to carry out their assigned tasks and they will get no forgiveness from those they have deceived. In Symposium, Socrates indicates that aristocratic credentials of lineage, priesthood and physical strength will make the polis put itself into the hands of Callias as their champion, likening the leader to the aristocratic lover and the polis to the beloved (8.4043). But the requirement that the lover please the beloved is not corrupt flattery, as Plato would have it; this pleasure is to come from virtue, and the polis will see through a champion who has no virtue because it will be proved from experience of him (Sym. 8.43). But although proving them astute judges, Socrates describes the Assembly (Mem. III 7.5) as made up of those who make and sell things, middlemen who
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buy cheap and sell dear, and farmers and traders, and he calls these those with fewest resources or wits this is his most celebrated undemocratic image.61 The traditional contempt for the minds and bodies of those who practice the banausic trades explains the description, but the inclusion of the farmers is odd, since farming promotes admirable qualities (Oec. 4.2, 56). The focus of the description may rather be the other part of the traditional criticism: that those who work for a living lack leisure to look after friends and polis, which means to do politics (Oec. 4.3). This is how their description is glossed in the Memorabilia passage: those who have never given thought to politics (III 7.7). Poverty is also the basis of the distinction that Thucydides Pericles makes between citizens who care for politics as their own affairs, and those who are turned to the pursuit of trades and merely not deficient in understanding politics. Socrates description is nevertheless a fairly brutal statement of reality. Some explanation of the context softens this impression. Socrates is trying to make Charmides give the public Assembly the sound advice and criticism that he gives more powerful men in private meetings (III 7.3). Charmides resists doing this because he fears the disgrace that would come from the contempt and laughter of the Assembly. It is in order to dispel this fear that Socrates draws his analogy between the men of power and wisdom who do politics and whom Charmides does not hesitate to advise, on the one hand, and the members of the Assembly, whom he fears to advise because of their judgment, on the other. It is in this context of polarity that he describes the first group as most powerful and quick-witted and the other as most weak and foolish. Such polarity produces extremes, and due account should be made of the strength of Charmides fear and the empowering effect that Socrates abuse of the demos will have on him. Some account should also be made of the metaphor that drives the conversation. Politics is represented as a wrestling match (III 7.1) in which the demos will laugh at the loser; yet they are amateurs, while Charmides is a professional (III 7.7). Socrates description of them fits their metaphorical role as amateurs, lacking in the strength or the skill that the competition requires, and if his description is contemptuous of them, it is only a fair response to their contemptuous laughter at those who fail to impress them. Xenophons Socrates thus emerges as one who engages with the demos as it is in order to improve it. He does not criticize their role as judges. Charmides points out that they can laugh at good advice as well as bad, but Socrates retorts that this is true of the men of power as well, and since Charmides deals with them, he can deal with the demos (III 7.8). He accepts that ridicule and uproar are the legitimate weapons of the demos in judging policies,62 but he does blame the man of talent for not having the courage to
Luccioni, Les Ides, pp. 11415; Vlastos, Socratic Studies, pp. 989. Ober (Political Dissent, p. 235) calls this laughter the awesome hegemonic power of popular ideology. See Plato, Republic 492bd.
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persist with it. He in effect asks Charmides to be a philosophic missionary in his own style, enduring their noise and ridicule as he does at his own trial (Apo. 1415). Socrates does not suggest that it is futile to give the demos good advice or that doing politics has fatal consequences; or if he does, he thinks the risks worth taking. Socrates sees self-interest as the reason why people should do politics. He describes Charmides as hesitating to take the affairs of the polis in hand, even though he must have a share in them since he is a citizen (Mem. III 7.2). Self-interest dictates the need to participate, Socrates tells Charmides directly: dont neglect the affairs of the polis, if there is something you can improve; if the affairs of the polis prosper, not only the other citizens, but your friends, and you yourself not least of all, will benefit (III 7.9). Socrates insists in other conversations too that his associates engage with democracy. For instance, when the untutored Aristippus characterizes the demos as tyrant, making demands of their leaders as of slaves and punishing them if they fail to meet them, Socrates directs his attention to the benefits of serving the demos voluntarily (II 1.89, 1819), pointing out also that he is bound to share in the polis because it is not possible to live in security outside it (II 1.1116).63 Charmides must endure their laughter; Aristippus is to endure their punishment of him, if he fails them. Charmides presents the same image of the demos as tyrant in Symposium (4.2933) and has Callias recognize this as the relationship he also has with the demos (4.45), but once again Socrates urges Callias to serve the demos throughout his final speech (8.743), using the more positive image of Callias as the lover of the polis, with the polis as his beloved. VIII Socrates as Dmotikos The definitions of the democrat in the discussions of Platos Socrates go beyond support for democratic laws, institutions and processes to include democratic values such as philanthropy. Socrates dialectic method has itself been read as an essentially democratic discourse because it seeks to see things from anothers perspective, and his dramatic polyphony has yielded ambivalent readings which do not support the simple undemocratic image; but his
63 Socrates distinction between ruling and being ruled may appear to contradict democratic principles (cf. Aristotle, Politics 1317b1920), but Socrates conversation is designed expressly to prevent Aristippus from being ruled. He proposes the division on a purely theoretical level. Moreover, his distinction does not produce a class who will be barred from ruling by outside authorities; rather he distinguishes between those who will be fit to rule and those who will not even claim to rule (II 1.1, cf. 1.7) because they will have been educated to a life of pleasure, and will find rule to be a barrier to this as Aristippus himself does (II 1.89). Aristippus also calls this second group directly those who do not wish to rule (II 1.8).
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discourse is also read as the opposite of openness.64 However, the importance of philanthropy for the democratic image is uncontested: The demotic public fora required that speakers adhere to prescribed forms . . . But especially for those who could point to a record of philanthropy, the required level of adherence did not constitute a very tight-fitting straightjacket.65 It is significant therefore that Xenophon refers to Socrates as both democratic and philanthropic (Mem. I 2.60: kai dmotikos kai philanthrpos).66 This seems prime evidence for the democratic image.67 This affirmation of Socrates as dmotikos occurs in the last part of Xenophons defence of Socrates against the charge that he used Hesiod and Homer to make his associates tyrannical wrong-doers (I 2.5661). The accusers have said that Socrates used Hesiods phrase work is no shame but worklessness is shame to teach people that they should shrink from no work at all, however shameful, as long as it brought profit; but Socrates, Xenophon argues, defined work as that which was by definition honourable.68 True to his interpretation, Socrates later endorses putting even free-born women to woolwork to support a household, defending the work as not disgraceful for women and as encouraging learning and memory, developing physical condition and keeping you from dishonest gain (II 7.79). Work also benefits the polis since it makes the household able to undertake many liturgies (II 7.6). The poor already work for their living, so the exhortation is appropriately addressed to the leisured rich. Socrates thus endorses the honest revalorisation du travail which Loraux calls an essential characteristic of democracy.69 The work that the wealthy might do is further addressed in Socrates interpretation of the passages from Homer (Iliad 2.188191, 198202). The accusers say Socrates taught people to beat their fathers and used this passage to teach them to beat ordinary members of the demos as well. Their identification of these as poor and common (Mem. I 2.59) points to the political reading; the terms are synonymous because poverty defined the demos (IV 2.379). Beating was of course unlawful in the democracy, the ultimate demonstration of that violence which Socrates is shown to have curbed. The charge of hybris protected poor and rich alike before the laws against the physical abuse that
64 J. Euben, Reading Democracy: Socratic Dialogues and the Political Education of Democratic Citizens, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 32760; cf. B. Barber, Misreading Democracy: Peter Euben and the Gorgias, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 36176. 65 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 288. 66 Vlastos (Socratic Studies, pp. 106) argues that Platos Socrates is demotic though Plato never uses that term, and that Xenophons Socrates is not demotic though Mem. calls him that. 67 On this passage, with bibliography, see Dorion, Xnophon, pp. 11822. 68 This accords with his definition of leisure elsewhere (Mem. III 9.9). Dorion discusses Critias interpretation of the same line in Platos Charmides (163b). 69 Loraux, LInvention dAthnes, pp. 1845, with p. 418 n.63.
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denied them the freedom of their persons. Yet the lines quoted from Homer are about the differing treatments of two classes of men when they wish to abandon the common cause of the Greeks at Troy.70 Odysseus discourages the kings with gentle words, but threatens with Agamemnons sceptre the man of the demos when he lifts his voice, calling him unwarlike and cowardly and telling him to listen to his betters. Xenophon has two answers to this charge. The first is that Socrates could not have endorsed beating the poor and common without considering himself worthy of that beating because he was poor. But of course Socrates is poor and common in a way different from the masses, in his deliberate adoption of poverty and his re-definition of the concept.71 He said that those who were able to live within their means were not poor, however meagre their possessions, while those of great wealth who could not live happily on their greater means, were poor; the tyrant could be poor and the commoner wealthy by this definition (IV 2.3739).72 One could consider his identification with the demos a subversion of a truly democratic character, which insulted the real poverty and material aspirations of the demos. Yet in the defence Xenophon will go on to present Socrates as a patron who serves to remedy their poverty and improve their prosperity. He does not devalue their poverty either when he adopts Hesiods principle of measuring a persons contribution in sacrifice according to ability, which gives more value to the poor man who gives to the best of his ability and less value to the rich man if he does not sacrifice according to the greater ability of his greater resources (I 3.3 and IV 3.1516). Socrates interpretation of Homers lines therefore transfers attention to the rich chiefly and endorses the need of both rich and poor to make their contribution to the common cause, but particularly the rich. Socrates said that those who were capable of helping the army, polis, or the demos itself, should the need arise should be checked (bothein) if they do not give assistance
70 The selective quotation omits material that could be said to be undemocratic (see Dorions discussion), but it seems to be the accusers who make the selection; the reason for the omission cannot therefore be in order to conceal undemocratic material. On these passages, see Gray, Xenophons Mirror of Princes, pp. 11932. 71 Other features of Socrates also identify him with the poor and common. See K. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), p. 201 n.10, suggesting that Socrates eirneia is democratic in its refusal to assert superior knowledge. His eirneia is the desirable opposite of fraudulence (alazoneia): see Mem. I 7.5. 72 Socrates service as a hoplite at Potidea and Delium is held to support the notion that he was moderately wealthy, but A. Jones, Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1957), pp. 312, proves there were poor hoplites who could not afford to support their military expeditions. In a context which mentions Cyrus association with Lysander and suggests the closing stages of the Peloponnesian war (Oec. 2.3), Socrates says that his estate consisted of a house and its goods, and was worth five minae, whereas Critobulus estate was worth five hundred. Jones (Athenian Democracy, pp. 7981) says that only a bachelor could survive on twenty minae.
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particularly if they were bold (thraseis), even if they were rich (I 2 59). In his defence against the charge of corruption of the young, Xenophon says Socrates checks bad desires and encourages good ones. Here, those who fail to contribute to the common cause should be checked regardless of their class if they do not contribute. Homers Odysseus also rebukes and checks both rich and poor, even though he uses different manners of rebuke. Xenophons particularly if they are bold and even if they are rich acknowledge that commoners should be checked, but that the role of the wealthy is a more important issue.73 The need for those who have the means to make their contribution is the principle according to which Socrates checks Charmides (III 7) for his unwillingness to serve the demos as advisor even though he was capable of it.74 This interpretation may be thought too ingenious, but Antisthenes, who was a leading interpreter of Homer and a close associate of Socrates (Sym. 4.3444, 8.46), allegorized whole Homeric scenes to make them mean other than what they appear to mean,75 as Socrates does in our passage. Antisthenes was particularly interested in Odysseus, and Xenophons Socrates shares this interest: he interprets Circes inability to turn Odysseus into a pig as an allegory for his self-control rather than the effect of the potion the god had given him (Odyssey 1.281 ff.; cf. Mem. I 3.7), and the Sirens formulaic description of Odysseus as an allegory of how to win friends through praise rather than as proof of the power of song as in Homer (Ody. 12.184 ff.; cf. Mem. II 6.11). Socrates also turns Odysseus into a proto-philosopher: his safe oratory is taken to be the habit of proceeding through agreed stages in the process of dialectic (Ody. 8.165 ff.; cf. Mem. IV 6.15), even though Homer defines it as oratory that uses gentle words (Ody. 8.236).76 It might even be argued that Socrates interpretation is so true to the known tendencies of his associate Antisthenes that it must be historical. Socrates obedience to military commands (Mem. IV 4.1) and his general endorsement
73 Socrates confirms (Mem. III 5.5) that boldness leads to disobedience. Homers Thersites, who continues to disobey Odysseus and whose name recalls boldness (tharsos) exemplifies this. 74 There was a special form of contribution from the rich to the army, polis, demos through the liturgies. Socrates confirms this democratic expectation of service (Oec. 2.6), mentioning the burdensome contributions to the rearing of horses (hippotrophia), the production of a dramatic chorus (chorgia) and gymnastic competitions (gymnasiarchia), presidencies, the upkeep of a trireme ( trirarchia) and war-taxes (eisphora). 75 See N. Richardson, Homeric Professors in the Age of the Sophists, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 201 (1975), pp. 6581, p. 67; L. Navia, Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright (London, 2001), pp. 3952. 76 Odysseus was not the only exemplum. Epithets for Agamemnon suggest the definition of a good leader in the Socratic mould (Mem. III 2) and Socrates etymologizes Ganymedes name to prove that Zeus was attracted by his intellectual rather than his physical beauty (Sym. 8.30).
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of the law, probably mean that he did endorse the beating of the man of the demos who refused to obey military commands. Xenophon himself defends this in a crisis in the common interest (Anabasis V 8). Even Homers multitude laughs to see Thersites beaten for continuing to refuse to serve the common cause (Il. 2.212277).77 The ability of the poor to make a military contribution has been called an ideological battle-ground,78 but Socrates does not disempower the demos on these grounds. He presents the demos as an entity to be passively assisted by the wealthy, but this is in the nature of the democratic paradigm of the liturgist. The demos itself is presumably obliged to assist to the best of its own ability, which means obeying commands, something that Socrates thought they did quite well (Mem. III 5). Participation in the rowing of a trireme has been thought to have taught the poor the power of corporate solidarity that they transferred to their political operations.79 Yet what they learned on the trireme and in choral and other competitions was that obedience to those with expertise did achieve the best results (III 9.10). Xenophon further judges Socrates by his own principle of service to the demos to be both democratic and philanthropic because he gave his resources to any citizen or foreigner who wanted them, and never made a profit (see I 2.78), while others took these from him for free and sold them on at a great price to others, which made them undemocratic.80 Socrates resources are of course his wisdom, so that, though poor by the ordinary definition, he fulfilled his own service to the demos according to his ability massaging the definition of wealth in order to produce a democratic currency that included the wisdom of his company. Indeed, he gave of this wisdom not only according to his ability, but abundantly (I 2.60).81 One could argue that the poor would find this generosity cold because they wanted material prosperity. Similar claims to generosity in Platos Apology have been considered subversive because Socrates does not supply the material support that is normally
77 His beating would be even more significant if he were not a man of the demos but a chieftain: see G. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. I (Cambridge, 1985). 78 Raaflaub, Equalities and Inequalities, p. 155. 79 B. Strauss, The Athenian Trireme School of Democracy, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 31326. 80 Dover sees philanthropy as a democratic value and democratic as the generous treatment of the ordinary individual (Greek Popular Morality, pp. 177, 201, 289). See Dorion, Xnophon, pp. 1201. Xenophon attributes philanthropy to the gods (Mem. IV 3.6,7), to Cyrus the Great (Cyr. I 2.1) and to the psphismata of the Assembly that were passed to win the support of the metics (Poroi 3.6). 81 Louis-Andr Dorion pointed out to me that Socrates here assists his friends further than even he recommended at Mem. II 7.1. Gray (Xenophons Mirror of Princes, pp. 30412) discusses the importance of the concept of according to ability mentioned here.
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expected of a patron, nor even the advice that might lead to this.82 Xenophons Socrates is different from Platos however, in that he does use his wisdom to assist the demos to secure material prosperity. He achieves this through his endorsement of political service to Aristippus and Charmides, and his endorsement of material prosperity as part of the eudaimonia that the demos achieves through such leadership (see III 2). Conclusion Xenophon and Socrates The undemocratic interpretation of Xenophons Socrates takes heart from the assumption that Xenophons life and works show that he was also undemocratic. Some comment is thus also needed on this impression.83 In fact, Xenophons own attitudes to democracy are even more democratic that those of his Socrates. If he learned these from Socrates, then his (adequately) democratic presentation of the master is accurate. If he developed them himself, then he may have made his master in his own image. Xenophon, for example, is said to have been disaffected from the Athenian democracy that exiled him and executed Socrates. Yet he gives the restored democracy that was responsible for both these events a good press, while painting a black picture of the oligarchy that preceded it (Hel. II 34). Within the oligarchy he has Critias show unrestrained violence against innocent people and execute his former friend Theramenes contrary even to the laws that he has made himself (II 3.956). He admires Theramenes self-control in the face of death (II 3.56) and has been credited with sympathy for his preferred constitution, which is based on enfranchising those who have the power to assist with horses and shields (II 3.48), but this occupies the broad ground between the two extremes of enfranchising slaves and those who through
Ober, Political Dissent, pp. 1757. See Luccioni, Les Ides. Diogenes Laertius (2.4859) offers a summary of Xenophons life, based especially on Anabasis (III 1.47; V 3.413; VII 7.57). The case for the undemocratic life is briefly: (a) the possibility that he was wealthy and served in the oligarchic cavalry; (b) his departure from Athens to pursue a friendship with the younger Cyrus of Persia, an enemy who had helped defeat Athens in the Peloponnesian War and a Persian prince who sought to become the King; (c) his subsequent exile by the democracy for this friendship and service under the Spartans, old enemies of Athens; (d) his establishment as their colonist at Scillus. It is admitted that he eventually returned from exile and was reconciled with the democracy, but this is seen as grudging, even though his son died fighting for the Athenians at the battle of Mantinea in 362 (Hel. VII 5.1925). Xenophons life could be presented with more sympathy however: (a) wealth was not automatically associated with oligarchic leanings; (b) he presents his decision to join Cyrus not as the result of disaffection from democracy, but as the rash decision of a young man who ignored Socrates prediction of the outcome (Ana. III 1.47); (c) he shows no bitterness about his exile; (d) he presents his early relationship with the Spartans as most insecure (Ana. IV 6.1416; VI 1.2629, 6.1216; VII 1.2531).
83 82
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poverty would sell the polis for a drachma and the tyranny of the very few. He writes only three speeches in his account in Hellenica of the civil war at Athens, all of them against the oligarchy and in favour of the democracy. Cleocritus, the herald of the mysteries, finds the oligarchs responsible for the breaking-down of the homonoia in the civil war that the citizens had enjoyed under democracy (II 4.2022). Thrasybulus delivers two speeches, one before the battle of Munychia to the democratic partisans, whom he calls warriors and citizens, even though they include missile men, peltasts, javelin throwers and stone throwers (II 4.12); these defeat the oligarchs and resist the Spartans (II 4.33). In the other speech he reminds the survivors of the oligarchy that they lack the justice, courage and wisdom of these poorer men (II 4.4042). He secures a reconciliation in which both parties adopt the old laws and swear oaths not to remember wrong; and in a rare narrative prolepsis, Xenophon commends the democrats of his own time too: they still live together now as citizens and the demos remains in its oaths (II 4.43). This good impression of the restored democracy continues when Thrasybulus repays the Thebans with greater favours than Athens has received (III 5.16), endorsing Socrates unwritten law about the importance of gratitude (Mem. IV 4.24) as well as Pericles praise of Athenian magnanimity (Thu. II 40.4). Xenophon praises him as a good man at his death (Hel. IV 8.31). In the end Xenophon presents Athens itself as made moderate through suffering and rising to match her mythical greatness as the champion of the oppressed (VI 3.1011, 5.3352). In Poroi, Xenophon adopts the role that Socrates assigned to those who do politics in the democracy. He says in his introduction that the leaders (prostatai) of the demos have claimed that they cannot feed the demos without unjustly exploiting the allies, but he will show how the politai can be fed from their own resources which he calls most just and how to remedy their unpopularity with their allies whom they currently exploit unjustly (1.1). He offers economic advice designed to do that: he associates prosperity with justice towards their imperial allies, thus confirming the connection between the material and moral aims of the royal art. The details of his reform show an impressive command of economic expertise that goes well beyond the ignorance of young Glaucon (discussed above), such as the advantages of their geography (1), measures to improve conditions for the metics to encourage them in commerce and trade (2.17), ways to encourage commerce and raise capital for trading ventures (3.114), and how to maximize profits from the Athenian silver mines (4). Peace according to Xenophon will preserve the Athenians prosperity and their empire more than war (5). The processes that Xenophon recommends to implement these evidently democratic reforms are also democratic ones, such as the philanthropic decrees he mentions (3.6). While he does not directly advise the Assembly, others could put the measures before them if these measures seem good to you to do (6.2).
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The result of Xenophons proposed reforms will be a prospering democracy in which the demos will be well-fed, and the rich will be spared the expense of war; and further, with a lot of surplus, we will conduct feasts even more magnificent than now, we will build temples, re-build walls and dockyards, give their ancestral due to priests and council, magistrates and cavalry (6.1). The distinctions between the demos, the rich and we indicate that the author identifies with a united Athenian polis, as an advisor with the interests of both classes at heart. Luccioni explained the democratic sympathies of Poroi as the result of a period in Xenophons life when he was seeking the favour of the democracy for his return from exile.84 This would mean that he also wrote Hipparchicus for the same reason, since he seeks to improve the standards of a cavalry commander in Athens, as is made clear in references to dikastera, boul and festivals of the Athenians (1.9, 13, 17; 3.1; 7.2). Democratic sympathies in Hellenica, which is dated to the same period, might be similarly explained away.85 Yet the argument risks wearing thin when too many works are involved. Cyropaedia shares some democratic features too. This work moreover creates a utopia in which Xenophon is almost entirely free to express his ideals. It is therefore significant that this work shows how the common man could achieve equality with a previously existing elite under the guidance of an expert practitioner of the royal art in Cyrus the Great, the Persian King.86 In Cyropaedia, Xenophon takes democratic thinking beyond the realities of democracy, in which the poor were never quite as equal as the rich, and he directly tackles the question of the way in which poverty ordinarily prevented the common man from having access to privilege and an education in the royal art. Xenophon credits the Persians with an education system that allows every citizen access, produces virtue and places a man among the elite: none is driven out by law from honours and offices, but it is open to all Persians to send their sons to the schools of justice (Cyr. I 2.15). However, in practice, those who are able to support their children without working send them, but those who have no means do not (II 3.7), and these end up making their living from farming or industry and supporting the elite. Pheraulas is one such man of the demos (II 1.15), the son of a farmer who could not afford to keep him at school for long because of his poverty (VIII 3.37). Yet Cyrus breaks with tradition when he promotes him to equality with the elite and makes him embody the democratic ideal of Thucydides Pericles (II 37.12) in which no-one is prevented by poverty from making a political contribution. He does so in order to create the warriors he needs to defend the land against its enemies. He
84 J. Luccioni, Xenophon et le Socratisme (Paris, 1953), pp. 1613. Poroi 5.89 dates this work to 355. For a more democratic reading, see Gauthier, Le Programme. 85 Hel. 6.4.37 dates this work to c.3575. 86 On the elevation of Pheraulas, see Gray, Xenophons Mirror of Princes, pp. 2838, 376; but cf. C. Nadon, Xenophons Prince (Berkeley, CA, 2001), pp. 6376, 1502.
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tells the commoners that their inequality is not the result of natural inferiority of mind or body, but merely of their poverty and their need to earn a living, and he makes them the military equals of his former peers when he supplies them with the same armour and training (Cyr. II 1.1419). Pheraulas, indeed, is said to have a body and a soul like that of a not ignoble warrior (II 1.15). Xenophon shows how Cyrus translated theoretical equality into hard reality in the training programmes that he develops to level inequalities (II 1.2031), and in the use of humour to break down class barriers (II 2). Pheraulas plays his part in continuing to break down these barriers through his own deferential character (VIII 3.58). He has philanthropy, like Cyrus, and practices that reciprocal friendship that secures the willing obedience essential to rule (I 6.2025); his success with the Sacian, to whom he gives over the management of his new-found wealth in order to pursue friendship, suggests that he has learned that part of the royal art (I 3.813; cf. VII 3.3749). Cyrus thus elevates the commoners from the sub-class of producers to a position of honour and power and wealth among the military and administrative elite. Instead of relying on the goods that the commoners once produced, the Equals now secure the willing obedience of other nations who produce the goods, and these goods now support the commoners as well as the peers the imperial vision of happiness. Pheraulas secures advancement because of the same usefulness that Socrates endorses as the main claim to honour and advancement (Mem. I 2.5155).87 The poverty that prevented the advancement of a commoner like Pheraulas was also the barrier to advancement in the democracy, but Thrasybulus had demonstrated that the poor had an equal contribution to make when he marshalled them alongside the hoplites to defeat the oligarchs in the civil war; they had been long-range fighters (Hel. II 4.12, 33) like the Persian commoners (Cyr. II 1.11). Xenophon explores the notion of equality even further when he has Pheraulas endorse equal opportunity for all in the new army, but equal outcomes only according to merit when he says that the individuals share of the profits should depend on the part that he played in securing them, since this will be an incentive to individual effort (II 3.715).88 There is a strong school of thought89 that seeks irony in Xenophons praise of monarchs, such as Hiero and Cyropaedia; but even such a reader admits of the portrayal of Pheraulas that
In all of classical literature it is difficult to find a more sympathetic portrait of the plight and potential of the exploited classes. That we should find it in the pages of a book written by an author whose views are routinely
See Gray, The Framing of Socrates, pp. 513. See F. Harvey, Two Kinds of Equality, Classica et Mediaevalia, 26 (1965), pp. 10146, at pp. 1267. 89 See W. Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian (New York, 1977); see also L. Strauss, On Tyranny (Ithaca, NY, 1963) and Nadon, Xenophons Prince.
88 87
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considered to be nothing more than an expression of oligarchic class prejudices only confirms the need to re-consider Xenophons reputation.90
The Athenians had practised democracy for over one hundred years before they executed Socrates, with the exception of only two short periods of oligarchy. The democratic currency is so strong in most forms of their discourse that it democratizes even archaic Athens, making Theseus himself the founder of democracy.91 So it is with Xenophons Socrates. Xenophon gives no complete whitewash of his Socrates, but makes him an adequate democrat within the terms of normal democratic ideology. Xenophons Socrates emerges as an unusual patron of the demos, teaching his associates to enrich the demos in ways that were material as well as moral and endorsing their political engagement for this purpose regardless of the risks. If he abused the demos in Assembly as Odysseus abused the commoners, he did so with the higher democratic interest of getting capable men to serve them. He admired the discipline of the demos and respected their mass judgments, even while hoping to improve them. He supported the unwritten laws and the laws that citizens agreed on, which he saw as compatible, but he also endorsed the processes that led to peaceful change of the written laws because he acknowledged their imperfections. He believed that obedience to any system of law was a good thing, but he did not obey instructions that contradicted the requirement of law to pursue justice. He opposed sortition, perhaps because it reduced respect for the laws as well as admitting those who had no expert knowledge, yet he saw dokimasia as a way of limiting the damage. He also sought to show wealthy individuals how to secure their own success through virtue, but some of the obligations they learned were service to the army, polis and demos. Xenophon seems to have written Poroi as a Socratic practitioner of those obligations.92 Vivienne J. Gray THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
Nadon, Xenophons Prince, p. 73 n.29. Loraux, LInvention dAthnes, pp. 1078, 2078 (citing Euripides, Suppliants, and Isocrates, Panathenaicus 1268). 92 Editors Note: Polis would like to express thanks to the editors of Les Etudes Philosophiques and its publisher (Presses Universitaires de France), for their permission to publish this revised English version of Professor Grays 2004 essay. Special thanks are due to Dustin Gish who has put in so much hard work in supervising this project and editing the article for press.
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XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY Vivienne J.

POLIS. Vol. 28. No. 1, 2011

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY Xenophons Socrates and Democracy

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

Cf. L.-A. Dorion, Xnophon: Mmorables (Paris, 2000).

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

V.J. GRAY VII Socrates and the Assembly

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHONS SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

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