Ancient Routes to Happiness. Acta Classica Supplementum VI. Pretoria: Classical Association of South Africa.

ANCIENT ROUTES TO HAPPINESS

Acta Classica Supplementum VI Classical Association of South Africa Klassieke Vereniging van Suid-Afrika

This publication was funded from the Research Fund of the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa.

All opinions expressed are those of the authors and are not to be ascribed to the Classical Association of South Africa or the Editor.

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ANCIENT ROUTES TO HAPPINESS

Edited by Philip Bosman

ACTA CLASSICA SUPPLEMENTUM VI CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH AFRICA KLASSIEKE VERENIGING VAN SUID-AFRIKA Pretoria 2017

EDITORIAL BOARD OF ACTA CLASSICA Editor Prof. J.L. Hilton, University of KwaZulu-Natal Chairperson of the Classical Association Mr Michael Lambert, University of Cape Town Editorial Secretary Prof. C. Chandler, University of Cape Town Treasurer Prof. P.R. Bosman, Stellenbosch University Supplementa Editor Prof. P.R. Bosman, Stellenbosch University Additional Members Prof. W.J. Henderson, University of Johannesburg Prof. D. Wardle, University of Cape Town

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Prof. David Konstan, Brown University, USA Prof. Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, UK Prof. Stephen Harrison, University of Oxford, UK Prof. Manfred Horstmanshoff, University of Leiden, The Netherlands Prof. Daniel Ogden, University of Exeter, UK Prof. John Scarborough, University of Wisconsin, USA Prof. Betine van Zyl Smit, University of Nottingham, UK

PATRON Justice D.H. van Zyl

HONORARY PRESIDENTS Prof. J.E. Atkinson Prof. L. Cilliers Assoc. Prof. J.-M. Claassen Prof. P.J. Conradie Prof. W.J. Henderson Prof. D.M. Kriel

HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENT Prof. F.P. Retief

CONTENTS PREFACE

vii

ELIZABETH IRWIN, Debating the Happiness of Periclean Athens: From Herodotus’ Solon to its Legacy in Aristotle 1 CLIVE CHANDLER, The Happiness of Sophocles’ Ajax

43

CHIARA THUMIGER, Grief and Cheerfulness in Early Greek Medical Writings

56

SUSAN PRINCE, Antisthenes and the Short Route to Happiness 74 SUSANNE SHARLAND, Horace on Happiness PAULINE ALLEN, Giving: Some Tips for Happiness from Late Antiquity

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120

PREVIOUS SUPPLEMENTS I

J.E. Atkinson, A Commentary on Q Curtius Rufus’ Historiae Alexandri Magni Books 5 to 7,2. Adolf Hakkert Publisher, Amster-dam 1994.

II

Louise Cilliers (ed.), Asklepios. Studies on Ancient Medicine. Classical Association of South Africa, Bloemfontein 2008.

III

Philip Bosman (ed.), Mania. Madness in the Greco-Roman World. Classical Association of South Africa, Pretoria 2009.

IV

Philip Bosman (ed.), Corruption & Integrity in Ancient Greece and Rome. Classical Association of South Africa, Pretoria 2012.

V

Philip Bosman (ed.), Alexander in Africa. Association of South Africa, Pretoria 2014.

Classical

PREFACE

Little can be said about happiness that would not somehow sound clichéd. Happiness itself, however, is no cliché. After two and a half thousand years, it would still contend for Aristotle’s ultimate end of human existence, though with a distinctly modern menu, or, to stay with the lifeas-a-journey metaphor, with altered routes and via-points. To be positive, resilient, comfortable with yourself, aware, altruistic and caring are some of the buzz words; nowadays steps to happiness are, typically, to exercise regularly, to eat healthily, to keep on learning, and to set yourself new life goals.1 Everyone has some idea of what happiness holds or means, obviously with various levels of sophistication and profundity. Small wonder, then, that the notion of happiness is frequently subjected to the rigours of scientific enquiry, with numerous institutes set up to get to the bottom of it all. These would, I assume, consider the cultural and temporal variables, as well as the physical, psychological, social, historical, and any other dimensions we can think of, with the aim to disseminate the greatest degree to the greatest number. As a result, happiness now comes in skill sets, and we can establish our relative chances by simply googling the position of our own country on the global happiness indices. It seems as if the methodologies of the happiness indices favour the prosperous, crossing out a shot at happiness not only for the majority of the world’s population, but also for most of humankind before the spread of consumerism. It must count as ironic that those same happiness experts would tell us that comparing one’s own happiness to that of others is a sure route in the opposite direction. Research on social media indicates that Facebooking constitutes an unhappiness trap for exactly this reason. And so, inevitably, the vocabulary of our digital age enters the happiness realm.

1

‘Steps to a happier you’ journalism abounds in the popular media; I relied for my list mainly on M. Williamson and V. King, 3 November 2014 at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/03/ten-easy-steps-thatwill-make-you-a-happier-person; see also ‘Happiness habits, backed by science’ at https://projecthappiness.com/science-of-happiness; both accessed 2/2/2017.

viii Scholarship on ancient routes to happiness, one would assume, has similar aims, namely to rediscover dimensions of being happy that might have got lost along the way, or to explain the happiness trends of current societies from their ancient roots. Early Christianity shied away from the Greek εὐδαιμονία in fear of the ‘good demon’ presumed to underlie the notion. The major constitutional impetus in modernity came from the ‘pursuit of happiness’ written into the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), and currently various African states have some reference to happiness in their constitutions. Its absence from public documents either means that happiness does not have legal status, or that the constitutional architects did not feel it warrants explicit mention in order to be a cultural driving force. It does not mean that some nations are incapable of or indifferent to happiness. Linguistically, the notion of happiness also places a number of conundrums on the table: how does happiness, for instance, relate to joy and luck (cf. Afrikaans ‘gelukkig’), to well-being and being well off? Does happiness bear any relationship – like emotional intelligence – to having a command not only over an array of words and concepts, but also over feelings and insight into the criteria, conditions and preconditions generally associated with happiness? How much of happiness is a state of being and how much a state of mind? Does it lie in the detached contemplation as Aristotle proposed, or in engaged virtuous acts, adrenaline-rushed action or chemically induced altered states of mind? How much of happiness happens to us while we ‘look elsewhere’, or should we, as Herodotus suggests, ‘look to the end’ before we judge ourselves happy or not? As can be expected, happiness as a topic in Greco-Roman culture has attracted due scholarly attention. The two most recent collaborative publications are from a research project at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Centre for Advanced Study on Ethics in Antiquity: ‘The quest for the good life’, a collection of articles in the 2011 issue of Symbolae Osloenses, which has a broad take on happiness in ancient literature and art, and a 2015 volume, with the registered project as title, focussing more

ix narrowly on happiness as dealt with by ancient philosophers.2 The current collection stems from a conference held in Pretoria in October 2012, sponsored by the University of South Africa with assistance from the South African National Research Foundation. It has more in common with the first Norwegian publication, as the conference aimed at exploring suggestions to a life of happiness broader than philosophical reflections. Fresh angles on Herodotus and Aristotle add to the existing literature as much as the perspectives from the Hippocratic corpus, Latin poetry and Late Antique Christianity. In the first article, Elizabeth Irwin engages with the usual suspects of ancient happiness discourses, namely Herodotus and Aristotle, though with a twist. Herodotus’ staging of a discussion between the Athenian sage Solon and the legendary wealthy Croesus counts among the classic scenes in world literature. Irwin reads the text not as a remnant of archaic thinking on hybris, but as reflecting on contemporary Athenian ideology and the penchant at the time of imperial power to equate εὐδαιμονία with material prosperity. Solon’s advice to ‘look to the end of every matter’ is prophetic (ex eventu?) of the outcome of the war with Sparta, warning the Athenians not to stake their happiness on the wealth derived from their ἀρχή. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Irwin goes on to argue, Aristotle errs in uncritically setting the imperial definition of εὐδαιμονία at the centre of his own deliberation. It is of little consequence that he presents a cleanedup version of Periclean ideology, as the conclusions drawn from his erroneous point of departure are as flawed and as prone to error as those of Croesus and imperial Athens. Consequently, the ‘sophist’ Herodotus’ warning remains as valid to Aristotle’s definition as it was when directed by his Solon against Croesus. The τέλος is actually one’s own τελεύτη. Clive Chandler also highlights some peculiarities of Aristotle’s definition that render problematic a simple equation of εὐδαιμονία and our 2

Rabbås, Ø., Emilsson, E.K., Fossheim, H. and Tuominen, M. (edd.) 2015. The Quest for Happiness. Ancient Philosophers on Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

x ‘happiness’. He poses the question of how valid the ancients held subjective experience by investigating the scenario presented by Attic tragedy’s madmen, Ajax and Heracles, when they derive pleasure from the atrocities they commit. As Chandler notes, their actions as perceived by themselves are not the issue, as these are in line with the heroic code. The problem lies solely in the fact that the perceivers are under the spell of divine delusion, causing their actions to be misdirected. But Aristotle would sternly reject such a version of happiness as too subjective to pass muster. In his definition, various categories of persons (like children, for instance) are, – on objective grounds, – excluded from εὐδαιμονία. The mere fact of the wrath of the gods against Ajax and Heracles already discounts them too, as do their misfiring cognitive faculties, no matter the elation they experience. In the classical definition represented by Aristotle, peer evaluation is crucial and we cannot, in the final event, judge for ourselves whether we are happy or not. An ancient route less travelled is Chiara Thumiger’s investigation of the Corpus Hippocraticum, representing layers in medical literature before the deliberate fusion of medicine and philosophy in the post-Hellenistic era. Thumiger finds that the Hippocratic writers objectify happiness even more than Aristotle, working with an observable conception which is linked, primarily, to correct bodily functioning and best translated as ‘flourishing’. Happiness as an inner state is absent from the case histories of the doctors: they are rather more interested in well-being and cheerfulness, to which balance, the correct regimen and harmony with the external environment are paramount factors. This, of course, does not mean that the Hippocratic authors are not interested in mental conditions: drawing no distinction between body and mind, they are as aware of δυσθυμία and δυσφορία as of any disease with physical symptoms, and εὐθυμία is as crucial to the desired state of ὑγίεια as any somatic condition. The vocabulary set introduced by the ancient doctors has had a lasting effect on subsequent happiness discourses. Dead on target for the collection title, Susan Prince tackles the tradition of the Cynic shortcut (σύντομος ὁδός) to happiness. Imperial Cynic

xi literature often ascribes it to Antisthenes, who put Diogenes before the choice of either a long and gentle or a short but rigorous route, both to the same destination. The Antisthenean choice again displays parallels with Prodicus’ story of Heracles at the crossroads, as told in Xenophon’s Memorabilia by Socrates. Antisthenes was keenly interested in the figure of Heracles, who also subsequently became the Cynic champion. The relationship between the narratives is complex, however, as the road of Virtue in Prodicus’ story is both long and hard (as opposed to the short, easy road to Vice), and the choice implies two separate destinations. Prince proposes the relationship to be polemical, which highlights the significance of the implied destination of the Cynic σύντομος ὁδός. It should be understood as leading to Antisthenes’ view of happiness which, in Xenophon’s Symposium, implies leisure and contemplation – in essence not far removed from Plato and Aristotle’s contemplative life as the happiest form of existence. Further core ingredients of Antisthenes’ happiness are the subjective perception of externals and the knack of making do with what is at hand. Evidently, happiness now becomes the less objective notion further developed in the Hellenistic schools. Prince notes that an Antisthenean understanding of the σύντομος ὁδός may also relate to his views on education, and finally to his views on language and discourse as revealing truth directly from life and literature, not needing systematic philosophy’s theory and logic. The Cynics, in particular, put this into practice. The ‘happiness guru of antiquity’, as Suzanne Sharland calls Horace for his prominence in popular references, serves as our collection’s exponent of Latin poetry. Sharland argues that the aphorisms regularly quoted from Horace fail to reflect his complex textual strategies, which entail more than meets the eye. The question is not simply about the meaning of what he says, but also whether we are meant to accept that as his view. In the epodes, his poetic voices often long for idealised settings as escapes from their dire current circumstances, but they would rarely trade their lives under normal conditions. The odes are more revealing of Horace’s Epicurean sentiments, emphasising the brutal brevity of life and urging his readers to enjoy what, while and when they can, albeit tempered by

xii modesty, tranquillity and leisure. Careful reading reveals that Horace does not give his counsels as truisms, but directs them to very specific individuals inclined to be trapped by political ambition and the pursuit of wealth. Beneath the surface of the Horatian oeuvre, the reader should always suspect a ludic Horace lurking. Much more straightforward and practical, representing a different social level from vastly different times, and introducing yet another vocabulary set, is Pauline Allen’s discussion of Christian erotapokriseis (question-andanswer literature) from the 6th and 7th centuries AD. These personal correspondences allow glimpses of the issues pressing on real ‘little’ people concerned with aligning their lives with their faith. One such issue is almsgiving as a means of ensuring eternal bliss. Here happiness as a blessed state shifts to the hereafter, and the focus to what needs to be accomplished in this life in order to achieve an eternal reward. The religious authorities offering their advice typically denounce excess, vainglory and visible acts of charity, especially when not meeting the requirement of love. At the bottom of these concerns lies the issue of how happiness relates to wealth and whether the two are ever compatible – a theme we have seen running from Herodotus through to the Socratics to the gospels, and which has remained problematic ever since. But the Christian wise men also put great score on inner disposition in acts of charity, to the extent that the humble rich are more highly valued than the proud poor – an aspect of happiness we have noticed to be underemphasised in Aristotle and totally absent from the Hippocratic authors. The widely divergent treatments of ancient routes to happiness in this collection seem all capable of being positioned on a set of recurring coordinates. These include, inter alia, whether happiness is a condition to be established on objective criteria and subject to the verdict of our peers, or whether it can be made ‘up to us’ by dismissing reliance on externals such as wealth, recognition and health. Other coordinates are whether happiness needs theory and reflection or simply derives from life itself, and whether it is ever to be realised in this life or not. No doubt such issues will continue to feature as long as complete happiness evades us.

xiii I should like to conclude this preface by briefly calling to memory a remarkable scholar who attended the 2012 conference. John Moles gave two excellent papers and contributed significantly to the level of discussion, both during and after conference hours. It is with regret that we had to continue with this publication without his contribution. He will be missed. Philip Bosman Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch

DEBATING THE HAPPINESS OF PERICLEAN ATHENS: FROM HERODOTUS’ SOLON TO ITS LEGACY IN ARISTOTLE Elizabeth Irwin Columbia University and Unisa (Academic Associate) Introduction In the first book of his Rhetoric, Aristotle selects εὐδαιμονία as the case study to illustrate how to handle those most important topics (τὰ μέγιστα) about which a deliberative orator must be well informed (1360a38-b3), and provides as a preliminary to his discussion a comprehensive working definition (1360b4-1362a12) of the concept. Εὐδαιμονία figures even more importantly in the Nicomachean Ethics: there Aristotle identifies εὐδαιμονία as the supreme good and the aim of politics, and consequently makes its definition a priority of the text (EN 1095a14-1096a10, 1098b91099b9). Aristotle’s choice to foreground and define εὐδαιμονία as starting points of his seminal works is, I will argue, neither accidental nor entirely transparent: in doing so, he demonstrates the abiding persistence of a debate of critical importance among his predecessors. Aristotle himself suggests the need to look back to an earlier period when at the end of Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics (1100a10-1101a21) he gives prominence to addressing the view of human εὐδαιμονία expressed by Herodotus’ Solon. Positioning Solon as if a last – and ultimately inconsequential – obstacle to establishing his conception of εὐδαιμονία as the τέλος of human life, Aristotle dismisses the conception of human happiness epitomised in Solon’s injunctions to ‘count no man happy until he is dead’ and to ‘look to the end’ before rendering a verdict on man’s life. And yet, the sheer amount of time Aristotle spends in his attempt to undermine Solon’s view of human εὐδαιμονία, which he calls ἄτοπον (‘strange’), as well as the quality of his arguments, belie his easy dismissal of the wise man. This article examines why Solon’s discourse on human εὐδαιμονίη1 occupies the prominence that it does in the texts of both 1

For the sake of stressing the differing – and competing – definitions of this term, I will use εὐδαιμονίη when speaking of Herodotus’ account and εὐδαιμονία when speaking of its use in fifth-century Athens and by Aristotle.

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Herodotus and Aristotle. The answer will be found to lie in each author’s engagement with the political ideology of late fifth-century Athens. I begin this examination with Herodotus’ Solon, providing an analysis of Herodotus’ λόγος that demonstrates its intense engagement with its contemporary intellectual and political context. I will show how Herodotus’ Solon must be seen as belonging to an intellectual debate of his times regarding the proper definition of happiness, and that this debate arose as a consequence of the prosperity – or what some chose to represent as εὐδαιμονία – Athens derived from her ἀρχή. In Parts 1 and 2, I argue that behind its traditional sheen, Herodotus’ λόγος represents a sophisticated engagement with contemporary philosophical – and ethical – debates regarding the definition of εὐδαιμονία, as well as a critique of that definition most popular in Athens and promulgated by Pericles. From there, I go on in Part 3 to show how an appreciation of the philosophy behind Herodotus’ λόγος helps one to recognise the degree to which Aristotle in his own definition of εὐδαιμονία has assimilated the ideology and values of Periclean Athens. I suggest that identifying the historical antecedents of the ideology underlying Aristotle’s account might alert one to the potential dangers of accepting an account of happiness built upon foundations that proved in the case of imperial Athens – that is, if one ‘looks to the end’, as Herodotus’ Solon admonishes – to have been so flawed. 1. Herodotus’ Solon It is a commonplace, though one justified, to recognise Solon’s encounter with Croesus as programmatic for the entire Histories. Readers have been waiting for Croesus to appear since the sixth chapter of Book 1 when our narrator defined Croesus’ enslavement of the Ionian Greeks as the first wrong act done by the barbarians to the Greeks. Moreover, the echo of Herodotus’ proem in Solon’s admonition about the precariousness of ‘human happiness/good fortune’ (ἡ ἀνθρωπηίη
εὐδαιμονίη) has caused readers from antiquity onwards to see Solon as a double for the narrator of the Histories themselves, and it is for this reason, as well as owing to the problematic chronology of the meeting, that the veracity of the encounter has been doubted already in antiquity.2 Despite the questionable status of 2

See Plut. De Herod. 857f-858a for the view of Herodotus as ‘forcing on Solon what he himself thinks’, which is, albeit usually more positively formulated, the consensus of modern scholarship. On the impossible synchronism of Solon and

3 this story as history, modern readers tend to see the encounter in terms that stress its ‘archaic’ wisdom.3 The dramatic date of the encounter, Lydia of the mid-sixth century, coupled with Herodotus’ Homeric style of narration, and the strong presence of elements from Solon’s poetry, have masked all too well the strong contemporary resonances of the story in relation to the political climate of Athens. One prominent exception has been Moles 1996,4 to which this discussion owes much, but here my focus will be on the λόγος’s engagement with contemporary philosophical debates – although the political will never be far away – and with the legacy of debates of this kind as reflected in the ethics of Aristotle. To begin, one must recognise the contemporary sheen that Herodotus has chosen to give to his Solon. Herodotus introduces his Solon as a ‘sophist’ par excellence: arriving in Sardis at the acme of its prosperity, he gains an audience with a figure possessing a great ἀρχή owing to his own reputation for ‘loving wisdom’ or ‘practicing philosophy’ (ϕιλοσοϕέων) which, according to Croesus, has preceded him.5 The use of both terms for Solon, σοφιστής and ϕιλοσοϕέων, are certainly anachronistic: neither word belongs to a sixth-century context. Both are, however, well applied if the narrator’s aim is to draw attention to the similarity between Lydia of the 6th century and Athens of the 5th. The ‘intellectual scene’ in Lydia, as Herodotus describes it, evokes that of Athens at the acme of Athens’ prosperity, a destination for sophists who received ξενία from the wealthiest and most powerful Athenians owing to their reputations for Croesus as a challenge (dismissed by Plutarch) to the veracity of the λόγος, see his Solon 27. On the subject, see e.g. Asheri 2007:99. 3 See e.g. Macleod 1983:151-52 (‘Solon and archaic thought’), or Flory 1987 for Herodotus’ ‘archaic smile’. 4 See now also Irwin 2013. Others have, of course, more generally discussed Herodotus’ engagement with contemporary Athens: see Moles 2002 for bibliography. 5 Hdt. 1.29.1: ‘There came to Sardis, then at the height of its wealth (ἀκμαζούσας πλούτῳ), all the wise men of Hellas who chanced to be alive at that time (ἄλλοι τε οἱ πάντες ἐκ τῆς ‘Ελλάδος σοϕισταί), brought thither severally by various occasions; and of them one was Solon the Athenian (καὶ δὴ καὶ Σόλων ἀνὴρ ‘Αθηναῖος) …’ Translations of Herodotus will be throughout those of Macaulay 1890 with some modification. Hdt. 1.29.2: Ξεῖνε ‘Αθηναῖε, παρ’ ἡμέας γὰρ περὶ σέο λόγος ἀπῖκται πολλὸς καὶ σοϕίης [εἵνεκεν] τῆς σῆς καὶ πλάνης, ὡς ϕιλοσοϕέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εἵνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας (‘Athenian guest, much report of thee has come to us, both in regard to thy wisdom and thy wanderings, how that in thy search for wisdom thou hast traversed many lands to see them.’)

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being σοφοί.6 Indeed, not only has Herodotus forged analogies between the setting of his λόγος and the contemporary setting in which his own text might be heard or read, but, as widely recognised in the scholarship, there is the strong analogy between one of the λόγος’s protagonists and Herodotus himself: Solon’s words about the fragility of human good fortune so conspicuously echo Herodotus’ own as even to draw the censure of an ancient reader such as Plutarch. One should, however, note that this need not render Herodotus’ outlook ‘archaic’, as is so often the verdict. Rather the pull may be felt to come equally from the opposite direction: that is, Herodotus may be using his Solon to argue for a universal truth, still no less valid in his own day. This reading of a contemporary Herodotus using a Solon whose words are far from dated is not simply a possibility, but indeed compelling, once one realises that in the very act of calling Solon a sophist, our narrator has transformed himself into a sophist: Herodotus’ choice of a modernising label resonates with the Platonic portrayal of the views of the sophist Protagoras who was apparently famous for arguing that early poets were actually sophists in disguise. In Plato’s Prot. 316d-17c, Protagoras claims: Now I tell you that sophistry (τὴν σοφιστικὴν τέχνην) is an ancient art (παλαιάν), and those men of ancient times (τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνδρῶν) who practised it, fearing the odium (φοβουμένους τὸ ἐπαχθὲς αὐτῆς) it involved, disguised it in a decent dress, sometimes of poetry, as in the case of Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides … All these, as I say, from fear of ill-will (φοβηθέντες τὸν φθόνον) made use of these arts as outer coverings … I have come by an entirely opposite road than these and I admit that I am a sophist (ὁμολογῶ τε σοφιστὴς εἶναι) and that I educate men; and I consider this precaution, of admitting rather than denying (τὸ ὁμολογεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ ἔξαρνον εἶναι), the better of the two. (Loeb tr. Lamb 1924)

In short, in the very act of adopting the sophist’s unmasking of the wise men of old as sophists, Herodotus himself becomes a sophist, and in rendering himself so, he becomes all the more closely aligned to that figure of his λόγος whom he has chosen to call a ‘sophist’. The analogy constructed between narrator and his character has consequences for understanding the target audience of Herodotus’ Solon: when the sophist 6

Callias, son of Hipponicus, is of course the most famous: see e.g. Pl. Prot., [Pl.] Axiochus.

5 Solon, constructed in the image of his narrator – himself a sophist – speaks to the Lydian king, possessor of a great ἀρχή who defines wealth as ‘happiness’, this is also the sophist Herodotus speaking to those in his audience who might employ the same erroneous definition as Croesus. They are likely to be those living in an ἀρχή at the height of its prosperity and, as such, a centre for travelling sophists. Before, however, addressing that audience, I want to look at the degree to which Solon lives up to his introduction as a sophist, or as Croesus more flatteringly describes him, one who ‘practices philosophy’. The answers that Solon gives to Croesus’ inquiry, ‘who is the ὀλβιώτατος?’,7 mark him truly as a ϕιλοσοϕέων. In defying the answer expected by Croesus, Solon can be understood as attempting to lead Croesus to recognise the errors of his beliefs, particularly those that pertain to himself. Quite simply, he suffers from the affliction portrayed as belonging to so many of Socrates’ interlocutors: he thinks he is something that he is not, in this case ὄλβιος, and this misapprehension of himself is based on an error in definition predicated upon misplaced value. Seen as the instruction of Croesus, the interaction is comparable to a Socratic dialogue: while Solon disabuses Croesus of his mistaken notion, Herodotus of course disabuses those readers for whom the εὐδαιμονία of Croesus was proverbial and who shared a definition of happiness that placed supreme value on the accumulation of wealth and its power. Again the Apology with its portrayal of the Athenians’ over-valuation of wealth proves useful in providing one likely audience for this lesson.8 We could call the whole encounter Philosophy 101 for Croesus. When Solon answers, ‘Tellus’, Croesus experiences ‘wonder’ (ἀποθωμάσας δὲ Κροῖσος τὸ λεχθὲν), and is intent on knowing (εἴρετο ἐπιστρεϕέως) the criteria that make Tellus ‘most blessed’ (κοίῃ δὴ κρίνεις Τέλλον εἶναι ὀλβιώτατον).9 ‘Wonder’ is, as both Plato and Aristotle note, the ‘beginning of philosophy’,10 and correspondingly Herodotus makes explicit that 7

Hdt. 1.30.2: νῦν ὦν ἐπειρέσθαι σε ἵμερος ἐπῆλθέ μοι εἴ τινα ἤδη πάντων εἶδες ὀλβιώτατον (‘Now therefore a desire has come upon me to ask thee whether thou hast seen any whom thou deemest to be of all men most blessed.’) 8 Pl. Apol. 29d7-e4. Another appropriate text in this discussion is the Platonic Eryxias staged on the eve of the Sicilian expedition, in which the agreed view of εὐδαιμονία as the most valuable thing for a man (393e5-6) is attended by an interrogation of the relative value of wealth and (absolute value of) wisdom. 9 Hdt. 1.30.4. 10 Pl. Theaet. 155d: μάλα γὰρ ϕιλοσόϕου τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, τὸ θαυμάζειν· οὐ γὰρ

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Solon’s intention in answering as he did was to ‘urge’ Croesus on (1.31.1): ὡς δὲ τὰ κατὰ τὸν Τέλλον προετρέψατο ὁ Σόλων τὸν Κροῖσον εἴπας πολλά τε καὶ ὄλβια (‘So when Solon had moved Croesus to inquire further by the story of Tellos, recounting how many points of happiness he had.’) A rare word in Herodotus, the verb προετρέψατο is strongly associated with sophists and philosophers: πρότρεψις is the name given to the ἐπίδειξις used by these figures to gain adherents, an exhortation to potential students to concern themselves with the attainment of wisdom and virtue to be found under their tutelage. 11 Solon chooses his examples by design in order to entice his interlocutor to pursue the wisdom he purports to offer. Indeed, Solon’s πρότρεψις begins to work: Croesus is moved to seek further answers, albeit still hoping to have his happiness recognised as such, even if second best. Pressed again for an answer, Solon seems to utter something paradoxical in replying that the ‘happiest’ are a pair of young men, Cleobis and Biton, who died in their prime (1.31.3): Ταῦτα δέ σϕι ποιήσασι καὶ ὀϕθεῖσι ὑπὸ τῆς πανηγύριος τελευτὴ τοῦ βίου ἀρίστη ἐπεγένετο, διέδεξέ τε ἐν τούτοισι ὁ θεὸς ὡς ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν. Then after they had done this and had been seen by the assembled crowd, there came to their life a most excellent ending; and in this the deity declared that it was better for man to die than to continue to live.

Taken together, Solon’s answers function as a riddle: one is induced to wonder what understanding of human happiness underlies his choices, on the one hand, to select as superlatively happy such diametrically opposed examples as a man who dies a citizen’s death in battle at the end of a long life and youths who die prematurely in their sleep after a great display of strength and piety and, on the other, to refuse to recognise as happiness ἄλλη ἀρχὴ ϕιλοσοϕίας ἢ αὕτη (‘For indeed this affliction, wonder, is that of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this’); see also Arist. Metaph. 982b. 11 Herodotus uses this verb only twice in the entire Histories: here and at 9.90.2 (only here in the middle). See e.g. Pl. Euthyd. 278d2: τὸ δὲ δὴ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐπιδείξατον προτρέποντε τὸ μειράκιον ὅπως χρὴ 
σοϕίας τε καὶ ἀρετῆς ἐπιμεληθῆναι (‘And next, after this, you have to give us a display of exhorting the youth that he ought to concern himself with wisdom and virtue.’)

7 that which Croesus believes himself to possess beyond all others. 12 Indeed, a baffled Croesus is provoked to bite, asking just what value Solon ascribes to his εὐδαιμονίη that he would place these private individuals before him. Solon’s protreptic has worked: at this point, Solon will provide the explanation, an ἀπόδειξις that demonstrates human εὐδαιμονίη to be nothing, precarious in the extreme, and only possible to be recognised as such upon a man’s death. In the use of particular figures to lead an interlocutor to a more general point, one might well compare the answer to Chaerephon’s question, ‘Is anyone wiser than Socrates?’, in which Socrates claims his name was used to demonstrate that human wisdom is little or nothing. According to the god (at least as Socrates interprets the oracle), he, no less than Tellus, Cleobis and Biton, was intended to stand as a foil for those thinking to possess something that they do not (Pl. Apol. 23a-b): But the fact is, gentlemen, it is likely that the god is really wise and by his oracle means this: ‘Human wisdom is of little or no value (ἡ ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία ὀλίγου τινὸς ἀξία ἐστὶν καὶ οὐδενός).’ And it appears that he does not really say this of Socrates, but merely uses my name, and makes me an example (καὶ φαίνεται τοῦτον λέγειν τὸν Σωκράτη, προσκεχρῆσθαι δὲ τῷ ἐμῷ ὀνόματι, ἐμὲ παράδειγμα ποιούμενος), as if he were to say: ‘This one of you, o human beings, is wisest, who, like Socrates, recognizes that he is in truth of no account in respect to wisdom.’ (Loeb tr. Fowler 1914)

Socrates’ claim about the god offers two points of comparison with Herodotus’ story. On the one hand, as Socrates claims of himself, Solon claims that the individuals, Cleobis and Biton, serve as the god’s παράδειγμα about the value of human life – in the former case, human achievement in the form of wisdom; in the latter, simply human life itself. On the other hand, at the same time as Herodotus presents Solon offering this pessimistic lesson on human existence, he is concomitantly constructing the narrative in which Croesus, legendary for his superlative wealth, functions as a παράδειγμα of how another thing that some humans 12

See the brilliant discussion of Lloyd 1987 on how implicit and latent in Solon’s choices of Tellus on the one hand, and Cleobis and Biton on the other, is the paradox Aristotle identifies in EN 1100a10-1100b7: the case of the Argive sons argues that only the dead are happy, while that of Tellus that only the dead can safely be called happy. I return to Aristotle’s discussion of Solon below in Part 3.

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value above all, material wealth, labelled by some εὐδαιμονίη, is worth little or nothing. Indeed, beyond the simple analogy that the two Argives help to construct between Herodotus’ λόγος and these more explicitly philosophic texts, Cleobis and Biton might have further contemporary resonances in the circles of the fifth-century sophists. The Platonic Axiochus, a dialogue about death whose dramatic date is 406 BC (368d6369a2), purports to recall the ἐπίδειξις that Prodicus gave recently in the house of the wealthy Callias in which he argued that it is better to be dead than alive.13 The view is, of course, a traditional one, as Prodicus’ ἐπίδειξις is presented as itself noting (367d-368a7), but the dialogue purports that this view had specific currency in the later 5th century (365b3-66).14 Significant for this discussion is the fact that Socrates’ rendition of Prodicus’ ἐπίδειξις actually adduces the story of Cleobis and Biton to prove the same point about the gods’ perspective on human life (367c-d): And that is why the gods, who understand human affairs, quickly release from life those whom they consider of greatest worth. For example, Agamedes and Trophonius, who built the sacred precinct of the god at Pytho, after praying that the best might happen to them, fell asleep and never awakened again. There are also the sons of the Argive priestess whose mother prayed for them in the same way that they might receive from Hera some reward for their filial piety, for when the team of mules was late, the sons yoked themselves to the cart and took her to the temple. And that night after their mother’s prayer they passed away. (tr. Hershbell 1981)

While the late date traditionally assumed for the Axiochus could suggest that the writer of the Axiochus here borrows from Herodotus,15 we have 13

[Pl.] Axiochus 366c: ‘My remarks are the echoes of the wise Prodicus (Προδίκου ἐστὶν τοῦ σοϕοῦ ἀπηχήματα) … just the other day he gave an ἐπίδειξις at the house of Kallias son of Hipponicus, and said so much against living that I came within a hair’s breadth of writing off life altogether. And ever since, Axiochus, my soul has longed for death’ (tr. Hershbell 1981). 14 The particular salience c. 406 BC seems also apparent in Soph. OC 1224-38, which is remarkably consonant with what Socrates claims to recall from Prodicus’ recent ἐπίδειξις (366d1-367b7). For a historical reading of the themes of this dialogue, see Irwin 2015. 15 For this view of the text, see e.g. the works cited in Joyal 2005:97 n. 2.

9 no basis for ruling out the possibility that both texts allude to the same source: in such a scenario, Herodotus would be understood as making the character he calls a sophist repeat, as Socrates does, the ‘echoes’ of the sophist Prodicus. Regardless, however, of whether the Cleobis and Biton story belonged to Prodicus’ repetoire, it remains the case that this story finds itself at home in a portrayal of an ἐπίδειξις such as those purported to have taken place in late fifth-century Athens. Croesus wants to know the basis of Solon’s evaluation, and Solon obliges. First, he provides an ἀπόδειξις of mathematical ἀκρίβεια – a proof, if you will – to show how fragile man’s happiness truly is: given this creature of the day is dependent on almost 30 000 days going well, a verdict of happy can, at best, be only provisional until a man is dead.16 Solon’s calculation of the days of man’s life in order to prove a paradoxical point provides yet another reminiscence of Plato’s Apology in which Socrates asks the jurors to reckon the days of man’s life as part of a demonstration that death is, in fact, – contrary to popular belief – a ‘good thing’ (ἀγαθόν).17 Next, he produces a detailed list of criteria belonging to the fortunate man (1.32.6): ‘sound of limb (ἄπηρος), free from disease (ἄνουσος), untouched by suffering (ἀπαθὴς κακῶν), the father of fair children (εὔπαις) and himself of comely form (εὐειδής)’, that displays clear generic affinity to such lists as will appear in Aristotle when defining εὐδαιμονία, but of a certainty must precede him given the Rhetoric’s claim to be taking εὐδαιμονία as a stock example of things discussed in deliberative oratory (Rhet. 1360b3-4, tr. Freese 1926): εἰ δή ἐστιν ἡ εὐδαιμονία τοιοῦτον, ἀνάγκη αὐτῆς εἶναι μέρη εὐγένειαν, πολυϕιλίαν, χρηστοϕιλίαν, πλοῦτον, εὐτεκνίαν, πολυτεκνίαν, εὐγηρίαν· ἔτι τὰς τοῦ σώματος ἀρετάς (οἷον ὑγίειαν, κάλλος, ἰσχύν, μέγεθος, δύναμιν ἀγωνιστικήν), δόξαν, τιμήν, εὐτυχίαν, ἀρετήν· If, then, such is the nature of happiness, its component parts must necessarily be:
noble birth, numerous friends, good friends, wealth, 16

The calendrical reckoning is relevant, c. 432 BC, when Athenians seem to have adopted the solar calendar for the Council (on which see Dunn 1998 and 1999) and installed a heliotrope within the walls of the Pnyx (Scholia to Aristoph. Av. 997), an act which must have required similar ἀπόδειξις justifying the decision based on greater accuracy: see Irwin 2013:269-72 for discussion and bibliography. 17 40c4-e4; note the terms used there for the numerical reckoning of the days (ἐκλεξάμενον, εὐαριθμήτους).

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Of course, here Solon speaks about the εὐτυχής – not the ὄλβιος or the εὐδαίμων, until he ends his life well – but this fine distinction between terms is precisely that which places him once again in a contemporary intellectual context. When Solon argues that a man having had all the aforementioned goods has also then to die well in order to be considered ὄλβιος, being before death at best only εὐτυχής,19 and repeats in conclusion that such a man ‘justly/rightly’ bears the name (ὄνομα) ὄλβιος,20 he echoes again such concerns at home in the teachings of Prodicus, a figure famous for his concern with the correct use of ‘names’ (ὀνόματα), and for having had a following,21 counted among whom were Socratics like Xenophon and Antisthenes.22 One might well compare a quotation of the latter (fr. 177 = DL 6.5) to see how closely Solon’s definition of happiness finds parallels among discussions taking place in the intellectual circles of late-fifth century Athens: ‘Being asked what was the 18

See also EN 1099b2-1099b8 for an enumeration of the external goods that happiness requires: ‘good birth, good children, beauty, living children’. In fact, this list of prerequisites for happiness explains, as Aristotle will comment, why some people use the term εὐτυχία in place of εὐδαιμονία (1099b7-8), which is, of course, what Solon proposes to do. The close relationship of the two was also visually depicted in personifications on Attic vases: see Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81948 in which Eutuchia is depicted as if a handmaid holding a mirror up to Eudaimonia; see Smith 2011:62, 158; fig. 5.11. 19 1.32.7: εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσει τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητέεις, ὄλβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιός ἐστι· πρὶν δ’ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄλβιον, ἀλλ’ εὐτυχέα (‘And if in addition to this he shall end his life well, he is worthy to be called that which thou seekest, namely a happy man; but before he comes to his end it is well to hold back and not to call him yet happy but only fortunate’). 20 1.32.9: ὃς δ’ ἂν αὐτῶν πλεῖστα ἔχων διατελέῃ καὶ ἔπειτα τελευτήσῃ εὐχαρίστως τὸν βίον, οὗτος παρ’ ἐμοὶ τὸ οὔνομα τοῦτο, ὦ βασιλεῦ, δίκαιός ἐστι ϕέρεσθαι (‘But whosoever of men continues to the end in possession of the greatest number of these things and then has a gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted worthy, O king, to receive this name’). 21 On Prodicus’ interest in language, see De Romilly 1986; for the sources, see Mayhew 2011:16-38. 22 Xen. Symp. 4.62; Philostr. VS 1.12.496 (= Mayhew 2011 no. 10) and Lib. Decl. 2.16 (= Mayhew 2011 no. 11).

11 height of human bliss (τί μακαριώτατον ἐν ἀνθρώποις), he replied, “To die having good fortune” (τὸ εὐτυχοῦντα ἀποθανεῖν).’ It is to such discussions that I now turn. 2. Debating εὐδαιμονία at Athens Herodotus’ choice to construct a parallel between himself and Solon has consequences – certainly intended – for the relationship of this λόγος to his readers. When Solon the sophist or, as described by his host, a ‘practitioner of philosophy’, challenges Croesus’ understanding of εὐδαιμονίη as wealth, his words serve likewise to challenge those of Herodotus’ audiences – contemporary and future – who employ that definition which the ἀπόδειξις of Solon/Herodotus demonstrates to be so misguided. As we have already begun to suggest, this challenge would have had particular salience for one audience among Herodotus’ contemporaries who, like Croesus, possessed a φόρος-bearing ἀρχή.23 Numerous sources of the 5th and 4th centuries point to εὐδαιμονία as the term used by Athenians of the prosperity afforded to them by their ἀρχή, an εὐδαιμονία built upon the same source as Croesus’ ἀρχή, namely tribute (φόρος) from Ionian Greeks.24 Isocrates asks, ‘… in their war against the Persians, who does not know from what circumstances [the Athenians] landed themselves in such great εὐδαιμονία (εἰς ὅσην εὐδαιμονίαν κατέστησαν)?’,25 and tells of how the Athenians paraded the incoming tribute on the stage of the theatre of Dionysus, calling the city εὐδαίμων as they did so.26 It is not clear when exactly this usage began, although below I offer some thoughts on how and why it proliferated, but one finds this usage reflected in Pericles’ famous resources speech, spoken on the eve of the Atheno-Peloponnesian War when he adduced Athens’ professed εὐδαιμονία, the guarantor of easy victory, to goad the Athenians on to war. Cataloguing the wealth already amassed on the acropolis and what could be expected in tribute each year, Pericles is said to have demonstrated how ‘by reason of the long peace the manner of life of the citizens had made 23

It is extremely likely that Plutarch saw this when he represents Solon’s rejection of gold and silver as an ἀναμέτρησις of happiness, as disregarding the value of ἀρχή and δύναμις (Solon 27) – glosses which are buzz-words of the late 5th century. 24 Hdt. 1.6.2, repeated as the preface to our story, 1.26.3-27.1: see Moles 1996:261. 25 Isocr. 6.42. 26 Isocr. 8.82.

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great strides toward εὐδαιμονία’ (τούς τε τῶν πολιτῶν βίους διὰ τὴν πολυχρόνιον εἰρήνην πολλὴν ἐπίδοσιν εἰληφέναι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν).’27 Such is the meaning of εὐδαιμονία which Thucydides will employ. One salient example is in his assessment of the δύναμις of the Thracians where, after cataloguing their material resources, he concludes that they were the greatest ἀρχή of the region in terms of revenues (‘tribute’: φόρος, πρόσοδος χρημάτων) and ‘other εὐδαιμονία’.28 Interestingly, this material definition of εὐδαιμονία is the one that Herodotus consistently uses, but in contrast to the Athenians’ bold claim to have gained (apparently lasting) possession of εὐδαιμονία, Herodotus stresses instead its inherent transience.29 This overwhelmingly material definition was hardly traditional, nor was it uncontested. Arising from Athens’ empire,30 this definition stood at odds 27

Ephorus apud DS 12.39-40 (Loeb tr. Oldfather 1946), a speech reported also in Thuc. 2.13. On the relationship of the two renditions of the speech, see Irwin 2013:277-80. 28 Thuc. 2.97. 29 De Heer 1969:67 comments on Herodotus’ use of εὐδαίμων as primarily indicating possession of riches, shared with Thucydides for whom εὐδαιμονία is always wealth: cf. e.g. 3.39.3-4. 30 This is perhaps best epitomised in a fragment of the comic poet Telecleides (fr. 45 KA), quoted by Plutarch to describe the extensive powers exercised by Pericles (Plut. Per. 16.2), all of which related to the exercise of ἀρχή and concluding with εὐδαιμονία in emphatic final position: ‘Telecleides says that the Athenians had handed over to him, ‘tributes of the cities, and the cities themselves, some to bind, other to release / stone walls, some to construct, and then to tear down again, / treaties, power, mastery, peace, both wealth (πλοῦτος) and εὐδαιμονία.’ Highly relevant here, but beyond the scope of our discussion, is the proliferation of Attic vases depicting Eudaimonia in the last decades of the 5th century, on which see most recently Smith 2005:20-21 and Smith 2011:s.v. ‘Eudaimonia’ for a collection of the images and basic discussion. The images have been largely underinterpreted owing to the failure of art historians to recognise the political valence of εὐδαιμονία in relation both to Periclean ideology and to the ambitions of the war: the practice described in Isocrates (quoted above note 26), for instance, seems relevant for understanding the unique appearance of Eudaimonia with Dionysus on the volute krater attributed to the Cadmus Painter in Ruvo, Museo Jatta 36818 (cat. no. J 1093): ARV21181.1. The frequent presence of Eros with Eudaimonia (e.g. London BM 1846.9-25.12; Ruvo, Museo Jatta 36818; Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81947) may be seen as related to the exhortation of Pericles to become ἐράσται (‘lovers’) of the δύναμις of the city (Thuc. 2.43.1) which, according to Thucydidean usage (on which see

13 with others that were no less contemporary.31 The Spartans, for instance, are presented as maintaining that εὐδαιμονία comes from ἀρετή, and was guaranteed to them by their Lycurgan constitution.32 And even at Athens one sees contestation in claims about the corrupting power of happiness defined in material terms. See, for instance, Plato’s Callicles of the Gorgias Kallet-Marx 1993:1-35), denoted the wealth of the city, its χρήματα, in which her δύναμις consisted. The presence of Hygeia on several of these vases (New York, MMA 09.221.40; Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81948; London BM 1846.9-25.12 and 1893.11-3.2) would be apotropaic and related to rectifying Pericles’ oversight when, claiming εὐδαιμονία and the attainability of full αὐτάρκεια, he persuaded Athenians to adopt a war strategy that led to the plague (‘sudden and unexpected’: τὸ αἰφνίδιον καὶ ἀπροσδόκητον, Thuc. 2.61.3; the only thing ‘greater than expectation’: ἐλπίδος κρεῖσσον, Thuc. 2.64.1); even more telling in this regard is the appearance of Eudaimonia with Asclepius at Epidaurus (Leuven, Katholieke Universiteit, Didactisch Museum Archeologie (KUL-A) – 1000) given the Athenians had been barred access to Epidaurus during the plague owing to the war (cf. their enthusiastic introduction of the god soon after the Peace of Nicias). 31 For example, one can see a range of meanings on display in [Pl.] Defin. 412d11, as well as the preponderance of those definitions based on material conditions: ‘Eudaimonia is a good composed of all goods (ἀγαθὸν ἐκ πάντων ἀγαθῶν συγκείμενον); a self-sufficient capacity for living well (δύναμις αὐτάρκης πρὸς τὸ εὖ ζῆν); perfection in accord with virtue (τελειότης κατ’ ἀρετήν); resources sufficient for a living creature (ὠϕελία αὐτάρκης ζῴου).’ 32 Xen. Const. Lac. 1.2.5: ‘Lycurgus, who gave them the laws that they obey, and to which they owe their prosperity (ηὐδαιμόνησαν), I do regard with wonder (θαυμάζω); and I think that he reached the utmost limit of wisdom. For … by devising a system utterly different from that of most others, he made his country pre-eminent in εὐδαιμονία (προέχουσαν εὐδαιμονίᾳ τὴν πατρίδα ἐπέδειξεν)’ (Loeb tr. Marchant 1923). Plut. Lyc. 31.1: ‘It was not, however, the chief design of Lycurgus then to leave his city in command over a great many others, but he thought that the εὐδαιμονία of an entire city, like that of a single individual, depended on the prevalence of virtue (ὥσπερ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς βίῳ καὶ πόλεως ὅλης νομίζων εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ἐγγίνεσθαι) and concord within its own borders. The aim, therefore, of all his arrangements and adjustments was to make his people free-minded (ἐλευθέριοι), self-sufficing (αὐτάρκεις), and moderate in all their ways (σωϕρονοῦντες), and to keep them so as long as possible (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον χρόνον διατελῶσι)’ (Loeb tr. Perrin 1914). Contrast Aristotle who, in defence of the status he claims for his εὐδαιμονία, mounts a weak attack against ἀρετή as the ‘Good’ and the τέλος of the political life on the grounds that ‘ἀρετή does not require being put into practice’ and ‘one can have ἀρετή when one sleeps’ (EN 1095b31-3).

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who candidly expresses a view which, according to Socrates, many think but are afraid to admit, namely, that luxury (τρυφή), lack of restraint (ἀκολασία) and freedom (ἐλευθερία) are ἀρετή and εὐδαιμονία, while what is normally said is just convention and contrary to nature.33 Similarly, Antiphon is said to have derided the pursuit of philosophy as advocated by Socrates on the grounds that it did not make anyone εὐδαίμων, that is, materially well off.34 Socrates, in turn, criticises Antiphon as wrongly seeing εὐδαιμονία as τρυφή (‘luxury’) and πολυτέλεια (‘extravagance’).35 Socrates might seem a lone voice in defining εὐδαιμονία on a non-material basis, and his view was no doubt unpopular, but others shared that view: beyond the expected echoes among Socratics like Antisthenes, Democritus, for instance, can insist that εὐδαιμονία is not predicated on wealth but is rather a quality of the soul,36 and such a view, rejecting as it does a material definition of εὐδαιμονία, must be acknowledged to be closer to the Spartan conception of happiness than to that most at home in Athenians.

33

Pl. Gorg. 492c. Antiphon in Xen. Mem. 1.6.2, 10: ‘Socrates, I supposed that those engaged in philosophy ought to be happier (τοὺς ϕιλοσοϕοῦντας εὐδαιμονεστέρους χρῆναι γίγνεσθαι), but you seem to me to have derived the opposite from philosophy. For example you are living a life that would drive even a slave to desert his master …’ (Loeb tr. Marchant 1923). 35 Xen. Mem. 1.6.10: ‘You seem, Antiphon to think that happiness (τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν) consists in luxury (τρυϕὴν) and extravagance (πολυτέλειαν). But I believe that to want nothing is divine; to have as few wants as possible comes next to the divine, and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest the divine is nearest to the supreme (τὸ μὲν μηδενὸς δεῖσθαι θεῖον εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ὡς 
ἐλαχίστων ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου, καὶ τὸ μὲν θεῖον κράτιστον, τὸ δ’ ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ κρατίστου).’ 36 Democr. 65 fr. 40, 170, 171 DK. See also DL 6.11: ‘[Antisthenes held] virtue to be sufficient in itself for happiness (αὐτάρκη δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν), since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. And he held that virtue belongs to deeds (τήν τ’ ἀρετὴν τῶν ἔργων) and does not need very many words nor lessons (μήτε λόγων πλείστων δεομένην μήτε μαθημάτων).’ Such a sentiment is likely to explain the particular verdict Croesus gives of Solon as ἀμαθής: ‘Thus saying he refused to gratify Croesus, who sent him away from his presence holding him in no esteem, and thinking him utterly senseless (κάρτα δόξας ἀμαθέα εἶναι) in that he passed over present good things and bade men look to the end of every matter.’ 34

15 A seminal text for this issue brings us yet again to the sophist Prodicus, this time to his famous Choice of Heracles:37 his mythic allegory presents two goddesses attempting to persuade the young Heracles at the crossroads of the benefits of the life they each propose. Contestation is embodied in the very name (ὄνομα) of the figure arguing for a life of ease, comfort and luxury: she is called by her friends ‘Εὐδαιμονία’, but others label her Κακία (‘Vice’).38 By contrast, Ἀρετή has only a single name, and while to be sure the life she proposes requires labour (πόνος), it is only through such labour, the goddess maintains, that one can reach ‘the most blessed εὐδαιμονία’.39 The stress on labour and the association of ἀρετή with the attainment of εὐδαιμονία all mark this lifestyle as (stereotypically) Spartan/Dorian, and appropriately so when one considers that the one making this choice, Heracles, is the mythic forebear of the Dorian race.40 Here one might note the affinity with Solon’s selection for the happiest man: Tellus receives the award of most happy because of an end characterised by traditional ἀρετή – a καλὸς θάνατος for his city – and what Cleobis and Biton are rewarded for is their πόνος in drawing their mother’s cart to the sanctuary for the festival. One must observe that here Herodotus portrays the Athenian wise man and political figure of the past as possessing a definition of ‘happiness’ at odds with the definition overwhelmingly employed by present-day Athenians, and one that he presents the values of his Croesus as embodying. One might understand Herodotus’ use of Solon to point at once to what the Athenians used to recognise as wisdom, and also to the contemporary definition of happiness used both outside Athens and among a minority of Athenians. Rather than representing Solon’s view as dated, Herodotus may well be using the Athenian lawgiver to argue for a universal truth that contemporary Athenians have erroneously rejected on the grounds of alleging it to be ‘archaic’ and as such not applicable to the ‘progress’ which they purport their city to have attained.41

37

Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-34. Xen. Mem. 2.1.26. 39 Xen. Mem 2.1.33. 40 On the valence of labour in Dorian and Spartan identity and lifestyle, see e.g. (Dorian) Thuc. 1.123.1, (Spartan) Xen. Lac. Pol. 2.5.5, 3.2.2 with Lipka 2002:1819, 115, 124, 137 and (for a negative portrayal) Ael. VH 13.38. 41 One can find a similar point made about progress in the light of what is constant and timeless in Soph. Ant. 332-75. 38

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One could trace in finer detail the contours of the fifth-century debate, but space will not allow this if we are to reach Aristotle. The focus is here as much on the fact of the debate and its political context as on the definitions themselves, for Aristotle has inherited its legacy. Before, however, turning to a discussion of Aristotle, one ought to speak briefly of origins, that is, how this meaning of εὐδαιμονία came to be embraced; for such a discussion will prove relevant to understanding Aristotle’s own definition of εὐδαιμονία and his (ultimately dismissive) engagement with Herodotus’ Solon. No doubt, the necessary condition for the popularity of this definition at Athens was the material prosperity arising from the ἀρχή, particularly in the form of the sudden surge in wealth that came with the movement of the Delian treasury to Athens in 454 BC, giving rise thereafter to the building programme and the parade of tribute in the theatre of Dionysus as visible proof of the city’s εὐδαιμονία. ‘Necessary’, but not sufficient: the question still remains why εὐδαιμονία should have been chosen as the term used to refer to this accumulated wealth along with the quality of life and ambitions that attended it. Three explanations seem in combination to underlie its adoption, and will prove relevant to understanding Aristotle. The more traditional of the explanations would seem to bow to piety and reflect moral anxiety in its invocation of the gods as the basis of Athens’ prosperity. Given that the Athenians owed their economic surplus to policies and acts that the evidence attests were open to the moral and religious criticism of contemporaries,42 the adoption of the term εὐδαιμονία for this wealth, understood as ‘the state of having a good δαίμων’,43 served to respond to such criticism by implicating the gods’ favour in Athens’ prosperity, its acquisition and continued possession: ‘we wouldn’t be in this position were the gods not favourable’; ‘it must be the gods’ will’.44 Such an argument would explain Solon’s injunction to ‘look to the end’ before one can make a claim for divine favour: only then can one tell the difference between εὐτυχία and εὐδαιμονία – momentary good luck is not the same as the abiding favour of the δαίμων. As Solon well knew (for example, fr. 13West) and some in the 5th century still believed, 42

Athenian and otherwise; see, for instance, Plut. Per. 12, 14. For Athenians’ implication of the gods in their ‘success’, see e.g. the Melian Dialogue, Thuc. 5.104-05. 43 On the meaning of the δαίμων in εὐδαιμονία, see the discussion of Mikalson 2002; see e.g. Eur. Or. 667-68, quoted by Arist. EN 1169b7-8. 44 On the gods as the source of εὐδαιμονία, see e.g. Pl. Sym. 188d8.

17 though the ‘justice of Zeus’ (conceived literally or metaphorically) most assuredly does come, sometimes it comes late. A second reason for the use of εὐδαιμονία rather than, for instance, πλοῦτος, is to respond to other criticisms of the Athenians’ overvaluation of wealth, χρήματα, and their overweening confidence arising from that material prosperity. Once εὐδαιμονία becomes the signifier for wealth, that which can also be called ‘the Good’, the dogged pursuit of εὐδαιμονία by the Athenians becomes ‘natural’ and the Athenians, in their avid pursuit of it, become no different from those who lodge criticism against them, since they, too, are implicated in the desire for ‘happiness’:45 as Aristotle claims, ‘the great majority of mankind agree’ that ‘the highest of all goods’ is ‘εὐδαιμονία’. Of course, multiple definitions of ‘happiness’ prevail, and one’s conception of the ‘Good’ or εὐδαιμονία may be erroneous, as indeed the definition predicated on wealth and thriving at Athens was, at least according to the critics, and as one might consider the events that transpired to have confirmed. Their criticism may be reduced to the simple home truth that wealth simply is not happiness. As Herodotus’ Solon says, many of the extremely rich are unfortunate (ἀνόλβιοι), their advantages over the lucky only two: they have better means to satisfy their desires and they have the resources to better weather great misfortune. But even so, Croesus will not be able to buy back his son’s life, nor give enough to Apollo to avert the fate that was – in human terms – the consequence of his erroneous belief in own εὐδαιμονία emboldening him to pursue the conquest of Persia. Likewise, Athens’ εὐδαιμονία does little to avert the disasters of the war and her ultimate defeat. Outside Herodotus, the same criticism can be expressed in a more lofty philosophical register: wealth as a pursuit is not ‘final’. Only ever a means to acquire something else, wealth cannot be an end in itself, cannot be the τέλος or even a τέλος of human life. This is what Socrates will attempt to teach the young Eryxias, pointing out that if one is hungry one cannot eat one’s money or one’s fancy home (Eryx. 394).46 Faced with such a criticism from both popular wisdom and (some) philosophers, the Athenians embrace a lexeme for their wealth that could seem to claim validity as a τέλος in itself, εὐδαιμονία, as well as enjoining another concept closely related to εὐδαιμονία in the sources, αὐτάρκεια (‘self45

One sees this kind of argument in Athens’ justification of her desire to possess and keep her ἀρχή: Thuc. 1.76.2. 46 The dialogue chooses as its dramatic date the eve of the Sicilian expedition, a campaign of conquest fuelled by greed. For this view, see also Arist. EN 1097a27.

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sufficiency’):47 wealth could enable one to live well, and, so it was claimed, attain ‘self-sufficiency’, a traditional τέλος applied in novel ways in Periclean Athens.48 There will be more to say on αὐτάρκεια below, given its importance to Aristotle, but suffice it to recognise here already that Herodotus’ Solon must certainly be involved in this discussion when his challenge to Croesus’ definition of εὐδαιμονία goes on, out of nowhere, to dismiss the possibility of human αὐτάρκεια (1.32.8-9): Now to possess all these things together is impossible for one who is mere man, just as no single land suffices to supply all things for itself (τὰ πάντα μέν νυν ταῦτα συλλαβεῖν ἄνθρωπον ἐόντα ἀδύνατόν ἐστι, ὥσπερ χώρη οὐδεμία καταρκέει πάντα ἑωυτῇ παρέχουσα), but one thing it has and another it lacks, and the land that has the greatest number of things is the best: so also in the case of a man, no single person is complete in himself (ὥς δὲ καὶ ἀνθρώπου σῶμα ἓν οὐδὲν αὔταρκές ἐστι) for one thing he has and another he lacks; but whosoever of men continues to the end in 47

The collocation of εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια is widespread. See Arist. Rhet. 1360b14-15 where one popular definition of εὐδαιμονία holds it to be αὐτάρκεια ζωῆς, and the possession of all the commonly held components of εὐδαιμονία is said by Aristotle to render a man αὐταρκέστατος (1.5.4). See also EN 1176b5-6 (cf. 1097b14-21) for the given (γὰρ) that ‘happiness lacks nothing, but is rather self-sufficient (οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἐνδεὴς ἡ εὐδαιμονία ἀλλ᾽ αὐτάρκης)’, and also Pl. Def. 412d11, ‘εὐδαιμονία is … a self-sufficient capacity for living well (δύναμις αὐτάρκης πρὸς τὸ εὖ ζῆν), … resources belonging to a living creature adequate to render it self-sufficient (ὠϕελία αὐτάρκης ζῴου)’, and (413e10), ‘a πολιτεία is a community (κοινωνία) of many men, self-sufficient for living successfully (αὐτάρκης πρὸς
εὐδαιμονίαν).’ For the additional collocation of the idea of the τέλος and what is τέλειον, see e.g. Arist. EN 1097b20-21: ‘Happiness, therefore, being found to be something final (τέλειον) and self-sufficient (αὔταρκες), is the End (τέλος) at which all actions aim.’ For self-sufficiency as a τέλος already attested in the later 5th century, see Suda s.v. ‘Ιππίας, the legacy of which felt throughout Aristotle’s Politics, but perhaps most succinctly expressed at 1253a1: ‘… and self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια) is both an end and a chief good (καὶ τέλος καὶ βέλτιστον)’. 48 Wheeler 1955:420; Gaiser 1975:70; Raaflaub 1984:59-66; 1985:237-41; Irwin 2013:294-309. Raaflaub 1985:238 needs only to be corrected in his claim that the rarity of the word in the 5th century means it ‘never became an important concept of political language or propaganda’, since an important concept with a short (and disastrous) history could render the same record: the latter scenario is easily observed (e.g. by a simple library catalogue search) in the case of Autarkie in modern German political thought.

19 possession of the greatest number of these things and then has a gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted worthy, O king, to receive this name.

In terms of Solon’s speech, αὐτάρκης and this discourse on the parallelism between an individual and a country comes out of the blue, not least because for Solon to use the word αὐτάρκης is a flagrant anachronism.49 Of course, his elaboration is entirely understandable once one recalls the connection between εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια thriving in discussions of political theory at the time (see, for example, the dramatic date of Plato’s Republic), and recognises that Herodotus has Solon construct this parallel precisely as a contribution to those same discussions. Moreover, no less than the philosophers, Herodotus, through his Solon, shows interest in the τέλος, but it is certainly not the τέλος of εὐδαιμονία or of αὐτάρκεια; rather, such ‘ends’ (τέλη) as these he categorically rejects as attainable for living humans; instead, he turns his readers’ attention to the only ‘End’ of a human life, the literal τελευτή of his or her own life, embodying this, in one case, in a figure significantly named Tellus,50 and, in the other, making it explicit that it is impossible to speak of the εὐδαιμονία of a human, at least while he or she yet lives. Surely Herodotus’ collocation of the terms εὐδαιμονία, αὔταρκες and the idea of the τέλος in a single speech cannot be accidental, but rather the result of extensive engagement with the contemporary intellectual debates demonstrated in Part 1. I return to this collocation below in the discussion of Aristotle. A third explanation involves both αὐτάρκεια and the δαίμων of εὐδαιμονία, but unlike the first makes no attempt at piety; on the contrary, it implies the (relatively) divine status of εὐδαιμονία’s possessors, the Athenians, owing to the prosperity of their city – superlative in relation to all others – that arose from their ἀρχή, and in so doing further explains the role of ‘the god/the divine’ in Solon’s discourse on happiness as well as his categorical denial of the αὐτάρκεια of a man or a land. That the gods are themselves εὐδαίμονες and enjoy εὐδαιμονία is presented as a 49

The first appearance of the word is in Aesch. Choeph. 757, and it is otherwise rare even in the 5th century: it appears only a single time in each of the tragedians (Eur. fr. 29, quoted below; Soph. OC 1057), and four times each in Democritus and Thucydides; contrast the numerous appearances in Plato, Xenophon and the Hippocratics. For discussions of the concept, see Wilpert 1950; Wheeler 1955, Warnach 1971. 50 Tellus, moreover, will live up to Aristotle’s criterion that requires as a component of εὐδαιμονία a complete (τέλειος) life (e.g. EN 1101a16).

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given in our classical sources.51 And when not stated as a τέλος in itself, to be autarkic is a key element in the idea of the τέλος of εὐδαιμονία, a state also ascribed to the gods, and best epitomised in the definition of ‘god’ found, for instance, in the Platonic Definitions (411a3): ‘God is an immortal living being, self-sufficient for happiness’ (αὔταρκες πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν). Despite being the definition of a god, nevertheless the aspiration to be both εὐδαίμονες and αὔταρκες – or at least to possess these qualities to the greatest extent admissible within the limits of human φύσις – is clearly attested in the 5th century, and explicitly in association with the ambition to achieve an existence approaching as near as possible that of the gods. Socrates’ conversation with Antiphon in Xenophon demonstrates one way in which the divide between man and god conceptualised in these terms is being assailed in fifth-century Athens. When Socrates chastises Antiphon for defining εὐδαιμονία in material terms, he goes on to state by way of syllogism: But I believe that to want nothing is divine (θεῖον); to have as few wants as possible comes next to the divine (τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐλαχίστων ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου), and as that which is divine is supreme (τὸ μὲν θεῖον κράτιστον), so that which approaches nearest the divine is nearest to the supreme (καὶ τὸ δ’ ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ κρατίστου). (Xen. Mem.1.6.10)

That Socrates here describes the state of αὐτάρκεια is clear from other passages of the Memorabilia, where he is introduced as himself living most autarkically (Xen. Mem. 1.2.14), and also as instructing those around him to do the same (4.7.1). Of course, the εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια alleged to have been advocated by Socratic teaching belongs to an alternate definition of εὐδαιμονία – not based on wealth, but on virtue (ἀρετή) – but Socrates’ formulation takes the shape it does in opposition to the definition thriving in Athens, embodied by Antiphon, Gorgias and ultimately Pericles. For there are two contrary ways to need as little as possible, that is, to approach the τέλος of αὐτάρκεια: one way is through training oneself to need what is in absolute terms very little; the other is to be superlatively (that is, relative to others) capable of satisfying virtually unlimited needs.52 51

See e.g. Eur. Hipp. 751, Pl. Sym. 202c7. Arist. EN 1178b8-9: ‘Above all (μάλιστα) are the gods as we understand them blessed (μακαρίους) and happy (εὐδαίμονας).’ 52 Krischer 2000:257.

21 And the latter seems to be what the Athenians claimed of their πόλις qua ἀρχή. For Pericles not only seems to have claimed for the Athenians εὐδαιμονία, but to have accompanied that claim with one of their virtual αὐτάρκεια. Beyond urging the Athenians to war with the assertion that the city had made great strides ‘towards εὐδαιμονία’ – conceived as prosperity – through their long peace, he is presented as claiming that through their accumulated resources the Athenians had made their city ‘most autarkic’ and, what is more, the city as the ‘education’ of Greece somehow acquired the capacity to confer αὐτάρκεια onto each Athenian’s very person.53 The claim for making their city ‘most autarkic’ seems to have been based on their naval power, that their superlative trading success conferred on them the capacity to ameliorate the naturally unautarkic state inherent to every land.54 It seems, however, that Pericles went further, arguing that their 53

Thuc. 2.36.3: ‘And we ourselves here assembled, who are now for the most part still in the prime of life, have further strengthened the empire in most respects, and have provided our city with all resources, so that both in war and in peace it is sufficient in itself (ἐς πόλεμον καὶ ἐς εἰρήνην αὐταρκεστάτην).’ Thuc. 2.41.2 (cf. Pl. Menex. 247e-248a): ‘In a word, then, I say that our city as a whole is the school of Hellas, and that, as it seems to me, each individual amongst us could in his own person, with the utmost grace and versatility, prove himself self-sufficient (τὸ σῶμα αὔταρκες) in the most varied forms of activity. And that this is no mere boast inspired by the occasion, but actual truth, is attested by the very power of our city, a power which we have acquired in consequence of these qualities’ (Loeb tr. Forster Smith 1928, as in all further quotation of Thucydides). Pericles’ extravagant claim regarding the σώμα αὔταρκες of the individual Athenian, subtly qualified by Thucydides’ repeating it with negation in his narrative of the plague when ‘nobody was autarkic’ (2.51.3), famously appears also in Solon’s emphatic denial of the possibility of such a state for a human, ever; on the relationship between Thucydides and Herodotus here, with bibliography, see Irwin 2013:295309. 54 Isoc. 4.42.2: ‘Again, since the different populations did not in any case possess a country that was self-sufficing (τὴν χώραν οὐκ αὐτάρκη), each lacking in some things and producing others in excess of their needs, and since they were greatly at a loss where they should dispose of their surplus and whence they should import what they lacked, in these difficulties also our city came to the rescue; for she established the Piraeus as a market in the center of Hellas – a market of such abundance that the articles which it is difficult to get, one here, one there, from the rest of the world, all these it is easy to procure from Athens’ (Loeb tr. Norlin 1928). See also ‘The Old Oligarch’ [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.12, for the same point, albeit stressed from the point of view of Athens’ own benefit from her naval supremacy rather than its generous provision for others.

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naval power could render them so superlatively autarkic as to be entirely self-sufficient, that is, in need of no-one. The evidence suggests that not only did the belief in their superlative economic status vis-à-vis their enemies urge the Athenians on to undertake what was from their perspective total war, but also no less so did a desire to attain full αὐτάρκεια, a pursuit that entailed, of course, the belief that αὐτάρκεια is humanly possible.55 The belief that αὐτάρκεια is an attainable goal is tied in with ‘theories of the state’ contemporary at the time, that the πόλις or πολιτεία arose out of human limitation, their inability individually to be autarkic. This is seen, for instance, in the eager acceptance of Socrates’ provisional suggestion that ‘[T]he city comes about, I think, because each of us is not autarkic, but rather lacking in many things’ (Pl. Resp. 369b). But here is where the danger arises: for some, it is a small step from understanding the origins of the polis as a palliative to mitigate the natural insufficiency of the individual to actually believing that the polis is entirely capable of enabling humans to transcend that state: ‘A πολιτεία is a community of many men, self-sufficient for living successfully’ (αὐτάρκης πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν, [Pl.] Defin. 413e10). The phrase αὐτάρκης πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν is telling, given that its use also in the definition of a god (Pl. Defin. 411a3) renders the human πολιτεία equivalent to a divine being.56 And this conception of the πολιτεία/πόλις is one to which Aristotle is entirely committed.57 55

Apparent in accounts of Pericles’ speeches. Ephorus (apud DS 12.39) records Pericles as ‘advising [the Athenians] … as masters of the sea (θαλαττοκρατοῦντας) to wage war to the end (διαπολεμεῖν) against the Spartans’; cf. Thuc. 2.13. In the Funeral Oration (2.41.4), Thucydides has Pericles stress the Athenians’ ability ‘to compel land and sea to lie open to [their] τόλμα, and in Pericles’ final speech, the Athenians are exhorted to aspire to total control of all lands through control of the sea (Thuc. 2.62.2): ‘You think that it is only over your allies that your empire extends, but I declare that of two divisions of the world which lie open to man’s use, the land and the sea, you hold the absolute mastery over the whole of one, not only to the extent to which you now exercise it, but also to whatever fuller extent you may choose; and there is no one, either the Great King or any nation of those now on the earth, who will block your path as you sail the seas with such a naval armament as you now possess.’ See also the aspirations in Aristoph. Εq. 797, 1330 and 1333 and expressed in Thuc. 6.18.4 and 6.90.3 by Alcibiades in relation to the intentions behind the Sicilian expedition, a campaign conceived first under Pericles. 56 Cf. also the phrase in Ephorus’ account of Pericles’ resource speech (apud DS 12.39-40): τούς τε τῶν πολιτῶν βίους διὰ τὴν πολυχρόνιον εἰρήνην πολλὴν

23 Before, however, turning to Aristotle more fully, one ought also to look at what fuelled the aspiration for αὐτάρκεια so conceived by the Athenians, and what consequences arose from their belief in the possibility of human possession of εὐδαιμονία and αὐτάρκεια, since the answers to these questions are relevant to evaluating the aims and priorities of Aristotle’s project. According to the sources, αὐτάρκεια may be that which allows one to rule oneself and do so without interference from others,58 but it is by the same token also a state that if attained allows one to treat others as one wills, without any concern for morality. When one needs nothing from others, so this ideology goes, one has no need of the good will of others, nor of friends, and therefore in the absence of need one can impose one’s will with no fear of consequence, or, otherwise said, treat others as δούλοι. So much is clear from our sources. Thucydides’ first use of the word is actually in conjunction with the inhabitants of Corcyra, whose remote location, according to the Corinthians’ accusation, afforded them an αὐτάρκεια that allowed them to treat as they would those with whom they came into contact, to disregard justice in their dealings in full confidence that they would never need justice from others.59 The consequence of believing oneself autarkic is likewise apparent in a ἐπίδοσιν εἰληφέναι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν (‘that also by reason of the long peace the manner of life of the citizens had made great strides toward prosperity’). A missing element here is the popularity of a theory of Prodicus, a famed atheist, about the gods: those traditionally believed to be gods are nothing more than the deified embodiments of the superlative achievements of humans, or the humans themselves (Phld. Piet. 2 = PHerc 1428, cols. ii 28-iii 13 and fr. 19; Cic. De deo. nat. 1.118; these and other testimony collected by Mayhew 2011, nos. 71-77 (4751; 180-93) with commentary. 57 See, for instance, Arist. Pol. 1252b27-30: ἡ δ᾽ ἐκ πλειόνων κωμῶν κοινωνία τέλειος πόλις, ἤδη πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, γινομένη μὲν τοῦ ζῆν ἕνεκεν, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν (‘The unification of several villages, when complete, is the city-state; it has at last attained the limit of total self-sufficiency, so to speak, and thus, while it comes into existence for the sake of life, it exists for the good life’). 58 See [Pl.] Defin. 412b6: ‘αὐτάρκεια is a perfect possession of good things (τελειότης κτήσεως ἀγαθῶν); the state in respect of which those who have it are masters of themselves (ἕξις καθ’ ἣν οἱ ἔχοντες αὐτοὶ αὑτῶν ἄρχουσιν).’ 59 Thuc. 1.37.3: ‘The insular and independent position of this state (ἡ πόλις αὐτῶν ἅμα αὐτάρκη θέσιν κειμένη) causes them to be arbitrary judges of the injuries they do to others instead of being judges appointed by mutual agreement owing to the fact that they resort very little to the ports of their neighbours, but to a very large extent receive into their ports others who are compelled to put in there.’

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fragment of Euripides (fr. 29): ‘May I never be a friend or associate with that man who is persuaded/confident to think thoughts of self-sufficiency, considering his friends to be slaves’ (τούτῳ δ’ ἀνδρὶ μήτ’ εἴην ϕίλος / μήτε ξυνείην, ὅστις αὐτάρκη ϕρονεῖν / πέποιθε δούλους τοὺς ϕίλους ἡγούμενος). And this, indeed, is the denouement of the Croesus story (Hdt.1.87.3). Cyrus will ask Croesus, ‘Who of men persuaded you to campaign against my land and render me an enemy instead of a friend (ἀντὶ 
ϕίλου)’, that is, ‘who persuaded you to deal with me as a potential slave?’60 Rather than ‘who?’ the more salient question is ‘why?’ The answer is quite simply because he thought he could: a man convinced that he possesses secure εὐδαιμονία, and is therefore autarkic, may feel that needing no friends he can treat people as slaves.61 From the point of view of the narrative, this explains Solon’s sudden declaration that no man, nor land, is autarkic, while from the point of view of Herodotus’ narration, the explanation lies in the ideology of Athenian ἀρχή.62 3. ‘Solon’ and Aristotle While the stature of Solon as a moral authority and the popularity of Herodotus’ λόγος might seem sufficient to win Solon a mention in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the discussion of the intellectual debates informing Herodotus’ λόγος suggests a more penetrating explanation for its presence: Aristotle’s attempt to establish – or rather reassert – εὐδαιμονία as an attainable τέλος for humans would have virtually 60

That the ‘enslavement’ of Cyrus, that is, the compelling of the defeated Persians into a tributary relationship, was the intention of Croesus’ campaign is clear from his previous campaigns (1.27.4, τοὺς σὺ δουλώσας ἔχεις) and implicit in how he refers to himself in defeat: now he is the δοῦλος of Cyrus (Hdt.1.89.1). Cf. the δουλοσύνη intended for the Ethiopians (3.21). 61 Of course, implicated in this view is a theory of friendship based primarily on need and self-interest, and the idea that one only makes friends of equals, those from whom one cannot derive one’s own benefit through compulsion. See Aristotle’s question, ‘Does the εὐδαίμων need friends?’ (EN 1169b3-8; see also EE 1244b). 62 Relevant here, of course, is the fact that by the late 5th century the tribute relationship could be conceptualised as one of ‘slavery’, whether Persian δασμός or Athenian φόρος (e.g. Hdt. 1.6, 27.4; Thuc. 1.98.4, 121.5, 124.3, 3.10.3, etc.): the obligation to pay tribute could be conceptualised as Athens treating φίλοι, that is, her allies (as well as ideologically her Ionian kin) with whom she agreed to have the ‘same friends and enemies’, as δούλοι.

25 demanded a substantial response to Solon’s views. For Herodotus has presented his Solon as a contemporary intellectual criticising as fundamentally flawed a political ideology whose τέλος, human εὐδαιμονίη conceptualised as wealth and (at least virtual) αὐτάρκεια, engenders not only disastrous consequences for those so deluded as to dismiss the advice ‘to look to the end’ with a verdict like that made by Croesus – to him Solon is ἀμαθής – but also the unethical behaviour that preceded and gave rise to these consequences. Irrespective of whether Aristotle understood Herodotus’ political subtext, or merely thought he was engaging with – and successfully refuting – a view ascribed to a traditional wise man that had gained immense popularity through a memorable narrative, his discussion of Solon’s views engages in a debate with criticisms of Athens of the late 5th century. The words of Herodotus’ Solon defies the claims of Pericles and of the intellectuals responsible for the theory of social origins that underpinned Periclean ideology. He is a figure who treats as nothing the kind of εὐδαιμονίη claimed by Athens, categorically denying the possibility of human αὐτάρκεια, and in doing so rejects also the pretensions of those who were induced to believe that αὐτάρκεια could be attainable, and to believe also that the step from being ‘most autarkic’ to ‘absolutely autarkic’ was simply a matter of a victory in war guaranteed by the superior financial reserves, their εὐδαιμονία. Here I want to address, first, Aristotle’s allusion to Herodotus’ Solon and then demonstrate, as a basis for further study, just how much of the ideology of Periclean Athens, that is, the ideology belonging to Athens of the ἀρχή, underlies and pervades Aristotle’s account of εὐδαιμονία. Since the implications of such an identification of a Periclean legacy in Aristotle’s works are broad, and necessitate a re-evaluation of Aristotle’s social, political and ethical philosophy, it should therefore be clear that the discussion here can only provide an introduction and invitation to a fuller re-examination of the political and historical antecedents of the ideas that informed and underlie Aristotle’s thought. Solon’s view constitutes virtually the last obstacle to Aristotle’s definition of εὐδαιμονία and to his claim that it is the attainable τέλος of human life, and insofar as his words constitute, as we will see, a critique of an ideology that Aristotle has chosen to embrace in revised form, Solon’s opposition must indeed be overcome. In what follows, much attention will be drawn to Aristotle’s mode of argumentation in making his case. Given Aristotle’s identification of εὐδαιμονία as a subject belonging to the study of rhetoric in the treatise of the same name, one is entitled to consider not only the content, but also the rhetoric that he employs in

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dealing with a view that denies the validity of his entire project. Aristotle presents Solon’s view as a possible objection, asking (EN 1100a10-11), ‘Must we not call a man εὐδαίμων while he lives, following Solon’s warning to “look to the end”?’ He then embarks on certain preliminary considerations in which he portrays himself as carefully weighing the possibility of the validity of Solon’s objection, a rhetorical performance that serves to establish both his authority and objectivity. Finding ἄτοπον the possibility that Solon would mean a dead man is actually happy (εὐδαίμων), given that happiness ought (according to him and presumably his target audience) to consist in activity, he gives Solon the benefit of the doubt that perhaps what he meant is that a man cannot be said to have been happy until his life is over (1100a11-17). This view, however, he finds no less ἄτοπον. Here traditional views about the dead are invoked to undermine Solon’s view as one leading to ἀπορία: given, as is commonly believed, the dead are affected by the fortunes of their descendants, it would be ἄτοπον, Aristotle points out, for an εὐδαίμων man to lose his title depending on the vicissitudes of successive generations, and yet also ἄτοπον would it be were the fortunes of descendants not to touch the dead at all (1100a17-31). Here Aristotle abandons this discussion as if there is no way to assist Solon out of this contradiction, and moves on to the more serious difficulty that Solon poses to his project. This is all seemingly a legitimate handling of Solon, were it not the case that at the safe distance of the next chapter, Aristotle will return to the subject of the vicissitudes of the dead and there render the contradiction inconsequential when applied to his own position: the dead are not significantly affected by their descendants, he claims, so as ‘to make the happy unhappy or rob the happy of their blessedness’. Given that Aristotle will ultimately dismiss the idea that successive generations influence the happiness of the dead (EN 1101b1-9), his choice to problematise Solon’s formulation with this concern must be seen as somewhat disingenuous, as a piece of rhetoric whose effects are, on the one hand, to establish his own authority by demonstrating his careful evaluation of the view of his predecessor before setting it aside, as well as his piety in seeming to ascribe to traditional views of the dead and, on the other, to undermine right from the very outset the authority of a view of εὐδαιμονία in competition with his own. At the same time, nestled between the ἀπορία that Aristotle generates from Solon’s position and the capacity of his own position seemingly to transcend it, lies Aristotle’s attempt to neutralise Solon’s more challenging threat to his project, that being εὐδαίμων cannot be predicated of a living man.

27 Once again Solon’s formulation is found to be ἄτοπον, or rather Aristotle formulates this as a question, asking how it is not ἄτοπον for a man recognised as εὐδαίμων at death not to be able to be so while actually in possession of that state. The choice to express this argument as a rhetorical question is not accidental: it is a move that renders his readers actively complicit should they follow his implicit lead and answer in the affirmative. Ἄτοπον it may well seem, but Herodotus had an answer for Aristotle as he did for those in his own time who held such a view: the answer resided in the 26 250 days that he calculates as belonging to a man’s life and the potential for a reversal of fortune on any one of those days. Such an answer, of course, would hardly be acceptable to a person intent on the possibility of human attainment of εὐδαιμονία, as Aristotle seems to have been, following in the footsteps of Pericles. Instead, implicitly rejecting this limitation on what can be claimed of a living human, Aristotle defends through lengthy argumentation his right to persist in predicating εὐδαίμων of a human, employing a reckoning comparable to, if demonstrably dwarfed by, Solon’s own. One might paraphrase Aristotle’s argument as ‘just do the sums, and if one has more good than bad, and the bad occurs sufficiently early in one’s life to allow one to recover and enjoy happiness, one is entitled to be considered happy.’ Sidestepped, however, is the fact that what Aristotle has labelled ἄτοπον can only seem to be so by adopting Solon’s vantage point, the end of a man’s life, when one is able to ‘look to the end’: for how can one know before then if a man will have experienced no reversal of fortune? And yet Aristotle never addresses this question, choosing instead to couch his own conclusion again as an interrogative (1101a14-21): May not we then confidently pronounce [lit. ‘what then is to prevent us from calling’] that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods (τὸν κατ᾽ ἀρετὴν τελείαν ἐνεργοῦντα καὶ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀγαθοῖς ἱκανῶς κεχορηγημένον)? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly (βιωσόμενον οὕτω καὶ τελευτήσοντα κατὰ λόγον), because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete (τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν δὲ τέλος καὶ τέλειον τίθεμεν πάντῃ πάντως)? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing

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To his question, ‘what therefore is to prevent us (τί οὖν κωλύει)?’, Solon, Croesus when on the pyre, and ultimately Herodotus, clearly had an answer occluded by Aristotle’s rhetoric: the transcience of human εὐδαιμονίη and the unpredictability of a man’s life. Herodotus’ text has given readers only a single alternative: one can believe humans may possess εὐδαιμονίη, that there is such a thing as human εὐδαιμονίη, but then, changeable as it is it cannot be ‘absolutely final and complete’, (εὐδαιμονίην οὐδαμὰ ἐν τὠυτῷ μένουσαν, Hdt. 1.5), or – should one be committed to such an absolute definition of εὐδαιμονίη – one must abandon the idea that while alive humans could ever possess it. One does not, however, actually need to invoke Herodotus’ λόγος to recognise the weakness of Aristotle’s argument, however enticing its rhetoric and what it promises to offer readers may seem to be. Couched as a question (‘what is to hinder us?’), the conclusion belies in its very form the apparent certainty with which Aristotle proceeds. The rhetoric has, however, a function: it compels Aristotle’s readers to become responsible for attributing εὐδαιμονία to a living man should they follow his leading question, persuaded to ignore warnings such as Solon’s. Readers are, moreover, responsible for not challenging Aristotle on his use of the future tense (ὑπάρξει), whether because they have failed to identify – or simply find unimportant – the unanswered question of how it could ever be possible to say in advance that a man ‘will possess’ those good things that constitute happiness. Language – a νόμος belonging to humans – may permit the use of the indicative mood in speaking about the future, but it is linguistic convention that distorts reality, sometimes dangerously so in that it may engender a confidence in the future that is neither admissible to humans, nor in certain areas advisable. To maintain the possibility of a lasting human εὐδαιμονία, one defined as a divine state which entails an autarkic existence (no doubt in relation to himself or his πολιτεία) is an act liable to encourage, if not also arise from, unethical tendencies, and likewise an act that will engender disastrous results. There are certain things humans cannot, and indeed ought not, predicate of themselves –

29 even relatively, as in ‘most autarkic’ – owing to the consequences for others and themselves of possessing such a belief.63 I return to this below. Having discussed Aristotle’s explicit reference to Solon in chapter 10 of Book 1, our discussion might close, but that would not do justice to two aspects of the critique that Herodotus’ Solon levels against the conception of εὐδαιμονία inherited and embraced by Aristotle: these have to do with the τέλος to which each σοφός instructs one to look, and the activity of θεωρία in which both have chosen to engage. I turn first to the τέλος. Given the philosophical underpinnings already identified in the language deployed in Herodotus’ λόγος, it can hardly be a coincidence that the idea of the ‘End’, the τέλος, features in both texts, nor that these ‘Ends’ stand opposed to each other insofar as Aristotle insists on a τέλος of man’s life that is not, as Solon maintains, his literal τελευτή, the end that embraces the fact of human mortality.64 A reader wishing to understand human εὐδαιμονία is faced with a choice: to whose ‘End’ should she or he then look and why? Aristotle’s τέλος certainly would seem more alluring, a loftier end worthy of aspirations and, moreover, offering no uncomfortable reminder of death, and yet his certainty about its existence is rather belied by the instability of his own language used in identifying it (EN 1094a1826). First, he expresses the premise with all the tentativeness of a protasis, ‘If there is some τέλος of our actions that we desire on account of itself, and other things on account of it, it is clear this would be ‘the good’ (τὸ ἀγαθόν) and ‘the best’ (τὸ ἄριστον)’. Next, he asks the rhetorical question, ‘Wouldn’t the knowledge of this [possibly existing] τέλος be supremely significant’ and, using a metaphor to support his ‘aim’, ‘like an archer, having this in sight [that is, ‘looking to this τέλος’], wouldn’t we happen upon “what is necessary (τοῦ δέοντος, a concept left vague and unspecified]”?’ The rhetoric attending Aristotle’s εὐδαιμονία is indeed persuasive, but one might ask whether life really is like archery, and further ask what happens if none of the ‘ifs’ that Aristotle has forged and accumulated in order to reach his conclusion are true, would not we, aiming at this single (erroneous) end be almost certain (unless chance stepped in) to err? Aristotle will again revert to the instability of another protasis in the conclusion which allows him to embark upon his project 63

That Aristotle has been capable of persuading many a reader to think such thoughts perhaps best illustrates just why he chose εὐδαιμονία as his case study in the Rhetoric. 64 One should note that Aristotle himself is responsible for glossing Solon’s end (τελευτή) with his own τέλος.

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(1094a24-25), ‘and if this is the case (εἰ δ᾽ οὕτω), one must try (πειρατέον) [an obligation whose nature is left unexpressed] in outline to understand what it is …’ Later, by Book 10, all this careful qualification that had enabled Aristotle to proceed in Book 1 with his premise about human εὐδαιμονία is dropped. Instead, after a brief acknowledgement implicating himself and his readers as the source of this identification of εὐδαιμονία as a τέλος (‘since we have made it the τέλος of human affairs’, 1176a30-32), and some further qualification (‘if happiness is an activity’ and ‘if activities are of two kinds’, 1176b2-3) that prevents ἀρετή from being the soughtafter τέλος (‘because you can have it when you are asleep’, 1176a33-35), it is expressed unproblematically as a given that εὐδαιμονία is the τέλος of human life (1176b31), and this despite his claim, unreconciled and irreconcilable with the facts of human existence, that ‘εὐδαιμονία lacks nothing [as humans do], but is autarkic [as humans are not].’ Adopting Aristotle’s view leads, however, to its own demise: if it is true that εὐδαιμονία lacks nothing and is autarkic (so Aristotle asserts while channelling late fifth-century ideology) then this εὐδαιμονία, according to ‘Solon’ (and backed by empirical evidence), cannot be the τέλος of a human life, at least not a human life which is still in progress.65 Moreover, even for Aristotle’s εὐδαιμονία, the possession of complete αὐτάρκεια is not possible: quite simply, Aristotle never gets away from the material dimension that belongs to the Periclean definition of happiness which he has chosen to embrace and to which he has given new impetus, the very one criticised by Herodotus’ Solon. In Book 1, Aristotle grants that those who include external prosperity in the criteria of εὐδαιμονία are likely not to be wrong (1098b22-29), and repeats, ‘Happiness (εὐδαιμονία) manifestly requires external goods in addition, as we said; for it is impossible (ἀδύνατον), or at least not easy, to do fine things without sufficient financial backing (ἀχορήγητον ὄντα, 1098b33).’66 Later in Book 10, despite claiming the superiority of the activity of θεωρία over those 65

But the legacy of the conflicting views of αὐτάρκεια lies in Aristotle’s ‘so to speak’ (ἤδη πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, Arist. Pol. 1252b27-30, quoted in full above, note 57). 66 See also the passage quoted above: the man Aristotle asks to call ‘happy’ is one also sufficiently endowed with external goods (τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀγαθοῖς ἱκανῶς κεχορηγημένον); cf. Heineman 1988:34. Aristotle’s qualification, ‘or at least not easy’, is a crucial admission, even if a flawed premise: for why must it be not easy, or if it is never easy, surely the effort entailed ought to make it worth more on the logic of 1099b18-25.

31 belonging to other virtues on the basis of its requiring nothing for its pursuit (1178b3-5), he admits that even the best and most autarkic life of θεωρία does require εὐημερία. This concession is made on the basis of nature’s inability to be autarkic (1178b33-35), a fragmentation of a man’s existence to allow the individual, once separated from nature, to seem to be able to transcend insufficiency, relatively speaking: he is most able to do so insofar as he requires least, or rather less than those practicing the other (moral) virtues. There is a certain irony in the fact that of all the wisdom that Solon espouses in Herodotus’ account, the little that Aristotle chooses to adopt from him is something rather pecuniary and banal: he adduces the level of prosperity that Tellus, Cleobis and Biton were said to have enjoyed in order to substantiate his claim that not very much wealth is necessary for happiness (1179a9-13), given that those singled out as happiest by Solon had only moderate means.67 And yet, although adopting Solon when it comes to a view of the ‘standard of living’ required for happiness, Aristotle somehow fails here to register that these men achieving, in Solon’s opinion, superlative happiness on moderate means did so not by engaging in θεωρία, that is, the pursuit he identifies as leading to the greatest εὐδαιμονία, but instead by exercising traditional ἀρεταί – courage, self-sacrifice, piety – the very virtues that Aristotle judges to be inferior, not least for ‘economic’ reasons: they require more external goods – are less self-sufficient – than θεωρία. The exercise of these ἀρεταί – the basis of traditional morality – is for Aristotle demoted to that which is ‘human’, and as such lesser,68 while θεωρία is man’s superlative pursuit, an ἀρετή associated with the divine (θεῖον) in man.69 It is to θεωρία and the claim for its divine status that we now turn.

67

The fact that Tellus achieves the title of most happy despite moderate means, is at odds with Aristotle’s claim in EN 1178a23-b3 that the superiority of θεωρία lies in requiring less external means than those needed for virtues such as justice, courage and moderation. 68 EN 1178a9-14, quoted below. 69 One might see Aristotle here as the professional teacher flogging his course: ‘Why pay more for happiness when you can have the most amount of happiness spending less?’; see also 1178a23-34. This is the argument that appeals to a city committed to trade; the vulgarity is comparable to that of Pericles in the Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.39.4), comparing Athenian bravery to that of Sparta: ‘we expend less effort and yet are no less brave.’ On ‘moral action’ for Aristotle, that is, ‘action in accordance with moral virtue’, counting as an inferior εὐδαιμονία, see Heineman 1988.

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Θεωρία provides an important, if hitherto unrecognised, intertext between Aristotle and Herodotus’ Solon. Θεωρία is the pursuit in which Aristotle is engaged when he identifies it as leading to the life which is most εὐδαίμων and most autarkic. Θεωρία is also that activity in which Solon is said by Herodotus (τῆς θεωρίης ἐκδημήσας ὁ Σόλων εἵνεκεν) to be engaged when he finds the occasion both to share his reflections on such matters as human εὐδαιμονία and on the (im)possibility of human αὐτάρκεια and to enjoin his interlocutor to ‘look to the End’. Again, this collocation can hardly be coincidence: instead, as I have attempted to show, the intertextuality arises as a consequence of both authors responding to a common source, albeit antagonistically. For Herodotus, this is a contemporary political ideology, for Aristotle it is its legacy. The apparent conclusions drawn by Solon from his θεωρία represent a diametrically opposed conception of human εὐδαιμονία to that arising from Aristotle’s own: while Solon’s θεωρία led to a sharp delineation of the divine from the human, mindful of human mortality, the results of Aristotle’s θεωρία culminate in an assault on that very divide.70 The aspiration of the θεωρετικὸς βίος as outlined in chapter seven of Book 10 is nothing less than the transcendence of man’s humanity, the achievement of the status of the gods, at least insofar as man is (relatively if not absolutely) able. The boldness of Aristotle’s argument is again belied by its form, a series of protases whose truth status is far from given, and their function is to lay upon his reader the responsibility for the acceptance of them as truth. He begins (1177a11-18): But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable (εὔλογον) that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue (κατὰ τὴν κρατίστην); and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the intellect (νοῦς),71 or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us (ἄρχειν καὶ ἡγεῖσθαι) by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble 70

To reiterate his ‘arguments’, really nothing more than a series of conjoined assertions: there is such a τέλος to human life, that human εὐδαιμονία is the τέλος, that it is an activity (which rules out ἀρετή as a τέλος, since it can be possessed when asleep: EN 1095b32-33, cf. EN 1176a33-35), that it is autarkic (at least as far as a man can be) and moreover attainable. 71 This elevation of νοῦς to superlative status is surely an echo of Anaxagoras, and as such a further link to Pericles, well recognised as an adherent of that philosopher (Plut. Per. 4.4-5.1), and a figure cited with approval by Aristotle in the context of this discussion (EN 1179a13-17).

33 and divine (ἔννοιαν ἔχειν περὶ καλῶν καὶ θείων), either as being itself also actually divine (εἴτε θεῖον ὂν καὶ αὐτὸ), or as being relatively the divinest part of us (εἴτε τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν τὸ θειότατον), it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it (κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν ἀρετὴν) that will constitute perfect happiness (ἡ τελεία εὐδαιμονία); and it has been stated already that this activity is the activity of contemplation (θεωρητική). (Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)

He continues by elaborating on this view and finally reiterates it in a preliminary conclusion (1177b26-1178a2): Such a life as this however will be higher than the human level (ὁ δὲ τοιοῦτος ἂν εἴη βίος κρείττων ἢ κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον): not in virtue of his humanity will a man achieve it (οὐ γὰρ ᾗ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν οὕτω βιώσεται), but in virtue of something within him that is divine (ἀλλ᾽ ᾗ θεῖόν τι ἐν αὐτῷ ὑπάρχει); and by as much as this something is superior to his composite nature, by so much is its activity superior to the exercise of the other forms of virtue. If then the intellect is something divine in comparison with man, so is the life of the intellect divine in comparison with human life (εἰ δὴ θεῖον ὁ νοῦς πρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, καὶ ὁ κατὰ τοῦτον βίος θεῖος πρὸς τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον). Nor ought we to obey those who enjoin that a man should have man’s thoughts and a mortal the thoughts of mortality (οὐ χρὴ δὲ κατὰ τοὺς παραινοῦντας ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν ἄνθρωπον ὄντα οὐδὲ θνητὰ τὸν θνητόν), but we ought so far as possible to achieve immortality (ἀθανατίζειν), and do all that man may to live in accordance with the highest thing in him (πάντα ποιεῖν πρὸς τὸ ζῆν κατὰ τὸ κράτιστον τῶν ἐν αὑτῷ); for though this be small in bulk, in power (δυνάμει) and value (τιμιότητι) it far surpasses all the rest (πολὺ μᾶλλον πάντων ὑπερέχει). 72

Aristotle’s breathtakingly ambitious claim, ‘Such a life will be greater than the human level: not in virtue of his humanity will a man achieve it, but in virtue of something within him that is divine’, is an implicit and beguiling offer of what may be attainable by his readers, should they only follow his lead. But how does he get here? The ‘argument’ which enables Aristotle to reach this bold conclusion lies precisely in αὐτάρκεια, the claim that it is 72

In quoting only to dismiss the tragic sententia about the necessity of mortals thinking mortal thoughts, Aristotle goes so far as to dismiss the moral reservations expressed during the very period which informed so much of his account.

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possessed – albeit only relatively speaking in comparison to others – by the man who engages in θεωρία (1177a27-b1): Also the activity of contemplation will be found to possess in the highest degree the quality that is termed self-sufficiency (ἥ τε λεγομένη αὐτάρκεια περὶ τὴν θεωρητικὴν μάλιστ᾽ ἂν εἴη); for while it is true that the wise man equally with the just man (ὁ δίκαιος) and the rest requires the necessaries of life, yet, these being adequately supplied, whereas the just man needs other persons towards whom or with whose aid he may act justly, and so likewise do the temperate man (ὁ σώφρων) and the brave man (ὁ ἀνδρεῖος) and the others, the wise man on the contrary can also contemplate by himself, and the more so the wiser he is; no doubt he will study better with the aid of fellow-workers, but still he is the most self-sufficient of men (ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως αὐταρκέστατος).

Here, especially, one hears the echoes of late fifth-century Athenian thought, and, if one listens to Aristotle as Solon would to Croesus, one begins to realise the danger of where such a belief held by a human tends. Aristotle’s exhortation that one should, as much as possible, attempt to gain immortality and his subordination of moral concerns (what Aristotle might call ἀνθρωπικά) are evocative of the final speech attributed to Pericles by Thucydides. Here Pericles dissuades Athenians from responding to any moral qualms about the continued execution of the war by holding before them the μνῆμα they will leave behind (2.64.3-5): And realise that Athens has a mighty name (ὄνομα μέγιστον) among all mankind because she has never yielded to misfortunes, but more freely than any other city has lavished lives and labours upon war, and that she possesses today a power which is the greatest that ever existed down to our time (δύναμιν μεγίστην δὴ μέχρι τοῦδε κεκτημένην). The memory of this greatness (μνήμη καταλελείψεται), even should we now at last give way a little – for it is the nature of all things to decay as well as to grow – will be left to posterity forever (ἧς ἐς ἀΐδιον τοῖς ἐπιγιγνομένοις), how that we of all Hellenes held sway over the greatest number of Hellenes, in the greatest wars held out against our foes whether united or single, and inhabited a city that was the richest in all things and the greatest. These things the man who shrinks from action (ἀπράγμων) may indeed disparage, but he who, like ourselves, wishes to accomplish something (ὁ δὲ δρᾶν τι καὶ αὐτὸς βουλόμενος) will make them the goal of his endeavour, while

35 every man who does not possess them will be envious. To be hated and obnoxious for the moment has always been the lot of those who have aspired to rule over others; but he who, aiming at the highest ends, accepts the odium, is well advised. For hatred does not last long, but the splendour of the moment and the after-glory are left in everlasting remembrance (ἡ δὲ παραυτίκα τε λαμπρότης καὶ ἐς τὸ ἔπειτα δόξα αἰείμνηστος καταλείπεται).

This ‘remembrance’ that Pericles claims will belong in the future to Athenians, however, requires that a certain amount of forgetting also attends it. Forgotten or ignored must be the travesties committed against others by an Athens under the sway of Periclean ideology and also those consequences for Athens itself, two bloody coups, defeat in the war, and the fact that Athens’ survival depended on the decision of her enemy not to inflict upon the Athenians in defeat what the Athenians inflicted on so many others.73 Such lapses of memory were, of course, possible from Aristotle’s vantage point, a figure whose knowledge of the AthenoPeloponnesian war, of Athens’ defeat and its aftermath belonged to that of a metic arriving in Athens some decades later, consuming such rosier versions of the ἀρχή as he would find in Thucydides and later Isocrates.74 Such selective memory is, however, dangerous. As in the case of ‘Croesus’ – that is, Periclean Athens – so, too, with Aristotle, the danger does not reside solely, nor most importantly, in the precariousness of the pursuits that such a belief encourages one to undertake, confident of success and the permanence of one’s εὐδαιμονία, but in the ‘ethics’ that arise from such a view, ethics that gave rise to the ‘hatred of the moment’ and to the censure of those whom Pericles derogatorily labels the ἀπράγμονες for whom ethics were a concern.75 Rather, Aristotle’s 73

Xen. Hell. 2.2.3, 10, 20; Isoc. 8.79. See, for instance, Isoc. 4, esp. 20, 38-53, 100-09. That Aristotle ‘evidently counts Pericles as a happy man’ (Heineman 1988:35; cf. EN 1140b7-11) is truly remarkable given that he entirely fails to possess the constituent elements of happiness listed by Herodotus’ Solon: Pericles loses his sister and sons to plague (not ἀπαθὴς κακῶν), who were held to be worthless (Pl. Alc. 118d-e; cf. Arist. Rhet. 1390b27-30) and were apparently childless (therefore not εὔπαις); he himself was mocked for his appearance (not εὐειδής: Cratinus, Thraittai 73 K-A); and he himself does not end his life well, instead dying of plague (not ἄνουσος), and therefore by Aristotle’s own standards not a ‘complete life’. 75 Thuc. 2.63.2-3: ‘From this empire, however, it is too late for you even to withdraw, if any one at the present crisis, through fear and shrinking from action 74

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preference for the ἀρετή belonging to intellect, the hierarchising of ἀρεταί in which the one involving νοῦς is said to display the κράτιστη ἀρετή owing to its being that which ‘leads and rules’, allows for a most unethical subordination of what those ‘thinking human thoughts’ might consider our highest virtues, justice, courage, self-control (1178a9-14): δευτέρως δ᾽ ὁ κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην ἀρετήν: αἱ γὰρ κατὰ ταύτην ἐνέργειαι ἀνθρωπικαί. δίκαια γὰρ καὶ ἀνδρεῖα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα τὰ κατὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλους πράττομεν ἐν συναλλάγμασι καὶ χρείαις καὶ πράξεσι παντοίαις ἔν τε τοῖς πάθεσι διατηροῦντες τὸ πρέπον ἑκάστῳ: ταῦτα δ᾽ εἶναι φαίνεται πάντα ἀνθρωπικά. The life of moral virtue, on the other hand, is happy only in a secondary degree. For the moral activities are purely human: Justice, I mean, Courage and the other virtues we display in our intercourse with our fellows, when we observe what is due to each in contracts and services and in our various actions, and in our emotions also; and all of these things seem to be purely human affairs. (Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)

The exertions concerning these ἀρεταί, dubbed by Aristotle ἀνθρωπικαί, are deemed lesser: one can find an εὐδαιμονία in such activity, Aristotle concedes,76 but set apart from them as clearly superior is the ἀρετή of the mind (νοῦς). Any requirement to elaborate on a claim of such immense ethical consequences is dismissed by Aristotle, seemingly on the does indeed seek thus to play the honest man (ἀπραγμοσύνῃ ἀνδραγαθίζεται); for by this time the empire you hold is a tyranny, which it may seem wrong (ἄδικον) to have assumed, but which certainly it is dangerous to let go. Men like these would soon ruin a state, either here, if they should win others to their views, or if they should settle in some other land and have an independent state all to themselves; for men of peace (τὸ γὰρ ἄπραγμον) are not safe unless flanked by men of action; nor is it expedient in an imperial state but only in a vassal state to seek safety by submission (οὐδὲ ἐν ἀρχούσῃ πόλει ξυμφέρει, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν ὑπηκόῳ, ἀσφαλῶς δουλεύειν).’ In the depiction of the ἄπραγμων claiming ἀρετή in advocating an end to the war, one might see the basis of the ἀρετή that Aristotle denigrates as secondary for involving no activity, and as such subordinate to the εὐδαιμονία that he advocates which requires activity; or, focalised by critics in the 5th century, this is Athens’ πολυπραγμοσύνη, whose τέλος of εὐδαιμονία was nothing other than (as in Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles) κακία. 76 Arist. EN 1178a20-22.

37 ‘responsible’ grounds of deeming it ‘greater than the task at hand’.77 Clearly he is right about the scope of a such a discussion, but ‘the task at hand’, one might argue, ought not to be undertaken if it necessitates an omission of a discussion of such great moral consequence. Instead, Aristotle chooses to shore up his claim by invoking the gods as exempla (EN 1178b7-24), a rhetorical move which must be recognised for the textbook sophistry that it is, the equivalent of using Zeus’ treatment of Cronus as justification for beating one’s own father. Aristotle ‘proves’ the superiority and divinity of the pursuit of θεωρία by arguing it to be ‘what the gods do’.78 The argument proceeds in stages: since to be just, liberal and courageous are πράξεις ‘small and unworthy of the gods’ and yet the gods are believed to engage in some activity (‘they don’t sleep continually’), his conclusion, formulated as a question that, as such, once again lays responsibility for its answer on his readers, begins, ‘what is left for them to do except θεωρία (τί λείπεται πλὴν θεωρία, 1178b21)?’ Confident his rhetoric has secured the desired answer, Aristotle continues (1178b21-23): It follows that the activity of God, transcendent in blessedness, is the activity of contemplation (ὥστε ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνέργεια, μακαριότητι διαφέρουσα, θεωρητικὴ ἂν εἴη); and therefore among human activities that which is most akin to the divine activity of contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness (καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων δὴ ἡ ταύτῃ συγγενεστάτη εὐδαιμονικωτάτη). (Loeb tr. Rackham 1934)

And concluding from what has proceeded, Aristotle declares, ‘It follows that εὐδαιμονία would be some kind of θεωρία’ (ὥστ᾽ εἴη ἂν ἡ εὐδαιμονία θεωρία τις, 1178b32). So runs the argument. One might, however, replace his rhetorical question with our own: ought we to be comfortable with a hierarchising of lives (βίοι), of ends (τέλη), of ἀρεταί that leads to the denigration of such moral virtues as courage, prudence, and above all justice? Ought we to subordinate these virtues, labelling them as ‘secondary’ and ‘human’, to the aspiration of immortality? This is, of course, not a question that Aristotle invites, nor is it one exclusively raised by his account, so much as one belonging to the previous century – but 77

Arist. EN 1178a22-23. Compare also the sophistic nurse of Euripides’ Hippolytus, who uses the argument, ‘Zeus does it’, to attempt to persuade that there is nothing wrong with committing adultery (451-61, 474-75). 78

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also universal – and answered in the negative by those similarly minded, as Herodotus’ Solon and the ἀπράγμονες of Pericles’ speech, and indeed answered by considering the consequences experienced by those who adopted the ideology underlying such a view. By contrast, the activity pursued by such men as those to whom Solon awarded the title of most happy is not ‘theoretic’, nor one that aspired to divine status, although nevertheless they did – thanks to Herodotus – gain immortality. They are, instead, the traditional virtues of courage, self-sacrifice for city and family, and filial and religious piety (and all done on moderate means!). From the vantage point of Aristotle, the Athens of the empire could well have looked attractive. He had, after all, never lived during the time of the empire, had not been on the receiving end of its excesses, 79 nor did he experience, as Athenians did, the depredations of war and defeat, as well as the aftermath of the years that immediately followed. Moreover, he had no doubt read such texts as glorified the Periclean days of Athenian ἀρχή,80 and was purveying his ‘wisdom’ to students full of nostalgia for their city’s lost ἀρχή, its εὐδαιμονία about which they had heard so much and of which they still witnessed the visible signs (cf. Thuc. 1.10.2). Some of these students, to be sure, were incapable of ‘achieving immortality’ however much Aristotle, channelling Periclean ideology, guided their θεωρία, but he would find one whose ‘success’ would come from the same means of attaining immortality used by Periclean Athens, namely the subordination of the ‘human virtues’ to the ambition of conquest. To conclude: Aristotle’s views of εὐδαιμονία, his account of the origins of πολιτεία as predicated on human need, the means by which humans transcend their naturally unautarkic state, and his view of φιλία as selfinterest, I would suggest, all need to be examined as a legacy inherited from fifth-century Athens. Whether Aristotle himself was fully 79

One might say, from Aristotle’s vantage point, Athens had ‘lived’ long enough (cf. EN 1101a12-13) after the misfortunes of the end of the AthenoPeloponnesian wars and her ἀρχή to warrant the label εὐδαίμων; of course, another reversal lay in store for them, ironically at the hands of a student of Aristotle. 80 And indeed such texts left out the brutality: see, for instance, the inadequacy of Thucydides’ handling of the treatment of the Aeginetans (explicitly noted in antiquity, Dion. Hal. Thuc. 14 and 15), violently expelled from their homes (Ael. VH 2.9) twice: first, clinically, as simply the ‘pus of the Piraeus’ (a metaphor of Pericles of which Aristotle speaks with approval, Rhet. 1411a15-16), and then ‘as birds having hidden themselves away’ (Plut. Comp. Nic. and Crass. 4.4-5) in their new homes of Cythera and Thyrea.

39 committed to the values he presents in the Nicomachean Ethics, or writing as a metic seeking to attract students belonging to a πόλις still committed to these values, must remain an open question. In this article, the aim has been above all to demonstrate the degree to which Herodotus’ Solon λόγος is no relic of archaic Greece, but a sophisticated reflection of critical contemporary debates on the definition of εὐδαιμονία and the legitimacy and consequences of its pursuit. I hope, however, at least to have begun to reveal the need to re-evaluate the nature of the εὐδαιμονία that Aristotle outlines for his readers, to suggest that Aristotle’s dubious achievement in the Nicomachean Ethics, if not also elsewhere, lies in his having been able to divorce his discussion from the historical and ideological context in which its ideas originated, to tidy up – curb the excesses of – the earlier debate for those who came and will come after. And finally, I want also to suggest – perhaps warn – that the implicit belief underlying Aristotle’s account in the utility of a reined-in version of the political and moral philosophy that circulated in imperial Athens may be fundamentally and morally flawed. As Herodotus’ Solon said, one must ‘look to the end of every matter’, and that would include looking to the acts that Athens committed while embracing such an ideology and how acting on it worked out for her in the end. Herodotus’ Solon is a figure who travels around engaged in θεωρία, whose conclusions are vastly at odds with those which Aristotle has chosen to promulgate. Solon implicitly argues that there is one τέλος of a human life – its τελευτή – and those human lives that he chose as the best and brightest ended in the selfless practice of virtue – whether defending one’s city with one’s own person, or displaying filial and religious piety. Εὐδαιμονία cannot be predicated of a man while alive; moreover, from a divine (θεῖον) perspective on man the most divine human life is not, pace those who first promulgated the view of Aristotle in Book 10 of the Ethics, one dedicated to θεωρία, but exists only in death. And rather than exhort readers to engage in such θεωρία as ascribes to the idea of the existence of a relatively superlative autarkic state for a human life or a city, an activity which inevitably invites one to believe in the possibility of attaining the τέλος of αὐτάρκεια, Herodotus, through his Solon, advises the opposite. The most ethical, and secure because empirically grounded, would be to forgo the temptation to use the concept in relation to humanity, except in the context of an absolute and categorical denial of the possibility of its human attainment.

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Bibliography Asheri, D. 2007. ‘Book 1.’ In D. Asheri, A. Lloyd, A. Corcella, O. Murray and A. Moreno (edd.), A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV, 57-218. Oxford. De Heer, C. 1969. Makar-Eudaimon-Olbois Eutuchēs: A Study of the Semantic Field Denoting Happiness in Ancient Greek to the End of the 5th Century BC. Amsterdam. De Romilly, J. 1986. ‘Les manies de Prodicos et la rigueur de la langue grecque.’ MH 43:1-18. Dunn, F. 1998. ‘The uses of time in fifth-century Athens.’ AW 29:37-52. Dunn, F. 1999. ‘The Council’s solar calendar.’ AJPh 120:369-80. Flory, S. 1987. The Archaic Smile of Herodotus. Detroit. Forster Smith, C. 1928. Thucydides. Vol. 1. (Rev. ed.) Cambridge, Mass. and London. Fowler, H. 1914. Plato. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Freese, J. 1926. Aristotle. Art of Rhetoric. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Hershbell, J. 1981. Pseudo-Plato, Axiochus. Chico, Calif. Heineman, R. 1988. ‘Eudaimonia and self-sufficiency in the Nicomachean Ethics.’ Phronesis 33:31-53. Irwin, E. 2013. ‘To whom does Solon speak? Conceptions of happiness and ending life well in the later fifth century (Hdt. 1.29-33).’ In K. Geus, E. Irwin and T. Poiss (edd.), Wege des Erzählens: Logos und Topos in den Historien, 261-321. Frankfurt am Main. Irwin, E. 2015 ‘The Platonic Axiochus: the politics of not fearing death in 406 BC.’ In S. Gotteland and S. Dubel (edd.), Genres, formes et cadres du dialogue antique, 63-85. Bordeaux. Gaiser, K. 1975. Das Staatsmodell des Thukydides. Zur Rede des Perikles für die Gefallenen. Heidelberg. Joyal, M. 2005. ‘Socrates as sophos aner in the Axiochus.’ In K. Döring, M. Erler and S. Schorn (edd.), Pseudoplatonica, 97-118. Stuttgart. Kallet-Marx, L. 1993. Money, Expense and Naval Power in Thucydides’ History 1-5.24. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Calif. and Oxford. Krischer, T. 2000. ‘Der Begriff der Autarkie im Rahmen der griechischen Kulturgeschichte.’ Hyperboreus 6:253-62. Lamb, W. 1924. Plato. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Lipka, M. 2002. Xenophon’s Spartan Constitution. Berlin and New York. Lloyd, M. 1987. ‘Cleobis and Biton (Herodotus 1.31).’ Hermes 115:22-28. Macleod, C. 1983. Collected Essays. Oxford.

41 Macaulay, G. 1890. The History of Herodotus, translated into English. London. Marchant, E. 1923. Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Mayhew, R. 2011. Prodicus the Sophist. Texts, Translations, and Commentary. Oxford. Mikalson, J. 2002. ‘The daimon of eudaimonia.’ In J.F. Miller, C. Damon and K.S. Myers (edd.), Vertis in Usum. Studies in Honor of Edward Courtney, 250-59. Munich and Leipzig. Moles, J. 1996. ‘Herodotus warns the Athenians.’ Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 9:259-84. Moles, J. 2002. ‘Herodotus and Athens.’ In E.J. Bakker , H. van Wees and I.J. De Jong (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, 33-52. Leiden. Norlin, G. 1928. Isocrates. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Oldfather, C. 1946. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History. Vol. 4. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Perrin, B. 1914. Plutarch, Lives. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Raaflaub, K. 1984. ‘Athens “Ideologie er Macht” und die Freiheit des Tyrannen.’ In J.M. Balcer, H.-J. Gehrke, K.A. Raaflaub und W. Schuller (edd.), Studien zum Attischen Seebund, Xenia 8:45-86. Konstanz. Raaflaub, K. 1985. Die Entdeckung der Freiheit. Munich. Rackham, H. 1934. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (Rev. ed.). Cambridge, Mass. and London. Smith, A.C. 2005. ‘The politics of weddings at Athens: an iconographic assessment.’ LICS 4:1-32. Smith, A.C. 2011. Polis and Personification in Classical Athenian Art. Leiden and Boston, Mass. Warnach, W. 1971. Art. ‘Autarkie.’ In J. Ritter (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 685-90. Basel. Wheeler, M. 1955. ‘Self-sufficiency and the Greek city.’ JHI 16:416-20. Wilpert, P. 1950. Art. ‘Autarkie’. RAC 1:1039-50.

THE HAPPINESS OF SOPHOCLES’ AJAX Clive Chandler University of Cape Town Madness makes great theatre, particularly madness which involves delusion. This is no surprise if the tragic effect is owed in some part to an inequality in the distribution of knowledge: some characters know things that others do not. In the surviving examples of tragedy there are a number of plays that feature a main character who suffers from delusions arising from a divinely-induced bout of madness. Most conspicuous, perhaps, are Pentheus and Heracles in Euripides’ Bacchae and Heracles, and Ajax in Sophocles’ play.1 In the Heracles and Ajax, both eponymous characters engage in acts of extreme violence while suffering from delusions that the targets of their aggression are someone, or something, else. Heracles murders his wife and three children in his own house, yet believes he is travelling all the way to Argos from Thebes and killing his enemy Eurystheus and his children. In the Greek encampment outside Troy, Ajax attacks and kills a number of livestock, along with the men stationed to protect and manage them, and takes others back to his tent to slaughter and even torture, all the while believing that he is perpetrating these actions upon the Atreidae and particularly Odysseus in revenge for not being awarded the arms of Achilles. In both plays, the gods are the cause of the delusions which are the principal characteristics of these spells of madness (Hera via Iris and Lyssa for Heracles, Athena for Ajax). Predictably, the reaction of other characters, and presumably even the audience of the plays, is complex: fascination, anxiety, horror, pity, revulsion, perhaps even amusement. The madness in both cases is seen as 

I am grateful to the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions. We know that Aeschylus devoted a trilogy to the judgement of arms and Ajax’s suicide, but it is unclear from surviving references and fragments whether the hero appeared mad on stage; POxy. 2256 fr. 71.12, at least as restored by the editors, may preserve an allusion in the phrase ο]ὐκ ἰσο̣[ρ]ρ̣[όπ]ω̣ι φρενί, though the context, such as it is, points to lack of fairness in allocating the arms to Odysseus; but ascription to a specific play, such as Aeschylus’ Armorum iudicio is highly speculative. Arist. Poet. 1455b34-1456a1 cites plays about Ajax and Ixion as representatives of the second (the so-called παθητική) of the four forms of tragedy. 1

43 an affliction of the φρένες, and thus is categorisable as a disease.2 Even the sufferers themselves describe it as such once they recover.3 Yet, in the descriptions of the madness of both Heracles and Ajax, and in the case of Ajax, whom Sophocles actually presents on stage while mad, there are unambiguous indications that the heroes are actually enjoying themselves while performing their tasks.4 Tecmessa is quite specific on this point when describing how she observed Ajax in his madness: ἀνὴρ ἐκεῖνος, ἡνίκ’ ἦν ἐν τῇ νόσῳ, αὐτὸς μὲν ἥδεθ’ οἷσιν εἴχετ’ ἐν κακοῖς, ἡμᾶς δὲ τοὺς φρονοῦντας ἠνία ξυνών· That man, when he was in the midst of the illness, for his part actually enjoyed the evils in which he was being held, but it was distressing for us, the ones with our senses, to be with him; (271-73)

It would be a mistake to assume that the enjoyment which Heracles and Ajax clearly derive from their hideously violent activities is itself a symptom of madness. In Euripides’ play there is no evidence in the text that Heracles finds the prospect of murdering Eurystheus and his children the act of a madman, or an utterly unconscionable deed. On the contrary, we are left to assume that if Heracles had achieved the slaughter of Eurystheus and his family, it would have constituted another testimony to his heroism and prowess as a warrior. Even more explicitly, in Sophocles’ play Ajax had already conceived the plan to murder and torture the Argive commanders while he was still perfectly in his right mind, so to speak. Though we may find the delight which he takes in describing his assumed murderous accomplishments psychotic, or at least ‘ghoulish’,5

2

Athena says she urged Ajax on μανιάσιν νόσοις (59), and promises Odysseus δείξω δὲ καὶ σοὶ τήνδε περιφανῆ νόσον (66); cf. Tecmessa ἐν τῇ νόσῳ (271), ὡς ἔληξε κἀνέπνευσε τῆς νόσου (274). Collinge 1962:50 goes so far as to offer a diagnosis: ‘Ajax’s total behaviour looks like a classic example of the manicdepressive disorder.’ 3 Cf. Tecmessa’s account of Ajax’s anguish on recovery at 259 (νῦν φρόνιμος νέον ἄλγος ἔχει), 275 (λύπῃ πᾶς ἐλήλαται κακῇ), and extensively in lines 305-27. 4 The Chorus’ neat oxymoronic phrase νοσῶν εὐφραίνεται (280) captures the paradox; see also Tecmessa’s description of him at 303: συντιθεὶς γέλων πολύν. 5 So Finglass 2011:154; see also Stanford 1979:62: ‘Note that Athena was not the cause of Ajax’s mad rage against the Greek commanders.’

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there is no evidence that he would find it so. His actions are only misdirected, through the agency of the goddess Athena. At least, while in the throes of their delusions, Heracles and Ajax are quite happy performing their activities. While one may legitimately use the adjective ‘happy’ in modern English in this context, from a Greek perspective it would seem perverse to allocate them the description εὐδαίμονες. No one in the plays, least of all Heracles or Ajax themselves, describes the madmen as such. The ghastly consequences of their mad actions might be thought sufficient to disqualify them from consideration for happiness anyway. Yet both Ajax and Heracles were unaware, at the time, of those consequences, so in the strict sense the consequences are irrelevant to the experience of the agents while mad. Of course, if the concept of disease is paramount in this context (and the cause of the disease is not important here),6 then there is no way that the sufferers can be regarded as happy, even if they appear to be experiencing enjoyment in the midst of their delusion. So too, if the φρένες regulate our sensations, responses and behaviours – in short, our grip on the world and how we navigate through it – any condition which compromises the efficiency of this organ is to be viewed as highly undesirable. Finally, it would seem paradoxical to apply the adjective εὐδαίμων to somebody who is so clearly the target of divine displeasure and whose true objectives are so spitefully frustrated. Common sense should insist, then, that it would be absurd to describe Heracles and Ajax as happy for as long as they are confined to their delusions. Yet common sense is not always adequate. Since εὐδαιμονία (‘happiness’) forms a fundamental topic in many Greek philosophical discussions of practical ethics, the grounds upon which happiness can be denied to Heracles and Ajax can be investigated more rigorously by reference to Aristotle’s discussions in his ethical works of what constitutes happiness, particularly since he tends to offer a review of more general Greek opinions about happiness, and how happiness is to be distinguished from other feelings of well-being. That being said, he does not regard the opinions of everyone as worth taking seriously: those of children, sick people and madmen are explicitly excluded from consideration in the Eudemian Ethics as superfluous to the issue:

6

Ajax’s affliction is explicitly labelled a νόσος even by the goddess who caused it (66); Holmes 2008: esp. 237-52 offers a reconsideration of the symptomatology of Heracles’ madness and its relation to medical discourse.

45 πάσας μὲν οὖν τὰς δόξας ἐπισκοπεῖν, ὅσας ἔχουσί τινες περὶ αὐτῆς, περίεργον (πολλὰ γὰρ φαίνεται καὶ τοῖς παιδαρίοις καὶ τοῖς κάμνουσι καὶ παραφρονοῦσι, περὶ ὧν ἂν οὐθεὶς νοῦν ἔχων διαπορήσειεν)· So it is superfluous to examine all opinions that people have about it (children, the sick, the insane have many views, but no one who has sense would engage in discussion over those) (1214b28-31);

In the Nicomachean Ethics, happiness (εὐδαιμονία) is acknowledged as the supreme good, that for which all other goods are chosen, and consequently all other choices which a person makes are subordinate to this: τοιοῦτον δ’ ἡ εὐδαιμονία μάλιστ’ εἶναι δοκεῖ· ταύτην γὰρ αἱρούμεθα ἀεὶ δι’ αὐτὴν καὶ οὐδέποτε δι’ ἄλλο, τιμὴν δὲ καὶ ἡδονὴν καὶ νοῦν καὶ πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν αἱρούμεθα μὲν καὶ δι’ αὐτά (μηθενὸς γὰρ ἀποβαίνοντος ἑλοίμεθ’ ἂν ἕκαστον αὐτῶν), αἱρούμεθα δὲ καὶ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας χάριν, διὰ τούτων ὑπολαμβάνοντες εὐδαιμονήσειν. Such is the kind of thing happiness most seems to be. For we always choose this on account of itself and never on account of something else, while honour and pleasure and intelligence and every virtue we choose both on account of them (for even if nothing resulted from them we would choose each one of them) but we choose them for the sake of happiness too, assuming that we shall be happy by means of these things. (1097a34-b5)

One notes that honour and pleasure, two things that concern Sophocles’ mad Ajax, though they can be objects in themselves, are still viewed as potentially subordinate to the goal of happiness itself. Aristotle suggests that to make the identification of εὐδαιμονία meaningful (ἐναργέστερον, 1097b23) human happiness must be assessed in relation to the function of a human life. What makes human life distinctive (τὸ ἴδιον, 1097b34), different from that of plants and animals (1097b33-1098a3), is to be sought in the way that the part of us that makes us unique, that is, λόγος, is deployed in activity.7 The function of a human, alone of creatures, is 7

Arist. EN 1098a3-7: λείπεται δὴ πρακτική τις τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος· τούτου δὲ τὸ μὲν ὡς ἐπιπειθὲς λόγῳ, τὸ δ’ ὡς ἔχον καὶ διανοούμενον. διττῶς δὲ καὶ ταύτης λεγομένης τὴν κατ’ ἐνέργειαν θετέον· κυριώτερον γὰρ αὕτη δοκεῖ λέγεσθαι (‘what is left then is a life that activates the part which has reason; and of this part, there is the one as obeying reason, the other as having it and doing the thinking. Since

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activity of soul in accordance with reason or not without reason (ἐστὶν ἔργον ἀνθρώπου ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια κατὰ λόγον ἢ μὴ ἄνευ λόγου, 1098a7-8). Human activity, since it is inevitably an activity of the soul performed in accordance with λόγος, can never avoid an ethical dimension: actions are either those of a good man or of one who is not good. The proper performance of this function is ultimately what constitutes εὐδαιμονία. This, of course, will have categorical and moral implications for what can count as happiness. If happiness can only be conceptualised in connection with the activity of a human soul performed with reason, there are a number of consequences, some of which Aristotle makes explicit. General feelings of well-being are insufficiently specific to humans to qualify as ‘happiness’ in the strict sense of the word. It perhaps comes as no surprise then to discover that animals, which do not have a soul equipped with λόγος, cannot be described as happy. And a commitment to the prescription for human function outlined above will also result in the formal exclusion of children from happiness too. While, it seems, children have the potential to be happy, they must await maturity before happiness can be properly activated: εἰκότως οὖν οὔτε βοῦν οὔτε ἵππον οὔτε ἄλλο τῶν ζῴων οὐδὲν εὔδαιμον λέγομεν· οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν οἷόν τε κοινωνῆσαι τοιαύτης ἐνεργείας. διὰ ταύτην δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν οὐδὲ παῖς εὐδαίμων ἐστίν· οὔπω γὰρ πρακτικὸς τῶν τοιούτων διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν· οἱ δὲ λεγόμενοι διὰ τὴν ἐλπίδα μακαρίζονται. So it is reasonable then that we can call neither an ox nor a horse nor any other animal happy. For no one of them is able to share in this kind of activity. For this reason neither is a child happy; for it is not yet able to engage in these kinds of activities owing to its immaturity; rather, those said to be happy are labelled blessed because of the expectation we have of them. (Arist. EN 1099b32-1100a4)

There is also the consideration of duration. Although Aristotle acknowledges that the question is amenable to debate, he seems to feel that happiness is an inappropriate term to apply to activities of limited duration:

life too is spoken of in two ways, the life as activity must be assumed; for this seems to be the more proper usage of the term.’)

47 τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθὸν ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια γίνεται κατ’ ἀρετήν, εἰ δὲ πλείους αἱ ἀρεταί, κατὰ τὴν ἀρίστην καὶ τελειοτάτην. ἔτι δ’ ἐν βίῳ τελείῳ. μία γὰρ χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ, οὐδὲ μία ἡμέρα· οὕτω δὲ οὐδὲ μακάριον καὶ εὐδαίμονα μία ἡμέρα οὐδ’ ὀλίγος χρόνος. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if the virtues are more than one, in accordance with the best and most complete. One should add ‘in a complete life’. For one swallow does not make a spring, nor one day. Therefore neither one day nor a short period makes one blessed and happy. (Arist. EN 1098a16-20)

No doubt, Aristotle needs to acknowledge the view associated with Solon (Hdt. 1.32-33, and EN 1100a10-13) that it is unwise to label anyone happy until they’re dead, but at the same time he is concerned to impose some sort of limit on this. Happiness cannot be postponed indefinitely out of fear of what will happen in the future. The entire question is usefully summarised by Aristotle thus: τί οὖν κωλύει λέγειν εὐδαίμονα τὸν κατ’ ἀρετὴν τελείαν ἐνεργοῦντα καὶ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀγαθοῖς ἱκανῶς κεχορηγημένον μὴ τὸν τυχόντα χρόνον ἀλλὰ τέλειον βίον; ἢ προσθετέον καὶ βιωσόμενον οὕτω καὶ τελευτήσοντα κατὰ λόγον; ἐπειδὴ τὸ μέλλον ἀφανὲς ἡμῖν ἐστίν, τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν δὲ τέλος καὶ τέλειον τίθεμεν πάντῃ πάντως. εἰ δ’ οὕτω, μακαρίους ἐροῦμεν τῶν ζώντων οἷς ὑπάρχει καὶ ὑπάρξει τὰ λεχθέντα, μακαρίους δ’ ἀνθρώπους. καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον διωρίσθω. So what prevents us from saying that man is happy who acts in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods not for a random period but for a complete life? Or should we add he will live so and die in accordance with reason? Since the future is invisible to us, we place happiness as the goal and complete in every way. And if so, we shall term ‘blessed’ those of the living to whom what has been said applies and will apply, and men blessed. Let that be the definition for these matters so far. (Arist. EN 1101a 14-21)

The discussion which Aristotle devotes to the question of εὐδαιμονία in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics serves to illuminate some of the assumptions which an intellectualist perspective, informed more broadly by common opinions, brings to what constitutes happiness. Most prominent are the involvement of λόγος, the entailment of ἀρετή, and the notion that happiness is most properly a prolonged state of activity rather

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than a fleeting feeling of well-being, exhilaration or contentment. Aristotle gives priority to the peculiar cognitive aspects of the human animal, both with respect to its proper function and the happiness which is a consequence of that proper functioning. Of particular interest, in my view, is the differentiation of happiness from a human subject’s own sense of well-being. In a sense, εὐδαιμονία is not up to us. By that I mean that we, as individuals, are not necessarily qualified to determine of our own accord whether we are happy or not. Aristotle also offers a sort of appendix, which may strike the modern reader as a little odd. In his effort to accommodate a variety of common beliefs, Aristotle devotes space to the question of whether the happiness of the dead is affected by the misfortunes of their descendants.8 The notion is curious if one reflects on the extent to which the dead are capable of performing the function of a human as defined earlier by Aristotle. Though Aristotle is cautious in committing himself to a belief that the dead are affected in any way by the fortunes of the living, 9 the investigation indirectly raises some interesting questions with respect to happiness. Aristotle’s phrasing does not make it clear how the dead are imagined to be affected by the misfortunes or successes of their living friends and descendants. It is possible that Aristotle is leaving open the possibility that living people reassess their opinion of the deceased in the light of the unfolding destinies of their loved ones. On this understanding, the deceased would not necessarily be aware of the fortunes of their living relatives, or even sentient in any way at all. But the most obvious way in which they could be affected is if they are to some degree sentient and received information about the living. Perhaps the most famous illustration of this sort of scenario is that offered in Book 11 of the Odyssey. Once the shade of Achilles has heard about his son’s success at Troy, he strides across the meadow of asphodel in joy (γηθοσύνη).10 The dead hero is 8

Arist. EN 1101a22-b9. Arist. EN 1101b1-5: ἔοικε γὰρ ἐκ τούτων εἰ καὶ διικνεῖται πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὁτιοῦν, εἴτ’ ἀγαθὸν εἴτε τοὐναντίον, ἀφαυρόν τι καὶ μικρὸν ἢ ἁπλῶς ἢ ἐκείνοις εἶναι, εἰ δὲ μή, τοσοῦτόν γε καὶ τοιοῦτον ὥστε μὴ ποιεῖν εὐδαίμονας τοὺς μὴ ὄντας μηδὲ τοὺς ὄντας ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸ μακάριον (‘for it seems from these considerations that even if something or other does reach them, whether good or the opposite, it is something ineffectual and small either generally or as far as they are concerned, and if not, that it is of such a size and such a quality as to not make happy those who are not or remove their blessedness.’) 10 Hom. Od. 11.538-40: ὣς ἐφάμην, ψυχὴ δὲ ποδώκεος Αἰακίδαο / φοίτα μακρὰ βιβᾶσα κατ’ ἀσφοδελὸν λειμῶνα / γηθοσύνη, ὅ οἱ υἱὸν ἔφην ἀριδείκετον εἶναι. 9

49 considerably happier than he was when he began his conversation with Odysseus. Presumably, the converse is possible too, in theory, that a visitor to the land of the dead may bring news of some disaster, and the shade be adversely affected. But whatever the case, the consideration of the happiness of the dead introduces the role which awareness plays in the state of happiness. It is, in theory, possible to remain happy if one does not have the information that would dispel the happiness. To return to the Ajax: after Athena has summoned Ajax from his hut to interrogate him on what he has done, while Odysseus looks on unseen by the deranged hero, the Ithacan confesses to feelings of pity for his enemy and draws a lesson from his example: ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο πλὴν εἴδωλ’, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἢ κούφην σκιάν. I see that all we who live are nothing other than images, or an insubstantial shadow. (Soph. Aj. 125-26)

One of the same terms is used by Tecmessa when she describes how Ajax spoke to the figments of his delusion (σκιᾷ τινι, 301) believing them to be men. Yet contemplation of the grotesque spectacle of the deluded Ajax has led Odysseus to compare all living mortals to the shades of the dead, and the implication of this insight is that everything we perceive as fixed and certain about anyone is transitory and insubstantial. From the perspective of the gods, all mortals are at risk of believing something to be true when it is merely an illusion, and thus (potentially) where an individual believes he is happy, he may be deluded. Other philosophical schools offer refinements or alternatives to the kind of understanding we find in Aristotle. Yet, with one or two possible exceptions, while the means to happiness are made available to the human agent, the assessment of the happiness remains objective. The human agent does not become the sole arbiter of his own happiness. In fact, the madman even seems to have been useful as a tool in polemical arguments about happiness. In a Peripatetic evaluation of the Stoic claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness, for example, Alexander of Aphrodisias draws attention to the absurdity of taking virtue as self-sufficient by taking as examples madmen and other persons whose cognitive functions are adversely affected by various afflictions:

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And again: ἔτι εἰ τὸν μὲν τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχοντα ἐνδέχεται μαίνεσθαι καὶ νοσεῖν, εὐδαιμονεῖν δὲ τὸν μαινόμενον, ὅτε μαίνεται, ἢ τὸν νοσοῦντα ἢ τὸν κοιμώμενον οὐδεὶς ἂν εἴποι, οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὸ εὐδαιμονεῖν ἐν τῷ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχειν. Further, if it is possible for the man who has virtue to be mad or sick, but no one would say that the madman is happy at the time that he is mad, or likewise the sick man, or the sleeping man, then it would not be that happiness lies in the possession of virtue. (Alex. Aphr. Mantissa 165.23-26)

Madness, like sickness and sleep, amounts to a suspension of the condition of happiness. Yet this objective perspective dismisses the sensation of the subject as relevant in any way to the assessment of the subject’s happiness. An examination which takes seriously the subjective experiences of Heracles and Ajax, and explains the positive feelings which the heroes enjoy even while deranged, requires perhaps a different approach. If we accept that Heracles and Ajax, within the limitations of the objectives they have while deranged, are engaged in purposeful action, that their actions are performed in accordance with a particular kind of prowess, that is, they exhibit excellence (ἀρετή) in their performance, and that they derive a sense of pleasure, exhilaration and achievement from actions so 11

Cf. Soph. Aj. 85: σκοτώσω βλέφαρα καὶ δεδορκότα.

51 performed, then a paradigm for this kind of activity is available. Aristotle can be found to recognise a connection between pleasure and activity, where pleasure completes the activity as an end which supervenes upon the activity, τελειοῖ δὲ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἡ ἡδονὴ οὐχ ὡς ἡ ἕξις ἐνυπάρχουσα, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐπιγινόμενόν τι τέλος, οἷον τοῖς ἀκμαίοις ἡ ὥρα. Pleasure completes the activity not as a state that already exists within it but as an end which supervenes upon it, like beauty in men who are in their prime. (Arist. EN 1174b31-33)

Furthermore, since life itself is an activity (ἡ δὲ ζωὴ ἐνέργειά τις ἐστί, 1175a13), each individual follows his or her own preferences in the kinds of activities undertaken and the pleasures which attend upon them: the musician deploys his ears in hearing melodies, the lover of learning his thought in thinking about the objects of his investigations, and so on (1175a13-15). Although Aristotle does not include the warrior among his illustrations, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he, too, would derive the specific pleasure proper to the activity undertaken, particularly if the activity in question were executed with excellence and success. Yet an additional complication is encountered in Aristotle’s distinction between good and bad activities and corresponding good and bad pleasures: διαφερουσῶν δὲ τῶν ἐνεργειῶν ἐπιεικείᾳ καὶ φαυλότητι, καὶ τῶν μὲν αἱρετῶν οὐσῶν τῶν δὲ φευκτῶν τῶν δ’ οὐδετέρων, ὁμοίως ἔχουσι καὶ αἱ ἡδοναί· καθ’ ἑκάστην γὰρ ἐνέργειαν οἰκεία ἡδονὴ ἔστιν. ἡ μὲν οὖν τῇ σπουδαίᾳ οἰκεία ἐπιεικής, ἡ δὲ τῇ φαύλῃ μοχθηρά· καὶ γὰρ αἱ ἐπιθυμίαι τῶν μὲν καλῶν ἐπαινεταί, τῶν δ’ αἰσχρῶν ψεκταί. Since activities differ in terms of virtuousness and meanness, and some are worthy of choice, others to be avoided, and still others neither, the same holds for pleasures too. There is a pleasure proper to every activity. Thus the virtuous pleasure is proper to the noble activity, the unsound pleasure to the mean activity; for the desires for fine things are to be praised, while the desires for shameful things are to be censured. (Arist. EN 1175b 24-29)

Where would the warrior’s activity be best placed? Clearly, a temporarily insane warrior could not be classified as deriving a virtuous pleasure from a

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noble activity. In her explanation to Odysseus, Athena boasts that she frustrated Ajax’s purpose and frames this in an interesting language which acknowledges the hero’s exhilaration: ἐγώ σφ’ ἀπείργω, δυσφόρους ἐπ’ ὄμμασι γνώμας βαλοῦσα, τῆς ἀνηκέστου χαρᾶς. It was I who held him back, casting grievous fancies upon his eyes, from his incurable joy. (Soph. Aj. 51-52)

Some editors have wanted to emend the word χαρᾶς to φορᾶς (‘headlong rush’) or φθορᾶς (‘act of destruction’).12 In his recent commentary on this play, Finglass maintains the transmitted text but interprets the word as a compressed rendering of ‘the act which would bring him joy’.13 While this is true, the word also resonates with the exhilaration that a warrior experiences in the Iliad when engaged in combat. The key term here is χάρμη, which is equated with χαρά by the ancient scholiasts, grammarians and lexicographers, and usually understood by us in the specific sense of ‘joy/lust of battle’, or sometimes ‘battle’ itself.14 The noun occurs 22 times in the Iliad, most noticeably often in the formula μνήσαντο δὲ χάρμης (4.222; 8.252; 14.441; 15.380) or its variation οὔ πω λήθετο χάρμης (12.203, 393) at the end of the hexameter, which serves to secure its status as one of the defining features of the warrior-hero. There is also the compound adjective μενεχάρμης which combines the notions of exhilaration and warrior spirit encapsulated in the noun μένος. A long recognised illustration of this adrenaline-fuelled condition is offered by a passage which involves Ajax specifically: τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη Τελαμώνιος Αἴας· οὕτω νῦν καὶ ἐμοὶ περὶ δούρατι χεῖρες ἄαπτοι μαιμῶσιν, καί μοι μένος ὤρορε, νέρθε δὲ ποσσὶν 12

φορᾶς attributed to Reiske by Jebb 1896:19; φθορᾶς: Rauchenstein 1873. Finglass 2011:154 n. 6. Jebb 1896:19 n. 13, however, connects the genitive χαρᾶς with γνώμας βαλοῦσα: ‘I cast upon his eyes the tyrannous fancies of his baneful joy.’ 14 E.g. Hsch χ 203,1 χάρμη· ἡ μετὰ χαρᾶς μάχη, Etymologicum Gudianum μ p. 396, line 2 χάρμη δὲ ἡ μάχη, ἤτοι κατὰ ἐναντιότητα, ἡ χαρὰν ἐμποιοῦσα τοῖς νικῶσι, χ p. 562, line 52 , ἡ μάχη· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε δηλοῖ ἡ λέξις, καὶ τὸ χαίρειν τῇ μάχῃ, παρὰ τὸ χαράσσω· τὴν γὰρ χαρὰν, ὡς φησὶ καὶ Ἀριστίδης. 13

53 ἔσσυμαι ἀμφοτέροισι· μενοινώω δὲ καὶ οἶος Ἕκτορι Πριαμίδῃ ἄμοτον μεμαῶτι μάχεσθαι. ὣς οἳ μὲν τοιαῦτα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀγόρευον χάρμῃ γηθόσυνοι, τήν σφιν θεὸς ἔμβαλε θυμῷ· And in reply to him (that is, Ajax son of Oileus), Ajax son of Telamon said, ‘Now my invincible hands, too, quiver in eagerness for the spear, my spirit is up, I feel my legs are bursting for the sprint. I’m dying to fight furious Hector, Priam’s son, in violent single combat.’ Thus they spoke to one another, carried high by the exhilaration of combat which the god cast into their spirits. (Hom. Il. 13.76-82)

The warrior experiences χάρμη as both an interior feeling and as something intensely physical. As Latacz has noted, only psychic and cognitive powers can be cast into the θυμός (or φρένες, καρδίη) in Homer.15 Yet the source of the pleasure anticipated is intensely physical. Ajax relishes the joy which will come from action, not from reflection. When Athena tells Odysseus of Ajax’s deluded attack (Soph. Aj. 5558), ἔνθ’ εἰσπεσὼν ἔκειρε πολύκερων φόνον κύκλῳ ῥαχίζων, κἀδόκει μὲν ἔσθ' ὅτε δισσοὺς Ἀτρείδας αὐτόχειρ κτείνειν ἔχων, ὅτ’ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλον ἐμπίτνων στρατηλατῶν then, falling upon them he sheared through and slaughtered many horned animals all around him, slicing through their spines, and there were times he imagined he had the two Atreidae in his grip and was killing them with his own hand, and other times when he thought he was attacking another member of the high command

she becomes the narrator of a compressed and perverted aristeia, one not rendered in the language normally associated with warrior combat in Homeric epic, but one which succeeds in conveying the physical violence of copious butchery16 and the perpetrator’s consciousness of his actions, particularly through the graphic references to the actual feeling of gripping Menelaus and Agamemnon. After she has conversed with Ajax himself 15

Latacz 1966:21-23, who notes the connection between the intensity of χάρμη and the more neutral μένος. 16 Garvie 1998:129 points out that the verb ῥαχίζω was used at Aeschylus Persians 426 of the Greeks’ killing of the Persians.

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with Odysseus looking on, she gets Odysseus to acknowledge that Ajax was a most effective warrior.17 The reason Ajax and Heracles enjoy their bloodshed is because it is a firmly established aspect of the epic warrior’s very make-up. Killing, it could be argued, is the warrior’s supreme ἔργον. The tragedy for both these characters is that the exhilaration they experience when performing the actions which epic warriors are best fitted for, is out of its proper context. While they exult in the physical experience of committing violence, their delusion as to the actual targets of their actions disqualifies them from being classified as engaged in heroic activity. And the warrior does not have the final say on whether his own actions are ‘heroic’ anyway. The ultimate umpires of that are one’s peers, as illustrated so clearly by the judgement which did not favour Ajax in the allocation of Achilles’ arms. Within the broadly normative framework offered by Aristotle, and because of the condescension with which the sane regard the mad, Ajax cannot be termed ‘happy’ even if he experiences pleasure while engaged in his actions. Bibliography Collinge, N.E. 1962. ‘Medical terms and clinical attitudes in the tragedians.’ BICS 9:43-55. Finglass, P.J. 2011. Sophocles Ajax, Edited with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge. Garvie, A.F. 1998. Sophocles. Ajax. Warminster, UK. Holmes, B. 2008. ‘Euripides’ Heracles in the flesh.’ ClAnt 27:231-81. Jebb, R.C. 1896. Sophocles. The Plays and Fragments. Part 7. The Ajax. Cambridge. Latacz, J. 1966. Zum Wortfeld ‘Freude’ in der Sprache Homers. Heidelberg. Rauchenstein, R. 1873. ‘Zu Sophocles’ Aias’. Jahrbücher für classische Philologie 19:581-88. Stanford, W.B. [1963] 1979. Sophocles Ajax. New York.

17

At 119-21, Athena asks τούτου τίς ἄν σοι τἀνδρὸς ἢ προνούστερος / ἢ δρᾶν ἀμείνων ηὑρέθη τὰ καίρια; Odysseus replies, ἐγὼ μὲν οὐδέν’ οἶδ’.

GRIEF AND CHEERFULNESS IN EARLY GREEK MEDICAL WRITINGS Chiara Thumiger Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin I should begin by distinguishing between two senses in which ‘happiness’ could be understood in ancient Greek discussions. On the one hand, we find a transitory, emotional happiness which we may call ‘cheerfulness’: the momentary enjoyment of life’s pleasures, of health and external goods, and the corresponding euthymic emotions. On the other hand, there is a broader conception of happiness, often designated by the term εὐδαιμονία, which comprises the fulfilment of chosen values and the pursuit of a good life, and which, being ‘inner’ in nature, has its source in the soul of man rather than in external contingencies.1 Happiness in the latter, eudaimonistic sense is central to philosophical discussions from early on, and prudential and existential reflections on the notion occur in various genres and authors of Greek literature (tragedy, the lyric poets, Herodotus). The former sense, relating to the enjoyment of life’s pleasures – from wealth to success to biological experiences like food, sex, the interaction with one’s environment, the enjoyment of youth, the procreation of offspring – occurs equally early in transmitted documents of early Greek culture. What was the contribution of ancient medical discourses to these cultural and philosophical considerations? It is well known that medical texts from the post-Hellenistic era, such as the Roman encyclopaedic text De Medicina, first-century AD nosology (Aretaeus, Anonymus Parisinus) and Galen in particular, would integrate into medical discourse ethical and spiritual models of well-being and mental health by elaborating versions of psychiatry which emphasise values, self-realisation and the care of the soul. This trend is taken to an unprecedented level in Galen’s psychological writings, and scholarship is increasingly turning its attention to this aspect, 

I would like to thank Hynek Bartoš and Philip van der Eijk for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper; Wei Chang and Stavros Kouloumentas for useful discussions; Giulia Ecca for her help with the Greek references; and Philip Bosman for his invitation to a wonderful conference. I also wish to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for its generous support of my research project. 1 Using Kahn’s expression, 1985:26.

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especially after the recent discovery of Galen’s letter on ‘not suffering’, De Indolentia. The moral qualities of the individual and his/her control over external circumstances – negative passions such as anger, but also excessive discomfort – are, in some Galenic writings at least, part and parcel of therapeutic procedures considered to fall within the domain of medicine.2 When we turn our attention to early medical writings, more precisely, the fifth- and early fourth-century texts of the so-called Corpus Hippocraticum,3 we find altogether different terms of discussion. The sense of happiness we defined above as ‘cheerfulness’, together with its opposite, are integrated into the medical discourse as objective external indicators of health, or lack thereof, within pathological and dietetic discussions. As far as the broader view of happiness is concerned, no trace exists of an internally generated εὐδαιμονία which promotes either the harmony between the individual as ethical subject and a set of values, or a person’s spiritual actualisation. The only form in which happiness beyond present enjoyment is contemplated, is that of ‘health’ (ὑγίεια) which refers to the soundness of the individual’s biological functions and is, as such, externally and objectively observable. In fact, the Hippocratic texts, for all their variety, do not give moral and psychological subjectivity (that is, the dimension in which the greater εὐδαιμονία is experienced) any independence apart from the physiology of the body, and restrict its observation to the transient context of illness. Scholars have long since noted the easy transition in these texts from the bodily (with our distinction) to the mental sphere, and the impossibility of

2

Galen discusses the vices of the soul in his psychological writings Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur, De animi cuiuslibet peccatorum dignotione et curatione, and De indolentia; see the recent translation and commentary by Singer 2013. The contrast between the strictly medical, i.e. biological and physiological account of the soul’s inclinations and dispositions as stated in the Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur, and the engagement with philosophical training as instrument of self-improvement, described in great detail in De animi cuiuslibet peccatorum dignotione et curatione (with reference to the much-despised vice of anger) and in De indolentia, appears irreducible; see Hankinson 2006 on the dual nature of Galen’s contribution; see also Gill 2010 especially on the Stoic influence on this aspect of Galenic thought; Singer 2013b. 3 I shall, for the sake of convenience, use the designation ‘Hippocratic’ for the fifth- and early fourth-century medical texts forming part of the Corpus Hippocraticum; see, however, Van der Eijk (forthcoming) for a discussion of the term ‘Hippocratic’ and its accompanying difficulties.

57 separating physiological from psychological pathology:4 mental life and psychological distress are notably conceptualised in an objective, externalised way.5 The concept of ‘health’ and its actualisation emerging from these texts should be translated with ‘flourishing’ rather than ‘happiness’. Flourishing differs from the common understanding of happiness precisely for its being an objective rather than a subjective datum: it does not primarily refer to a sense of well-being registered by the individual and emanating from an inner spiritual source, but to the correct working of one’s functions, assessed from an external point of view.6 In this paper, I want to look back and away from the well-known later developments – the doctrine of Galen, the self-fashioned ‘philosopher doctor’ – and place our focus on the medical sources which preceded him, in order to answer the following question: if not in an ethical and subjective sense, how do the Hippocratic doctors deal with euthymic emotions and their opposites as part of a patient’s condition within an overarching physiological account? ‘Happiness’ as health and flourishing We should begin by clarifying briefly the views vis-à-vis health and its preservation offered by the medical texts of the 5th to the early 4th centuries BC. In the works of these so-called Hippocratic authors, the concept of health is characterised by three key elements. Firstly, health corresponds to a balance, the symmetry of different factors within the 4

See Pigeaud 1980; Singer 1992; Gundert 2000. Wittern 1991, comparing madness in literary texts and the Hippocratic sources, calls this the exclusion of ‘psychological conflict’ from the Hippocratics’ range of causes for mental disorders, i.e. the exclusion of subjective mental or spiritual suffering. 6 The distinctions described here mirror to some extent current reflections on the definition of health, which comprise a biomedical view (health as physiologically sound functioning, defined negatively as the absence of disease) and a more humanistic view that includes social and spiritual aspects of personal life (health as a sense of fulfilment and accomplishment inclusive of psychological and social aspects). See the WHO’s 1946 definition of health as a ‘state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity’, preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June 1946, signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100), implemented on 7 April 1948 and unamended since. 5

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human individual.7 These factors themselves vary greatly: they can be the basic elements constituting the universe (that is, air, earth, fire and water)8 or different qualities like hot, cold, dry and wet, or tastes such as acid, salty, astringent and others.9 Also, symmetry could mean the due balance of the humours found in the human body (considered by some to be yellow bile, phlegm, blood and black bile, and by others only two or three of these), as famously stated in the Nature of Man 4.10 Others thought in terms of the factors affecting the individual which had to be in balance, for 7

For an introduction to various theories on the principles and substances composing the human body, see Klibansky et al. 1992:39-54. 8 As mentioned polemically by the author of Nat. Hom. 1 (Jouanna 164.5-8 = L. 6.32.4–6): οὔτε γὰρ τὸ πάμπαν ἠέρα λέγω τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, οὔτε πῦρ, οὔτε ὕδωρ, οὔτε γῆν, οὔτ’ ἄλλο οὐδὲν ὅ τι μὴ φανερόν ἐστιν ἐνεὸν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ· ἀλλὰ τοῖσι βουλομένοισι ταῦτα λέγειν παρίημι (‘for I do not say that a man is air, or fire, or water, or earth, or anything else that is not an obvious constituent of a man; such accounts I leave to those who care to give them’); see also Vict. 1.32 and 1.35 (Joly-Byl 148.3-150.10; 150.29-156.18 = L. 6.506.14-510.23; 6.512.20522.16) for a theory of different types of bodies and of ψυχαί as based on different blends of fire and water. 9 As in Vet. med. 14.4 (Jouanna 136.10-14 = L. 1.602.9-13): ἔνι γὰρ ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ ἁλμυρὸν καὶ πικρὸν καὶ γλυκὺ καὶ ὀξὺ καὶ στρυφνὸν καὶ πλαδαρὸν καὶ ἄλλα μυρία παντοίας δυνάμιας ἔχοντα πλῆθός τε καὶ ἰσχύν· ταῦτα μὲν μεμιγμένα καὶ κεκρημένα ἀλλήλοισιν οὔτε φανερά ἐστιν οὔτε λυπεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὅταν δέ τι τούτων ἀποκριθῇ καὶ αὐτὸ ἐφ’ ἑωυτοῦ γένηται, τότε καὶ φανερόν ἐστι καὶ λυπεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον (‘For there is in man the bitter and the salt, the sweet and the acid, the sour and the insipid, and a multitude of other things having all sorts of powers both as regards quantity and strength. These, when all mixed and mingled up with one another, are not apparent, neither do they hurt a man; but when any of them is separate, and stands by itself, then it becomes perceptible, and hurts a man’). 10 Nat. Hom. 4 (Jouanna 172.13-174.3 = L. 6.40; tr. W.H. Jones 1931): τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔχει ἐν ἑωυτῷ αἷμα καὶ φλέγμα καὶ χολὴν ξανθήν καὶ μέλαιναν, καὶ ταῦτα ἐστιν αὐτῷ ἡ φύσις τοῦ σώματος, καὶ διὰ ταῦτα ἀλγεῖ καὶ ὑγιαίνει. ὑγιαίνει μὲν οὖν μάλιστα, ὅταν μετρίως ἔχῃ ταῦτα τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα δυνάμιος καὶ τοῦ πλήθεος, καὶ μάλιστα μεμιγμένα ᾖ· ἀλγεῖ δ’ ὅταν τι τούτων ἔλασσον ἢ πλέον χωρισθῇ ἐν τῷ σώματι καὶ μὴ κεκρημένον ᾖ τοῖσι πᾶσιν (‘the body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of his body, and through these he feels pain and enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. Pain is felt when one of these elements is in defect or in excess, or is isolated in the body without being compounded with all the others’).

59 example, the food and drink taken into the body on the one hand, and the amount of exercise practiced by the body on the other.11 Whereas the actual components at work in the body could vary, the opinion regarding their mutual relationship was clear and widely shared: they had to be balanced, none overpowering the others, as in this famous definition of health and disease traditionally attributed to Alcmaeon, which extends a political metaphor: Ἀ. τῆς μὲν ὑγείας εἶναι συνεκτικὴν τὴν ἰσονομίαν τῶν δυνάμεων, ὑγροῦ, ξηροῦ, ψυχροῦ, θερμοῦ, πικροῦ, γλυκέος καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν, τὴν δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς μοναρχίαν νόσου ποιητικήν· φθοροποιὸν γὰρ ἑκατέρου μοναρχίαν. Alcmaeon says that health is the result of isonomia of the powers – the wet, the dry, the cold, the hot, the bitter, the sweet, and so on, while predominance of one over the others produces disease. For (he says) predominance of either is destructive. (24 B4 DK)

The second point is that health is achieved through, and in a sense equals, the practice of a regimen.12 The notion of regimen, δίαιτα, encompassed one’s lifestyle in the broad sense; that is, not only habits of consuming food and drink and the kinds of beverages and nutriments consumed, but also sleeping, bathing, exercising, sexual habits, as well as data about other daily activities like one’s profession and the type of practices it entailed. A person’s regimen was of the utmost importance, since each of the various aspects it involved had its effect on the body and particularly on the ‘mixture’ (κρᾶσις) of the factors on which health 11

E.g. at Vict. 3.69, (Joly-Byl 200.30-202.2 = L. 6.606.5-9): ἔστι δὲ προδιάγνωσις μὲν πρὸ τοῦ κάμνειν, διάγνωσις δὲ τῶν σωμάτων τί πέπονθε, πότερον τὸ σιτίον κρατεῖ τοὺς πόνους ἢ οἱ πόνοι τὰ σιτία ἢ μετρίως ἔχει πρὸς ἄλληλα. ἀπὸ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ κρατεῖσθαι ὁποτερονοῦν νοῦσοι ἐγγίνονται· ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ ἰσάζειν πρὸς ἄλληλα ὑγιείη πρόσεστιν (‘[the regimen I have discovered] comprises prognosis before illness and diagnosis of what is the matter with the body, whether food overpowers exercise, whether exercise overpowers food, of whether the two are duly proportioned. For it is from the overpowering of one or the other that diseases arise, while from their being evenly balanced comes good health’). Cf. also Vict. 1.2 (Joly-Byl 122.22-126.4 = L. 6.468.6-472.11). 12 On the concept of regime, its history and medical specificity, see Bartoš (forthcoming); overviews of the concept of health from early sources to Galen are offered by Wöhrle 1990, Jouanna 2012, and the essays in King 2005.

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depended. Thus, by controlling the regimen, both doctor and patient, aware of the physiological effects of a brief or a long period of sleep, or of a certain type of bath or nutriment, could manipulate the patient’s body – that is, the humours, elements or qualities in it – in order to help cure it or to keep it healthy. Regimen is often in the background of Hippocratic writings – whether nosological, or patient-based – but also specifically the subject of the dedicated treatises Regimen, Regimen in Health, and Regimen in Acute Diseases. It is also the subject of the book On Matters of Health to Pleistarchus by the important fourth-century physician Diocles, of whose work only fragmentary evidence remains.13 Thirdly, health is determined by the quality of the interaction between the individual and his or her environment (intended as geographical location, season and weather conditions), and so are disease and cure, as it is most evident in the constitutions (καταστάσεις) of different communities and locations found in the books of Epidemics 1 and 3, or in the data gathered in Airs Waters Places, whose stated topic is precisely the environmental component of the medical discipline: ἰητρικὴν ὅστις βούλεται ὀρθῶς ζητεῖν, τάδε χρὴ ποιεῖν· πρῶτον μὲν ἐνθυμεῖσθαι τὰς ὥρας τοῦ ἔτεος, ὅ τι δύναται ἀπεργάζεσθαι ἑκάστη· οὐ γὰρ ἐοίκασιν ἀλλήλῃσιν οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ πολὺ διαφέρουσιν αὐταί τε ἑωυτέων καὶ ἐν τῇσι μεταβολῇσιν· ἔπειτα δὲ τὰ πνεύματα τὰ θερμά τε καὶ τὰ ψυχρά, μάλιστα μὲν τὰ κοινὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐν ἑκάστῃ χώρῃ ἐπιχώρια ἐόντα. δεῖ δὲ καὶ τῶν ὑδάτων ἐνθυμεῖσθαι τὰς δυνάμιας· ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν τῷ στόματι διαφέρουσι καὶ ἐν τῷ σταθμῷ, οὕτω καὶ ἡ δύναμις διαφέρει πολὺ ἑκάστου. Whoever wishes to pursue properly the art of medicine must proceed thus. First he ought to consider what effects each season of the year can produce; for the seasons are not at all alike, but differ widely both in themselves and at their changes; the next point is the hot winds and the cold, especially those that are universal, but also those who are peculiar to each particular region. He must also consider the properties of the waters; for all these differ in taste

13

See also the ᾿Επιστολὴ προφυλακτικὴ πρὸς ᾿Αντίγονον. Van der Eijk 2001:xxxxxxii provides a list of dietetic works by Diocles.

61 and weight, so that the property of each is far different from that of any other.14

The above three determinants of health are notably objective aspects: symmetry, a general principle (although to be adapted to each individual); regimen, the practical lifestyle that determines and in a sense constitutes health, and actual environment. This does not imply neglect to consider the specifics and the ethos of each individual patient. On the contrary, there is no such thing as one fixed ‘correct regimen’. Rather, the correct regimen is dependent on a wide range of factors: gender, age, climate and the land in which one lived and in which one was born, the season, even one’s habits and one’s physiological constitution.15 But they, nonetheless, exclude the subjective experience of health, and with it the sense of personal fulfilment as an indicator of health. Grief and cheerfulness With this view of human health as background, we can better approach the topic of cheerfulness (and its opposite) as part of individual physiology. While the Hippocratic texts contain a great deal of information about mental health, its assessment is made difficult by the impossibility to extrapolate mental information from the physiological discussion. The two aspects are indissolubly intertwined, with the result that the discussion appears, again, to be largely objectified. In addition, as to be expected from the largely clinical contexts in which they are mentioned, emphasis lies on the negative emotions or moods that appear in pathological circumstances16 rather than on the positive.17

14

Aer. 1.1-2: Jouanna 186.1-187.4 = L. 2.12.2-10. Cf. very similar remarks in Vict. 1.2 (Joly-Byl 124.11-14 = L. 6.470.6-10) on the key variables of age, winds and geographical location. 15 Cf. Salubr. 2 = Nat. Hom. 17 (Jouanna 208.18-20 = L. 6.76.1-5): δεῖ οὖν πρὸς τὴν ἡλικίην καὶ τὴν ὥρην καὶ τὰ εἴδεα τὰ διαιτήματα ποιεῖσθαι ἐναντιούμενον τοῖσι καθισταμένοισι καὶ θάλπεσι καὶ χειμῶσιν· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μάλιστα ὑγιαίνοιεν (‘So in fixing regimen pay attention to age, season, and constitutions, and counteract the prevailing heat or cold. For in this way will the best health be enjoyed’). 16 The concept of ‘mood’ in current psychology indicates a continuous underlying state as opposed to transient emotion. Mood includes states such as depression, elation, anger and anxiety, and may be seen as the more pervasive, sustained

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The negative emotions of sadness, grief and hopelessness feature for the most part in patient cases: the emotions of λύπη (‘pain’ or ‘grief’); δυσελπίς (‘hopelessness’) and ἀνελπίζω (‘I feel desperate’); a πικρός (‘bitter’) or a σκυθρωπός (‘dark’) disposition; silences or refusal to talk; despondency or low mood (ἀθυμία, δυσθυμία, forms of δυσφορεῖν); and signs of distress such as screams, tears and laughter.18 Let us explore more closely some examples of how these feature in the medical discussions and patient reports of the Hippocratic corpus. Grief as cause of pathology The Hippocratic doctors discuss patients whose illness is, at least in part, caused by emotional suffering. In case 11 at Epid. 3.17 (Kühlewein 241.49 = L. 3.134. 2-6), for example, we have the case of ‘a woman of gloomy temperament’ who suffered ‘a grief with a reason for it’ (δυσάνιος ἐκ λύπης μετὰ προφάσιος). At nightfall she presented with fears, much rambling, depression and slight feverishness, and many spasms in the morning (ἀρχομένης νυκτὸς φόβοι, λόγοι πολλοὶ, δυσθυμίη, πυρέτιον λεπτόν. πρωὶ σπασμοὶ πολλοί). The physiological condition is inseparable from the mental aspect – fever and spasms accompany mental symptoms – but the case has an important emotional or existential cause: a λύπη which resulted from something that happened in her past. Similarly, at Epid. 3.17, case 15 (Kühlewein 243.26-244.5 = L. 3.142.6-10), we read that ἐν Θάσῳ Δεάλκους γυναῖκα, ἣ κατέκειτο ἐπὶ τοῦ λείου, πυρετὸς φρικώδης, ὀξὺς ἐκ λύπης ἔλαβεν. ἐξ ἀρχῆς δὲ περιεστέλλετο, καὶ διὰ τέλεος αἰεὶ σιγῶσα ἐψηλάφα, ἔτιλλεν, ἔγλυφεν, ἐτριχολόγει, δάκρυα καὶ πάλιν γέλως, οὐκ ἐκοιμᾶτο· ἀπὸ κοιλίης ἐρεθισμῷ, οὐδὲν διῄει. In Thasos the wife of Delearces, who lay sick on the plain, was seized after a grief with an acute fever with shivering. From the emotional ‘climate’ in contrast to affect, which refers to more fluctuating changes in emotional ‘weather’ (paraphrasing from Cohen 2003:31). 17 These aspects of the Hippocratic sources have not received extensive scholarly attention; some general consideration in Di Benedetto 1986:35-43 (on fear especially), Singer 1992:135, Gundert 2000:25-30 and Pigeaud 1980. Recent scholarship on the emotions has largely bypassed the medical material. 18 Cf. Ciani 1983:14 and Di Benedetto 1986:45-47 for disturbances pertaining to a ‘depressive’ spectrum.

63 beginning she would wrap herself up, and throughout, without speaking a word, she would fumble, pluck, scratch, pick hairs, weep and then laugh, but she did not sleep; though stimulated, the bowels passed nothing.

This patient displays signs of mentally pathological behaviour typical in these patient cases; for her, too, the origin of her fever and her condition overall is an unspecific grief (λύπη). Her mental suffering takes the form of compulsive movements (floccillation, the plucking and picking that characterises patients of phrenitis and other mental cases in our texts), lack of sleep and δάκρυα καὶ πάλιν γέλως (tears and laughters, uncontrolled and unmotivated, we are led to think). Consideration of the woman’s emotions focuses on the external and the visible – ‘tears and laughters’: while recognised as relevant in the report, the physician’s attention goes to the external manifestation of the emotion. The term λύπη, which in Greek medicine is a general term for pain and physical suffering, here refers more specifically to grief and sorrow.19 In Acut. (spur.) 40 (Joly 87.11-12 = L. 2.476.5-7), dealing with cases of weakened and suffering bodies, we find a distinction between cases to be cured with hellebore and those which are not, as they are caused by drink, sexual excesses, grief, worries and troubled sleep (μήτε ὑπὸ ποτῶν, μήτε ὑπὸ ἀφροδισίων, μήτε ὑπὸ λύπης, μήτε ὑπὸ φροντίδων, μήτε ὑπὸ ἀγρυπνιῶν). The latter group are considered apart since they resist pharmacological therapy. Among them, λύπη should be understood as grief caused by personal reasons rather than by an unspecified δυσθυμία, (‘despondency’); in the same group we find worries and troubled sleep. We read further that such cases require specific therapy (πρὸς τοῦτο ποιεῖσθαι τὴν θεραπείην) rather than adopting the ἑλλεβορίζειν (hellebore drinking) under discussion. Again, the doctor acknowledges the weight of emotional suffering on the patient’s health, at the same time maintaining a physiological frame of interpretation: he is observing a sign, not analysing the psychology of the patient as we would see it. 19

Hum. 9 (L. 5.490.1-6) speaks of aspects τῆς ψυχῆς stemming from the character of the individual, ἐκ τῶν ἠθέων: φιλοπονίη ψυχῆς, ἢ ζητέων, ἢ μελετέων, ἢ ὁρέων, ἢ λέγων, ἢ εἴ τι ἄλλο, which include ‘grievances, excessive passion, desires’ (οἷον λῦπαι, δυσοργησίαι, ἐπιθυμίαι), as well as ‘pains that occur by chance to the soul’ (τὰ ἀπὸ συγκυρίης λυπήματα γνώμης), i.e. ‘either through sight or through hearing’ (ἢ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων, ἢ διὰ τῆς ἀκοῆς): the grief is suffered under specific circumstances, whether experienced directly or just witnessed.

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Dysphoria as sign of pathology20 In most cases the acute and temporary nature of the negative emotion seems clear: sadness, hopelessness and despondency appear to be signs within a larger pathological picture. For example, at Epid. 3.17, case 14 (Kühlewein 243. 16-20 = L. 3.140.18-21), we encounter a female patient who has just given birth, and will die on the seventeenth day of her illness. She is described as displaying dysthymic signs, ‘silent, sad and unwilling to obey’ (σιγῶσα δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπὴ καὶ οὐ πειθομένη) and soon after begins to talk deliriously (πολλὰ παρέλεγε). In the discussion in Epid. 1.18 (Kühlewein 194.21-22 = L. 2.652.3) φόβοι (‘fears’) and δυσθυμίαι (‘despondency’) are recognised as among the various mental symptoms of phrenitics, and Mul. 2.174 bis (L. 8.356.2-5) depicts a typology of a patient who ‘is depressed and restless in her mind’ (δυσθυμέει τε καὶ αἰολᾶται τῇ γνώμῃ), and later ‘seems to be dying’ (δοκεέι θανεῖσθαι). Fear, desperation and anguish are typical symptoms of the ill, often mentioned in the plural, which suggests that these are episodes and signs of distress being reported on, rather than a deeper, continuous psychological state.21 Not only illness, but also dietetic factors can cause the patient to present with symptoms of this kind. Acut. 42 (Joly 54.4-5 = L. 2.312.6-7) describes patients who suffer from pathological conditions due to a too rapid change of diet (from fasting to gruel). Various of the conditions are mental in nature and are described in dysphoric terms: ‘they become peevish, bitter, and deranged’ (περίλυποί δὲ καὶ πικροὶ γίνονται καὶ παραφρονέουσι).

20

I borrow here the terminology of mood from current psychiatry: dysthymia and euthymia are the two opposite poles of sustained negative and positive moods respectively. The terms dysphoria and euphoria indicate symptoms of greater mental disturbances, acute by comparison. These definitions require further qualification and discussion, but they offer useful terminology to organise the evidence under discussion. 21 See also Epid. 3.1 case 6 (Kühlewein 221.1-2 = L. 3.52.7-8): the patient shows signs of mental disturbance, and is described as ‘silent, and would not converse at all. She felt depressed and hopeless’ (σιγῶσα, οὐδὲν διελέγετο. δυσθυμίη, ἀνελπίστως ἑωυτῆς εἶχεν); a similar association of general mental disturbance with φόβοι and δυσθυμίαι at Epid. 3.17 case 11 (Kühlewein 241.8 = L. 3.134.5).

65 All the instances seen so far have an important common characteristic: despite being emotional experiences, they all remain features of the more general physiological description. Likewise, δυσθυμίη appears in contexts of mental disturbance, but also as a consequence of physiological changes. The author of Ancient Medicine, for instance, recognises δυσθυμίη (‘depression’) and δυσεργείη (‘listlessness’) as pathological signs when someone accustomed to having lunch begins to miss his meals (Vet. med. 10.4: Jouanna 131.3-4 = L. 1.592.17-18). Dysthymia: negative emotions as ‘diseases’ or syndromes We have seen that consideration of emotional states in early medical texts occurs mainly within contexts of acute disease and temporary affection. But sometimes, sadness and grief are also contemplated as more enduring experiences. In a passage at Loc. Hom. 39 (Jouanna 69.1-3 = L. 6.328), a pharmacological cure (mandrake root) is advised for people characterised by emotional distress, ‘badly disposed, ill and wanting to hang themselves’ (ἀνιωμένους καὶ νοσέοντας καὶ ἀπάγχεσθαι βουλομένους). The physicians seem to identify here a specific group of patients with a definite, longlasting negative mood – the closest we get in these texts to the categorisation of what we would call ‘psychiatric patients’. The element of an enduring mental condition seems also to be present in Coac. 472 (Potter 220.28-30 = L. 5.690), where ‘depressions and avoidance of others with silence’ (αἱ μετὰ σιγῆς ἀθυμίαι καὶ ἀπανθρωπίαι) are linked to whitephlegmatic patients. In this case the authors seem to describe not a mere emotion, but rather a syndrome, we could say, of low mood and intentional isolation from others that can be an aggravating factor.22 The most prominent example is perhaps offered by Aph. 6.23 (Magdelaine 453.1-2 = L. 4.568.11-12), which famously associates pathologically long-lasting fear and sadness with melancholic suffering: ‘if fear or despondency lasts for a long time, this is melancholic’ (ἢν φόβος ἢ δυσθυμίη πουλὺν χρόνον ἔχουσα διατελῇ, μελαγχολικὸν τὸ τοιοῦτον).23 Apart from the passage’s reference to melancholy and its importance for a 22

For ἀθυμεῖν see also Mul. 1.8 (L. 8.36.6) and Mul. 2.154 (L. 8.328.20); at Mul. 2.177 (L. 8.360.5), a patient ‘is affected by suffocation, and wishes to die’ (πνίγεται, καὶ θανεῖν ἐρᾶται). 23 ἀθυμία is used to the same effect, as in Epid. 3.17 case 2 (Kühlewein 235.5-6 = L. 3.112.10-2), the female patient with melancholic traits (τὰ περὶ τὴν γνώμην μελαγχολικά) is ἀπόσιτος, ἄθυμος, ἄγρυπνος.

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history of melancholy as a mental disease, the aphorism is interesting for its reference to the πουλὺν χρόνον, the long duration of a distress of a mental, psychological nature. An actual case of this pathology is described in Epidemics 5-7, that of a certain Parmeniscus (Epid. 5.84: Jouanna 39. 1-3 = L. 5.252.5-6; Epid. 7.89: Jouanna 103. 6-8 = L. 5.446.7-8). Parmeniscus is the closest approximation in the Hippocratic testimony to what nowadays would be labelled as a bipolar mood disorder. The symptoms and moods, as well as the chronic and resilient character of the ailment, are unique in the texts under consideration. In the shorter version of the case (Epid. 5.84), we read that ‘Parmeniscus had previously been visited by depressions and a desire to end his life, but then again by cheerfulness’ (Παρμενίσκῳ καὶ πρότερον ἐνέπιπτον ἀθυμίαι καὶ ἀπαλλαγῆς βίου ἐπιθυμίη, ὁτὲ δὲ πάλιν εὐθυμίη). This shorter summary includes as key elements the alternating moods, the desire to die, and the periodic character of the suffering, suggested by καὶ πρότερον and the use of the imperfect: this is the only example of such a patient in these sources. At Epid. 7.89 (Jouanna 103.6-18 = L. 5.446.7-17) we find the extended report: Παρμενίσκῳ καὶ πρότερον ἐνέπιπτον ἀθυμίαι καὶ ἵμερος ἀπαλλαγῆς βίου, ὁτὲ δὲ πάλιν εὐθυμίη. Ἐν Ὀλύνθῳ δέ ποτε φθινοπώρου ἄφωνος κατέκειτο ἡσυχίην ἔχων, βραχύ τι ὅσον ἄρχεσθαι ἐπιχειρέων προσειπεῖν· ἤδη δὲ τι καὶ διελέχθη καὶ πάλιν ἄφωνος. ὕπνοι ἐνῆσαν, ὁτὲ δὲ ἀγρυπνίη· καὶ ῥιπτασμὸς μετὰ σιγῆς καὶ ἀλυσμὸς καὶ χεὶρ πρὸς ὑποχόνδρια ὡς ὀδυνωμένῳ, ὁτὲ δὲ ἀποστραφεὶς ἔκειτο ἡσυχίην ἄγων· ἀπύρετος δὲ διὰ τέλεoς καὶ εὔπνοος· ἔφη δ’ ὕστερον ἐπιγινώσκειν τοὺς ἐσιόντας. πιεῖν ὁτὲ μὲν ἡμέρης ὅλης καὶ νυκτὸς διδόντων οὐκ ἤθελεν, ὁτὲ δὲ ἐξαίφνης τὸν στάμνον ἁρπάσας τοῦ ὕδατος ἐξέπιεν· οὖρον παχὺ ὡς ὑποζυγίου. περὶ τεσσαρεσκαιδεκά ἀνῆκεν. Parmeniscus had previously been visited by depressions and a desire to end his life, but then again by cheerfulness. Once in Olynthus, in the fall, he took to his bed, voiceless. He kept still, hardly attempting to begin speaking. At times he said something, and again voiceless. Sleep came on, and periodically wakefulness, and tossing silently, and delirium, and his hand went to his hypochondria as though he was in pain. And at times he turned away and lay still. He was without fever until the end and breathing easily. He later said that he recognized people who came in. At times for a whole day and night when they offered water to drink he did not want it, but at times he would suddenly seize the

67 water cooler and drink it down. His urine was thick like a mule’s. He was cured about the fourteenth day.

It is worthwhile quoting the case in full, since it illustrates how a mental condition, in this case specifically a depressive mood disorder, presents in abnormal behaviour: lack of speech, confinement in bed, irregular patterns of sleep, refusal to interact (ἀποστραφεὶς, ἔκειτο ἡσυχίην ἄγων). General mental disturbance is registered (ἀλυσμός, ‘wandering’, is a stock word for mental disturbance in these texts) as well as alternating states of forgetfulness and an inability to recognise those around him (ἔφη δὲ ὕστερον ἐπιγινώσκειν τοὺς ἐσιόντας). The illness is described as recurring periodically, and its cause seems to be at the mental, psychological end. We should, however, note how even the predominantly behavioural and psychological notes on Parmeniscus’ condition are interspersed with physiological observations, without any indication that they might belong to different categories (‘his urine thick like a mule’s’, etc.). Euthymia and physiology In pathological and clinical discussions, negative emotions and moods are naturally of greater relevance than a good mood, a sense of fulfilment, or good cheer. The counterparts to sadness, depression and other negative feelings register only when they have a pathological aspect, or when they are part of a pathological picture, never as a desideratum or as a healthy state to be nurtured. In a theoretical exposition of encephalocentrism (Morb. Sacr. 14.1, Jouanna 25.13-5 = L. 6.386.16), εὐφροσύνη features alongside ‘pleasures’, ‘laughters’ and ‘jokes’ as among the areas of human experience controlled by the brain: ‘pleasures, joys, laughters and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and sobs’ (καὶ ἡδοναὶ γίνονται καὶ εὐφροσύναι καὶ γέλωτες καὶ παιδιαὶ ἢ ἐντεῦθεν, ὅθεν καὶ λῦπαι καὶ ἀνίαι καὶ δυσφροσύναι καὶ κλαυθμοί). At Prorrh. 2.4 (Potter 226.22-23; 228.1415 = L. 9.16.4-5; 16.20-21) we read about the role of exercise in making happier a patient who suffers from debilitation following a meagre diet or excessive drink (εὐθυμότερος ἐν τῇ ταλαιπωρίῃ); drunkenness may also play a part, ‘more cheerful unless his head is disturbed by something’ (εὐθυμότερος, ἢν μή τι αὐτῷ ἡ κεφαλὴ ἀνιῷτο). Epid. 6.5.5 (ManettiRoselli 108.8-110.3 = L. 5.316.6-7) may serve as illustration of the physiological approach when it is claimed that ‘contentment releases the heart’ (ἡ δ’ εὐθυμίη ἀφίει καρδίην). The claim is set in opposition to the ill effects of ὀξυθυμία, so that the ‘contentment’ referred to emerges as more

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a lack of aggressiveness and distress than a positive feeling of accomplishment or joy. In a similar contrastive way the term was used in the case of Parmeniscus, quoted above, to describe his optimistic phases, ‘and then again in good spirits’ (ὁτὲ δὲ πάλιν εὐθυμίη). In none of the instances surveyed are the human emotions and moods of cheerfulness and grief viewed as having ethical or eudaimonistic dimensions. Flat. 14.3 (Jouanna 122.7-10 = L. 6.112.6-8) exemplifies this tendency. Here the effects of wine are said to be capable of inducing a hopeful disposition in the individual: … μεταπίπτουσιν αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇσι ψυχῇσι φρονήματα, καὶ γίνονται τῶν μὲν παρεόντων κακῶν ἐπιλήσμονες, τῶν δὲ μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν εὐέλπιδες. … one’s mind changes and the thoughts in one’s mind, and forgetfulness of the present evils come about, and hopes for good things to come.

The passage contains a double view, namely (in negative terms) the absence or the removal of pre-existing worries, and a (positive) happy, hopeful mood. The experience is attributed a temporarily, externally induced quality – only as long as the effect of wine endures. Euphoria as sign of pathology Even more extreme and foreign to eudaimonistic programmes are the instances in which physicians identify a type of manic joy or euphoria of a pathological kind (resembling the signs of what one might nowadays label ‘mood disorders’) marked by restlessness, excessive talk and unmotivated fits of laughter.24 Laughter is never a sign of joy or heightened happiness in our sources; in fact, laughter is never seen as something positive. At Epid.1.27, case 2 (Kühlewein 203.23-204.1 = L. 2.686.6-7), a patient with several mental symptoms is described as having ‘many words, laughter, singing; could not be restrained’ (λόγοι πολλοὶ, γέλως, ᾠδή, κατέχειν οὐκ ἠδύνατο). We already mentioned similar symptoms with the woman at Epid. 3.17, case 15 (Kühlewein 244.3-4 = L. 3.142.9), whose disease came about ἐκ λύπης, ‘out of a grief’, and who alternated tears and laughter 24

See Halliwell’s 1991:280 opposition between ‘playful laughter’ and ‘consequential laughter’ as corresponding to γελοῖα and σπουδαῖα.

69 (δάκρυα καὶ πάλιν γέλως). At Epid. 5.95 (Jouanna 42.5 = L. 5.254.19) and 7.121 (Jouanna 116.19 = L. 5.466.14), a man hit by a catapult presented with ‘uproarious laughter’ (γέλως ἦν περὶ αὐτὸν θορυβώδης). At Gland. 12.2 (Jouanna 119.25-26 = L. 8.568.3), damage to the brain causes mental disturbance in the patient who displays ‘grinning laughter and grotesque visions’ (σεσηρόσι μειδιήμασι καὶ ἀλλοκότοισι φαντάσμασιν). Neither the emotions, nor the expressions of cheer and joy are integrated into an affirmative image of happiness as stemming from the inner person: they are solely registered when relevant to the illnesses discussed, or (more rarely) in illustration of a physiological condition. Conclusions If we, in summary, reflect on the surveyed material, it should be noted, firstly, that the fifth- and early fourth-century medical texts are certainly not unconcerned with psychology: many acute observations are made with subtlety and precision, and aspects of emotions and mood contribute to an important degree to the state of health of patients, sometimes as the cause (or concurrent cause) of an illness, sometimes as a symptom or a behavioural consequence of an illness. On the other hand, when compared to the explicitly ethical quality of the Galenic psychological writings, it is immediately evident that these earlier authors have much more restricted horizons as far as reflections on human happiness are concerned. Like in Galen, the interdependence between mental, psychological and physiological aspects of pathology is firmly established; unlike Galen, however, the pursuit of happiness by way of practising virtue, ethical accomplishment and the eradication of moral flaws remains entirely absent from the scope of the medical τέχνη, the aims of which remain subordinated to the agenda articulated in De Arte 3.2 (Jouanna 226.13227.1 = L. 6.4.16-6.1): τὸ δὴ πάμπαν ἀπαλλάσσειν τῶν νοσεόντων τοὺς καμάτους καὶ τῶν νοσημάτων τὰς σφοδρότητας ἀμβλύνειν, καὶ τὸ μὴ ἐγχειρεῖν τοῖσι κεκρατημένοισιν ὑπὸ τῶν νοσημάτων, εἰδότας ὅτι πάντα ταῦτα δύναται ἰητρική. to do away with the sufferings of the sick, to lessen the violence of their diseases, and to refuse to treat those who are overmastered by their diseases, realising that those are all the powers of medicine.

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Bibliography Bartoš, H. (forthcoming) Studies in the Hippocratic On Regimen and its context. Ciani, M. 1983. Psicosi e Creativita’ nella Scienza Antica. Venezia. Cohen, B.J. 2003. Theory and Practice of Psychiatry. Oxford. Di Benedetto, V. 1986. Il Medico e la Malattia. Torino. Gill, C. 2010. Naturalistic Psychology in Galen and Stoicism. Oxford. Gundert, B. 2000. ‘Soma and psyche in Hippocratic Medicine.’ In Wright and Potter 2000:13-36. Halliwell, F.S. 1991.‘The uses of laughter in Greek culture.’ CQ 41:279-96. Hankinson, R.J. 2006. ‘Body and soul in Galen.’ In R.A.H. King (ed.), Common to Body and Soul, 232-58. Berlin. Jouanna, J. 2012. ‘Dietetics in Hippocratic medicine: definition, main problems, discussion.’ In J. Jouanna, Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen. Selected Papers (tr. N. Allies, ed. P. van der Eijk), 137-54. Leiden. Kahn, C.H. 1985. ‘Democritus and the origins of moral psychology.’ AJPh. 106:1-31. King, H. (ed.) 2005. Health in Antiquity. London. Klibansky, R., Panofsky, E. and Saxl, F. 1992. Saturn und Melancholie Studien zur Geschichte der Naturphilosophie und Medizin, der Religion und der Kunst. Frankfurt. Pigeaud, J. 1980. ‘Quelques aspects du rapport de l’âme et du corps dans le Corpus hippocratique.’ In M.D. Grmek (ed.), Hippocratica, 417-33. Paris. Singer, P.N. 1992. ‘Some Hippocratic mind-body problems.’ In J.A. Lopez Ferez (ed.), Tratados Hipocraticos, 131-143. Madrid. Singer, P.N. 2013a (ed.), Galen: Psychological Writings. Avoiding Distress, Character Traits, The Diagnosis and Treatment of the Affections and Errors Peculiar to Each Person’s Soul, The Capacities of the Soul Depend on the Mixtures of the Body. Translated with introduction and notes by V. Nutton, D. Davies and P.N. Singer, with the collaboration of P. Tassinari. Cambridge. Singer, P.N. 2013b. ‘Avoiding distress’. Introduction. In Singer 2013a:4576. Van der Eijk, P. (ed.) 2000-2001. Diocles of Carystus. A collection of the fragments with translation and commentary. Leiden.

71 Wittern, R. 1991. ‘Die psychische Erkrankung in der klassischen Antike.’ Sitzungsberichte der Physikalisch-Medizinischen Sozietät zu Erlangen, N.F. Bd. 3, Heft 1. Hrsg. im Auftrag der Sozietät v. Karl-Heinz Plattig. Wöhrle, G. 1990. Studien Zur Theorie Der Antiken Gesundheitslehre. Stuttgart. Wright, J.P. and Potter P. (edd.) 2000. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Oxford. Texts used Œuvres completes d’Hippocrate, E. Littré (ed. and tr.) Paris 1839-61. Airs Waters Places (Aer.), J. Jouanna (ed. and tr.) Airs-Eaux-Lieux. Paris 1996. Ancient Medicine (Vet. Med.), J. Jouanna (ed. and tr.), Hippocrate. De l’ancienne médecine. Paris 1990. Aphorismi (Aph.), C. Magdelaine (ed.) Diss. Universite de Paris-Sorbonne. Paris IV. Paris 1994. De Articulis (Artic.) H. Kühlewein (ed.), Hipp. Opera Omnia 1. Leipzig 1902:180-245. Breaths (Flat.), J. Jouanna (ed. and tr.) Des vents, de l’Art. Paris 1995. Coan Prenotions (Coac.), P. Potter (ed. and tr) Hippocrates. Vol. 9. Harvard 2010. De Arte (De Arte), J. Jouanna (ed. and tr.) Des vents, de l’Art. Paris 1995. Diseases of Women 1, 2; Barrenness (Mul. 1, 2; Steril.), Grensemann, H. (ed.) Hippokratische Gynäkologie. Die gynäkologischen Texte des Autors C nach den pseudohippokratischen Schriften De muliebribus I, II und De sterilibus. Wiesbaden 1982. Epidemics 5, 7 (Epid. 5, 7), J. Jouanna (ed. and tr.) Epidémies V et VII. Paris 2000. Epidemics 1, (Epid. 1), H. Kühlewein (ed.) Hipp. Opera Omnia 1. Leipzig 1894:180-245. Epidemics 3, (Epid. 3), H. Kühlewein (ed.) Hipp. Opera Omnia 1. Leipzig 1894:180-245. Epidemics 6 (Epid. 6), D. Manetti, A. Roselli (ed. and tr.) Ippocrate. Epidemie. Libro sesto. Firenze 1982. Galen, Quod Animi Mores Temperamenta Sequantur 1.1 (ed. Müller 1891, CMG 2).

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Glands (Gland.), R. Joly (ed. and tr.), Des Lieux dans l’Homme. Du Système des glandes. Des Fistules. Des Hémorroiïdes. De la vision. Des Chairs. De la Dentition. Paris 1978. Humours (Hum.), O. Overwien (ed. and tr.) Hippokrates, De humoribus. CMG 1.3.1. Berlin (forthcoming). Nature of man (Nat. Hom.), J. Jouanna (ed. and tr.) De Natura Hominis. CMG 1.1.3. Berlin 1975; revised edition 2002. Places in Man. (Loc. Hom.) E.M. Craik (ed. and tr.) Oxford 1998. Prorrhetikon 2 (Prorrh. 2), P. Potter (ed. and tr.) Hippocrates. Vol. 9. Harvard 1995. Regime in Acute Diseases (Acut.), R. Joly (ed. and tr.) Du Régime des maladies aiguës, Appendice. De l’aliment. De l’usage des liquids. Paris 1972. Regime in Acute Diseases, Appendix (Acut. Sp.), R. Joly (ed. and tr.) Du Régime des maladies aiguës, Appendice. De l’aliment. De l’usage des liquids. Paris 1972. Regimen 1-4 (Vict. 1-4), R. Joly and S. Byl (ed. and tr.) Hippocratis De Diaeta. CMG 1.2.4. Berlin 1984.

ANTISTHENES AND THE SHORT ROUTE TO HAPPINESS Susan Prince University of Cincinnati, Ohio This paper attempts to untangle the major snarl in the tradition of the Cynic ‘short cut’ (ἡ σύντομος ὁδός) to happiness in Hellenistic and Imperial texts, and to clarify the role of Antisthenes, first-generation disciple of Socrates, senior contemporary of Plato, and likely teacher of Diogenes of Sinope, in fashioning the image of the Cynic short cut, one of the more paradoxical ancient proposals for the route to happiness. In addition, it aims to illuminate the range of senses in which the ‘short cut’ could have been understood or promoted by Antisthenes in his historical situation, namely Athens of the period between Socrates’ death and his own (399 to c. 365 BCE). These senses are primarily ethical, but social and logical as well. The fictional letters attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, datable to some 550 years after Antisthenes’ lifetime, credit Antisthenes with formulating the Cynic short cut in a coherent allegorical image of the possible roads to happiness.1 Although it is generally accepted that these letters preserve genuine Cynic thought from its formative period (the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE),2 their late date also renders them susceptible to be dismissed as rhetorical expansions of, or even generated during, the later Hellenistic period. At best, they would have been distorted from whatever form they originally had, and thus discontinuous with the Classical period and unsuitable for backward projection. More generally, it is not obvious that any strand in Cynicism from the Imperial period can simply be attributed to Antisthenes. Diogenes Laertius (approximately contemporary with the writing of the fictional letters of Diogenes) notes the Cynic ‘short cut’ to virtue in order to contrast it with the Stoics’ long road of education; he names Antisthenes three times for intellectual influence on the Cynics, 1

Emeljanow 1965 argues, in a very brief article, that the treatment of the short cut in Ps.-Diog. Ep. 12, 30, 37 and 44 shows the Antisthenean origin of the metaphor. 2 See, conveniently, Malherbe 1977:2-3. The fundamental arguments were made by Capelle 1896, with Von Fritz 1926 subsequently dismissing any value of the letters beyond overlaps with Diogenes Laertius; scholarship has since largely ignored the letters.

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but does not attribute the short cut to him.3 According to another Diogenes Laertius passage, the Cynic short cut was fashioned by the Stoic Apollonius of Seleucia in the 2nd century BCE as a way to reconcile Stoicism with Cynicism while retaining the difference between them.4 Meanwhile, the story of Heracles at the crossroads, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia 2.1.21-34 (told by Socrates who cites Prodicus), is widely recognised as the principle source for Imperial-period imagery of the short and long routes to happiness.5 In Xenophon’s version of the story, as in most of the earlier and later versions, the correct road is markedly long and hard, and the short route, the road of pleasure, is renounced as the wrong road. Nevertheless, some kind of relationship between Antisthenes and this Choice of Heracles has long been suspected, for mainly three reasons: (1) because the hero is Heracles, about whose education in virtue Antisthenes wrote famous, but now lost fictions;6 (2) because the story is addressed by Socrates to his hedonist associate Aristippus, the likely opponent of Antisthenes on the choice between a life of pleasure and the practice of a certain ‘kingly art’ of self-mastery (βασιλικὴ τέχνη, Mem.

3

Diog. Laert. 6.104, from the concluding overview of common Cynic doctrine in 6.103-05. Because Antisthenes is repeatedly cited, Giannantoni includes the complete passage among the testimonia for Antisthenes in Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (hereafter cited as SSR), VA 135. Brancacci 1992:4068 n. 70 argues that Diogenes Laertius himself devised this assimilation of Antisthenes to the Cynics as part of his assertion that Cynicism is a ‘school’ (αἵρεσις), but nonetheless attributes the short cut to Antisthenes. 4 Diog. Laert. 7.121. Goulet-Cazé 1986:22-24 and n. 22 credits coinage of the term to Apollonius but the motif itself, on the basis of the Cynic epistles, to Antisthenes and Diogenes; in 2003:109-11 she is primarily concerned with the Stoics’ use of Cynicism and credits the short cut fully to Apollonius. 5 Alpers 1912 is still cited as the major study of this question. In addition to Emanjalow 1965 and Goulet-Cazé 1986, see also Sansone 2004:125 with n. 1; Brancacci 1992:4068-69 n. 70. Höistad 1948:150-79 (on Dio Chrys. Or. 1) rejects Prodicus as the primary source and proposes a Cynic tradition descending from Antisthenes – see following note. Xenophon’s predecessors begin with Hes. Op. 286-92 and include also Simonides and possibly the Pythagoreans and Parmenides. Cribiore 2007:76 n. 18 proposes that ‘the pattern was probably inspired by the judgment of Paris’. Resonances elsewhere in Xenophon, Plato and Isocrates show that the motif was productive in Socratic and post-Socratic discourse beyond its use in Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-34. 6 SSR VA 92-99, and the three titles in the fourth and tenth tomoi of Antisthenes’ book catalogue, Diog. Laert. 6.16 and 18 = SSR VA 41.

75 2.1.17),7 whose value the story is meant to demonstrate; and (3) because there are at least two intertextual resonances between Xenophon’s passage and evidence surviving from Antisthenes.8 This relationship between Antisthenes and Xenophon’s Choice of Heracles turns out to be central for the case that Antisthenes discussed the short road to happiness. But, if Antisthenes advocated for the short road, we encounter our tangle: the story of Heracles clearly cannot derive from Antisthenes, precisely because the long road is recommended and the short road derided and dismissed. Rather, there is more likely a polemical relationship between Xenophon’s version of the story9 and the teaching of Antisthenes. Unlike Xenophon and the fictional lady Virtue, Antisthenes did not rank traditional élite status and benefaction to society among the highest human values: in the sympathetic account of the short cut, these are precisely what get discarded when one takes the short road. For greater clarity on the two views of the short cut, the Cynic epistles offer the clearest evidence. In Letter 30 of Ps.-Diogenes (c. 200 CE), Antisthenes is attributed with pointing out the short route to happiness. 10 The letter is worth quoting at length for its relevance to the topic of this paper: 7

On Antisthenes’ likely connections to the kingly art, see Höistad 1948:22-102 and Brancacci 1990:80-83. 8 The clearest resonances are Xen. Mem. 2.1.5 (from the frame dialogue between Socrates and Aristippus) with SSR VA 60, and Xen. Mem. 2.1.31 with SSR VA 112; see Gigon 1956:22. More recent commentators on Xenophon hesitate to recognise this relationship, in consideration of the loss of Antisthenes’ writings: Bevilacqua 2010:77 n. 356, in critique of Dorion 2000:LII-LV, is willing to admit comparison of theme but – following Giannantoni 1990:4:214 – warns against direct dependence. Both commentators mention Antisthenes generally at 2.1.5, but neither at 2.1.31. Joël 1901:125-206 and 284-332 argues in detail that Xenophon’s story was really written by Antisthenes, with Höistad 1948:152 arguing against Joël. 9 The majority of critics read Xenophon at face value, i.e. most of the content and probably some of the phrasing is Prodicus’; contra both Joël 1901 who holds Prodicus as a fiction in this passage, and Sansone 2004 who argues that the text was composed by the historical Prodicus. 10 Ps.-Diog. Ep. 30 is the first of a set of 10 longer letters containing passages of dialogue. On organising the 50 transmitted letters in sets based on shared features and assignable to single composers, see Emanjalow 1967:1-10, and Malherbe 1977:14-19. Texts cited from Hercher 1873, with changes suggested by Emenjalow 1967.

PRINCE Ἧκον, ὦ πάτερ, Ἀθήναζε, καὶ πυθόμενος τὸν Σωκράτους ἑταῖρον εὐδαιμονίαν διδάσκειν, εἰσῆλθον παρ’ αὐτόν. ὃ δὲ ἐτύγχανε τότε σχολάζων περὶ ταῖν ὁδοῖν ταῖν φερούσαιν , ἔλεγε δὲ αὐτὰς εἶναι δύο καὶ οὐ πολλάς, καὶ τὴν μὲν σύντομον, τὴν δὲ πολλήν· ἐξεῖναι οὖν ἑκάστῳ ὁποτέραν βούλοιτο βαδίζειν. κἀγὼ ταῦτα ἀκούσας τότε μὲν κατεσίγησα, τῇ δὲ ἑξῆς, ἐπειδὴ πάλιν εἰσιόντων ἡμῶν παρ’ αὐτὸν περὶ ταῖν ὁδοῖν παρεκάλεσα αὐτὸν ἐπιδεῖξαι ἡμῖν, καὶ ὃς μάλ’ ἑτοίμως ἀπαναστὰς τῶν θάκων ἦγεν ἡμᾶς εἰς ἄστυ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν. καὶ ἐπεὶ ἀγχοῦ ἐγενόμεθα, ἐπιδείκνυσιν ἡμῖν δύο τινὲ ὁδὼ ἀναφερούσα, τὴν μὲν ὀλίγην προσάντη τε καὶ δύσκολον, τὴν δὲ πολλὴν λείαν τε καὶ ῥᾳδίαν καθιστάς. ἅμα γάρ ‘αἱ μὲν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν’ εἶπε ‘φέρουσαι ὁδοί εἰσιν αὗται, αἱ δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν τοιαῦται· αἱρεῖσθε δὲ ἕκαστος ἣν ἐθέλετε, ξεναγήσω δ’ ἐγώ.’ τότε οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τῆς ὁδοῦ τὸ δύσκολον καὶ πρόσαντες καταπλαγέντες ὑποκατεκλίνησαν καὶ τὴν μακρὰν καὶ λείαν παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν διάγειν, ἐγὼ δὲ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν χαλεπῶν τὴν προσάντη καὶ δύσκολον· ἐπὶ γὰρ εὐδαιμονίαν ἐπειγομένῳ κἂν διὰ πυρὸς ἢ ξιφῶν βαδιστέον εἶναι. I arrived, father, in Athens, and when I learned that the companion of Socrates was teaching happiness, I went to him. He happened to be teaching at the time about the two roads leading to it, and he said that the roads are two and not many, and that one is a short cut and the other long: and so it is up to each person which of them he wishes to tread. And I, when I heard this, was quiet then, but on the next day, when we went back to him, when I appealed to him to demonstrate for us his point about the two roads, he very agreeably stood from his seat and led us to the city and through it straight to the Acropolis. And when we got close, he showed us two paths leading up, rendering the short one as steep and difficult and the long one as smooth and easy. And simultaneously he said, ‘The roads leading to the Acropolis are these, and the roads leading to happiness are similar. Choose, each of you, the one he wishes, and I shall be your tour guide.’ Then the others, startled at the difficult and steep quality of the road, gave up and bid him to lead by the long and smooth road, but I stood up to the challenge and chose the steep and difficult road. For to one in pursuit of happiness, it is necessary to walk, even if through fire and swords.11

11

Ps.-Diog. Ep. 30.1-2 (Hercher 1873); cf. Prince 2015:399-402.

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77 Newly arrived in Athens, Diogenes reports to his father that he has found a teacher of happiness. On first encounter, this teacher (not named here, but in the overlapping Letter 37 identified as Antisthenes) throws out a puzzle: just as there are two paths to the Acropolis, one long and smooth and another short and steep, so are there two paths to happiness. Diogenes does not know quite what to make of the puzzle, but he returns the next day to ask for a demonstration. He learns that each tourist, or perhaps pilgrim, is invited to make his own choice between the paths, and Antisthenes is happy to lead by either way. Diogenes chooses the short and rigorous path, and this is the turning point in his life: the conclusion of the letter features Antisthenes endowing Diogenes with the Cynic costume of double cloak, wallet, simple eating utensils and a staff, so achieving his conversion to Cynicism.12 As Emeljanow has shown, this allegory with both paths leading to the same place of happiness, is a more coherent geographical image than the versions in Hesiod and Xenophon where the long hard and the short easy paths cannot have the same endpoint: Virtue is the destination of a long path, and those tempted by an apparent short route (either a practical deception or a literary foil), are misguided and will arrive at neither Virtue nor true happiness. This is also the gist of most other Imperial resonances of the story, which implicitly or explicitly advocate for the long path. The fictional Antisthenes’ advocacy of a short path is underlined in Letter 37 of Ps.-Diogenes.13 Diogenes writes now of a luxurious banquet hosted by a friend and of his protest that the situation is at odds with the simple food and drink of his normal diet, to which he has been habituated through his education at the hands of Antisthenes: τοιαῦτα ἐγὼ παρὰ Ἀντισθένει παιδευόμενος ἔμαθον ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν, οὐχ ὡς φαῦλα ἀλλ’ ὡς κρείττονα τῶν ἑτέρων καὶ μᾶλλον δυνάμενα ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ εὑρίσκεσθαι τῇ φερούσῃ ἐπ’ εὐδαιμονίαν, ἣν δὴ πάντων τιμιωτάτην χρημάτων θετέον. ἐν τόπῳ ὀχυρωτάτῳ καὶ ἀποκρημνοτάτῳ τραχεῖαν ἱδρύσασθαι. ταύτην οὖν τὴν ὁδὸν διὰ τὸ δύσκολον μόλις μίαν ὁδὸν προσάντη καὶ ἂν δύνασθαι γυμνὸν ἕκαστον ἀναβῆναι, καὶ οὐχ ὅτι φέροντά τι σὺν ἑαυτῷ καὶ βαρούμενον μόγῳ καὶ δεσμοῖς περισωθῆναι, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ 12

Cf. similar motifs in Ps.-Crates, Ep. 6 and 13: the σύντομος ὅδος is attributed directly to Diogenes in Ep. 13, but Ep. 6, citing from Ps.-Diog. Ep. 30, credits Antisthenes with starting this mode of living well (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) or practicing this sort of philosophy (τὸ ὧδε φιλοσοφεῖν).

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τῶν ἀναγκαίων τι μετιόντα, ποιῆσαι δ’ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ τροφὴν μὲν πόαν ἢ κάρδαμα, πόμα δὲ εὐπαλὲς ὕδωρ. μάλιστα δ’ ὅπῃ δέοι τοῦ ῥᾷστα βαδίσαι, γυμναστέον ἐσθίειν μὲν κάρδαμον, πίνειν δὲ ὕδωρ, ἀμπέχεσθαι δὲ τρίβωνα κοῦφον . These are the sorts of things I learned to eat and drink under the tutelage of Antisthenes, [and to see] them not as meager, but as better than other things and more able to be found on the road leading to happiness, which of course must be posited as the most valuable of all. [He said that]14 in a place very secure and full of cliffs, one road, steep and rough, is set out. And this road, because of its difficulty, each man could scarcely climb naked, not to mention survive when carrying something with him and weighed down by distress and bonds, nor when chasing after one of the necessary things; but he can create as his nourishment on the road the grass or the cresses, and as his drink the common water. And foremost where one would need to proceed most easily, one must exercise in eating cress and drinking water and dressing in a light cloak .

Here only one path leads to happiness, and Diogenes explains more fully how the ascetic lifestyle he adopted in Letter 30 relates to climbing this steep path. One must be ‘naked’ (γυμνόν), lest either of two problems deter. Firstly, the fully clothed traveller is weighed down by distress and bonds (βαρούμενον μόγῳ καὶ δεσμοῖς), that is, ailments of a life committed to things that enslave. In fourth-century Socratic discourse, not least the dialogue between Socrates and Aristippus framing the choice of Heracles in Xen. Mem. 2.1.4-6 and 10-11, these are characterised as bodily appetites gratified without limit, such that they control the ethical subject and not vice versa. One might assume that if the fully clothed traveller were to try ascending this rugged mountain, he would need to take the long and gradual route of Letter 30 where he can lug along all his baggage. Secondly, the unprepared traveller has to chase after the ‘necessary things’ (τῶν ἀναγκαίων τι μετιόντα), primarily nourishment and drink. If one cannot find nourishment from the grass, cresses and water on the road 14

An apparent anacoluthon between the colon ending at θετέον and the accusative construction that follows has inspired despairing statements from editors: see Nihard 1914:261-63 (who complained also about repetition of content); Emeljanow 1967:183-85; Malherbe 1977:156. If the clauses concerned are understood as Diogenes’ citation of what Antisthenes said, in indirect discourse, the problems of both syntax and redundancy disappear.

79 (τροφὴν μὲν πόαν ἢ κάρδαμα, πόμα δὲ εὐπαλὲς ὕδωρ), that is, what is present and available, one must go off track to find them, and this obviously deters progress. We will see that both problems, having too much baggage on the one hand, and having to cope with few available resources on the other, have parallels in the best surviving version of Antisthenes’ presentation of his own happiness. Should one ask why Diogenes so readily chooses and permanently prefers the short, steep route, the answer must be something to the effect that less time getting to happiness implies more time being there. In addition, Diogenes in Letter 30 is aware of possessing some superiority of power or strength (ἐγὼ δὲ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν χαλεπῶν) and is eager to take up the challenge that sets himself apart. This competitive spirit is related to the Cynic display referred to and often ridiculed in hostile sources.15 In these, the necessary long road and the attractive short road cannot lead to the same destination. The secondcentury Galen represents in his text On the Diagnosis and Cure of Errors of the Soul 3.12 a straightforward version of the resistance to the Cynic short cut: καὶ γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι σύντομον ἐπ’ ἀρετὴν ὁδὸν εἶναί φασι τὸ σφέτερον ἐπιτήδευμα. τινὲς δὲ αὐτῶν ἐλέγχοντες οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀρετήν, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀρετῆς ἐπ’ εὐδαιμονίαν ὁδὸν εἶναι φάσκουσι τὴν κυνικὴν φιλοσοφίαν. ἀλλ’ ἕτεροί γ’ ἀληθέστερον αὐτῶν ἀποφαινόμενοι σύντομον ἐπ’ ἀλαζονείαν ὁδὸν εἶναί φασι δι ἀμαθῆ τῶν τοιούτων ἀνθρώπων τόλμαν. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ Κυνικοὶ πάντες, οὕς γε δὴ τεθέαμαι κατὰ τὸν ἐμαυτοῦ βίον, οὕτω καὶ τῶν φιλοσοφεῖν ἐπαγγελλομένων ἔνιοι φεύγειν ὁμολογοῦσι τὴν ἐν τῇ λογικῇ θεωρίᾳ γυμνασίαν. And indeed also they say that their way of life is a shortcut road to virtue. But some of them, refuting this, claim that the Cynic philosophy is not a road to virtue, but a road to happiness through virtue. Yet others of them, declaring their opinions more truthfully, say that it is a shortcut road to charlatanry, because of the ignorant boldness of such people. Well, in the same way as all the Cynics agree (at least those I have seen in the course of my life), likewise also some of those who proclaim that they philosophize agree that

15

Competitive spirit is critical to Cynic performance from every perspective. Bosman 2006:101 shows that Diogenes’ antics, even from a sympathetic perspective, always involve ἀγών.

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they shun exercise in logical theory.16

Galen uses the trademark σύντομος ὁδός which is, in fact, absent from the Ps.-Diogenic letters. In calling the Cynic route charlatanry (ἐπ’ ἀλαζονείαν), a mode of show-off with the self-serving purpose of gaining attention or attacking others, or even with no purpose at all, Galen echoes other critics of the Cynics who accuse them of vapid antics.17 Most modern scholarship, as well, characterises Cynic freedom as negative freedom, freedom from social constraint or convention without any justifying positive freedom, freedom for a definite goal such as reaching the mountain top of happiness.18 For the historical Antisthenes’ positive conception of happiness and the road to getting there, one must turn to the text most likely to present his own account, namely his speech on the wealth of his soul in Xenophon’s Symposium (4.34-44 = SSR VA 82). Antisthenes here explains the nature of his happiness and not the road that got him there, but we might from this text be able to deduce more about his proposed road. Antisthenes’ speech is set as his contribution to the party game, a cycle of speeches explaining what each guest values most. Antisthenes’ riddling answer in the previous chapter of the text (Sym. 3.8) was his wealth. Since he was not wealthy in land or money, the other diners asked what his ‘wealth’ referred to, and he explains that he has wealth of the soul. Antisthenes presents this as an original metaphor, although it was surely commonplace in Socratic literature by the date of Xenophon’s composition in the late 360s.19 Antisthenes’ whole speech is important to his conception of happiness, 16

Text cited from De Boer 1937. Cf. Luc. Vit. auc. 11 (Diogenes speaking): Ἀλλὰ ῥᾷστά γε, ὦ οὗτος, καὶ πᾶσιν εὐχερῆ μετελθεῖν· οὐ γάρ σοι δεήσει παιδείας καὶ λόγων καὶ λήρων, ἀλλ’ ἐπίτομος αὕτη σοι πρὸς δόξαν ἡ ὁδός (‘But at all events it is easy, man, and no trouble for all to follow; for you will not need education and doctrine and drivel, but this road is a short cut to fame’, tr. Harmon 1913). 18 Examples of this characterisation are collected in Montiglio 2005:181-84 and n. 3. This tradition is countered by Höistad 1948:15-16 (who traces it to Gomperz 1915), where he sets out the framework for his whole book. See also Moles 1983 for a positive conception of Cynic cosmopolitanism. Moles 2000: esp. 431, emphasises that Cynic freedom must be negative in literal political terms, but it creates space for exercising moral strength, the content of real Cynic freedom. 19 On the dating of the Symposium and various aspects of its overall structure, see Huß 1999. 17

81 but we may stress three main points. Firstly, although Antisthenes frames his choice of lifestyle in the negative, as an alternative or solution to the corrupted tyrannical lifestyle he sees around him (Sym. 4.35 and especially 4.36), there is in the end a positive goal: leisure and contemplation (4.44). We will return to this point last. Secondly, in the core of his argument (4.37-38), the measure of ‘enough’, that is, fulfilment of bodily appetite and desire, is unproblematically given: περίεστί μοι καὶ ἐσθίοντι ἄχρι τοῦ μὴ πεινῆν ἀφικέσθαι καὶ πίνοντι μέχρι τοῦ μὴ διψῆν καὶ ἀμφιέννυσθαι ὥστε ἕξω μὲν μηδὲν μᾶλλον Καλλίου τούτου τοῦ πλουσιωτάτου ῥιγοῦν. [I]t is possible for me to eat to the point of not being hungry, and drink to the point of not being thirsty, and get dressed in such a way that outdoors I shiver no more than the very wealthy Callias here. (Xen. Sym. 37)

Simultaneously, however, this limit is a matter of perception (38): ἐπειδάν γε μὴν ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ γένωμαι, πάνυ μὲν ἀλεεινοὶ χιτῶνες οἱ τοῖχοί μοι δοκοῦσιν εἶναι. And when I am in my house, the walls seem to me to be very warm undergarments.

In fact, his minimal fulfilments of needs of the body seem even too pleasant (4.39). Although it is a truism in modern terms that the experience of pleasure is always subjective, Antisthenes uses this repeated emphasis on his peculiar and deliberately trained way of experiencing pleasure to show that the objective circumstances for ‘well-being’ determine neither pleasure nor the happiness extended from pleasure. An objective assessment of Antisthenes’ well-being from the tyrant’s (here Callias’) perspective, or even that of most average people, would find him lacking. But, because being pleasant is a predicate that seems to be true of, among other things, his bedding, not something that is true in itself, the response is up to him. In this way, his subjective experience is an appearance, not something that could be known, as in the very different

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account of the Cyrenaics.20 In contrast to this subjective pleasure in the fulfilment of bodily needs, which takes on objective limits (‘enough’) only as identified through Antisthenes’ reasoning, the wealth of the soul that Antisthenes gains from Socrates at the end of the picture (4.43) escapes objective measure: Σωκράτης τε γὰρ οὗτος παρ’ οὗ ἐγὼ τοῦτον ἐκτησάμην οὔτ’ ἀριθμῷ οὔτε σταθμῷ ἐπήρκει μοι, ἀλλ’ ὁπόσον ἐδυνάμην φέρεσθαι τοσοῦτόν μοι παρεδίδου. Socrates here, from whom I have acquired so much, supplied me neither by number nor by weight, but however much I could carry off, that much he granted me.

Its total volume is again relative to the subject, here not figured as an appearance but an objectively real package of well-being, something that can be carried. Thirdly, the key to the lifestyle of Antisthenes is not minimalisation of pleasure or its satisfactions in itself, but the ability to make use of what is available. So in 4.38, ‘what is available’ suffices as his sexual partners (οὕτω μοι τὸ παρὸν ἀρκεῖ). In 4.40, any job available will satisfy his financial needs (οὐδὲν οὕτως ὁρῶ φαῦλον ἔργον ὁποῖον οὐκ ἀρκοῦσαν ἂν τροφὴν ἐμοὶ παρέχοι). In 4.41, pleasure in general can be provided right from his soul (ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς ταμιεύομαι). When he encounters Thasian wine (4.41), a luxury good,21 he does not resist or reject it, but he enjoys it. What he has not done is go out of his way or expend toil or risk to get the wine. He has also not cluttered his field of decision-making by rejecting it, but his whole set of attitudes is organised to invest all his effort, so to speak, on his most splendid possession, namely leisure (4.44) and the positive content of that. Neither the baggage of bonds to desire nor the pursuit of what is necessary prevents Antisthenes from becoming a traveller on the steep road of Ps.-Diogenes’ Letter 37. What is missing in this speech is an account of the road itself and a full description of the state of happiness. But comparison to other passages might allow us to fill in these missing pieces. 20

Diog. Laert. 2.86-90. Although current scholarship tends to attribute these views to Aristippus the younger (cf. Tsouna 1998:129 n. 18), it is not implausible that an epistemological issue lies at the heart of the polarised positions of Antisthenes and Aristippus the Elder on the topic of pleasure. 21 See Huß 1999:284-85.

83 Let us consider, first, what Antisthenes’ speech does say about the positive goals of his self-discipline: ‘And furthermore, you see that the most splendid possession, leisure, is always my possession’ (καὶ μὴν καὶ τὸ ἁβρότατόν γε κτῆμα, τὴν σχολὴν ἀεὶ ὁρᾶτέ μοι παροῦσαν, 4.44). When Antisthenes maximises σχολή (‘free time’), the result is that he can ‘behold the things worth beholding and hear the things worth hearing, and, what I value for most, I can spend the day at leisure with Socrates’ (ὥστε καὶ θεᾶσθαι τἀ ἀξιοθέατα καἰ ἀκούειν τα ἀξιάκουστα καἰ ὃ πλείστου ἐγὼ τιμῶμαι, Σωκράτωι σχολάζων συνδιημερεύειν, Xen. Sym. 4.44). Antisthenes says no more about which things are worth beholding or worth hearing, but this activity is at the centre of his lifestyle, just as gazing on the Forms is at the centre of the lifestyle in Plato’s philosophy.22 Given that Antisthenes does not recognise the Platonic Forms,23 one might ask which visions and sounds at the core of his happiness could be the nearest equivalent to Diotima’s central lesson on his terms. These cannot be aesthetic in the commonplace sense, because Xenophon’s text overall rejects aesthetic beauty, represented by the beautiful body of the athlete Autolycus (Sym. 1.9) in favour of some Socratic ‘fine and good’ (Sym. 8.3, 8.11); Antisthenes’ speech contributes centrally to this message. Within the frame of Antisthenes’ speech, and what we otherwise know about his values, these pleasures must be hearing the logoi of Socrates or seeing, through the mind’s eye, objects such as the actions in Homeric poetry or on the Athenian stage.24 In later discourse such as Themistius’ On Virtue, this kind of highest vision consists in seeing the divine things that reside above the human, on the one hand, and seeing the lush vegetation of the beautiful meadow at the top of the road to happiness.25 Whatever the 22

Represented most clearly in the lesson of Diotima at the heart of his own Symposium, 210e2-211a1. 23 The clearest surviving evidence for this dispute between Antisthenes and Plato is collected in SSR VA 149. 24 See SSR VA 12; Antisthenes’ pursuit of Socrates’ company and attraction to his discourse (according to the account in the Gnom. Vat. and in Jerome), and evidence of his interest in Homeric actions in VA 53-54, 187-92. For Antisthenes and Socrates as co-spectators of tragedy (in anecdote), see VA 16. 25 Them. De virt. fol. 32a (Mach 1974) (= SSR VA 96): perfectus enim vir non eris, priusquam ea, quae hominibus sublimiora sunt, didiceris. si ista disces, tunc humana quoque disces … (‘for you will not be a perfect man until you have learned the things that are more exalted than humans. If you learn these, then you will also learn human matters.’ At fol. 26a, the ‘broad and open field’ at the top of the difficult path discovered by Socrates, trodden by Antisthenes, Diogenes and

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exact content of this experience, it is this experience that constitutes the goal of freedom according to Antisthenes. Both these key concepts, leisure and contemplation, are also central to Plato’s conception of happiness and the philosophical life, as a short excerpt from the Theaetetus demonstrates. I do not propose that these Platonic texts necessarily refer to Antisthenes, only that they show a common Socratic background to these core components of happiness. Arguably, Diotima’s destination of love differs from Antisthenes’ central experience in only two respects: the nature of its content, being Forms, and the length of the ascent, being long.26 In the Theaetetus, a text that famously has no explicit commitment to the theory of Forms, Socrates in the course of a long digression (171d177c) praises the philosophical life, and especially its leisure, by contrast to the lifestyle of the man of affairs and law courts, the forensic man. There is no dominant language of roads in this passage, but there is a culminating distinction of two ways or τρόποι (175d7-176a1) for spending leisure. As Socrates describes the inferior way, that of the forensic man, he shows how this man performs the appearance but not the real way of the philosopher (175b8-176a1). I am not committed to the possibility that Plato is taking a subtle and ornery dig at Antisthenes in this passage, but others have pointed in this, indeed attractive, direction.27 Plato implies that this non-philosopher rises from particular to general only with effort and insufficiency (175b8-d2); that his favourite topics are justice, kingship and human happiness (same passage); that he knows how to make a bed and season food, activities disgraceful to the real philosopher;28 and that he Crates, and begun but rejected by Chrysippus, Zeno and Cleanthes, is described: quae via primo ingressu difficilis et aspera est; sed paulo post ambulantibus campus planus atque apertus subest; in ea et tranquillitas et sudum et pax insunt; alimenta, quibus eam ambulantibus opus est, terra sponte sua germinanda curat … (‘this road is difficult and harsh on first approach; but a little bit later a broad and open field appears to those who walk; on this road are tranquility, peace and a clear blue sky; the earth by its own accord takes care of sprouting the food needed by those who walk it.’ The text is preserved only in Syriac and has been rendered in Latin by R. Mach in Themistii Orationes v. 3 (Leipzig: Teubner 1974). 26 Brancacci 1993:43 also compares Diotima’s vision to the activity at the core of Antisthenes’ leisure. 27 Zeller 1888:289 n. 2 pointed to the Thracian women who appear in this passage (175d5) as a clue to Antisthenes; see SSR VA 1-3. Plato mentions Thracian women nowhere else in his corpus. 28 Theaet. 175e1-4; compare Antisthenes’ pride in his luxurious bed at Xen. Sym. 4.38.

85 lacks the upbringing necessary for true freedom and leisure.29 Whether or not Plato is thinking about Antisthenes in particular, the importance of leisure,30 along with the implication that leisure is rightfully devoted to discussing the kinds of topic the Socratics discussed, is common to this passage and Antisthenes’ exposition of the wealth of his soul in Xenophon’s Symposium. Antisthenes, in his speech, presents the life of happiness he is already practicing, not the path to getting there. Although the account overlaps with Ps.-Diogenes’ Letter 37 in two significant ways, it does not tell us whether the path is long or short, let alone how the path is conceived: Antisthenes seems only to celebrate his achieved state of happiness. But an odd passage in Aelius Aristides which cites Antisthenes might shed light on this question. Here Aristides, amid his Sacred Tales, is recounting his recovery from illness through his communication with Asclepius.31 Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis has shown that Aristides regularly evokes healing practices in this text from the authority of ancient books.32 She also mentions that a portrait of Antisthenes was displayed on the sacred way of second-century Pergamon leading from the city to the precinct of Asclepius, the setting of Aristides’ Sacred Tales.33 It thus seems plausible that Aristides is indeed quoting Antisthenes. In the book, Aristides tells us, a god appeared advising the athlete in training to drink water and to abstain from wine, because in such a way he would attain victory (ταῦτα δὴ πάντα ὁ θεὸς συλλογισάμενος καὶ ὁρῶν τὸ ῥεῦμα ἄρδην φερόμενον προσέταξεν ὕδωρ πίνειν, οἴνου δὲ ἀπέχεσθαι, εἴ τι δεῖται νικῆσαι, Sacred Tales 3.31). Aristides, in his own right, then follows the advice given by the god to the aspiring victor of Antisthenes’ text, and his path to abstinence is tracked out in detail.34 First, it seems, he immediately stops drinking wine, and drinks water instead, in obedience to the god and in 29

The philosopher is the one raised in real freedom and leisure; cf. Theaet. 175d8e1. 30 From the list of Plato’s most outstanding treatments of σχολή that could plausibly be relevant to Antisthenes’ climax in Sym. 4.44 (Huß 1999:287-88), this is the most clearly framed and most developed. 31 Sacred Tales 3.30-33 = SSR VA 197. The text is cited from the edition of Keil 1898. 32 Petsalis-Diomidis 2010:267-69. 33 See Petsalis-Diomidis 2010:174-79. 34 Sacred Tales 3.32. This section of the Aristides passage is elided in SSR, although the reference to Antisthenes and the second reference to his book follows in §33.

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disobedience to his own personal inclinations. Then start the phases of training. Once the god is satisfied that Aristides can abstain, he reintroduces the wine, in a small daily ration that is only for the day, the ‘kingly half-portion’ (ἡμίνα βασιλική). He continues: ἐχρώμην τούτῳ καὶ οὕτως ἤρκει ὡς οὐκ ἤρκει πρότερον τὸ διπλάσιον, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ φειδομένῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ δεδιέναι μὴ ἐπιλείπῃ περιῆν. οὐ μὴν τοῦτό γε ἐποιούμην ἐξαίρετον εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔδει τῷ μέτρῳ στέργειν. ‘I consumed this’, he continues, ‘and it was sufficient to such a degree as double the amount previously had not been sufficient: and there were times when it was even left over, since I was sparing out of fear that it might run out. However, I did not set this aside for the next day, but it was necessary to be content anew with the portion [for that day].’ (Sacred Tales 3.32)

Finally, the god, as if testing Aristides’ achievement of virtue, allows him to drink to indulgence (ἀφίησιν ἤδη πίνειν πρὸς ἐξουσίαν), since it is also part of virtue to use what is ready or available, and foolish are those who cannot (μάταιοι τῶν ἀνθρώπων εἶεν ὅσοι τῶν ἱκανῶν εὐποροῦντες μὴ τολμῶσιν ἐλευθέρως χρῆσθαι, Sacred Tales 3.32). In the end, Aristides is able to follow his regimen and not be lured into excess, because he has fixed his habits. Although it is not impossible that Aristides has introduced this method for what looks like the defeat of an addiction from his own imagination and not from Antisthenes’ book, the passage occurs between the two references to the book, and the story does not follow Aristides’ typical patterns. The vocabulary in this passage seems appropriate to Antisthenes and even overlaps at points with the speech reported by Xenophon.35 The Sacred Tales refers very rarely to wine and never to drunkenness or addiction: of the merely six references to wine in the entire work, three occur in this passage and one just before.36 In so far as this passage presents 35

Consider especially ἡμίνα βασιλική, μέτρον, and all vocabulary in the last clause quoted. In addition, the concluding sentence (3.33) reports a longing for τὴν ταμιείαν τὴν τότε: in Sym. 4.41 Antisthenes manages his transactions in pleasure from the shop of his soul, ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς ταμιεύομαι. 36 Apart from the present passage, the word οἶνος is related to a medicine or treatment in Sacred Tales 1.26 and 3.26, both close in context to the present

87 a path to virtue, it is quite different from the other images of the path to virtue in the tradition: none discusses the dishabituation from wine. But, possibly, this passage makes sense in the context of the short cut. The abrupt change of attitude to the wine at the beginning of the process, where it is removed completely and then reintroduced, rather than reduced gradually, could perhaps be understood as a version of the short cut. Let us turn now from this exploration of Antisthenes’ ethical short cut to two other plausible areas of application. These are both related more narrowly to education and not happiness, but, of course, in ancient philosophy education was equated to the route to happiness. As we turn now from consideration of Antisthenes’ views on ethical virtue and its achievement to the language of the long road in the discourse about Athenian education, let us remember that this was based in rhetoric, that is, techniques and topics in language, and that Antisthenes was a notable contributor in this field. His catalogue of books shows an extended series of nine or more titles devoted to topics comparable to Plato’s Cratylus, Theaetetus and Sophist;37 another extended series of eighteen titles was devoted to topics in poetry and Homer,38 which, to judge from relics surviving in the Homeric scholia, involved complicated and aggressive interpretations of Homer’s terminology and the ethical behaviour of his characters.39 In light of this broader scope of Antisthenes’ interests, let us note two further ways in which the short road of Antisthenes can arguably be conceived. A second way is related to knowledge and truth: that is, the Antisthenean understanding of truth might be a short cut, and his brand of education might, as Galen and Diogenes Laertius imply through the contrast to the Stoics, omit the long course of exercise in logic but seek access to the truth more directly, in some non-systematic form, perhaps even in the poems of Homer. In other words, the very sense of the ‘short passage, and once (4.34) sailors arrive on the scene heavy with wine. Μέθυ and derivatives do not occur in Sacred Tales. A survey of Aristides’ complete works shows similarly low use of these words. 37 These are in the sixth and seventh τόμοι of Antisthenes’ book catalogue; Diog. Laert. 6.16-17 = SSR VA 41. 38 These are in the eighth and ninth τόμοι of the catalogue; Diog. Laert. 6.17-18 = SSR VA 41. 39 See SSR VA 187-92, but especially 189 (the epithets of the Cyclopes) and 191 (the strength of Nestor).

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cut’ attributed by Goulet-Cazé to Apollonius of Seleucia might be closely faithful to Antisthenes, whose distinction would, obviously, be not from the Stoics, but from the technical advocates of his own day: Plato, who was developing the longer route of philosophy; perhaps Isocrates, who was developing the longer, if not quite so long, route of rhetoric; and every teacher who advocated for a special intellectual τέχνη learned through an extended course of study. We shall return to this possibility in conclusion. A third way is that Antisthenes’ brand of education, in so far as it was short and therefore inexpensive in economic terms,40 might have been targeted to a type of person not addressed by traditional educational models, that is, non-aristocrats, persons like the craftsmen who appear now and then in Plato’s dialogues as a model audience for Socrates. This type, most notably in the person of Simon the Shoemaker, appears with much more frequency in later discourse about the Socratics, especially that influenced by the Cynics.41 This third sense is likely to supply the key to the interpretation of Xenophon’s story of Heracles at the crossroads as a response to or subtle statement about Antisthenes. A preliminary general point about Xenophon’s relationship to the writings and doctrines of Antisthenes is in order. In a tradition going back to the 19th century, it is often assumed that if Xenophon used material from Antisthenes (or anyone else) to compose his own text, this took the form of cut-and-paste quotation, adapted only crudely to the scrapbook Xenophon was assembling, sometimes betraying itself through phrasing never fully adapted to the new context.42 The more plausible picture, however, is that Xenophon interacts with texts by Antisthenes (or anyone else), sometimes to endorse them, but sometimes to parody them or make a joke:43 he admired Antisthenes’ ascetic ethics 40

The main evidence for this traditional opinion is in SSR VA 169, an anecdote from Diogenes Laertius, and VA 170, a passage from Isocrates where Antisthenes is not named. Despite the bad evidence, the point is plausible as well as consistent with e.g. SSR VA 83 and the rest of Xenophon’s Symposium. 41 See the comprehensive treatment of Sellars 2003. 42 E.g. Gigon 1956 detects what he considers breaks in thought or unmotivated statements in the framing dialogue of Mem. 2.1, and attributes these to Xenophon’s not quite competent redaction of his source material. There are occasions when such an explanation may be necessary (e.g. Mem. 2.1.30, where Virtue addresses Vice as though she is a man), but this should not be applied unnecessarily. 43 The most compelling cases of parody with respect to Antisthenes are Sym. 8.46 (= SSR VA 14) and Mem. 3.4, on which see Prince 2015:262-69.

89 and, in the case of Heracles, he shares with Antisthenes the view that achieving happiness is difficult and entails the rejection of indulgence in immediate pleasure. But quite often, especially in the Symposium, Xenophon also subtly criticises Antisthenes, there, according to my overall reading, for his failure to actually succeed Socrates in the mission to become a teacher for Athens who would effectively steer it toward unity and success.44 In the case of Heracles at the crossroads, one of Xenophon’s points must be to correct Antisthenes for his omission of many benefactory civic goals Xenophon considers important from his programme for personal ethical success. The speech of virtue to Heracles (Xen. Mem. 2.1.27-28), is jarring for its list of noble activities Heracles must prepare for through long hard work: For of the things that are good and fine (ἀγαθῶν καὶ καλῶν), the gods have given nothing to humans without toil and application (ἄνευ πόνου καὶ ἐπιμελείας), and if you want the gods to be kind to you, you must serve the gods, and if you want to be loved by your friends, you must do good service to your friends. and if you want to be honoured by any city, you must help the city, and if you expect to be admired by all of Greece for your virtue, you must try to benefit Greece, and if you want the earth to bear limitless fruits for you, you must serve the earth, and if you think you should become wealthy from livestock, you must take care of the livestock, and if you strive to expand through war, and you want to be able to free your friends and subdue your enemies, you must learn the arts of war, and these from those who know, and you must practice how to use them. If you want to be able in your body, you must accustom your body to serve under your mind and you must exercise with labours and sweat (τῇ γνώμῃ ὑπηρετεῖν ἐθιστέον τὸ σῶμα καὶ γυμναστέον σὺν πόνοις καὶ ἱδρῶτι).

Serving the gods, helping the city, cultivating large amounts of land, imperialism through war, are all practices Antisthenes variously rejects in the surviving testimonia.45 It is only the concluding statement of Virtue 44

This criticism, I think, is embedded especially in the μαστροπός passage, Sym. 8.56-64 (= SSR VA 13). Although Xenophon’s Symposium is laden with irony showing that this mission failed even in Socrates’ hands, his Athenian audience seems to bear the blame; the Memorabilia praises Socratic teaching for what it did achieve. 45 On serving the gods: see, especially SSR VA 182, albeit about Cybele. But Antisthenes probably rejected the conventional Olympian gods also (SSR VA

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that fits with Antisthenes’ notably private and individualist cultivation of virtue on the personal scale.46 When the second woman, Vice, addresses Heracles (Mem. 2.1.29), she tempts him to a more attractive path to joy or happiness: And Vice, interrupting, said (as Prodicus tells us), ‘Are you aware, Heracles, how difficult and long (χαλεπὴν καὶ μακρὰν ) is the road to joy (τὰς εὐφροσύνας) that this woman describes to you? I will lead you on an easy and short road to happiness (ῥᾳδίαν καὶ βραχεῖαν ὁδὸν ἐπὶ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν).’

If the short, albeit difficult, road was known to the audience, Xenophon delivers a joke here, a harmless one given the overall message of the story, against Antisthenes that the audience will enjoy: Socrates reminds us that it is Prodicus’ story he is telling, and he makes the short road the corrupt road of pleasure, the very road Antisthenes adamantly opposes. In another version of the story, we might imagine, the subject heroically chose the short road, for which he needed to ditch his baggage and his social aspirations, and aim straight for Virtue. Elsewhere in the Memorabilia (2.6.39), Xenophon’s Socrates indeed advocates a short cut route to his difficult pupil Critobulus, and this is a sort of road that Antisthenes would have agreed with, the short cut road to seeming good through the most efficient behaviour of being good.47 That there was a background contest between Antisthenes and Prodicus over the question whether the road is long or short is not suggested in Classical evidence (we do hear from Plato’s Socrates in Cratylus 384b2-c1 that Prodicus himself offered a very long and expensive course on the use of names in addition to the publically accessible ones). But again we find some enticing discussion in 179-81). On helping the city: see, especially SSR VA 70. On cultivating land: see, especially SSR VA 82 (the passage from Plutarch). For imperialism there is no direct evidence, but on war see SSR VA 74. 46 See SSR VA 163. 47 Xen. Mem. 2.6.39: ἀλλὰ συμτομωτάτη τε καὶ ἀσφαλεστάτη καὶ καλλίστη ὁδός, ὦ Κριτόβουλε, ὅ τι ἂν βούλῃ δοκεῖν ἀγαθὸς εἶναι, τοῦτο καὶ γενέσθαι ἀγαθὸν πειρᾶσθαι (‘Nay, Critobulus, if you want to be thought good at anything, you must try to be so; that is the quickest, the surest, the best way’, tr. Marchant 1921). Joël 1901, reading the whole episode as Antisthenean, picked up on this evidence for Antisthenes’ advocacy of the short cut. See also Brancacci 1992:4068 n. 70, who counts it as primary evidence for Antisthenes’ connection to the short cut.

91 the Pseudo-Socratic epistles of Imperial times. Ps.-Aristippus Letters 9 and 13 are from a series of the so-called ‘Socratic Epistles’ dealing mostly with flattery to the Sicilian tyrants and residents in their court.48 In Letter 13, Aristippus writes to Simon the Shoemaker to advise him that he makes the wrong choice in preferring Antisthenes’ values to those of Prodicus: Οὐκ ἐγώ σε κωμῳδῶ, ἀλλὰ Φαίδων, λέγων γεγονέναι σε κρείσσω καὶ σοφώτερον Προδίκω τῶ Κείω, ὃς ἔφα ἀπελέγξαι σε αὐτὸν περὶ τὸ ἐγκώμιον τὸ εἰς τὸν Ἡρακλέα γενόμενον αὐτῷ. It is not I who mocks you, but Phaedo, when he says that you are more excellent and wiser than Prodicus of Ceos. And he [Phaedo] said you refuted him [Prodicus] about the Encomium, the one he has for Heracles.

In Letter 9, Aristippus writes to Antisthenes to chide him about their relative comforts in life: πέμψω δέ σοι τῶν θέρμων τὼς μεγάλως τε καὶ λευκώς, ἵν’ ἔχῃς μετὰ τὸ ἐπιδείξασθαι τὸν Ἡρακλέα τοῖς νέοις ὑποτρώγειν. And I will send you some large white beans, so that you can have them to eat after you perform your Heracles for the youth.

In the second passage, Aristippus teases Antisthenes for his failure to court clients who could finance a decent lifestyle for him. Both passages are from larger contexts, but the relevance here is their suggestions that the Heracles pieces of Prodicus and Antisthenes stood in rivalry as advertisements for a curriculum to audiences of Athenians, either wealthy or poor.49 It is unlikely that such details were invented for the occasion of these fictional epistles, since they come up by the way and are not the main focus in either case. The long road is indeed the road most commonly promoted by most élite Athenian teachers, and it is plausible that Antisthenes could have distinguished himself in this Athenian market by promoting the short route: he was probably the only one. Both Isocrates and Plato favour the long over the short in the way that matches the preference in Hesiod and 48 49

Texts are in Köhler 1928 and useful discussion in Sykutris 1933. See Döring 1997, who cites earlier studies.

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the later versions of Lucian, Galen and others. In his Letter to Demonicus 18-19, Isocrates exhorts his pupil to the long route: ‘Do not hesitate to go the long road (μακρὰν ὁδὸν πορεύεσθαι) towards those proclaiming to teach something useful.’ Plato in Phaedrus (274a) implicitly praises the long road in education for rhetoric, which involves first learning some philosophical technicalities such as the method of collection and division: ‘Do not be surprised if the road around is long (εἰ μακρὰ ἡ περίοδος).’ Let us consider finally, and briefly, the short cut involving modes of discourse, a topic on which Antisthenes wrote so much. Abbreviated or concise speech is apparently the oldest metaphorical use of the ‘short cut’ term, whose original application (for example, in Herodotus, Hist. 4.136) was geographical, especially for situations of military advance. All three tragedians used adverbial forms of ‘short cut’ in connection with discourse (for example, λέξομεν δὲ συντόμως, Aesch. Eu. 585). From this background in the tragedians, it is plausible that the term σύντομος as first used in intellectual circles referred to discourse and was from there extended to ethics. Some passages in the later rhetorical tradition suggest that the σύντομος λόγος also had a special Cynic flavour, which we might connect to Antisthenes because of his interest in the topic of educational curriculum, also consistently evoked in these passages. From Diogenes Laertius 6.31 we learn that the sons of Xeniades benefited from the short cut at the service of their teacher Diogenes: κατεῖχον δ’ οἱ παῖδες πολλὰ ποιητῶν καὶ συγγραγέων καὶ τῶν αὐτοῦ Διογένους πᾶσάν τε ἔφοδον σύντομον πρὸς τὸ εὐμνημόνευτον ἐπήσκει. The boys mastered many [sayings/thoughts] of the poets and prose writers, and works of Diogenes himself, and he exercised them in every short cut path toward what was readily remembered.

Here the application is to lessons in discourse, poetry rather than logic or any systematic or extended curriculum, but the term is a short cut route, ἔφοδος σύντομος. This would be a fitting succession to Antisthenes’ presumed preference for teaching from Homer over systematic teaching, for example, in the method of collection and division that Plato’s Socrates locates at the foundation of philosophical rhetoric.50 In a passage from 50

It remains controversial what kind of curriculum Antisthenes taught. Whereas Brancacci 1990 reconstructs a ‘study of names’ (Arr. Epict. Diss. 1.17.10-12 = SSR

93 Diodorus Siculus (33.7.7), attributed by scholars to Posidonius, the Iberian war king Virianthus is admired for his σύντομος λόγος, which he developed not from the ἐγκύκλειος παιδεία, but from training in virtue: this is aphoristic style. Like the lessons offered by Diogenes of Sinope, his virtue in speaking was related to what was memorable (τοῦ δὲ ἀκούσαντος ἀπομνημόνευμα). The connection with Galen’s comment on the Cynics, meanwhile, where assumption of the σύντομος ὁδός entails rejection of the ἐγκύκλειος παιδεία, and with Apollonius of Seleucia’s distinction between the Stoics and the Cynics, is clear. Although it is unlikely that Posidonius depends on Antisthenes for his figuring of Virianthus’ Cynic education, this shows a use of the ‘short cut’ motif in distinguishing Cynic intellectual style, beyond the short ethical route to virtue through simple living, so well explained by Goulet-Cazé. Finally, a set of definitions of technical rhetorical terms from Late Antiquity51 uses the phrase λόγος σύντομος to classify both aphorism and definition: although this usage could be merely a survival of the commonplace metaphor for abbreviated speech evident in the tragedians and used ever since, the connection to the ‘revelatory’ (δηλωτικός) function of the true λόγος σύντομος recalls Antisthenes’ famous definition of λόγος as ‘the formulation revealing what it was or is to be’.52 The passage occurs amid a set of definitions modelled on the opening of Aristotle’s Topics; Antisthenes’ account of λόγος is also discussed by Alexander of Aphrodisias in commentary on the definition of terms in the opening of Aristotle’s Topics.53 Combined with other coincidences between this passage and Antisthenes’ attested interests – definition of the human being and the narrative text of the Odyssey54 – and in consideration of the connections to the passages on Diogenes of VA 160) that is somewhat formal and logical, and based in definitions, I argue that Antisthenes denied the possibility of definition (Aristot. Met. 1043b23-28 = SSR VA 150) and studied names in a way related to natural language, etymology and poetic usage. Details of this reconstruction can be found in Prince 2015:46264, 475-81, 488-94, 597-622 (treating SSR VA 150, 151, 152, 187). 51 Troilus of Sidon, Preface to Hermogenes’ Art of Rhetoric 50 (c. 5th century CE). 52 DL 6.3 = SSR VA 151. 53 SSR VA 151. 54 Definition of the human being is the example behind SSR VA 150, 152, 153, as demonstrated by Aristotle’s context for VA 150 and the Late Antique commentators’ discussions under VA 150 and 152. See further, Prince 2015:47072, 507-08, 512-16. Antisthenes’ surviving passages on the Odyssey (SSR VA 187-90) are foremost about lexical matters, but issues of narrative strategy are implied in VA 189.

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Sinope’s curriculum – for the sons of Xeniades, via poetry, and Virianthus’ style of speech, via aphorism – this text could point to Antisthenes’ concept of a λόγος σύντομος in distinction from the λόγος μακρός that he or his characters complain of repeatedly in surviving evidence. Antisthenes accuses it against Plato in a traditional anecdote; the character Ajax accuses it against Odysseus in the fictional speeches of the Judgment of the Arms; and Aristotle distinguishes it from the Antistheneans’ conception of ideal λόγος in his report of their objections to Academic definition.55 To concude: it is difficult to prove rigorously anything about Antisthenes, but the evidence suggests that he advocated for the short route to happiness in three senses. Firstly and most importantly, Antisthenes’ route was short in the ethical sense requiring a decisive commitment to a life of leisure free of distractions and burdens, and free for the maximal engagement in some kind of activity at the high end of human nature or competence. Secondly, it probably concerned educational style, the frame for both an ethical and a language-based strategy that could be started and mastered quickly, perhaps even by the adult learner, by design without requiring the long road normally expected in the more traditionalist circles of fourth-century Athenian education. Thirdly, it probably concerned language and discourse not rooted in systematic logic or method, yet revealing nature, in pointed opposition to the philosophical method used by Plato and Aristotle. The short cut strategy was to find truth not by syllogism and logic, but by reading and criticising Homer or other great texts. The evidence for Antisthenes’ reading of Homer is fragmentary and complicated, but the remains do include clever leaps of reasoning. Possibly daring and executing such a short cut was the hard part.56 Bibliography Alpers, J. 1912. Hercules in Bivio. Dissertation, University of Göttingen. Bevilacqua, F. 2010. Memorabili di Senofonte. Torino.

55

Gnom. Vat. 13 = SSR VA 30; Ajax §8 = SSR VA 53; Aristot. Met. 1043b25-26 = SSR VA 150. 56 I would like to thank Philip Bosman for the opportunity to speak at the UNISA XIII colloquium in October 2012, and for the many helpful comments offered by the audience on that occasion. Thank you also to the anonymous referees for Acta Classica whose suggestions have helped me clarify my style and argument.

95 Bosman, P.R. 2006. ‘Selling Cynicism: The pragmatics of Diogenes’ comic performances.’ CQ 56:93-104. Brancacci, A. 1990. Oikeios logos: la filosofia del linguaggio di Antistene. Naples. Brancacci, A. 1992. ‘I κοινῇ ἀρέσκοντα dei Cinici e la κοινωνία tra cinismo e stoismo.’ ANRW 2.36.6:4049-75. Brancacci, A. 1993. ‘Érotique et théorie du plaisir chez Antisthene.’ In M.O. Goulet-Cazé and R. Goulet-Cazé (edd.), Le Cynisme Ancien et ses Prolongements. Actes du Colloque International du CNRS., 35-55. Paris. Capelle, W. 1896. De cynicorum epistulis. Dissertation, University of Göttingen. Cribiore, R. 2007. ‘Lucian, Libanius, and the short road to rhetoric.’ GRBS 47:71-86. De Boer, W. 1937. Galeni De propriorvm animi cvivslibet affectvvm dignotione et cvratione, De animi cvivslibet peccatorvm dignotione et cvratione, De atra bile. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. 5.4.1. Leipzig and Berlin. Dorion, L.-A. 2000-2011. Xenophon, Mémorables. 2 vols. in 3 parts. Paris. Döring, K. 1997. ‘Die Dialoge der Sokratesschüler Phaidon und Aischines.’ In Kessler, H. (ed.), Sokrates: Bruchstücke zu einem Porträt, 53-78. Kusterdingen. Emeljanow, V. 1965. ‘A note on the Cynic short cut to happiness.’ Mnemosyne 18:182-84. Emeljanow, V. 1967. ‘The Letters of Diogenes.’ Dissertation, Stanford University, Calif. Giannantoni, G. 1990. Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae. 4 vols. Bibliopolis: Centro di studio del pensiero antico. Naples. Gigon, O. 1956. Kommentar zum zweiten Buch von Xenophons Memorabilien. Basel. Gomperz, H. 1915. Die Lebensauffassung der griechischen Philosophen und das Ideal der inneren Freiheit. Jena. Goulet-Cazé, M.-O. 1986. L’Ascèse Cynique. Un commentaire de Diogène Laërce VI 70-71. Paris. Goulet-Cazé, M.-O. 2003. Les kunika du stöicism. Paris. Harmon, A.M. (tr.) 1913. Lucian. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass. Hercher, R. (ed.). 1873. Epistolographi Graeci. Paris. Höistad, R. 1948. Cynic Hero and Cynic King. Uppsala. Huß, B. 1999. Xenophons Symposion. Stuttgart and Leipzig. Joël, K. 1901. Der echte und der xenophontische Sokrates. Vol. 2.1. Berlin. Keil, B. (ed.) 1898. Aelii Aristidis Smyrnaei quae supersunt omnia. Vol. 2.

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Berlin. Köhler, L. 1928. Die Briefe des Sokrates und der Sokratiker. Philologus, Suppl. 20.2. Leipzig. Mach, R. (tr.) 1974. Themistii orationes. Vol. 3. Leipzig. Malherbe, A.L. 1977. The Cynic Epistles. A Study Edition. Missoula, Mont. Marchant, E.C. (tr.) 1921. Xenophontis Opera omnia. Vol. 2. Oxford. Moles, J. 1983. ‘“Honestius quam ambitiosus?” An exploration of the Cynic’s attitude to moral corruption in his fellow men.’ JHS 108:10323. Moles, J. 2000. ‘The Cynics and politics.’ In C. Rowe and M. Schofield (edd.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, 415-34. Cambridge. Montiglio, S. 2005. Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture. Chicago, Ill. Nihard, R. 1914. ‘Les lettres de Diogène à Monime.’ Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 38:259-71. Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2010. ‘Truly Beyond Wonders’: Aelius Aristides and the Cult of Asklepios. Oxford. Prince, S. 2015. Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations, and Commentary. Ann Arbor, Mich. Sansone, D. 2004. ‘Heracles at the Y.’ JHS 124:125-42. Sellars, J. 2003. ‘Simon the Shoemaker and the problem of Socrates.’ CPh 98: 207-16. Sykutris, J. 1933. Die Briefe des Sokrates und der Sokratiker. Paderborn. Tsouna, V. 1998. The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School. Cambridge. Von Fritz, K. 1926. Quellenuntersuchung zur Leben und Philosophie des Diogenes von Sinope. Philologus Suppl. 18.2. Leipzig. Zeller, E. [1888] 1922. Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer Geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Zweiter Teil, Erste Abteilung. Sokrates und die Sokratiker. Leipzig.

HORACE ON HAPPINESS Suzanne Sharland University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) Informally appointed the happiness guru of antiquity by popular sentiment, the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus devotes a substantial portion of his works to questions of personal fortune and individual contentment.1 Yet Horace is also a very sophisticated writer who constantly keeps his audiences on their toes and is often joking when he seems to be serious, and earnest when he appears light-hearted. As he suggests to his audience in his first satire, there is nothing to prevent one telling the truth while laughing: ridentem dicere verum, / quid vetat? (Sat. 1.1.24-25).2 A reader may be forgiven, however, for thinking that one of Horace’s aims in much of his poetry is to probe the extent of his audience’s gullibility.3 So what does Horace actually say about happiness, and can we trust him? It is the purpose of this paper to survey a few of Horace’s poetical treatments of and advice about human happiness. Given that so many Horatian aphorisms on happiness are regularly taken out of context, it will be necessary to consider the poem in which each statement occurs, the 1

Enter the words ‘happiness’ or ‘contentment’ on any Internet search engine, and you are bound, sooner, or later, to come upon a quote from Horace. However, most of the Horatian aphorisms listed among the quotable quotes are given in isolation and taken entirely out of context. 2 On the other hand, in that same poem (Sat. 1.1.69-70), Horace warns his addressees that we may just be able to recognise ourselves in his cautionary tales: mutato nomine, de te / fabula narrator (‘Change the name and the story is told about you!’). 3 This is particularly true of Horace’s hexametric poetry. In Sat. 1.4, for example, Horace discusses the idea that the genre in which he is writing is not poetry, but something closer to conversational prose (sermoni propiora, Sat. 1.4.42), but all the while he is writing in flawless dactylic hexameters. Eventually, he promises to return to the discussion of whether or not satire is poetry ‘another time’ (alias, Sat. 1.4.63), an event for which we are still waiting. At the start of his first book of Epistles, he announces that he is putting aside his poetry ‘and other such nonsense’ for the pursuit of philosophy: nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono; / quid verum atque decens, curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum; Epist. 1.1.10-11). That a collection of new poems in hexameter verse follows should not surprise us – that is, if we think that this kind of writing is poetry.

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genre in which Horace is writing, and the persona of the speaker. As important as what Horace says is the person to whom he says it: the addressee is a significant part of the context of his statements on happiness and the virtue that is its ancient prerequisite.4 To simplify things, I have subdivided the contexts in which Horace treats issues of human happiness into the utopian, the moralising, the sympotic, the political, and so on, although in practice many of these categories overlap. The utopian context In his first epode, Horace promises to accompany Maecenas to war, to travel to far locations with him, and, although he doubts that he will be able to help him much, he maintains that he will worry less if he is with his patron. The final few lines discuss the needs of the farm given to Horace by Maecenas, by way of gratitude perhaps, or to suggest that Horace (who does not really wish to go to war) is needed elsewhere. Since rural scenes are evoked in these last few lines of Epode 1, the audience does not find it strange when at the start of Epode 2, a voice continues to praise the countryside and discuss the livelihood of the farm. But we are in for a surprise5 when, in the final four lines of Epode 2, we discover that this speaker is not Horace, but the quoted words of the money-lender or ‘loan-shark’ Alfius (Mr ‘A’), day-dreaming about life in the country. The usurer Alfius, however, finds it impossible to make his fantasies a reality, but returns almost at once to his habit of raking in loans and lending them out again at interest: haec ubi locutus faenerator Alfius, iam iam futurus rusticus, omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam, 4

Although the ancient Greek word eudaimonia is usually translated as ‘happiness’, ‘human well-being’ is perhaps a more accurate translation. Horace’s approach owes a great deal to ancient philosophers’ conceptions of happiness, such as Aristotle’s eudaimonia and Epicurus’ ataraxia (calm in the face of external troubles), but he tailors his advice to the philosophical preferences of his addressees. 5 An ancient audience may not have been as surprised at the ending of Epode 2 as a modern one: to Mankin 1995:63, Alfius’ speech is ‘riddled throughout with distortions and downright errors’ which are absent when Horace is praising the country elsewhere; Watson 2003:80 more cautiously claims that Alfius’ lopsided view of the country reveals him as an ‘armchair rustic’.

99 quaerit Kalendis ponere. When Mr ‘A’ the loan-shark said all this, just now on the point of becoming a rustic, he called all his money in at midmonth, seeking to place it out again at month-end. (Epod. 2.67-70)

Alfius calls blessed or fortunate (beatus ille) the old-time farmer who works his father’s fields with his own oxen (paterna rura bubus exercet suis, Epod. 2.3). There are intimations of a Golden Age in Alfius’ account,6 since the loan-shark attributes this happy position to ‘the people of old’ or ‘the early race of mortals’ (ut prisca gens mortalium, Epod. 2.2), striking a distinctly antediluvian note. Given the historical realities of the period of the civil wars, however, when many had lost their family estates, livestock and possessions, such a situation had begun to look more and more like a utopian ideal.7 Alfius also imagines, appropriately, that the fantasy farmer will have no debt (solutus omni faenore, Epod. 2.4), with faenore in the fourth line picked up by faenerator in the fourth last line of the poem: as a loan-shark, Alfius would be all too familiar with the effects of too much debt and crippling interest on his customers. Perhaps, in retrospect, solutus omni faenore could also literally apply to Alfius who imagines himself living the simple, honest country life, freed from his constant calculations involving monetary interest (faenus). But, ultimately, a contemporary farmer without any problems and for whom everything goes perfectly is a practical impossibility, the product of Alfius’ lively imagination. Alfius may be aware of this anomaly, either consciously or subconsciously, because in the end he chooses to remain in the world of urban moneymaking. The moralising context Alfius of the second epode, in fact, has much in common with the group of targets introduced at the start of Horace’s first satire. Horace initially 6

The utopian aspects of Alfius’ speech have much in common with Epode 16, where the impractical suggestion is made that, in order to escape the civil wars, the Romans should go off to the Isles of the Blessed: arva, beata / petamus arva, divites et insulas (Epod. 16.41-42); see discussion in Thom 2000:41 nn. 14 and 15. 7 See Lindo 1968:207; Watson 2003:81. Mankin 1995:63 observes that, as a financier, Alfius may even have been one who stood to benefit from the land confiscations.

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poses the question to Maecenas as to why no one lives content with the lot that either rational choice (the Stoic option) has given him, or chance (the Epicurean side of the equation)8 has thrown in his path, but instead praises those who follow different modes of life (Sat. 1.1.1-3). Four exempla of professionals suffering from the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome are then advanced according to what seems to have been the standard practice of Hellenistic moralising on mempsimoiria (dissatisfaction with one’s lot): a soldier, with his limbs worn out by lengthy military service, praises the life of a merchant, while the merchant who is being tossed about in a gale at sea, idealises what he imagines is the decisive life of battle that the soldier enjoys. Woken up by a client first thing in the morning, the city lawyer praises the life of a farmer, while the country-dweller who has stood bail for someone and consequently is being dragged into the city to appear in court, shouts out that city folks alone are happy (solos felices viventis clamat in urbe, Sat. 1.1.12).9 Kirk Freudenburg has suggested that Horace’s speaker bungles the usually straightforward exempla of Hellenistic moralising, and argues that this was part of Horace’s elaborate characterisation of his persona as a buffoon or doctor ineptus who cannot get anything right.10 However, if one compares Horace’s dissatisfied professionals to the surviving exempla in the later Greek texts of pseudo-Hippocrates11 and Maximus of Tyre,12 it is 8

Freudenburg 1993:11. Like Alfius’ beatitude at Epode 2.1 (Beatus ille, ‘Happy the man’), the first lines of Satires 1.1 abound in synonyms for the Greek makarizei (‘He calls blessed’): contentus (Sat. 1.1.3), laudet (1.1.3), fortunati (1.1.4), laeta (1.1.8), laudat (1.1.9), felices (1.1.12) and beatis (1.1.19) many of which, particularly beatus and fortunatus, could encompass financial and circumstantial as well as emotional wellbeing. 10 Freudenburg 1993:23-24. 11 Ps.-Hp. Epist. 17 treats mempsimoiria at length. After considering a number of examples of ironic inconsistency resulting from restless dissatisfaction, the author tackles dissatisfaction as a result of one’s profession or position in life: leaders and kings call the life of the common man blessed, while the common man aspires to kingship. In a second set of examples, the politician calls the lot of the craftsman blessed, specifically because it is ‘without danger’, whereas the craftsman praises the politician for his capability and freedom. 12 Horace’s pairs of exempla are paralleled at Max. Tyr. Diss. 21.1, both probably inspired by earlier Hellenistic moralising; see Fiske 1920:220 who argues for a common source rather than Maximus’ dependency on Horace; Lejay 1911:8 claims the similarities bear witness to ‘la profonde influence d’Horace sur les 9

101 clear that Horace’s examples are much more detailed and animated, and that he has added a contemporary Roman flavour, particularly obvious in the second pair of mutually envying types of people. It is transparent, right from the start, that the pairs are deluded, and the recipe for their failure to actually change their modes of existence, if given the chance, is built into the exempla: the merchant is heard praising the quick outcome of the soldier’s battles, when we have just met a soldier whose extensive career has resulted in painful long-term physical suffering; the soldier calls the merchant fortunate, but two lines below this we witness just what peril his pursuit of financial fortune entails; the city lawyer who is woken up early to practice law, and the country bumpkin who falls foul of the law, both envy each other for what they, patently deluded, imagine is a charmed life. Naturally, their complaints are made just at that moment, moreover, when each person’s way of life is at its most exacting, when they are in physical pain, mortal danger, grossly inconvenienced or in trouble with the law. However, should these people be given the opportunity to swap positions with their counterparts, they, like Alfius the loan-shark, would refuse. In the course of his first satire, Horace eventually links dissatisfaction to greed: people, he explains, are stuck in the rat race because they are trying to build up a nest egg for their old age (Sat. 1.1.29-32). This is why they will not give up their chosen professions. They will tell you this if you ask them. Of course, this could be the bottom line for Alfius too: he keeps on acting as a loan-shark because of greed. This issue is taken up again in Horace’s first ode, also addressed to Maecenas, where the poet reviews many of the themes and preoccupations of his previous poetry. As part of a priamel construction leading up to Horace’s confession that what makes him happy is writing lyric poetry, he mentions inter alios those who rejoice in competitive chariot racing (Carm. 1.1.3-6), those who entertain political ambition (1.1.7-8), and those who love sweeping up and storing in private barns all the grain from Libya’s threshing floors (1.1.9-10). Most of the pursuits which Horace rejects here are those which attracted moralistes qui l’ont suivi’. After some general statements on human dissatisfaction (paralleling the generalising question at the start of Sat. 1.1), Maximus demonstrates with two sets of exempla: farmers and city-dwellers, and soldiers and civilians. While Maximus’ variation of the verbs is closer to Horace than Ps.Hippocrates, and his exempla are not merely reproduced, like the Greek passage they remain nothing more than neat opposites, in contrast to Horace who has to great effect gone beyond a mere reproduction of the tradition.

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censure in the Satires. He also talks about a peasant farmer who, like Alfius’ fantasy, delights in cleaving his father’s fields (patrios … agros, 1.1.11-12) with a mattock, and will never, not for any amount of money, be persuaded to become a sailor (1.1.11-14). By contrast, the fearful merchant who is caught in a gale at sea, suddenly develops enthusiasm for the quiet countryside around his hometown (luctantem Icariis fluctibus Africum / mercator metuens otium et oppidi / laudat rura sui, 1.1.15-17a); however, we hear that he is soon rebuilding his shattered boat, since he is not, as Horace explains, used to putting up with poverty (mox reficit rates / quassas, indocilis pauperiem pati, 1.1.17b-18). Once again, as in Satires 1.1, greed – the endless pursuit of wealth over every sea – prevents the merchant from changing his lifestyle. The Satires and Epodes merely show us, by drawing on negative examples of individuals in the manner of Horace’s father’s instructions to his son (see Sat. 1.4.105-126a), how not to pursue happiness. It is up to the greater subtlety and sophistication of the odes to point the way to human well-being (eudaimonia), although, as always with Horace, we should pay close attention to the contexts in which his apparent statements on happiness occur. A moralising or philosophising tendency, which is part of the sympotic context, characterises many of Horace’s odes. There is a distinctly Epicurean slant to many of Horace’s musings (although not all aspects are purely Epicurean). There is the inevitable warning to the addressee that life is short, that fortune is cruel, and that there is no way for anyone to escape his or her fate, or add any years onto their allotted lifespan, no matter how rich or powerful they may be: the corollary is that one must enjoy life while one can and not worry about the future. Enjoying one’s life involves having a symposium, drinking, perhaps even neat wine in the tradition of Alcaeus when particularly desperate, decorating oneself or others with flowers in a beautiful location (the locus amoenus), and of course, engaging in erotic pursuits. The sympotic context Two well-known examples of this approach to human happiness or wellbeing occur in Horace’s first book of odes, quite close to one another. In the famous Soracte Ode (1.9),13 the poet paints a gorgeous picture of Mount Soracte, north of Rome, covered in deep snow: 13

Concern about the rapid changes in the weather and the scenery of Carm. 1.9 has made it one of the most written about of Horatian poems. Scholars seem

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Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus silvae laborantes, geluque flumina constiterint acuto: You see how Soracte stands glistening white with deep snow, and the struggling trees can barely support their burden, and the rivers are stopped by sharp ice: (Carm. 1.9.1-4).

By contrast, Horace then shifts the focus inside and instructs someone – in the eighth line we discover it is Thaliarchus – to pile wood on the fire, and pour some four-year-old neat wine from a Sabine two-eared jar (5-8). Some attention has been given to the identity of Thaliarchus, whose Greek name means ‘ruler of the festivities’, and who is possibly a pais kalos or puer delicatus, given that Greek names are most unusual for male addressees, but standard for all the women in Horace’s lyric poetry. Horace’s ordering of Thaliarchus to do things may suggest that he is a slave or servant.14 The scene is expressly not the usual venue for a symposium, the summery locus amoenus; yet the contrast of the bitter cold outside and the inside of the house warmed by the fire is one of the cosiest images in Latin poetry, and encourages a delicious sense of well-being and snugness. Thaliarchus is instructed, as we enter the two middle stanzas of the poem and the speaker waxes philosophical, to leave all else to the gods (permitte divis cetera, 9), being assured that they alone can calm winter storms.15 Horace then advises his addressee not to try to find out about the future, but to chalk up to profit from whatever day Fate gives him (quid

divided as to how literally or figuratively to take the poem, and there seems also to be a pressing need to identify the season of the year during which the ode is supposed to take place. It is beyond the scope or intentions of this paper to address all these concerns. 14 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970:117, 121. Davis 2007:210-11, on the other hand, sees ‘Thaliarchus’ simply as the title given to the friend of high social status who has been appointed magister bibendi at their drinking-party. 15 Consternation has arisen among scholars because the cold but calm image of Soracte in the first stanza is followed in the third by images of vicious storms shaking the trees (10-12). Yet the cold weather, the fire and the wine are all present in what remains of Horace’s Greek source, Alc. 338: cf. Nisbet and Hubbard 1970:116.

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sit futurum cras fuge quaerere et / quem Fors dierum cumque dabit lucro / appone, 13-15a). In almost the same breath (and certainly the same stanza), Thaliarchus is then advised not to reject love and dancing while he is still a boy (15b-16), with a warning going into the next stanza that someday he will be grey, and by implication, old (17-18a).16 The flow from thoughts of fate, mortality and age to those of love is entirely natural. The rest of the poem is devoted to the erotic, with the description of wonderfully furtive love assignations (18b-20), and a sketch of a charming and rather coquettish girl who hides, laughs and only pretends resistance (21-24). Whether she is a love object for Horace or Thaliarchus or both, or whether both Thaliarchus (who is still a puer, 16) and the girl are love objects for Horace, is perhaps solely up to our imagination. An attractive suggestion is that this girl is someone from Horace’s past and that it is the memory of her that occupies his mind.17 In spite of his warning to Thaliarchus not to concern himself with the future, the aging Horace ends up dwelling on his own past.18 For the young, happiness entails contemplating the present, Horace seems to be saying, but for the old it comprises reliving the past. Another warning not to worry about the future features two poems later, in Carm. 1.11, where one of Horace’s most famous phrases carpe diem (‘seize the day’ or, more literally, ‘pluck the day’) occurs. Here Horace addresses a girl called Leuconoe,19 who is anxious or curious about 16

In ancient Greek poetry, old age is conventionally inappropriate for love affairs; cf. Mimn. fr. 1; Hor. Ep. 1.6.65-66. Likewise dancing, as a demanding physical activity, is only seemly with the young, usually of lower social status. 17 See Catlow 1976:79; Fitzwilliam 2000:4. If the scene is a recollection, it explains why Horace is vague about whether he snatched the love-token from the girl’s arm or finger, and also why the weather, so cold in the first stanza, seems to have warmed up in the memory of his own past summers. 18 But see Moritz 1976:174-75, who counters Catlow’s image of the aging Horace with a depiction of a younger man still intent on the erotic. 19 ‘Leuconoe’ literally means ‘white mind’ in Greek, or less literally ‘clear mind’, ‘pure mind’, even ‘blank mind’ – a ‘dumb blonde’? Many mythological heroines have names beginning with ‘Leuc-‘ (‘white’) and thus the term must originally stress the attractiveness of this colouring (Nisbet and Hubbard 1970:73; Marsilio 2010:119). However, the colour white may also associate Leuconoe with death, which is appropriate given her pressing need to know her fate (Lee 1964:120; Marsilio 2010:117). Smith 1919 associates Leuconoe, given her interest in horoscopes, with the Athenian astronomer Meton who came from the deme Leuconoe and is thus sometimes called ‘Leuconoeus’. Carrubba and Fratantuono

105 the future and is gullibly (or desperately?) dabbling in astrology to try to find out how long her allotted lifespan is (or perhaps, how long a relationship will last):20 Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios temptare numeros. You should not ask – for to know is impious – what end the gods have given me and you, Leuconoe, nor should you meddle with Babylonian horoscopes. (Carm. 1.11.1-3).21

Horace advises Leuconoe to accept whatever the future holds, whether Jupiter has assigned them more winters or whether this will be their last 2003:134 suggest a link to the island of Leucas (which has tall limestone cliffs) where Octavian built a temple to Apollo to commemorate Actium: Leuconoe thus means ‘she who has the mind of Apollo’ or ‘she who thinks like Apollo’. However, it is hard to see how the new regime could possibly benefit (which would presumably be the intention of this reference) by being associated with this woman who, Horace implies, is essentially misguided in her attempts to foresee the future. Leuconoe is also using foreign aids (Babylonios … /… numeros, 1-2) to divine the future, and not Apollo. More recently, Maria Marsilio has seen the enigmatically named Leuconoe as the focal point in Carm. 1.11, noting that ‘Horace has cleverly embedded several of the major themes … in the very name Leuconoe’ (2010:120). Marsilio observes not only issues of death, the erotic, and prophecy all coinciding in this poem, but also references to Horace’s literary ideals and poetic aesthetics. 20 Santirocco 1986:44 suggests that Leuconoe’s dabbling in astrology reveals that she is in love with Horace. Anderson 1993:118 n. 6, on the other hand, claims that Leuconoe’s recourse to divination indicates that she is prudently cautious about getting involved with Horace. 21 In response to Fernandez Corte 2000, who highlights Carm. 1.10 as the conclusion to a distinct group of ten poems in which Horace played around innovatively with many poetic metres, Konstan 2001:17-18 suggests a metaliterary reading for the start of Carm. 1.11: the ‘end’ (finem, 2) Leuconoe is told not to seek may be interpreted as Horace telling the reader not to expect an end to his odes after ten poems, as in many other Augustan collections, including his own first book of satires. Carm. 1.10 is thus not an ending, but a pivot or turning point. In response to Konstan, Fernandez Corte apparently further suggested that when Leuconoe is told not to play with ‘numbers’, this may be a joke about not fooling around with poetic metres, as the virtuoso Horace himself had done in his first ten odes (Konstan 2001:18).

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(3-6). Instead, Horace instructs her to be wise, strain the wine, and reduce her hope for something lengthy to a brief extent of time: sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi / spem longam reseces (6-7). The final lines 7-8 pick up a sense of urgency: dum loquimur, fugerit invida / aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (‘While we are speaking, envious time will have flown past: pluck the day, trusting as little as possible to the future’). Not only is Leuconoe’s name associated with the colour white, and thus possibly with death, but images and associations of snow and winter seem to have drifted onto her from Mount Soracte in Carm. 1.9, just two poems away: although it is a common trope to use seasons or months to stand for whole years in a person’s life,22 Leuconoe’s lifespan (or relationship span, perhaps?) is counted, rather chillingly, not in years but in winters.23 As with Thaliarchus in 1.9, Leuconoe’s Greek name strongly suggests her as a love object for Horace, perhaps even a slave or servant. She may, alternatively, be a freedwoman or even, if her name is a pseudonym, someone of high social status indulging, like many, in weird astrological obsessions.24 The advice Horace gives Leuconoe likewise echoes the precepts the poet gave Thaliarchus in Carm. 1.9, where he advised him not to worry about the future, but to concentrate on the pleasures of love and dancing while he was still young. Yet Horace’s message to Leuconoe is all the more urgent and desperate, an impression that is encouraged by the far shorter length of 1.11, which is eight lines in contrast to 1.9’s more leisurely twenty-four. The urgency of Horace’s

22

Cf. Ep.1.20.27, where Horace says he has completed forty-four Decembers. Lee 1964:122. 24 The island of Leucas, with which Leuconoe may be connected (Carrubba and Fratantuono 2003), was also, according to one tradition, where the poetess Sappho was alleged to have committed suicide, jumping from the cliff-face due to unrequited love, a connection perhaps invented to link her with Apollo, god of poetry (Strabo, Geogr. 10.2.9 quotes a fragment of Menander’s Leukadia to this effect; see discussion by Marsilio 2010:120). Kutzko (2006:406) observes that Varro of Atax called his mistress Leucadia and later elegiac mistresses (e.g. Lycoris, Delia, Cynthia) often have names associated with Apollo’s cult. Leuconoe’s name thus places her squarely in this tradition, with the emphasis on ‘white’ stressing the fairness usually admired in these love objects. Could Horace’s image of the waves battering the shore (Carm. 1.11.5-6a) – while primarily suggesting the unrelenting passage of time – also hint that Leuconoe, like Sappho, suffers from unrequited love and thus may be equally self-destructive, likewise casting herself off the cliffs and onto the shore? 23

107 Epicurean carpe diem seems designed to get Leuconoe into bed.25 Nevertheless, the exhortation, advising Leuconoe (and us) to live in the moment and to pluck the day or the opportunity as one would a flower,26 is universally understood as a memorable and persuasive prescription for happiness irrespective of its original context. The political context Some of Horace’s odes which contain iconic statements or advice about happiness are addressed to those who are politically controversial, if the identifications of the addressees are correct. In such cases, Horace’s precepts on happiness would seem to be specifically tailored to his named addressees rather than designed as ‘one-size-fits-all’ sayings for general human edification. For example, Dellius, addressed in Carm. 2.3, is possibly the Quintus Dellius who indulged in sensual delights at Cleopatra’s court.27 Dellius, who was later pardoned for his Antonian allegiances by Octavian/Augustus and included in Maecenas’ circle, is warned in Carm. 2.3 to keep a steady mind or attitude in difficult circumstances and likewise to keep it tempered and away from excessive joy (Aequam memento rebus in arduis / servare mentem, 1-2). Before Dellius supported Antony, he had been a supporter of Cassius, and prior to that, of Dolabella. In all, he changed political allegiances four times, with the result that, as Seneca the Elder records, Valerius Messalla Corvinus dubbed Dellius the ‘circus-rider’ or ‘horse-changer’ of the civil wars (desultor bellorum civilium, Suas. 1.7).28 Since both Seneca the Elder and Valerius Messalla Corvinus (the addressee of Carm. 3.21) were contemporaries of Horace, I would suggest that Horace’s reference ‘to keeping a balanced perspective’ may in fact be a pun. Aequus meant ‘flat’, 25

See Anderson 1996:4, who comments that ‘the speaker of this carpe diem routine is arguing for his own amatory advantage: he wants her to forget about the future and prudence and instead let him make love to her.’ 26 The verb carpere (‘to pluck’) may recall the innocent Persephone/Proserpina plucking flowers just before she is seized and abducted by Hades; cf. Ov. Met. 5.392-93: quo dum Proserpina luco / ludit et aut violas aut candida lilia carpit. Persephone and Leuconoe are both innocent and mentally distracted, not noticing the potential erotic interest and evil intent they are arousing in the onlookers Hades/Horace. I thank Elizabeth Irwin for alerting me to this potential parallel. 27 Plut. Ant. 59.4, where Dellius even criticises the queen’s wine choice and instead recommends to her Falernian wine, mentioned here in Carm. 2.3.8. 28 See discussion in Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:51-52.

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‘level’ or ‘even’ before it acquired the derived associations of ‘fair’, ‘equitable’ or ‘contented’. After all, one needs a steady balance when changing horses.29 Although Nisbet and Hubbard comment that in Carm. 2.3 it looks as though Horace is ‘recommending hedonism to a hedonist’,30 the poet’s precepts in the first four lines would be entirely acceptable to most philosophical schools. Dellius is warned not to overindulge his emotions, or at least, to keep them on an even keel. Even though he indulges in pleasures, it will make no difference in the end. Addressed as moriture Delli (‘Dellius, you who are going to die’) at line 4, he is told that like all humans, whether rich or poor, he will sooner or later end up among the dead. There is an ominous sadness and desperation in the fourth stanza, where, having located a shady locus amoenus with a running stream, Dellius is told: huc vina et unguenta et nimium brevis flores amoenae ferre iube rosae, dum res et aetas et sororum fila trium patiuntur atra. Tell them to bring the wine, the fragrant oils, and the all-too-short-lived flowers of the lovely rose, while your age and means and the black threads of the three sisters [that is, the Fates] permit. (Carm. 2.3.13-16)

Horace is not encouraging hedonism so much as demonstrating how pointless it all is and, ultimately, how useless are Dellius’ large estate and his heaped-up wealth, which will go to his heir. Death is the great leveller, all our names are in the urn, and in the end, we all go into an everlasting exile (in aeternum / exsilium, 27-28) – even Dellius, the ultimate escapeartiste and circus-trickster who used all his cunning to ‘back the right horse’ and thus survive the civil wars. Even more politically controversial is Licinius of Carm. 2.10 (Rectius vives), who may or may not be the Licinius Murena, brother-in-law of Maecenas, who was accused of plotting, in association with Fannius

29

Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:52 likewise comment that ‘in his political circus-act Dellius must have prided himself on his inner balance and resilience.’ 30 Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:52.

109 Caepio, against Augustus in 23 or 22 BCE,31 and executed after attempting to escape.32 Horace uses the Aristotelian idea of the mean,33 which he terms the ‘Golden Mean’ (aurea mediocritas) here for the first time: auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit, tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula. Whoever loves the Golden Mean, safely escapes the squalor of a shabby hovel, soberly escapes the enviable mansion. (Carm. 2.10.5-8)

If this is indeed Maecenas’ brother-in-law and not some other Licinius, it may be noteworthy that Licinius Murena or Terentius Varro Murena, as he is variously called, being in origin a Licinius Murena who was adopted by the family of the Terentii Varrones,34 was patron to a leading contemporary Peripatetic philosopher, Athenaeus of Seleucia,35 which could explain Horace’s use of Aristotle. Athenaeus apparently fled with Licinius Murena when the latter was tipped off by his adopted sister Terentia, wife of the well-placed and for once not-so-taciturn Maecenas,36 about the accusations of conspiracy against him. Athenaeus was apprehended together with his patron, but was later pardoned by Augustus as having had no part in the plot.37

31

On the controversy over the dates and related issues, see Atkinson 1960; Stockton 1965; Bauman 1966; Swan 1967; Jameson 1969; Levick 1975; Watkins 1985. 32 D.C. 54.3.5. 33 The idea of the ‘mean’ had previously appeared in Horace’s Satires, where he had often admonished his audiences that there were certain means or limits to virtue; see e.g. 1.1.106-07, est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines, / quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum (‘Things have a proper measure, there are in other words definite limits, beyond or short of which the right course can’t lie’); 1.2.24, dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt (‘In avoiding one fault, fools rush to the opposite extreme’); and 1.2.28a, nil medium est (‘There’s no happy medium’). 34 See Treggiari 1973:254-57. 35 Str. 14.5.4; Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:152-53. 36 Suet. Aug. 66.3. 37 Str. 14.5.4.

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It is generally assumed that Books 1-3 of the Odes were published prior to Licinius’ disgrace.38 This factor is used to date the publication of the poems, since it is thought that the ever-editing Callimachean Horace would have been unlikely to leave a poem sympathetic towards one of the regime’s enemies in his poetry collection.39 But it does sound like there is a bit of a warning in this poem, a premonition that here was one person who had a tendency to go just a little too far, who one day could go to extremes. This may explain why ultimately Horace allowed this cautionary poem to remain in his earlier collection of odes. The ship-ofstate metaphor in the first and last stanzas is both poignant and ironic, given that, prior to his downfall, Licinius was set to be consul. The images in the third stanza of this poem are commonplaces – the tall pine is more often tossed by the winds, the highest towers fall more heavily, and lighting strikes the mountain summit (2.10.9-12) – yet their focus on what stands out above the rest suggests that Horace’s addressee is someone of high social position and even greater ambition, a ‘tall poppy’,40 as it were. The slight Muse and modest lifestyle Echoes of many of Horace’s previous thoughts on happiness recur in Carm. 2.16 (Otium divos), the ‘tranquillity ode’, which opens with the image of a man caught in a sudden storm on the open Aegean asking the gods for otium, translatable here as ‘peace’, ‘peace of mind’, ‘rest’, ‘respite’, ‘tranquillity’ or more accurately, ataraxia, the Epicurean ideal of calm in the face of external troubles. Warring tribes are also heard praying for otium, and then we discover that the poem is addressed to Grosphus (line 7), identified as Pompeius Grosphus, a wealthy Sicilian landowner,41 who is told that peace cannot be bought with jewels or purple or gold (non gemmis neque purpura ve- / nale neque auro, 7-8). Nor can political ambition assure us of peace of mind, says Horace, painting a picture of worries fluttering around pannelled ceilings (curas laqueata circum / tecta

38

Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:157 suggest that Hor. Carm. 2.10 be dated to an ‘intermediate stage’ in Licinius Murena’s downfall, after he had fallen foul of Octavian/Augustus, but before he was convicted of conspiracy and condemned to death. 39 See Nisbet 2007:14. 40 See Liv. 1.54. 41 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1978:252-53.

111 volantis, 11-12).42 Sounding a little like Alfius the loan-shark, who envisages the happy farmer ploughing his ancestral fields, Horace asserts that the man lives well on little, whose father’s salt-cellar shines on his modest table, and fear and loathsome greed do not deprive him of his easy sleep (vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum / splendet in mensa tenui salinum / nec levis somnos timor aut cupido / sordidus aufert, 13-16). The poet voices a strongly Epicurean rejection of political ambition and the wealth associated with it as being too stressful and taxing to assure us of a peaceful (and thus happy) existence. In the last stanza, Horace contrasts his fortunes with those of the wealthy Grosphus: mihi parva rura et spiritum Graiae tenuem Camenae Parca non mendax dedit et malignum spernere vulgus. To me honest Fate has given a small farm and the slight breath of a Greek Camena and has allowed me to despise the envious mob. (Carm. 2.16.37-40)

Adjectives meaning ‘small’, ‘light’ and ‘slight’ recur here: the tenuis spiritus (‘slight breath’) of the Greek muse, echoing the tenuis mensa earlier in the poem (14), suggests that the Callimachean virtue of the light, small text is reflected in the slight, modest lifestyle Horace upholds.43 The recipe for happiness is clear: both the poet’s modest lifestyle and his ‘modest’ variety of poetry make him happy.44 Similar contrasts between wealth and jaded luxurious living, on the one hand, and the simple, honest and happy lifestyle, on the other, which Horace identifies as his own, occur in a number of other odes, notably 2.18 (Non ebur neque aureum), 3.1 (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo), and 3.24 (Intactis opulentior). The ivory and gold which decorate the ceilings of the rich man’s house do not appear in Horace’s simple abode, we hear at the start of Carm. 2.18; instead Horace describes himself as being sufficiently happy or blessed with his singular Sabine farm – ‘singular’ both 42

Harrison 2010:57 notes that, although the Sapphic metre of this poem and the repetition of the word otium recall Cat. 51.13-16, the theme of the vanity of human riches is reminiscent rather of Lucr. 2.20-39, where we also find a reference to panelled and gilded rafters: laqueata aurataque templa, DRN 2.28. 43 See Call. Aet. fr. 1.21-24 Pfeiffer. 44 See Mette 2009:54-55.

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in number and in its unsurpassed uniqueness: satis beatus unicis Sabinis (14). Similar ideas had occurred in another poem about the gift of the Sabine farm, Sat. 2.6, where we find out that among the topics discussed by Horace and his friends and guests late at night when they are being entertained in Sabinis, is the philosophical question of whether it is through wealth or through virtue that people are blessed or happy (utrumne / divitiis homines an sint virtute beati, 73b-74). This is followed by the tale of the town mouse and the country mouse which Horace terms an anilis fabella, (an ‘old wives’ tale’, 77-78) and which he places in the mouth of his rustic Sabine neighbour Cervius. Cervius uses this tale to illustrate a point (ex re, 78) and to correct the impression that wealth is the ideal state for humans to live in. If someone praises Arellius’ wealth, being ignorant of its accompanying worries, Cervius begins to tell this story. Unimpressed by his rustic host’s impoverished lifestyle on the edge of a precipitous cliff and by his meagre diet,45 the Epicurean-inspired (and apparently rhetorically trained) town mouse cautions the rusticus mus that life is short and must be enjoyed while it lasts. ‘Trust me, take to the road (carpe viam, 93), with me as your comrade,’ counsels the urbanus mus (echoed later, of course, by the carpe diem of Carm. 1.11),46 ‘since all earthly creatures have mortal lives as their lot, there is no escape from death for large or small; therefore, my good fellow, while you still can, live happily in pleasant circumstances (in rebus iucundis vive beatus, 96); live mindful of how short your life really is (vive memor, quam sis aevi brevis, 97).’47 Convinced by this speech, the country mouse bounds off happily to the city with the town mouse, and the two sneak through the walls of the city at night. They set foot in a rich man’s house where crimson coverings shine on ivory couches (super lectos … eburnos, 103) and where leftovers from the previous night’s feast are stacked up in baskets. The town mouse plays host like a house-born slave (verniliter, 108) and the country mouse acts the part of the happy guest (laetum convivam, 111), until suddenly the loud rattling of doors shakes them from their couches in fright, and they 45

This is similar to the tenuis victus so celebrated by that other ‘country cousin’ Ofellus, whom Horace recalls from his boyhood in Sat. 2.2. 46 Harrison 2007:237 notes that, since Horace was already composing some of the odes in the 30s, this may be a deliberate mockery of the carpe diem idea of many of the sympotic poems. 47 West 1974:74 terms the town mouse ‘a fashionable Pseudo-Epicurean’.

113 scamper, petrified, across the whole length of the room, as the house begins to ring with the barking of huge Molossian hounds (111b-15a). The chastened (and rather fickle) country mouse then promptly bids farewell to his urban acquaintance, assuring him that his woodland and his cave, safe from such attacks, will be a comfort to him with his meagre diet of vetch (tenui … ervo, 117). How not to be happy Finally, let us take what we have seen so far of Horace’s ideas on happiness and general human well-being and apply them to a most unusual poem. Overall, if we can take him at all seriously, it seems that Horace is essentially an eclectic philosopher with strong Epicurean leanings,48 who tends to apply different varieties of philosophy to different addressees as he finds appropriate. On the whole, Horace seems to identify living modestly and contentedly as the key to happiness, while the pursuit of wealth, indulgence in excessive luxury, worry about the future, and political ambition are targeted as things that stand in the way of human happiness. In Ep. 1.6, Horace addresses someone called Numicius and advises him that in order to be happy and to stay happy, he should adopt the Pythagorean precept ‘marvel at nothing’ or ‘let nothing surprise you’, which the poet translates into Latin as nil admirari:49 Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum. The one and only thing that is able to make and maintain a happy man, Numicius, is: let nothing surprise you. (Ep. 1.6.1-2) 48

See Moles 2002:157. Plut. Mor. 44B gives Pythagoras’ precept as mēden thaumazein (‘Don’t be amazed at anything’). If a real person, Numicius’ identity is unknown, so we cannot establish the relevance of Pythagorean doctrine to him; cf. Mayer 1994:143. Musurillo 1974:194 suggests the relatively obscure quaestor and tribune of the plebs P. Numicius Pica Caesianus. De Pretis 2004:54 n. 25) suggests a pun on nummus (money). Ov. Met. 14.599 identifies Numicius as the name of the god associated with the river Numicus in Latium where Aeneas is supposed to have died; cf. Liv. 1.2. Ov. Met. 14.600-08 has Venus order this river god to wash all the mortal parts of Aeneas away and anoint him with nectar and ambrosia so that he can become the god Indiges. 49

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In Ep. 1.6 the speaker constantly encourages the addressee to do things which are the opposite of those that Horace normally prescribes for happiness. Numicius is exhorted to go and feast his eyes on silver and antique marble and bronze artworks, and to marvel at jewels and the colours of Tyrian dye (i nunc, argentum et marmor vetus aeraque et artis / suspice, cum gemmis Tyrios mirare colores, 17-18). That this is tongue-incheek on Horace’s part should be plain from the fact that he is telling his addressee to admire the Tyrian cloth and other precious things, whereas at the beginning of Epistle 1.6 he expressed the precept of admiring or being surprised at nothing. Furthermore, the speaker encourages his addressee to engage enthusiastically in competitive political manoeuvring, snobbery and vanity: ‘Revel in the fact that thousands of eyes are fixed on you when you speak. Be busy – off to the forum early, not back home until late, so that Mutus does not haul in a bigger harvest than you from his wife’s estates (shameful thing, for a man of lower birth than you) and thereby win the chance to be the one who’s marvelled at by you, when it’s you who should be marvelled at by him’ (19-23; tr. Bovie 1959:180). The addressee is also encouraged to be greedy, to be competitive in business, and to increase his pile of wealth constantly (32-35).50 ‘Queen Money’, the addressee is assured, will bring him a wife with a dowry, loyalty, friends, good birth and good looks, and the goddesses Persuasion and Venus will beautify the man who has lots of money: scilicet uxorem cum dote fidemque et amicos / et genus et formam regina Pecunia donat / ac bene nummatum decorat Suadela Venusque (36-38). If money alone makes him happy and keeps him that way, the addressee is told, he should seek it first and omit it last (46b-48). He is also urged to flatter and suck up to those in power (49-55). Then, the addressee is told that if he who lives well dines well, he should follow his gullet (eamus / quo ducit gula, 56-57) and go ‘fishing’ and ‘hunting’ first thing in the morning, like Gargilius the glutton, who sent his slaves to the market place armed with nets and spears which they lugged through the crowds to show off a store bought boar loaded on a mule (56-61). Next, the speaker and addressee are pictured ill-advisedly getting into a bath after having gorged and stuffed themselves full of food (61-62), a sure-fire recipe for a heart attack, as we

50

Competitive ambition and constant greed for more were the very vices taken to task in Hor. Sat. 1.1.

115 know from later satirical sources such as Juvenal.51 In fact, they are appropriately linked to ‘the Ithacan Ulysses’ wicked crew’ (remigium vitiosum Ithacensis Ulixei, 63), for whom, we are told, forbidden pleasure was more alluring than their fatherland (cui potior patria fuit interdicta voluptas, 64).52 In the last few lines, the speaker adds a kind of postscript by referring to the Greek lyric poet Mimnermus’ idea that without erotic love, life is not worth living at all (fr. 1). The speaker, however, adds laughter (‘jokes’) to love and wishes that the addressee could live and flourish with both these joys: si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore iocisque nil est iucundum, vivas in amore iocisque. If, as Mimnermus warned, without love and laughter, there is no joy in life (lit. nothing is pleasant), may you live in love and laughter (65-66).

In the final two lines, the speaker suggests that should his addressee have better advice, he should go ahead and impart it; if not, he should follow the foregoing precepts. The reference to laughter in the final few lines of this poem is, I think, an indication of how Horace would like us to read Ep. 1.6. If we have not already figured it out (and we should have), this poem is a joke from beginning to end. Either we can see the speaker as a doctor ineptus, the foolish instructor figure, who appears in much of Horace’s hexametric poetry, or we can see the poet himself as speaker being entirely ironic or even sarcastic.53 Although, at the start of his first book of epistles, Horace assured his audience that he was putting aside his poems and all the rest of his ludicra and involving himself completely in 51

Hor. Ep. 1.6.61-62: crudi tumidique lavemur, / quid decet, quid non, obliti (‘While gorged with undigested food, let us bathe, forgetful of what is or is not seemly’). Cf. Juv. Sat. 1.142-44: poena tamen praesens, cum tu deponis amictus / turgidus et crudum pavonem in balnea portas. / hinc subitae mortes atque intestata senectus (‘Nevertheless the punishment is at hand, when you take off your clothes, swollen with food, and you haul undigested peacock into the baths. This is where sudden death and intestate old age come from’). 52 This may refer to the episode of the Lotus-eaters (Hom. Od. 9.82-102) or to that of the cattle of Helios (Od. 12.260-419); see Mayer 1994:155. 53 Recently, it has been suggested that Horace’s persona in the Epistles be viewed as a ‘liar’ (Maric 2012); I, however, would prefer to see him as a Joker.

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philosophy,54 it is abundantly obvious that he has both continued to write poems and to test his audience as much as ever. He challenges us, however, as the phrase ridentem dicere verum would suggest, to find the truth hidden within the laughter. Bibliography: Anderson, W.S. 1993. ‘Horace’s different recommenders of Carpe diem in C. 1.4, 7, 9, 11.’ CJ 88.2:115-22. Anderson, W.S. 1996. Review of D. West, 1995. Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 96.04.37. Atkinson, K.M.T. 1960. ‘Constitutional and legal aspects of the trials of Marcus Primus and Varro Murena.’ Historia 9.4:440-73. Bauman, R.A. 1966. ‘Tiberius and Murena.’ Historia 15.4:420-32. Bovie, S.P. 1959. The Satires and Epistles of Horace: A Modern English Verse Translation. Chicago, Ill. and London. Carrubba, R.W. and Fratantuono, L.M. 2003. ‘Apollo and Leuconoe in Horace Odes 1.11.’ QUCC 74:133-36. Catlow, L. 1976. ‘Fact, imagination and memory in Horace Odes 1.9.’ G&R 23.2:74-81. Davis, G. 2007. ‘Wine and the symposium.’ In Harrison 2007:207-20. De Pretis, A. 2004. Epistolarity in the First Book of Horace’s Epistles. Piscataway, NJ. Fernandez Corte, J.C. 2000. ‘El final de las “odas del alarde” (Odas 1.1-10).’ Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos 19:63-77. Fiske, G.C. 1920 (repr. 1971). Lucilius and Horace: A Study in the Classical Theory of Imitation. Westport, Conn. Fitzwilliam, R.J. 2000. ‘Horace’s Ode 1.9.’ The Explicator 59.1:3-4. Freudenburg, K. 1993. The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire. Princeton, NJ. Harrison, S. 2007. ‘Town and country.’ In Harrison 2007:235-47. Harrison, S. (ed.) 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Horace. Cambridge. Harrison, S. 2010. ‘Themes and patterns in Horace Odes Book 2.’ CentoPagine 4:47-59. Jameson, S. 1969. ‘22 or 23?’ Historia 18.2:204-29. Konstan, D. 2001. ‘Horace Odes 1.10: A turning point?’ Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos 21:15-18. Kutzko, D. 2006. ‘Lesbia in Catullus 35.’ CP 101:405-10. 54

Hor. Ep. 1.1.10-11.

117 Lee, M.O. 1964. ‘Horace Odes 1.11: The lady whose name was Leu.’ Arion 3:117-24. Lejay, P. [1911] 1966. Oeuvres d’Horace. Hildesheim. Levick, B. 1975. ‘Primus, Murena and Fides: Notes on Cassius Dio Liv. 3.’ G&R 22:156-63. Lindo, L.I. 1968. ‘Horace’s second epode.’ CPh 63:206-08. Mankin, D. 1995. Horace Epodes. Cambridge. Maric, L. 2012. ‘Horace, the liar persona and the poetry of dissimulatio: The case of Epistles 1.’ Akroterion 57:53-77. Marsilio, M.S. 2010. ‘Two Notes on Horace Odes 1.11.’ QUCC 96:117-23. Mayer, R. 1994. Horace Epistles Book 1. Cambridge. Mette, H.J. 2009 ‘“Slender genre” and “slender table” in Horace.’ In M. Lowrie (ed.), Horace: Odes and Epodes. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies, 50-55. Oxford (= 1961 ‘“genus tenue” und “mensa tenuis” bei Horaz.’ MH 18:136-39). Moles, J. 2002. ‘Poetry, philosophy, politics and play.’ In A.J. Woodman and D.C. Feeney (edd.), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace, 141-57. Cambridge. Moritz, L.A. 1976. ‘Snow and spring: Horace’s Soracte ode again.’ G&R 23.2:169-76. Musurillo, H. 1974. ‘A formula for happiness: Horace Epist. 1.6 to Numicius.’ CW 67:193-204. Nisbet, R.G.M. 2007. ‘Horace: Life and chronology.’ In Harrison 2007:721. Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M. 1970. A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 1. Oxford. Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M. 1978. A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 2. Oxford. Santirocco, M.S. 1986. Unity and Design in Horace’s Odes. Chapel Hill, NC and London. Smith, J.A. 1919. ‘Metonymy in Horace Odes Book 1.11.’ CR 33:27-28. Stockton, D. 1965. ‘Primus and Murena.’ Historia 14.1:18-40. Swan, M. 1967. ‘The consular fasti of 23 B.C. and the conspiracy of Varro Murena.’ HSPh 71:235-47. Thom, S. 2000. ‘The individual and society: an organising principle in Horace’s Epodes?’ Akroterion 45:37-51. Treggiari, S. 1973. ‘Cicero, Horace and mutual friends: Lamiae and Varrones Murenae.’ Phoenix 27:245-61. Watkins, O.D. 1985. ‘Horace Odes 2.10 and Licinius Murena.’ Historia 34.1:125-27.

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Watson, L.C. 2003. A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes. Oxford. West, D. 1974. ‘Of mice and men: Horace Satires 2.6.77-117.’ In A.J. Woodman and D.A. West (edd.), Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry, 67-80. Cambridge.

GIVING: SOME TIPS FOR HAPPINESS FROM LATE ANTIQUITY Pauline Allen Australian Catholic University and University of Pretoria Over the past three decades there has been an intense scholarly concentration on the problematic of poverty and riches in Christian late antiquity and the possibilities of achieving happiness, whether eternal or temporary, for both the poor and the rich. Mostly, the topic has been considered in a top-down model, whereby the authoritative pronouncements of prominent bishops in their preaching, letter-writing and theological works on poverty and riches (and on almsgiving as a route to happiness for both rich and poor) have been taken as normative.1 In this paper, it is my intention to contrast this approach with a bottom-up model, by looking at the everyday problems expressed by ‘little people’ in their struggles either to divest themselves of money or to acquire it. In particular, I shall study two works from the question-and-answer genre (erotapokriseis), one a collection of letters posted in sixth-century Palestine to two ‘Old Men’ with queries pertaining to happiness, and the other a volume of questions and answers preserved in the works of a monk from Mt Sinai in the 7th century. In both these works the merits and mechanics of almsgiving as a means to happiness, especially of the eternal variety, are treated in some detail. The scholarly debate so far, in nuce There are at least three main different recent approaches to poverty and the poor in Christian late antiquity, and several others in between. The first was advocated by Michael de Vinne in his 1995 dissertation,2 and subsequently by Peter Brown (2002). According to this view, in late antiquity the poor increased in visibility, and bishops were the agents of 1

This situation is of course not confined to the topic of almsgiving. For example, our picture of slavery in the late-antique world is derived from the viewpoint of slaveholders; see Harper 2011:16-23. 2 De Vinne 1995. For an extensive literature review of the topic of poverty and the poor in this period see Allen and Sitzler 2009:15-21. See also the studies in Leemans et al. 2011.

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this change, which in some scholarly circles was seen as a shift from civic evergetism to a ‘love for the poor model’.3 The second approach is that of Richard Finn in his book on Christian almsgiving during this period.4 Finn argues against the overwhelming influence of Christianity on evergetism, maintaining that episcopal authority evolved not simply from patronage of the poor in its discourse on almsgiving, but encompassed a variety of factors that made its construction considerably more complex. A third and most recent approach has been to consider Christian, and in particular episcopal discourse, from the point of view of rhetoric, whereby the poor and the concept of poverty are idealised, spiritualised but relegated to a distance, a technique in evidence in such disparate late-antique bishops as John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo and Leo I of Rome.5 Whichever of these three main approaches one adopts, the ancient evidence comes principally from the preaching or writing of the late-antique bishop or from hagiographical works about him – a man, we remember, who, particularly in the Greek- and Latin-speaking areas of the empire, was usually well-educated, not uncommonly of curial class, of a theological temperament, and with some philosophical training, albeit mostly eclectic.6 It follows that most insights we gain about a bishop’s view of poverty, the poor and almsgiving, come through a top-down prism, where the poor are predominantly the vehicle for the donating rich to reach eternal happiness in heaven, and the call to almsgiving itself is often a means of rallying both rich and poor in a community to a common purpose, and therefore to ecclesial unity. The letters and sermons of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), simply because of their bulk, provide a great deal of information on how bishops argued for almsgiving amongst both the rich and poor in their congregation, and to a lesser extent manipulated the addressees of their letters. Let Augustine speak for himself to his congregation: Si daretur pauperibus laturariis? Nosti enim et vides quia quibus das in terra ambulant. Quod das in caelum portant, et cum portaverint 3

See particularly Patlagean 1977; also discussion in Van Nuffelen 2011. Finn 2006a. See also his chapter in Atkins and Osborne 2006b:130-61; and the essays in Frenkel and Lev 2009: esp. 15-121. 5 See Allen, Neil and Mayer (edd.) 2009:69-118 (on Chrysostom), 119-70 (on Augustine), 171-208 (on Leo). 6 On the social contexts of the bishop in Late Antiquity, see e.g. Sterk 2004:13-92 (Basil of Caesarea); Rapp 2005:172-207. 4

121 ad caelum, non quod das hoc recipis. Pro terrenis enim caelestia accepturus es, pro mortalibus immortalia, pro temporalibus sempiterna. Suppose you gave it [alms] to the poor as porters. You know, after all, your eyes tell you that those you give alms to on earth can walk. Well, what you give them they carry to heaven, and you don’t get back merely what you give. In exchange for the goods of earth, you see, you are going to receive those of heaven, for mortal things immortal ones, for temporal things everlasting ones. 7

This sermon in its entirety depicts the shrewdness of giving alms to the poor, and elsewhere in Augustine’s works almsgiving is portrayed (in his words) as ‘a kind of mercantile loan or investment. You lend or invest here, you get paid back with interest there’ (Quasi fenus traiectitium facis. Hic das, ibi recipis).8 The promise of a credit-worthy God is an incentive to embark on the route to heavenly happiness. A further strategy to the giving of alms, the presentation of a spiritualised poverty and the promotion of ecclesial unity, all of which are stages on the route to eternal happiness, can be seen in passages such as the following: Nescio quomodo, fratres mei, animus eius qui porrigit pauperi, velut communi humanitati atque informitati compatitur, quando ponitur manus habentis in manum indigentis. Quamvis ille det, ille accipiat, coniunguntur minister et cui ministratur. I don’t know how it is, my brothers and sisters, but the spirit of the person who actually hands something to a poor man experiences a kind of sympathy with common humanity and infirmity, when the hand of the one who has is actually placed in the hand of the one who is in need. Although the one is giving, the other receiving, the one being attended to and the one attending are being joined in a real relationship.9

For his part John Chrysostom (d. 407) idealises poverty as χωρίον γὰρ ἐστιν ἄσυλον, λιμὴν γαληνὸς, ἀσφάλεια διηωεκὴς, τρυφὴ κινδύνων ἀπηλλαγμένη, ἡδονὴ εἱλικρινὴς, βίος ἀτάραχος, 7

Sermo 107A.2 NBA 30/2 (Rome 1983) 340; tr. Hill 1992:120. Sermo 42.2 NBA 29 (Rome 1979) 746; tr. Hill 1990:235. 9 Sermo 259.5 NBA 32/2 (Rome 1984) 840; tr. Hill 1993:181. 8

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ALLEN ζωὴ ἀκύμαντος, εὐπορία ἀκαταμάχητος, φιλοσοφίας μήτηρ, χαλινὸς ἀπονοίας, ἀναίρεσις κολάσεως, ῥίζα ταπεινοφροσύνης. a place of asylum, a peaceful harbour, perpetual security, luxury free of risk, pure pleasure, a life without waves of disturbance, impregnable abundance, mother of philosophy, a bridle to 10 arrogance, removal of punishment, root of humility.

Like other Greek writers in Christian antiquity, John does not use the word εὐδαιμονία when speaking of happiness, no doubt because the concept was personified as a pagan divinity.11 In much of the discourse on poverty from Christian bishops the Stoic idea of ‘indifferents’, that things are not intrinsically either good or evil, but that it is their use that is determinative for happiness, is also never far from the surface. From the majority of works of bishops we have the impression that the poor are an anonymous mass, invoked as examples to encourage almsgiving. This is the paradigm I will try to turn on its head by examining from the bottom up how the late-antique discourse on poverty, wealth, and eternal happiness was perceived by what we might call ordinary people. Of course, there were various motivations in early Christianity for giving to the poor, for example a social obligation, a divine commandment, or the hope of redemption for one’s sins, but the expectation of happiness in the next world was perhaps the most powerful motive for disbursing one’s material goods. To illustrate the nexus between almsgiving and eternal happiness, as I said, I am drawing on two collections of letters, one from the 6th century, the other from the seventh, belonging to the erotapokriseis or questionand-answer genre, which is related to, but distinct from, the dialogue in Classical antiquity.12 In this genre we are shown the actual concerns of the questioners, which is what makes the material unique.

10

Cum Saturninus et Aurelianus (CPG 4393); PG 52, 416.23-28; tr. Mayer 2009:105. 11 Christian writers generally preferred the word χαρά, as can be seen from Lampe 1994:1512-13 s.v. 12 See further Grillmeier 1987:77-78; Jacob 2004; Bussières 2013.

123 Barsanuphios and John13 These two monks, advanced in the spiritual life (hence their title ‘Old Men’), lived in a monastery near Gaza, a region characterised by a thorough-going monastic culture in which spiritual guidance was exercised in seclusion – hence the ‘posting’ of letters by the questioners and the postal replies. From these two monks we have 848 mostly short letters in which they reply to questions from monastics (about two-thirds of the total), lay people (about one-quarter) and bishops (about fifty letters).14 The letters of their correspondents are preserved as well, and possibly all the questions and answers were dictated to a scribe. In general, John responded to matters of a practical nature and Barsanuphios to those of a spiritual nature.15 What is useful for my purpose is that, unlike in much other monastic literature, rather than dealing exclusively with the spiritual ascent and future eternal happiness of monks, this work also reveals the concerns of ordinary lay people about finding the correct route to everlasting happiness in the next world, and even to serenity in the present, whether they are rich, poor or in between. To begin with, I present some examples of these letters to give their flavour: Φιλόχριστός τις ἠρώτησε τὸν ἄλλον Γέροντα, Ἰωάννην· Παρακαλῶ σε Πάτερ, τοῦτό μοι σαφηνίσαι, ἵνα πληρωθεὶς χαρᾶς ἀπέλθω. Ἐπειδὴ λογισμὸν ἔχω ποιῆσαι εὐποιΐαν ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων μοι, τί συμφέρει; Ἵνα κατὰ μικρὸν ποιήσω ἢ ἐφάπαξ; A Christ-loving layperson asked the οther Old Man, John: ‘I implore you, father, clarify this for me, too, so that I may depart joyfully. Since my thought tells me to offer some alms from my possessions, what is more beneficial for me to do? Should I give things away gradually, or should I give them away all at once?’16

13

Text in Neyt and De Angelis-Noah 2001; English translation in Chryssavgis 2006-2007: vols. 113-14, with literature. For background see Hevelone-Harper 2002, with literature and esp. 95-96 on ‘Property and charity’; Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, esp. 82-106. 14 For the breakdown see Chryssavgis 2006:9. 15 See further Chryssavgis 2006:6. 16 Ep. 617; SC 468, 38.1-5; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:207.

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John’s advice is that everyone should give according to their capacity, but that the ever-present threat of death should goad everyone to act generously: Ποιήσωμεν δὲ τὴν δύναμιν κατὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν ἡμῶν, καὶ ἀγαθός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν ἁπάντων Δεσπότης τοῦ εἰσαγαγεῖν ἡμᾶς μετὰ τῶν φρονίμων παρθένων εἰς τὸν νυμφῶνα αὑτοῦ εἰς τὴν χαρὰν τὴν ἀνεκλάλητον σὺν Χριστῷ. Let us do our best according to our weakness, and the Master of all is good; he shall lead us with the wise virgins into his weddingchamber and into the ineffable joy that is with Christ. 17

Another query, supposedly anonymous, comes from a layman who has been overdoing his almsgiving: Ἐάν τις συναρπαγεὶς ἀδιακρίτως ἀναλώσῃ εἰς εὐποιΐαν τὰ τῆς χρείας αὑτοῦ καὶ μεταμεληθῇ, πῶς ὀφείλει ἑαυτὸν παραμυθεῖσθαι, ἵνα μὴ τῇ διαβολικῇ λύπῃ καταποθῇ; If someone is solicited on all sides to spend all of one’s possessions in almsgiving, and then the same person regrets doing so, how can one be consoled in order not to be consumed by such demonic sorrow?18

The answer is that the over-zealous donor should blame himself for his lack of discernment and console himself with the fact that, since he spent all his money on a good cause, God will look after him. The letters of the Old Men are firm on the point that excess does not lead to happiness, 19 and that the destitute person, when asked for alms, should not think of borrowing in order to give.20 This last situation seems to have exercised those seeking advice, for there is another long question and answer on the subject: Σαφήνισόν μοι καὶ τοῦτο, κύριε ἀββᾶ, ὁ μὴ ἔχων πόθεν δοῦναι, πῶς γίνεται συμμέτοχος τῆς εὐλογίας τῆς ῥηθείσης ὑπὸ τοῦ

17

Ep. 617; SC 468, 40.28-32; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:208. Ep. 624; SC 468, 48.1-4; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:211. 19 E.g. Ep. 621; SC 468, 44-47; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:209-10. 20 Ep. 620; SC 468, 42-45; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:209. 18

125 Σωτῆρος πρὸς τοὺς ἐκ δεξιῶν αὑτοῦ· ‘Δεῦτε οἱ εὐλογημένοι τοῦ Πατρός μου, κληρονομήσατε τὴν ἑτοιμασμένην ὑμῖν βασιλείαν …’ Abba sir, clarify this for me as well. How is it possible for someone who has nothing to give to become a partaker of the blessing expressed by the Saviour to those on his right: ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you …’21

The Old Man explains that these words are addressed to those who have money and give to the poor without vainglory, whereas those who have nothing to offer in terms of almsgiving can become poor in spirit (cf. Matt. 5:3) in order to inherit, with the saints, the kingdom of heaven. Likewise, those who endure reproach, persecution, and so on, will rejoice greatly at their heavenly reward. Behind much of this kind of rhetoric lies the text of Matthew 25:31-46, where saving the poor is equated with serving Christ. There is considerable evidence in this correspondence about the devolution of almsgiving, which could give rise to embezzlement or other problems.22 It seems to have been standard practice for people to give money to monks on the understanding that they would distribute it to the poor, a practice that is called into question by one monastic. Abba John replies that it is impossible to expect those who have renounced their own possessions to manage the possessions of others,23 but the monk hints at further problems in another letter: Ἐὰν οὖν φιλονεικήσῃ ὁ παρέχων ὅτι Ἐὰν μὴ λάβῃς καὶ διαδώσῃς, οὐδὲν παρέχω, ἆρα ἀφήσω τὸν πτωγὸν θλιβόμενον ἀπὸ πείνης; If the one who is proposing this insists by saying: ‘If you do not accept the money and distribute it [to the poor], then I will offer nothing’, should I allow the poor to suffer hunger?24

John’s reply is that it is not up to the monk to be distracted by activities of this sort, and the owner of the property should distribute the alms himself. From another letter it appears that donors give money not only to monks for distribution, but also to the poor for further disbursement. The etiquette of the situation is the topic of the following letter: 21

Ep. 627; SC 468, 50.1-5; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:212. Cf. Epp. 618, 619, 629, 632, 633, 634. 23 Ep. 618; SC 468, 40-41; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:208. 24 Ep. 619; SC 468, 42.1-3; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:208-09. 22

126

ALLEN Ἐὰν ὁ παρέρχων τινὶ χρήματα διαδοῦναι εἴτε Πατράσιν εἴτε πρωχοῖς εἴπῃ αὐτῷ ἐν φανερῷ τόπῳ παρασχεῖν, εὑρίσκονται δέ τινες πλήσιον πάνυ ἐνδεεῖς, μὴ ἄτοπόν ἐστι κἀκείνοις μεταδοῦναι; If someone gives another person some money to distribute, whether to the fathers or to the poor, conveying this to him in an open place where there are also certain poor people around, is it inappropriate to offer these poor people some of the money as well?25

Further queries about caritative etiquette concern which of two poor people should be privileged by a donor who does not have enough money for both (response: the more vulnerable poor person should be preferred),26 and whether one should give to beggars in public, while other poor people are invisible, being too embarrassed to beg, or ill at home. Answer: Πάντας τοὺς φανερῶς λαμβάνοντες ἔχε ἐν μιᾷ τάξει, εἰ μή τις ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐστιν ἔχων ἀσθένειαν καὶ πάθος, τούτῳ γὰρ δεῖ προσθεῖναι μικρόν. Τοὺς δὲ ἐρυθριῶντας φανερῶς καὶ δημοσίᾳ λαμβάνειν, καὶ τοὺς ἐν ἀσθενείαις κατακειμένους, ἔχε ἐν ἑτέρᾳ τάξει, παρέχων αὐτοῖς περισσὸν κατὰ τὴν χρείαν αὐτῶν, καὶ καθὼς ἔχει ἡ χείρ σου καὶ εὑρίσκει. You should regard all those who openly receive alms as being in one category, unless there is one among them who is vulnerable and afflicted; for you should give a little more to that person. Those who are embarrassed about receiving openly and publicly, as well as those who are ill, should be regarded as being in a different category; and you should give these people more than they require, according to whatever you are carrying at the time or can find. 27

There is a related question about what to give to the poor who go from house to house begging. John advises giving whatever comes to hand: a piece of bread, some undiluted wine (presumably to show that the donor is not stingy enough to mix it with water), two small coins, or a bit more money.28 Other queries come from people who admit they are sluggish 25

Ep. 631; SC 468, 58.1-5; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:215. Ep. 625; SC 468, 48-49; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:211. 27 Ep. 630; SC 468, 58.7-13; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:215. 28 Ep. 635; SC 468, 62-63; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:217. 26

127 almsgivers, have doubts about the practice, or do not enjoy giving at all.29 Since in much literature on the topic of almsgiving the practice was linked with forgiveness,30 some people perhaps queried the treatment of a poor person in a lawsuit: ‘What does it mean when it says: “You shall not be partial to the poor in a lawsuit”?’ (Τί ἐστιν ὃ λέγει· Μὴ ἐλεήσῃς πτωχὸν ἐν κρίσει; Exodus 23:13).31 Abba John hedges his bets by saying that a judge must judge fairly and not violate justice; on the other hand, ‘to entreat the adversary of a poor person to be compassionate is not wrong’ (Τὸ δὲ παρακαλέσαι τὸν αὐτοῦ ἀντίδικον ποιῆσαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ ἔλεος, οὐκ ἔστιν ἄδικον).32 Throughout the letters dealing with almsgiving we find the underlying principle that, even if it is sometimes painful and requires careful discernment, the practice of giving is a necessary route for achieving the individual’s happiness in heaven. Anastasios of Sinai33 We know next to nothing about the monk-priest Anastasios except that he was probably born in Cyprus c. 630, was a prolific writer on spiritual and theological matters, and that he was still writing on Sinai in 700 CE. It seems that his answers to various questions probably posed by pious churchgoers were collected either by him or his disciples shortly before or shortly after his death, and some of his questioners may have been in Egypt and Syria/Palestine, where he travelled.34 From the resulting collection we have several questions and answers on almsgiving (44, 45, 58, 83, 92) and on property and wealth (41, 44, 45, 55), from which Anastasios emerges as a compassionate man.35 As in the correspondence of Barsanuphios and John, here too we find a question about the proportion of one’s financial resources that should be spent in alms. Avoiding specifics, Anastasios answers that, if pagans and others used to kill their sons and daughters as offerings to the gods, there is 29

Ep. 626; SC 468, 50-51; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:211-12. Ep. 623; SC 468, 46-49; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:210-11. 30 For the relationship between almsgiving and forgiving, for example in Augustine, see Swift 2001. 31 Ep. 651; SC 468, 82.1-2; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:225-26. 32 Ep. 651; SC 468, 84-85; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:225-26. 33 Text in Richard and Munitiz 2006. English translation in Munitiz 2011. 34 See the evidence of Anastasios’ travels assembled in Munitiz 2011:10-11. 35 See e.g. the use of the word πτωχός in Quaes. 32.21.24; 81.23; 87.16; 88.59, and his respect for one who is πτωχοτρόφος (Quaes. 43.6-7; 89.10). I owe this observation to Dr Joseph Munitiz, SJ (communication dated 22 November 2012).

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no excuse for Christians: ‘Even if we were to offer our own flesh to God, we would have done nothing commensurate with the gifts He has given us’ (Ὅτε γὰρ καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν σάρκα ἡμῶν προσενέγκωμεν τῷ Θεῷ, οὐδὲν ἄξιον τῶν δωρεῶν ὧν ἐχαρίσατο ἡμῖν πεποιήκαμεν).36 Since we know that after his departure from Cyprus Anastasios held the position of infirmarian in the monastery on Mount Sinai, we may suppose a rural or even desert environment for his questioners because Arabs, whom he calls barbarians, are mentioned frequently. To the question, ‘Where is it expedient to offer money: to a church or to the poor and needy?’, he replies that while Christ’s words in Matthew 25:34 (‘Come you blessed of my father’) definitely refer to the poor and other disadvantaged groups, there needs to be some flexibility according to circumstances in different places. Thus one should give to churches that are poor, but not to wealthy churches, as we can never be sure where their contents will end up.37 Many churches, maintains Anastasios, ‘which insatiably collected funds, and failed to administer them well, were later plundered by barbarians.’38 Elsewhere, in answering a question about human infertility, Anastasios speaks of rich people who are unable to have children, whereas the destitute Arabs in the desert, who have barely enough to eat, have an abundance of offspring.39 There is possibly also an Arab background to the comment that Anastasios knew of somebody who helped a whole people, and gave instructions to many persons, and because of this received funds from many and used them for the poor and the ransom of prisoners.40 The ransom of prisoners, a very prevalent practice among bishops in the 5th to the 7th centuries, was considered an obligatory act of mercy and therefore a meritorious route to eternal happiness.41 The problems of sluggish almsgiving, as in Barsanuphios and John, and of the divide between rich and poor are also addressed by Anastasios in reply to a question about a wealthy person who cannot retire from the world but ‘enjoys a wealthy table, a variety of foods, and bathing facilities’ (ἀπολαύων πλουσίας τραπέζης καὶ ἐδεσμάτων διαφόρων καὶ βαλανείων) – how can someone like that live without reproach and obtain the 36

Quaes. 55; Richard and Munitiz 2006:107.6-8; tr. Munitiz 2011:169. Quaes. 58; Richard and Munitiz 2006:109.1-2; tr. Munitiz 2011:171. 38 Quaes. 58; Richard and Munitiz 2006:109.10-11; tr. Munitiz 2011:171. 39 Quaes. 81; Richard and Munitiz 2006:132-33; tr. Munitiz 2011:196. 40 Quaes. 32; Richard and Munitiz 2006:84; tr. Munitiz 2011:134, who thinks there may be a hint of the autobiographical here. 41 See e.g. Klingshirn 1985. 37

129 forgiveness of sins so necessary for eternal happiness? Anastasios replies that wealth in itself is not wrong, for some influential or wealthy people in the Old Testament saved themselves by almsgiving, but his contemporaries who see their family and fellow Christians living in the desert and do not send money to help them should count their blessings (perhaps their relatives and co-religionaries are prisoners of the Arabs). When, for example, they sit down to a decent meal, get into bed, go to the bathhouse, the church, or market-place they should weep for themselves. They have firmly shut the gate to eternal happiness on themselves if they think that God intended them to lead their comfortable lifestyle, because otherwise he would have given it to the poor person.42 The centrality of almsgiving to salvation and eternal happiness can be seen in an anecdote related by Anastasios, who has just written about rubbing a soul clean with almsgiving: Καὶ Ζήνωνος γὰρ τοῦ βασιλέως φθείραντός τινα κόρην παρθένον καὶ ἀπολύσαντος ταύτην, κατεπροσήρχετο τοῦ βασιλέως ἡ μήτηρ τῆς κόρης πρὸς τὴν ἁγίαν Θεοτόκον, καὶ φαίνεται αὐτῇ ἡ Παρθένος λέγουσα· Πίστευσόν μοι γύναι· πολλάκις ἠθέλησα ἀνταποδοῦναι τῷ Ζήνωνι, ἀλλ’ ἡ χεὶρ αὐτοῦ διὰ τῆς ἐλεημοσύνης κωλύει με. The Emperor Zeno [471-491 CE] had deflowered some young maiden and then abandoned her. The mother of the girl was praying in supplication against the Emperor to the holy Theotokos; then the holy Virgin appeared to her saying, ‘Believe me, woman, I have frequently desired to pay back that Zeno, but his hand stops me by the alms it gives.’43

The inclusion of this story in Anastasios’ reply is all the more remarkable because he would have considered Zeno not only immoral, but also heretical because of his legislation against the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), to whose decisions Anastasios subscribed over two centuries later. These factors point to the centrality of almsgiving in the happiness trail. Concomitant with the status of almsgiving as a route to eternal happiness is the question of the connection between wealth and criminality. For example, one pious soul asks Anastasios if income from unjust acts that is given as alms is acceptable to God. The measured, if initially somewhat Delphic reply, is that ‘there are thefts and there is 42 43

Quaes. 88; Richard and Munitiz 2006:140.3-4; tr. Munitiz 2011:213. Quaes. 41; Richard and Munitiz 2006:95.35-40; tr. Munitiz 2011:148.

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injustice’ (ἔστι κλέμματα καὶ ἀδικία):44 stealing church revenue is different from stealing what comes from the land and sea of unbelievers, just as harassing peasants and poor people on the one hand, and ripping off the wealthy on the other, are different. Everything comes down to intentionality – an overriding consideration in ancient Christian literature on almsgiving, wealth and poverty – and if someone cannot abstain from some injustice it is better for them to disburse for good purposes their money so gained. On the other hand, ‘the money derived from injustice to the peasants and the poor is quite unacceptable to God and bears a curse’ (μέντοιγε τὰ ἀπὸ ἀδικίας πτωγῶν καὶ γεωργῶν ὑπάρχοντα ἀπρόσδεκτα τῷ Θεῷ καὶ κεκατηραμένα ὑπάρχουσιν).45 Clearly, then, not a route to eternal happiness. Along the same lines is a question regarding whether someone who is rich has been made rich by God. Definitely not, replies Anastasios, because nobody who has amassed riches ‘from wars, bloodshed, and thefts, and perjuries’ can say that, but only those who have become rich by sinless means. In reply to a query about the meaning of ‘the mammon of iniquity’ (Luke 16:9), Anastasios explains that this term designates all the wealth we may have over and above our strict needs. So if someone possesses enough to be able to feed and save a person who is being destroyed by hunger, or debt, or imprisonment, and chooses not to save that person, it is quite certain that such a one will be justly condemned as a swindler and a murderer.46 No route to happiness there either. Similarly, loveless almsgiving cancels itself out, as we see from the following question: Πῶς ψωμίζει τις πάντα τὰ ὑπάρχοντα αὐτοῦ ἐκτὸς ἀγάπης; ΑΠΟΚΡΙΣΙΣ. Εἰσί τινες τῶν ἀνθρώπων δοκοῦντες μὲν ποιεῖν πολλὰς ἐλεημοσύνας, ὑπάρχουσι δὲ μισάδελφοι, λοίδοροι, ὑπερήφανοι, ἄδικοι, μνησίκακοι, φθονεροί, καὶ διὰ τῶν τοιούτων παθῶν ἀνόνητος λοιπὸν γίνεται ἡ ἐλεημοσύνη αὐτῶν.

44

Quaes. 44; Richard and Munitiz 2006:98.1; tr. Munitiz 2011:156. Quaes. 44; Richard and Munitiz 2006:98.11-12; tr. Munitiz 2011:156. 46 Quaes. 83; Richard and Munitiz 2006:137; tr. Munitiz 2011:200. In another collection of Anastasios’ Questions and Answers we find the sentiment that ‘almost all the wealth of those who are rich and in positions of government comes from injustice – usury, confiscations, enforced gifts, robberies’ (ὅλος σχεδὸν ὁ πλοῦτος τῶν πλουσίων καὶ ἀρχόντων ἐξ ἀδικίας, καὶ τόκων, καὶ ἁρπαγῶν, καὶ δωροληψιῶν, καὶ κλοπῶν ἐστι); Quaes. 83; Richard and Munitiz 2006:190.7-9; tr. Munitiz 2011:201. 45

131 How can someone bestow all one’s possessions for food without love? ANSWER: There are some persons who appear to give many alms, but they are haters of their fellow men, calumniators, proud, unjust, resentful and envious. Thus, because of all these vices, their almsgiving becomes worthless.47

This kind of showy almsgiving is also denounced by the bishop-preachers. Concluding observations There is much work still to be done in the question-and-answer genre, and in this paper I have been able only to deal with two roughly comparable collections in Greek, although the genre was popular (and somewhat elastically conceived) in the Latin-speaking world, in Syriac literature, and is found in Byzantium down to the time of Patriarch Photios at the end of the 9th century. A detailed investigation of other collections will shed light on how representative the letters to and from Barsanuphios, John and Anastasios are regarding attitudes to almsgiving as a route to happiness.48 It was my intention in this paper to demonstrate the merits of hearing from ‘ordinary’ people, as opposed to episcopal homilists, letter-writers and theologians regarding concerns about poverty, wealth and almsgiving. Like the homilists, whose pronouncements on these subjects I have deliberately not entertained in detail here, the laypeople who consulted Barsanuphios, John and Anastasios are often worried about how wealth can impede happiness. They are also exercised about how much one should give in alms and whether disposing of ill-gotten gains by giving will redound to the eternal credit of the almsgiver or not. With regard to the amount to be given, the Old Men, like the homilists, stress the importance of intentionality and the fact that nobody is expected to give more than they can. The letters to the Old Men are more instructive than homiletic works regarding the mechanics and etiquette of almsgiving, and the role expected from the monk in disbursing funds illustrates a development from previous centuries when monks gave to the poor from their own daily labour.49 The homilists’ rhetorical exploitation of the theme that the humble rich person is better off than the proud poor person is not so 47

Quaes. 92; Richard and Munitiz 2006:147.5-8; tr. Munitiz 2011:219. See the incisive online assessment of the status quaestionis of the genre and its definition by Papaconstantinou 2005. 49 See Finn 2006a:92-93. 48

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obvious in the literature under consideration here, although a certain jealous divide between rich and poor is in evidence, as in a query presented to Abba John about the ‘haves’ in a family not acknowledging their relationship with their ‘have-nots’ in order to keep up appearances.50 While such a divide is also presented by the homilists in order to goad their congregations to increased giving, the predicament of this family strikes one as being concrete and realistic. In general, there is nothing from the questioners’ side or that of the holy men who offer the responses to indicate that they are spiritualising poverty or riches. On the contrary, the questions are of a concrete, practical nature and so are the responses. Similarly, we encounter no philosophising about ‘indifferents’, which is so common in homiletic literature. Although it would be misleading to differentiate between homiletic literature and these more popular corpora on the rhetoric versus reality model; all in all I suggest that for the people who consulted Barsanuphios, John and Anastasios, almsgiving was perceived in practical terms as a pre-eminent, if sometimes difficult and painful, strategy for embarking and remaining on the route to eternal happiness. Bibliography Allen, P. and Sitzler, S. 2009. ‘Introduction’. In Allen, Neil and Mayer 2009:15-34. Allen, P., Neil, B. and Mayer, W. (edd.) 2009. Preaching Poverty in Late Antiquity. Perceptions and Realities. Arbeiten zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte 29. Leipzig. Bitton-Ashkelony, B. and Kofsky, A. 2006. The Monastic School of Gaza. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 78. Leiden and Boston. Brown, P. 2002. Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire. Hanover and London. Bussières, M.-P. (éd.) 2013. De l’enseignement à l’exégèse: la littérature des questions et réponses dans l’Antiquité païenne et chrétienne. Actes du colloque tenu à l’université d’Ottawa les 25 et 26 septembre 2009. Turnhout. Chryssavgis, J. 2006. Barsanuphius and John. Letters, Vol. 1: The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 113. Washington, D.C. Chryssavgis, J. 2007. Barsanuphius and John. Letters, Vol. 2: The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 114. Washington, D.C. 50

Ep. 764; SC 468, 208-09; tr. Chryssavgis 2007:275-76.

133 De Vinne, M. 1995. ‘The advocacy of empty bellies. Episcopal representation of the poor in the Late Roman Empire.’ Unpublished PhD dissertation. Stanford, Calif. Finn, R.D. 2006a. Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire. Christian Promotion and Practice (313-450). Oxford. Finn, R.D. 2006b. ‘Portraying the poor: descriptions of poverty in Christian texts from the Late Roman Empire.’ In M. Atkins and R. Osborne (edd.), Poverty in the Roman World, 130-61. Cambridge. Frenkel, M. and Lev, Y. (edd.) 2009. ‘Charity and giving in monotheistic religions.’ Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients N.F. 22:15-121. Berlin. Grillmeier, A. 1987. Christ in Christian Tradition. Vol. 2: From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590-604). Atlanta, Ga. Harper, K. 2011. Slavery in the Late Roman World AD 275-425. Cambridge. Hevelone-Harper, J.L. 2002. Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza. Baltimore, Md. Hill, E. 1990. Sermons II (20-50) on the Old Testament, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century. Brooklyn, NY. Hill, E. 1992. Sermons III/4 (94A-137A) on the new Testament, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century. Brooklyn, NY. Hill, E. 1993. Sermons III/7 (230-272B) on the Liturgical Seasons, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century. New Rochelle, NY. Jacob, C. 2004. ‘Questions sur les questions: archéologique d’une pratique intellectuelle et d’une forme discursive.’ In A. Volgers and C. Zamagni (edd.), Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question-and-Answer Literature in Context. Proceedings of the Utrecht Colloquium, 13-14 October 2003. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 37:25-54. Leuven and Dudley Mass. Klingshirn, W. 1985. ‘Charity and power: Caesarius of Arles and the ransoming of captives in sub-Roman Gaul.’ JRS 75:183-203. Lampe, G.W.H. 1994. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford. Leemans, J., Matz, B.J. and Verstraeten, J. (edd.) 2011. Reading Patristic Texts on Social Ethics. Issues and Challenges for Twenty-First-Century Christian Social Thought. Washington D.C. Mayer, W. 2009. ‘John Chrysostom on poverty.’ In Allen, Neil and Mayer 2009:69-118. Munitiz, J.A. (tr.) 2011. Anastasios of Sinai. Questions and Answers. Corpus Christianorum in Translation. Vol. 7. Turnhout. Neyt, F. and De Angelis-Noah, P. (edd.) 1997-2001. Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza. Correspondance. Paris.

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Papaconstantinou, A. 2005. Review of A. Volgers and C. Zamagni (edd.) 2005. Erotapokriseis. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.04.48. Accessed 3 March 2014. Patlagean, E. 1977. Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance 4e-7e siècles. Civilisations et Sociétés 48. Paris. Rapp, C. 2005. Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 37. Berkeley, Calif. Richard, M. and Munitiz, J.A. (edd.) 2006. Anastasii Sinaitae Quaestiones et Responsiones. Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 59. Turnhout. Sterk, A. 2004. Renouncing the World yet Leading the Church. The MonkBishop in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, Mass. Swift, L. 2001. ‘Giving and forgiving: Augustine on eleemosyna and misericordia.’ Augustinian Studies 32:25-36. Van Nuffelen, P. 2011. ‘Social ethics and moral discourse in Late Antiquity’. In Leemans, Matz and Verstraeten 2011:45-63.