The place of political thought in Josephus’ writings

The historian Josephus succeeds Philo as the exponent of a political theory centred on Judaism and expressed in Greek. The two writers are intellectually far apart, and Josephus had little penchant for philosophical speculation. Nonetheless, their backgrounds and experience are comparable. From a base within the small Jewish social elite of the Roman east, each acted for a period as political leader, defender of the Jews and delegate to the emperor; in Josephus’ case, the mission marked the beginning of his career. Josephus’ literary output, almost as much as Philo’s, belongs to the diaspora: transferring from Jerusalem to Rome, he addressed readers in the Greek world. Admittedly, unlike Philo, who probably knew no Hebrew, Josephus, of priestly and royal stock and brought up in an Aramaic/Hebrew milieu, had to labour, he informs us, to perfect his grasp of the language in which he wrote. But this he successfully did, and, for all his Roman patronage, the framework and the intellectual agenda of his writings are primarily Greek.

It is commonly thought that Josephus knew and exploited Philo. Thus, part of the discussion of Jewish practices in the Against Apion reveals a close dependence on Philo’s now fragmentary Hypothetical. At the same time, the bulk of Josephus’ extensive output is historical; there theory emerges, as we would expect, as analysis in the context of the narration of events – whether distant, recent or contemporary.

In the Hellenistic age changing political conditions set the stage for refinement and adaptation of the classical analysis and evaluation of forms of government. The most significant development was the rise of powerful autocratic monarchies on the model of the Persian and Egyptian kingships.

By the second century bc even the traditional kingships of mainland Greece, such as the Macedonian elected kingship and the limited dual kingship of Sparta, had been transformed into the autocratic Hellenistic type. Greek city-states continued to exist, but had to work out a new relationship with the monarchs, whose imperial ambitions encompassed the entire eastern Mediterranean. Most either settled for reduced autonomy under the authority of one of the monarchies, or banded together into an independent regional league. The development of regional leagues, chiefly on the Greek mainland, was another development that affected Hellenistic thought.

A third was the disappearance of the distinction between democracy and aristocracy or oligarchy. In the wake of intervening political and economic developments, the typical free city-state remained a democracy, but with a strong executive component, dominated by a narrow group of old wealthy families. Since such cities regarded themselves as democracies despite their aristocratic orientation, the classical distinction disappeared. The significant difference was now between a city with a high degree of self-rule and one administered by an agent of one of the Hellenistic kings, often in the shadow of a military garrison.

As a political work, the Politicus is generally regarded as a poor relation of the Republic and the Laws: on the standard view, it reflects rather scrappily on issues arising out of the Republic (especially in relation to the idea of philosopher rulers), and somehow prepares the way for the Laws. But such an approach fails to do justice to its argument. Once its twists and turns are properly understood, it stands out as a major document of Platonic political theory in its own right; less bulky though it may be than either of the other two works, and certainly less appealing than the Republic, it offers real illumination of some central themes, and adds some important new elements which are not in any way superseded in the Laws.

The first, and perhaps chief, problem for the interpreter is to understand the structure of the argument, and its outcome or outcomes. The dialogue has four main components: a long series of ‘divisions’ aimed at defining the politikos, the ‘politician’ or (more traditionally) the ‘statesman’, together with his ‘art’ or expertise (‘statesmanship’); a cosmological myth, inserted into the divisions at an early stage, which allegedly helps take them forward; a discussion of the role of law in ideal and actual societies, which similarly interrupts the process of division, though it is formally motivated by it; and, after the divisions have been completed, a description of the role of the statesman in ‘weaving together’ complementary character traits or kinds of temperament among the citizens.

Isolating ‘political thought’ in Latin historical narratives is more difficult than in the works of historians who wrote in Greek. Explicit theorizing was not a Roman characteristic. But that does not mean that what Roman historical writers wrote did not reflect their conceptions of political institutions and structures and of how they changed over time. The further that a particular statement about historical events deviates from ‘real’ history (as in the analyses which we find in Plato or Aristotle, or in the Greek elements in Cicero), the easier it is to identify – and isolate – such a statement as ‘political thought’; but statements that correspond to the collective morality of a culture represent ‘political thought’; too.

Rome was a society used to accepting authority, whether that of the head of the household (paterfamilias) at home (domi) or the commander (imperator) in war (bello, militiae). From the fourth century bc on, warfare became the most important element in the Roman value-system. In war, obedience to the commander could not afford to be challenged; but the language in which domestic political issues were discussed was equally based on authority – that provided by the speaker’s virtus (proved by his own great deeds or those of his ancestors) or by ancestral tradition, mos maiorum, from which the speaker selected those precedents (exempla) which supported his argument. When the consul Cornelius Scipio Nasica at a contio (formal public gathering) in 138 bc heard views with which he disagreed, he did not try to persuade, but told his assembled fellow-citizens: ‘Please be silent. I know better than you what is best for the state.’

Terminology

Much of our political terminology is Greek in etymology: aristocracy, democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, plutocracy, tyranny, to take just the most obvious examples, besides politics itself and its derivatives. Most of the remainder – citizen, constitution, dictatorship, people, republic and state – have an alternative ancient derivation, from the Latin. It is the ancient Greeks, though, who more typically function as ‘our’ ancestors in the political sphere, ideologically, mythologically and symbolically. It is they, above all, who are soberly credited with having ‘discovered’ or ‘invented’ not only city-republican forms but also politics in the strong sense: that is, communal decision-making effected in public after substantive discussion by or before voters deemed relevantly equal, and on issues of principle as well as purely technical, operational matters.

Yet whether it was in fact the Greeks – rather than the Phoenicians, say, or Etruscans – who first discovered or invented politics in this sense, it is unarguable that their politics and ours differ sharply from each other, both theoretically and practically. This is partly, but not only nor primarily, because they mainly operated within the framework of the polis, with a radically different conception of the nature of the citizen, and on a very much smaller and more intimately personal scale (the average polis of the Classical period is thought to have numbered no more than 500 to 2,000 adult male citizens; fifth-century Athens’ figure of 40,000 or more was hugely exceptional). The chief source of difference, however, is that for both practical and theoretical reasons they enriched or supplemented politics with practical ethics (as we might put it).

Julian and Themistius

In November ad 355 the emperor Constantius II elevated his twenty-four-year-old cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, or number two in the hierarchy. On hearing the news one of Julian’s old teachers, the philosopher Themistius - author of surviving paraphrases of various Aristotelian treatises - wrote from Constantinople a letter to the new Caesar congratulating him and celebrating the advent of a Platonic philosopher king, comparable with a Dionysus or a Heracles. The letter does not survive, but we can infer quite a lot of what Themistius must have said in it from the successive extant panegyrics he addressed to emperors from Constantius on, and above all from Julian’s reply in his Letter to Themistius (probably ad 356), which is also extant. Themistius seems to have appealed both to history and to theory: Julian is to emulate and indeed surpass Solon, Lycurgus and Pittacus; and in switching from ‘indoors’ to ‘outdoors’ philosophy (Ep.Them. 262e-263a) he is not only following in the steps of philosophers like Thrasyllus and Musonius Rufus, who took up positions at court, but he is also living up to Aristotle’s ideal in the Politics, where in a discussion of the rival claims of the active and the leisured life statesmen are praised as ‘the architects of external actions’ (263d; cf. Pol. VII.3, 1325 b21-3).

Julian’s reply is not exactly uncivil, but it is lacking in grace, and it is highly critical. Consider the question of the comparative merits of the philosophical and the political life, or - as Themistius sometimes puts his contrast between ‘indoors’ and ‘outdoors’ philosophy elsewhere (e.g. Or.8.104a-b, 31.352b-c) - the choice between two paths of philosophy: the more divine and the human, more beneficial to the community.

The aim of all of Aristotle’s practical philosophy is to provide a description of the best life for a human being, along with an understanding of how that life is to be achieved or at least approached. The discussion of individual happiness (eudaimonia) in the ethical writings and the discussion of political arrangements in the Politics are complementary and equally necessary parts of that inquiry. The happiness of an individual is that of a naturally political animal whose life and happiness are essentially interwoven with that of his fellow citizens. The happiness of a city is nothing other than the happiness of the individuals who constitute it. The best or happy life is the life of virtue. Justice, in one of its forms, is complete virtue in an individual. The best life is thus the just life, and the best city the one populated by just citizens. This much said, much remains to be explained, in particular, what Aristotle thought justice was.

Aristotle’s writings about justice, found chiefly in the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics and the third book of the Politics, are notoriously difficult. If there is any explanation for this apart from the combination of the complexity of the issues being dealt with, the state of our texts, and the identity of the author, it has to do with Aristotle’s characteristic method of answering philosophical questions. He approaches all topics through the views of his predecessors, often quite explicitly.

Introduction

This chapter discusses four leading intellectuals in the first and second centuries ad. Their surviving or reported work (together with that of Seneca) provides points of access to the form that political thought took in a period in which there is no extant text that deals, in an obvious and systematic way, with political philosophy. These figures are interconnected in various ways. Musonius Rufus (c. 30–c. 101, these and all subsequent dates ad) taught both Dio Chrysostom (c. 40–c. 112) and Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135). The Stoic notebook (Meditations) of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–80) is avowedly influenced by Epictetus’ Discourses; and his version of Stoic theory is broadly similar to that of Epictetus and Musonius. Dio Chrysostom differs from the others in combining the roles of philosopher and ‘sophist’ (public speech-maker), and in his philosophical eclecticism. But a significant element in the thought of his speeches is Stoic (of a type comparable with that of the other three thinkers); he also sometimes deploys the Stoicized Cynicism that appears in Epictetus.

The lives and thought of these individuals illustrate certain more general features of the period. Dio Chrysostom was a leading figure in the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’ movement; and his career displays how sophists, as public performers, functioned as intellectual communicators and as vehicles of Greco–Roman culture throughout the (Greek-speaking) Eastern part of the Roman empire. More broadly, the careers of all four men exhibit the interlinking of Greek and Roman intellectual (and political) life, and the interplay between philosophy and politics in the period.

Preliminary considerations

The Platonism of the first centuries of the empire does not constitute a single current of thought, still less the work of a school. To refer to Platonist authors from the time of Eudorus (active c. 25 bc) until the rise of Neoplatonism the term ‘Middle Platonism’ is often employed: a historiographical category which poses considerable problems. There is not in fact any single Middle Platonist philosophy, but rather a group of writers who may be described as Platonist by virtue of their allegiance to a nucleus of ‘orthodox’ positions, contaminated in many instances by Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, and not the same nucleus in all cases. That is true for political thought too. The authors of most interest from this point of view, Philo of Alexandria (20/15 bc– ad 45/50) and Plutarch of Chaeronea (ad 45–100), despite sharing features in common, stand far apart from each other. For the political thought of other Platonists of the period we do not have sufficient evidence, but there is nothing to suggest political theories of any great originality or with significant contemporary impact. The consolidation of Rome’s supremacy on the world stage in the first centuries of the empire certainly did not provide favourable conditions for theoretical political thought to flourish: the apparent inevitability of Roman domination limited the scope for political reflection. It tended to oscillate between wary pragmatism and purely theoretical idealism.

The Cynics had no ideals of their own and assumed the worst of everybody else; hence the modern usages ‘cynic’ and ‘cynical’.

Among non–classicists today these are perhaps the two dominant, although contradictory, images of Cynicism. The first projects Diogenes’ behaviour, which some might regard as merely loutish, as illustrating a truly admirable independence of spirit; indeed, some versions add that Alexander delightedly exclaimed: ‘Had I not been Alexander, I would have wished to be Diogenes’ (Plu. Alex. 14. 5; D.L. VI. 32). The second projects the Cynics as, if not positively immoral, at least unpleasantly amoral. Neither seems to encourage claims that the Cynics made an important contribution to ancient political thought, and the contradiction between the two is but a pale reflection of the many difficulties involved in the attempt to uncover a true picture of Cynicism. Any assessment, therefore, of the Cynic contribution must begin by resolving these difficulties.

Introduction: the nature of the Politics

One of the chief problems about discussing any aspect of Aristotle’s political thought, but especially his thinking about constitutions, is the apparent disorder of the Politics. The relatively loose and dialectical nature of the argument is certainly responsible for some of its unevenness: the repetitions, the omissions of promised discussions of particular topics, and the sudden turns, perhaps as the focus changes between two opposing series of reflections. But even when all of this is taken into account, it is hard not to conclude that at least some of the larger pieces do not quite fit together. This fact is reflected in the old fashion, begun in the nineteenth century, for placing Books VII and VIII after the end of Book III. Books VII and VIII contain a treatment of the ‘best constitution’; since the end of Book III, as it stands, promises one, there seem to be good grounds for allowing that promise to be fulfilled. Yet this easy solution turns out to cause as many problems as it resolves, since not only do Books IV–VI turn out to contain more backward references to III than VII and VIII, but IV–VI are a considerably more inappropriate sequel to VII–VIII than they are to III. In that case, the most that can be said is that VII and VIII might once, in some different Politics, have followed Book III.

According to W.K.C.Guthrie in his A History of Greek Philosophy ‘the primary aim of education for statesmanship never left [Plato’s] thoughts. It was certainly his intention that many of his pupils should leave the Academy for politics, not as power-seekers themselves but to legislate or advise those in power, and we have the names of a number who did so.’ The distinguished historian P. A. Brunt takes a different view:

As these contradictory assessments suggest, the sources on Plato and practical politics are not easy to handle, and interpretation tends to reflect the more or less self-conscious preconceptions of the interpreters about for example the Academy (how far was it yet an institution?), or the general credibility of ancient biography and epistolography, or the still more general issue of the impact on public life made by philosophy now or then. The present writer inclines to scepticism or minimalism in all these areas.

There is in Plato’s early dialogues (here labelled ‘Socratic’) a certain ‘intellectualism’ that is quite foreign to the middle and later dialogues (here labelled ‘mature Platonic’ dialogues). Indeed, that intellectualism, with its implication that only philosophical dialogue can improve one’s fellow citizens, is decisively rejected by Plato in the parts of the soul doctrine of the Republic. On that doctrine, it is essential to the improvement of citizens that their appetites and spiritedness be controlled, either by their reason or by the reason of the intellectual elite. This contrast between dialogue in ‘Socrates’ and control of one’s lower parts in ‘the mature Plato’ – one which even those most opposed to ‘developmentalism’ will be hard pressed to deny – is explored in section 1 below. But there are also striking continuities between ‘Socratic’ and ‘mature Platonic’ thought, of a sort sometimes missed by ‘developmentalists’. If for ‘Socrates’ what is required for an individual’s human goodness is that individual’s full intellectual grasp on the real human good, so for ‘the mature Plato’, such a grasp by those in the intellectual elite is quite as necessary for the goodness of all the citizens. These continuities (concerning attitudes to the good, the ideal, the sciences and practical politics) are explored in sections 2 and 3 and section 5 ad finem. Sections 4 and 5 explore these continuities and contrasts as they show up in the three most overtly political ‘Socratic’ dialogues: the Protagoras, the Apology and the Crito.

A century after Cicero’s death, another Roman senator, also a gifted orator, again demonstrated the power of philosophical writing in Latin, but in a different vein and a different style. Like Cicero Seneca regarded the moralis pars philosophiae, which traditionally included political theory, as the most important branch of philosophy, but unlike Cicero, who used a leisured periodic style suited to the balanced tone of a sceptical Academic, Seneca expounded ethics in a nervous epigrammatic style suited to the passionate tone of a committed Stoic. And whereas Cicero had been inspired by the example of Plato and the Peripatetics to compose a de Re Publica and to embark on a de Legibus, Seneca did not write about the relative merits of different constitutions and showed little confidence in what could be achieved by legislation. Indeed it is often said that Seneca showed no interest in political theory and restricted the moralis pars philosophiae to individual ethics.

Similar points have been made about Hellenistic philosophy itself, including Stoicism, and Seneca’s de Clementia, his most explicit work of political theory, is clearly indebted to lost Hellenistic works on kingship, of which there were many Stoic examples. Moreover, between Cicero’s time and Seneca’s there had been important political developments with the advent of the Principate. Cicero had placed his faith in the Roman Republican constitution which, he believed, had once realized the Greek ideal of the mixed constitution, equitable and durable. The divisive trends he perceived, however, led to protracted civil wars and Caesar’s dictatorship, which shattered the dream of constitutional stability.

The transition from Classical to Hellenistic philosophy coincided with the passage from a Greek world in which the polis was the dominant political formation to one presided over by large central states. The first of these was the kingdom of Macedon. The advance of Macedon was swift. In no more than four decades, beginning with the rise to power of Philip II in 359bc, Greece was subdued, the massive Persian empire conquered (334–327), and democracy in Athens crushed (in 319). In this last act Macedon was all but finishing off not only democracy (only Rhodes remained democratic, for a time), but also the independent polis. In fact, freedom and independence had been enjoyed in their fullness in the fifth and fourth centuries only by a few hegemonic poleis (principally Athens, Sparta and Thebes), which dominated the mass of smaller Greek poleis through their leagues, or polities (such as Caria under Mausolus in 377/6–353, and Thessaly under Jason in the 370s). Athens was the last of the hegemonic poleis. After the death of Alexander in 323, the unified Macedonian empire quickly gave way to the Successor Kingdoms of the Hellenistic age based on Macedon, Syria and Egypt, which in turn were absorbed, finally and conclusively, by Rome. After establishing itself, at the expense of Carthage, as the leading power in the Western Mediterranean, Rome in the course of the second century bc became dominant also in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The sophists

Let us begin by considering three Athenian texts of the fifth and fourth centuries bc.

The first, short enough to quote in full, is a fragment of what was probably a satyr (i.e. serio-comic) play. Controversy continues as to whether the author of these forty-odd lines of verse was the tragedian Euripides (c. 485–c. 406), or Critias, uncle of Plato, versifier, political pamphleteer, and leading member of the oligarchic junta that overthrew Athenian democracy in 404 following Athens’ defeat by Sparta, who was killed in the course of its suppression the following year. The speaker is Sisyphus, archetype of villainy and cunning – whose never-ending punishment was and remains legendary: