The life of Simonides of Ceos (556–468) stretched from the age of tyrants through the overthrow of the Peisistratids in Athens, the turning back of the two Persian invasions, and the rise of Athens. Invited to Athens by the tyrant Hipparchus as part of his effort to bring culture to Athens, Simonides left after his fall for various courts in Thessaly. Later, when his patrons sided with the Persians, he returned to Athens where he celebrated the Greek victory. He died while visiting the court of Hieron in Syracuse. His reputation was such that his name was linked with those of Homer and Hesiod as a source of wisdom.

Is it hard to be good?

This is an encomium (or song of praise) to Skopas, a king in Thessaly whom Simonides had visited (PMG 542, four strophes in a complex lyric form).

The fables that have come down to us under Aesop's name represent an accumulation of popular wisdom on moral and political issues. We have translated here the fables of political interest that seem to derive from the sixth and fifth centuries.

The fox and the hedgehog (Perry 427; Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.20)

Aesop spoke in Samos in defense of a demagogue who was on trial for his life. “A fox,” he said, “was swept into a gully while trying to cross a river. She was unable to get out, and suffered for a long time, especially from the large number of dog-ticks she had on her. A hedgehog who was passing by took pity on her and asked if he could take off the dog-ticks. But the fox would not let him do so. When the hedgehog asked why, the fox said, ‘These ticks have already had their fill of me, and they are taking only a little blood; but if you take these away, others will come and in their hunger will drink up the rest of my blood.’

“Now in your case, men of Samos, this man is no longer doing you any harm, because he is rich. But if you kill him, others will come who are poor, and they will steal your common property and squander it.”

Euripides (c. 485 to c. 406) was an Athenian dramatic poet who was heavily influenced by the new learning of the sophists. Although controversial, he had ninety-two plays accepted for production and became after his death the most performed of Greek tragedians. Eighteen or nineteen plays have survived, along with numerous fragments. He is said also to have written the elegy for the Athenian troops lost in Sicily (413).

Euripides' plays represented advanced views about the position of women, and seem also to have been critical of traditional beliefs about the gods and the morality they stood for. His work is important for an understanding of ancient Greek rhetoric and political theory of the fifth century. Here we print only some of the most important passages. (Dates of production, where known, are given in parentheses.)

Medea (431)

On discovering the unfaithfulness of her husband Jason, Medea says:

Solon, one of the legendary seven wise men of ancient Greece, was a poet and a lawgiver to his native Athens in the seventh and sixth centuries. He was archōn with special powers in about 590 and instituted reforms to the economy and to the constitution. He provided for the relief of debts (the seisachtheia) and rewrote most of the laws enacted by his predecessor Draco.

Though a model for later reformers, Solons's laws were not an unqualified success, and in 561 a series of disturbances led to the tyranny of Peisistratus (died in 527), who rose to power on the basis of popular support.

Fragments of Solon's poems have come down to us as quotations in later works. We have translated here all the passages relevant to political theory. For a famous anecdote about Solon see Herodotus, 1.

The importance of good government, or eunomia (W 4, lines 1–10, 26–39)

Evenus came from the island of Paros and was active toward the end of the fifth century. Plato often speaks of him as a sophist (Apology 20b, Phaedo 60c–61c, Phaedrus 267a), but only a few fragments of his elegiac verse survive.

(W 1)

(W 3)

(W 4)

(W 9)

The Dissoi Logoi is an anonymous treatise of uncertain date, though most scholars accept a date around 400 (see n. 321 below). It is written in the Doric dialect, a kind of Greek spoken primarily in the Peloponnesus and parts of Sicily and southern Italy. This may indicate the author's provenance, or perhaps that he is writing for an audience that spoke Doric. Speculation about the author's identity has been wide-ranging, but no suggestion has gained much support. The work shows the possible influence of Protagoras (who wrote Antilogiae or Counter-Arguments), Hippias, Gorgias, Socrates, and others, and may be the work of an unknown student of one of these.

Good and Bad

1. [1] Double arguments (dissoi logoi) are put forward by intellectuals in Greece concerning good and bad. Some say that good is one thing and bad another, while others say that the same thing can be both, and that something may be good for some but bad for others or sometimes good and sometimes bad for the same person.

[2] I myself agree with the latter, and my investigation will begin with human life and its concern with food and drink and sex; for these things are bad for someone sick but good for someone healthy who needs them. [3] Moreover, lack of control in these things is bad for those who lack control but good for those who sell them and make a profit.

Very little is known of Lycophron's life. He lived in the late fifth and early fourth centuries and was probably a follower of Gorgias. The following quotations are all from works of Aristotle.

(DK 3)

(DK 4)

(DK 1)

Knowledge is an association between knowing and the soul.

The Hippocratic corpus is a collection of medical writings by different authors representing different schools of thought. We do not know for certain when specific works in the corpus were written, but we believe that some of them come from the later fifth century and so belong to our period. The texts translated below belong to the group which is considered early. It is unlikely that any of the preserved texts was written by Hippocrates himself.

Airs, Waters, Places

This work is an essay on the effects of environment on human culture. The following excerpts introduce political considerations (16):

These, then, are the features of physical nature (phusis) and appearance that distinguish the peoples of Asia. As for the lack of courage and spirit in these people, the fact that Asians, by comparison with Europeans, are less aggressive in battle and more docile in character is primarily explained by the climate: their seasons do not produce sharp fluctuations between hot and cold, but are nearly the same. For they do not receive the sudden shocks to the mind or the strong changes in their bodies that would be likely to give them harsher tempers and more passionate spirits than those who are always in the same condition. It is change in all circumstances that stirs up the human mind and makes it restless.

Antisthenes (c. 455–360) was an Athenian, a pupil of Socrates and the founder of the Cynic school of philosophy. Numerous surviving fragments, most of them witty ripostes, echo his cynical views, but we have no complete work or even substantial fragment except for this pair of speeches. They are in the tradition of Gorgias' Helen and Palamedes, and Antiphon's Tetralogies, and are probably early works of Antisthenes. The character of Odysseus prefigures several of the qualities valued by the Cynics.

The contest for the armor of Achilles was a well-known episode of the Trojan War. After the death of Achilles at Troy, the Greeks decided to give his armor to the next best warrior. The choice was between Ajax, clearly the strongest and most powerful fighter, and Odysseus, who was not as mighty but was more intelligent and resourceful. When the vote came out for Odysseus, Ajax felt (with some justification) that he had been cheated of what was rightly his, and feeling disgraced he committed suicide. In a famous scene in the Odyssey (11.543–567) Odysseus sees the ghost of Ajax in Hades and makes a friendly overture toward him, but Ajax turns away in scornful silence. Sophocles' play Ajax portrays the madness and suicide of Ajax after he has been denied the armor. Aeschylus also wrote a play, now lost, entitled The Decision about the Armor.

Western political thought begins with the Greeks – not just with recognized masterpieces, such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics, but with a host of earlier thinkers who are less well known. The purpose of this volume is to present the broad range of ideas about politics and the nature of human society that were proposed and debated before the more formal works of Plato and Aristotle began to dominate and control the expression of political theory.

Greek political thought before Plato comprises everything the Greeks deemed important to the functioning of the city-state, or polis: political theory, sociology, anthropology, ethics, rhetoric, and more. These issues come together in the last half of the fifth century in the teaching of the sophists, whose profession it was to prepare young adults for participation in public life. Long before the sophists, however, such issues were central to the poetry that served as the cultural memory of the Greeks. Accordingly, the texts in this volume represent more than thirty authors, including poets, philosophers, playwrights, historians, medical writers, and, of course, sophists. Because the sophists made the most striking contribution to political theory in this period, their surviving works are translated here in their entirety. In the case of other writers, we have included texts that reflect sophistic influence, as well as earlier texts with themes relating to the political thought of the time on such matters as human nature, the origin of human society, the origin of law, the nature of justice, the forms of good government, the distribution of wealth, and the distribution of power among genders and social classes.

Thrasymachus of Chalcedon (a Greek colony on the Bosporus) was an orator, active during the second half of the fifth century. We have no reliable information about his life. He is best known today from the vivid caricature Plato gives of him in the first book of the Republic. Otherwise, ancient writers speak of him as a stylist, not a political theorist. For the suggestion that he may be the author of a speech we have assigned to Critias, see the discussion on Critias, fr. 26, in the Bibliographical Note (§ B.5).

(DK 1)

This excerpt is quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Demosthenes 3), who presents it as an example of the “mixed” style (combining the “plain” and “elaborate” styles). The overall level of generality has led some scholars to suggest that this is a display piece, not written for any specific occasion.

I would have preferred, Athenians, to have taken part in the public life of the old days when young men could remain silent, since affairs did not compel them to speak in public and their elders were running the city correctly. But since the gods have assigned us to live in a time when we obey the rule of others in the city but endure its misfortunes ourselves, and since the greatest of these misfortunes have been brought not by the gods or fortune but by those in charge, I am compelled to speak.

Alcidamas (from Elaea) was a pupil of Gorgias who taught in Athens in the late fifth and early fourth centuries. Although his writings are probably later than those of the other sophists, we include his writings in this anthology because he shows little or no influence from Socrates or Plato, his concerns are an extension of the fifth-century debates on several issues, and the works are not readily available in English. In addition to these, Alcidamas also wrote a work on Homer, a few papyrus fragments of which have recently been discovered. This was apparently the main source for a later work entitled The Contest of Homer and Hesiod.

(Scholiast on Aristotle, Rhetoric 1373b6)

God set all people free; nature has made no one a slave.

On Those who Write Speeches, or On Sophists

This essay may be a response to Isocrates' Against the Sophists (Isoc. 13), written c. 391. Isocrates (436–338) was the leading teacher of rhetoric at Athens in the fourth century, but was a notoriously poor speaker himself. There may be a degree of irony in some of the arguments Alcidamas uses to attack writing – an attack that is itself (as he acknowledges) written.

[1] Some of those who are called sophists are not concerned with inquiry (historia) or general education (paideia), and they are just as inexperienced in the practice of speaking as ordinary men; but they are proud and boastful about their practice of writing speeches and displaying their own intelligence through their books.

Homer is the name traditionally given to the author of the Iliad and Odyssey. Of the actual composition of the poems we know very little. Many scholars believe the two poems were the work of different authors, and some believe in the multiple authorship of each work. The poems probably took their final form at the end of the eighth century or later, with the Odyssey following the Iliad by about a generation. Although the poems draw on stories that were orally preserved and passed down over several centuries, the ideas of justice and social order evident in the following passages were probably current in the eighth century.

The role of common citizens in the assembly (Iliad 2.188–278)

As the Achaeans stream from their assembly to the ships, thinking to abandon the siege of Troy, Odysseus calls them back to their seats.

Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus in Asia Minor about 485, while the city was ruled through tyrants by the Persian empire. His life spanned the period between the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars. At an early age he moved to Samos for fear of the tyrant Lygdamis. Herodotus spent many years traveling through Greece and other lands, and settled in Thurii in southern Italy when the colony was established there in 443. He evidently composed his History during the third quarter of the fifth century. Part of it was presented orally in Athens and elsewhere, and the final version was written around 430–425. Its observations on politics and related themes represent intellectual movements of his lifetime.

On happiness (1.30.2–34.1)

The Athenian wise man Solon visited the magnificent court of Croesus, King of the Lydians in Sardis. After showing off his treasures, Croesus asked:

“Athenian visitor, we have heard much about you and your travels in search of wisdom, and about how you have traveled widely as an observer and for the love of knowledge. So now I am longing to ask you: of all those you have seen, who is the happiest?” He asked this in the hope that he would be the happiest of human beings, but Solon was no flatterer and he told the truth:

“Tellus the Athenian, O King.”

Astonished by this answer, Croesus asked severely, “Why do you judge Tellus the happiest?”

Antiphon was an Athenian orator and sophist, who was born around 480. In 411 he was one of the leaders of a coup that brought the oligarchy of the Four Hundred to power (pp. 130–131); when this government collapsed and democracy was restored, Antiphon was tried, convicted, and executed for treason. He was a popular legal adviser to others and his final speech in his own defense was much admired.

In addition to the speeches he composed for others to deliver, three of which survive complete, Antiphon wrote three Tetralogies for hypothetical homicide cases. Since these raise general rhetorical, legal, and philosophical issues, we translate them here. A common idea in the Tetralogies is that a killer suffered religious “pollution” or “defilement” (miasma) which could be transmitted to others. The concept of pollution is much less important in the speeches delivered in court and apparently did not play a significant role in Athenian law.

In Athenian law a homicide case could normally be prosecuted only by a relative of the victim. Each side spoke twice, first the plaintiff and then the defendant.

The main “sophistic” works of Antiphon were Truth, in two books, and Concord; the latter addresses more mundane issues and may have been intended for a less specialized audience. Less well attested are a collection of Proems, or typical introductory remarks for speeches in lawsuits, and an Art of Rhetoric.