A seventh-century poet of Sparta, Tyrtaeus was said to have been a general in the second Messenian War, during which Sparta subjugated Messene. Most of his surviving poetry consists of exhortations to combat, but he also wrote a poem on the Spartan constitution.

The place of common citizens in the assembly (W 4).

The legendary Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus was said to have received the constitution of Sparta from the oracle of Delphi. These verses describe his reforms. See also Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 6.

Dying for one's country (W 10, lines 1–14)

The following paragraphs, of unknown authorship, are generally agreed to be from a sophistic treatise of the late fifth or early fourth century. The work gets its title (lit. “The Anonymous Author of Iamblichus”,) from the fact that it is embedded in a work by the fourth-century ce Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus. Iamblichus' work, entitled Protrepticus or Exhortation to Philosophy, quotes many passages from earlier authors. The style of these paragraphs is typical of the sophistic period and the subject matter also clearly belongs to the same period.

1. [1] Whatever goal anyone wishes to attain with the very best results – wisdom, courage, eloquence, or aretē (either as a whole or in part) – he will be able to succeed given the following conditions. [2] First, one must have natural ability, and this is granted by fortune (tuchē). The other things are in the person's own hands: he must be eager for beauty (kalon) and goodness (agathon) and willing to work hard, beginning his studies very early and seeing them through to the end over a long period of time. [3] If even one of these is absent, it is impossible to reach the highest goal in the end; but if any human being has all these things, he will be unsurpassed in whatever pursuits he undertakes.

Heraclitus of Ephesus lived during the reign of Darius (521–487) and wrote around the beginning of the fifth century. Ephesus was at that time under Persian control. Its rich neighbor, Miletus, was destroyed in 494 after the failure of the Ionian revolt, and Ephesus thereafter was unrivaled among Greek cities in Asia Minor. The fragmentary quotations of Heraclitus that have come down to us are rife with puzzles and ambiguities. We have included the fragments that can be read as carrying a political meaning.

(DK 1)

Although this is the true logos, people are always stupid about it, before they have heard it and after they have heard it for the first time. For although everything happens in accordance with this logos, people seem like those of no experience when they experience words and deeds such as the ones I am expounding when I mark off each thing by its nature and say how it is. And other people are not aware of what they do while awake, just as they forget what they did while asleep.

(DK 113)

Understanding is shared by all.

(DK 2)

Although the logos is shared, most people live as if they had a private understanding.

(DK 116)

All human beings share in knowing themselves and thinking soundly.

Most of the verse translated in this part was originally in dactylic hexameter, the traditional form for epic poetry; elegiac couplets (dactylic hexameter alternating with shorter dactylic lines) are indicated by the indenting of every second line.

Hesiod lived in Boeotia in the late eighth century. His two substantial poems in epic verse are the Theogony (“Generation of the Gods”), which is a retelling of traditional myths of origin, and Works and Days, which is addressed to his brother Perses over the disputed division of property that followed their father's death. Hence arises Hesiod's concern with justice and the resolution of disputes.

The origins of evil (Theogony 507–612)

Hesiod's versions of the Prometheus myth are translated here as background for later accounts of the origins of human society. See especially Protagoras, fr. 8. “Prometheus” means “Forethought,” and “Epimetheus,” “Afterthought.”

Democritus came from Abdera, a city in Thrace. He lived c. 460–380, a generation later than two other philosophers from Abdera, Protagoras (below, p. 173) and Leucippus. Democritus and Leucippus are known as the inventors of atomism, the theory that all matter consists of atoms and void. In addition to fragments on physics, more than a hundred ethical/political fragments are attributed to Democritus. Although their authenticity has been doubted, a majority of scholars accept them as authentic. We present here only those fragments that deal with the themes of this volume.

(DK 5)

This is an excerpt from the History of Diodorus Siculus (1.8) who wrote in the first century. It does not mention Democritus, but is based on the work of a fifth-century thinker, and this is likely to have been Democritus (see Cole, Bibliographical Note, § B.4).

The generations of humans born in the beginning led an unruly and bestial life. They foraged individually for food and consumed the most pleasing of the plants and whatever fruit fell from the trees. When attacked by wild beasts, they helped each other, learning that this was mutually advantageous; and when they were thus brought together by fear, little by little they learned each other's ways. The sounds of their voices were confused and unintelligible at first, but gradually they articulated words, and by establishing signs (symbola) for each existing thing, they taught each other the meanings of each of them.

Gorgias came from Leontini in Sicily. All sources report that he lived more than 100 years, c. 480–375. In 427 he came to Athens as an ambassador from Leontini and reportedly created a sensation with his rhetorical style. He had many other interests in addition to rhetoric, for which he is best known. The material we translate includes two complete speeches attributed to mythological characters, a fragment of a funeral oration, a later summary/paraphrase of a philosophical treatise, and miscellaneous fragments and reports of his views. None of these can be dated, except perhaps for On Not Being, which was reportedly written in the eighty-fourth Olympiad (444–441).

Gorgias' teaching was closely associated by Plato with rhetoric, and he apparently disclaimed teaching all other subjects, including virtue. We arrange the material loosely by subject matter: first rhetoric, then ethics, metaphysics, and science.

Encomium of Helen (DK 11)

According to the principal version of the myth (as found in Homer), when the Trojan prince Alexander (Paris) was a guest in the house of Menelaus, king of Sparta, he took advantage of Menelaus' absence to abduct his wife Helen and take her back to Troy with him. Menelaus raised a Greek army to recover Helen, hence the Trojan War. There were many other versions of the story, including some in which Helen did not go to Troy at all.

Aeschylus, the first of the three great Athenian tragic poets, lived 525–456. Seven of his nearly one hundred tragedies are preserved complete, and we have fragments of several dozen others. His most complex work, the Oresteia trilogy (458), raises many of the social, political, and ethical issues of contemporary Athens, such as the nature of justice, the origins of law and order, and the relations between the sexes. Some modern scholars doubt the authenticity of Prometheus Bound and would date the play after 450, because it shows the apparent influence of sophistic ideas, especially in the passages translated here.

Prometheus Bound

In the excerpts from the Prometheus Bound (1–3), Prometheus addresses the chorus, who are generally sympathetic to him. Cf. Hesiod's treatment of the same myth (Hesiod, 1–2), and Protagoras, 8. “Prometheus” means “Forethought”

Prometheus (228–241)

Of the life of Thucydides we know little beyond what he tells us. We believe he was born around 460–455, and we know that he was an elected general in 424. During that year he was in charge of forces that were unable to save Amphipolis from the Spartans. Democratic Athens frequently brought criminal charges against unsuccessful generals, so Thucydides went into a twenty-year exile during which he visited the Peloponnesus (including Sparta) and probably also traveled to Syracuse. Most of the time he probably spent in Thrace, where his family had longstanding connections. He returned to Athens after the war but apparently did not live to finish the History.

His education must have included some study with the sophists who were beginning to be popular in Athens during his youth. His style of writing, however, is uniquely his own, and he must be counted as one of the most original prose stylists of the Greek or any language.

The first phase of the Peloponnesian War began in 431 and lasted ten years. Although the Athenians met some reverses, they were victorious on the whole. Their greatest success in this period was the capture in 425 of a band of 120 Spartan citizen soldiers on a small island called Sphacteria, near Pylos. So much did the Spartans value their citizens that they were willing to sue for peace on virtually any terms to get their men back.

In this section are two passages that cannot be assigned with certainty to any particular historical figure. They reflect teachings that have been associated with various sophists.

The social contract (Plato, Republic 358e3–359b5)

Hoping that Socrates will be able to refute the view, Glaucon tells him what is being said about the nature and origin of justice. We do not know who first proposed the contract theory of the origin of justice, or who first inferred from the theory that justice is not an intrinsic good. Although the language of the passage is Platonic, it probably reflects the views of an earlier thinker connected with some of the sophists.

As far as nature goes, they say that doing injustice is good, while suffering injustice is bad; the badness of suffering injustice, however, outweighs the goodness of doing it to such an extent that after people have been doing injustice to each other and suffering it, once they've had a taste of both, then those who lack the power to avoid the one while choosing the other decide that it is in their interests to make a mutual agreement neither to do nor to suffer injustice. And so (they say) people start making their own laws (nomoi) and agreements (sunthēkai) at that point, and they use the words “lawful” (nomimon) and “just” (dikaion) for what these laws require.

Archilochus of Paws, an elegiac and iambic poet, lived in the eighth and seventh centuries, and is said to have taken part in the colonization of Thasos in about 708. Little is known about his life, but a large number of poems and fragmentary quotations survive.

The common people (W 14)

If a man listened to the reproaches of the common people,

Aesimedes, he would never have very much fun.

The eagle and the fox

(W 174)

This is a fable people tell,

how a fox and an eagle joined

as partners.

(Atticus, quoted by Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica 15.4.4)

Do you see where that high rock is,

rough and menacing?

There I sit lightly, planning my fight with you…

[Our source continues in paraphrase as follows:]

Up to this high rock it is impossible for this clever wicked animal to climb, so that for the fox to come where the eagle's offspring are, they would have to meet a sad accident and fall to earth, losing their home, or else he would have to grow what it is not his nature to grow, and bend swift wings; then rising from the ground, he could fly up to the high rock. But as long as each stays in his appointed home, there will be no sharing between the creatures of the land and those of the sky.

Prodicus came from the island of Ceos; he was probably born around 470 and died some time after 400. There is an amusing picture of him in Plato's Protagoras (315c–d), lying on a couch. Socrates often refers to Prodicus as his teacher, and some have speculated that Socrates' concern with the precise meanings of words like “justice” may owe something to Prodicus' work on distinctions. In addition to fr. 1, there are also references to Prodicus' fondness for distinguishing between near synonyms in Protagoras 339e–341d, Meno 75e, Euthydemus 277e, and Aristotle, Topics 2.6, 122b22.

(Plato, Protagoras 337a–c; DK A13)

During an interlude in the discussion between Socrates and Protagoras, Prodicus contributes the following.

Those who are present at these discussions should be an impartial but not an egalitarian audience; for these are not the same. You must hear both sides impartially but not give them equal weight; rather, give more weight to the wiser and less to the more foolish speaker. For my own part, moreover, I think you two, Protagoras and Socrates, should agree to debate but not to quarrel; for friends debate with friends in a cordial spirit, but enemies and adversaries quarrel with one another. In this way we will have the best discussion, for you speakers will be esteemed, and not praised: esteem is truly in the minds of the listeners without deceit, whereas praise is often falsely given in words that run counter to one's actual opinion.

Socrates thought that an awareness of our own ignorance should create a desire for the knowledge that eludes us. Plato agreed with him, but went on to ask how such knowledge, which had managed to elude even Socrates, could ever be acquired. He found his answer in the theory of recollection, one of his most notorious philosophical legacies. What we now call learning, he claimed in the Meno, is in fact the recollection of knowledge had in a prenatal existence. None of his successors, Aristotle, Epicurus or the Stoics, found this suggestion convincing, but all of them were sufficiently impressed by the importance of the questions that he was trying to answer to go to considerable lengths to present their own alternatives, their rivals to recollection. Aristotle, in obvious reaction to Plato, placed great emphasis upon perception and experience both in scientific and ethical learning. Epicurus and the Stoics also developed sophisticated accounts of the role of experience in learning and, in addition, showed an increasing interest in distinguishing between those elements of our thinking that arise naturally and those that derive from cultural influences. Seen in this light, Plato's theory of recollection acted as the catalyst for what was to be a long-running philosophical debate about the origins of knowledge.

Precisely because Plato's successors acknowledged the importance of his questions but replaced his answers with their own, we have the opportunity to compare these different theories diachronically, to see how a certain theme develops over the course of ancient philosophy.

INTRODUCTION

The great affirmation of the church as ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic’ was not formulated precisely or stated explicitly until the promulgation of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in 381. Yet the seeds of this declaration of the essential notes of the true church were sown well before this time.

Unity as a note of the true church has its scriptural basis in passages such as the prayer of Jesus for the unity of his disciples at John 17,21f, Paul's condemnation of division in the congregation at 1 Corinthians 11,17f., and at Ephesians 4,4-6, where the author ties the unity of the church to that of the Godhead. Among the Fathers before Tertullian, Clement of Rome, Hermas and Irenaeus of Lyons all place emphasis on the necessary unity of the church and frequently either cite or allude to Ephesians 4,4-6 to make their point.

Holiness as a note of the true church was very early linked to the question of discipline. The assertion that the church is the virgin Bride of Christ at Ephesians 5,26f, the case of the man living with his father's wife at 1 Corinthians 5,1-5, the treachery of Hymenaeus and Alexander at 1 Timothy 1,1 gf., and the warnings to separate from an erring brother and other immoral persons at 2 Thessalonians 3,6, Ephesians 5,7f, and 1 Timothy 5,22 all confirm the necessary holiness of the church; this is usually accompanied by a call for a rigorous discipline which will lead to a church fellowship untainted by grievous sinners.

INNATENESS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

Epicurus and the Stoics appealed to the natural origin of our prolepses to explain their reliability. In doing this they were certainly differentiating prolepses from concepts formed by education or some other cultural process. But if prolepses are formed by a process of nature, that process could be the result either of innateness or merely of sense perception, which was construed by both schools as an essentially natural process. As I have already said, there is considerable controversy among scholars, both in the case of Epicurus and of the Stoics, as to whether any of these natural notions were actually innate notions.

One explanation for the divergence of opinion among scholars is the state of the evidence, especially in the case of Epicurus. But this is not the only one. When we attempted to determine Aristotle's attitude to innatism in chapter 3, we came up against the need to distinguish different varieties of innatism and to clarify the opposition between innatism and empiricism. The same goes for the Hellenistic philosophers. The scholarly controversies that have raged over which, if any, of these philosophers espoused innatism have arisen partly out of a lack of clarity on these philosophical issues. So before turning to the texts, we need to recall some of the points made about the innateness debate in chapter 3.

On pp. 91–3, we drew a distinction between two different ways in which we might talk of innate knowledge, beliefs or concepts: according to one theory these items might be latent in the mind from birth; according to another we have inborn predispositions to acquire them.

TRANSITION FROM SCIENCE TO ETHICS: ARISTOTLE'S APPEARANCES

When Aristotle talked of the path of discovery in the first chapter of the Physics he had in mind a smooth and gradual transition from the perspective of perception to the attainment of first principles and not, as Plato had done, a journey of almost frightening disorientation. But so far we have only been considering Aristotle's views on scientific discovery, whereas our treatment of Plato was at least as much concerned with ethical discovery. It was, after all, ethical discovery that originally gave rise to the problem in the Meno. The purpose of this chapter is to see how far these conclusions about Aristotle's account of scientific discovery can be applied to ethics. Phys. I i says at the outset that its account of discovery will apply to all inquiries in which there are first principles. But does he really mean to include ethics?

I have already suggested that we should not be too eager to find a tidy fit between scientific and ethical discovery given the repeated warnings in the Nicomachean Ethics against ignoring the differences between the two. On the other hand, one prima facie reason for expecting to find something common to both areas is that he sometimes uses the same terminology when talking about discovery both in science and ethics. The distinction between the more knowable to us and the more knowable in nature, which we found pervasive in scientific contexts, crops up in his ethical works as well. But the common term that has attracted the most interest is the term phainomenon, which I shall translate as ‘appearance’.

There are a number of terms which Tertullian employs to denote either appointment or election to church office or promotion from lesser to higher office. We will now look at these and consider what they might tell us about Tertullian's understanding of Christian office.

‘Adlectio’ and ‘adlegere’

In Roman law ‘adlectio’ originally denoted the election of a person to the Senate, and later the bestowal of citizen rights on entire communities. Tertullian uses it seven times in settings both pagan and Judaeo-Christian. At Adv.Marcionem 11,24,2 he employs it of the ‘election’ of Saul as king by God, at 11,25,4 of the ‘election’ of man into divinity (i.e. of the Incarnation), at 111,21,3 of the ‘election ’of the ‘nations’, at 111,21,4 of the ‘election’ of the ‘elders’ of the Jews, and at v, 17,10 of the ‘election’ of the Fathers of the Jews. At De Baptismo 12,8 Tertullian employs ‘adlectio’ to denote Christ's ‘choosing’ of the first disciples. The verb ‘adlegere’ is also used extensively by Tertullian with a variety of meanings. He employs it normally, however, to denote a divine choosing, such as that of Saul at Adv. Marcionem 11,24,2, of Peter by Christ at IV, 11,1, of the other apostles and the Seventy by Christ at IV,24,1, of the ‘nations’ by God at De Resurrectione 22,4, and, finally, of the animals in the Ark by Noah at De Monogamia 4,5.

The employment of ‘adlectio’ or ‘adlegere’ in an ecclesiastical setting appears to be confined by Tertullian to admission to the ‘official’ classes of bishops, presbyters, deacons and widows. They were not used for the ‘minor’ grades of ‘virgin’, ‘lector’ and ‘doctor’, nor for recognition as a ‘prophet’.