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Eunomia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. Andrewes
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Oxford

Extract

Eunomia was early personified. Already in Hesiod she is one of the three Horai, the child of Themis and the sister of Dike and Eirene, and from her family we may learn something of her nature. Both mother and sisters are concerned with the individual as the member of a community rather than as persomn in himself. Themis is a complicated character, whose implications cannot here be discussed, but we may without offence call her the mother of the social order and of the organized life of the community; Dike and Eirene are certainly social virtues which cannot usefully be practised by the individual in isolation, but if widespread make possible the collective life of the city. Eunomia too is one of the guardians of the social order, keeping the city from violence and lawlessness.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1938

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References

page 89 note 1 I owe great thanks to Mr. H. T. Wade Gery, who has read through more than one draft of this article and made many valuable criticisms and suggestions.

page 89 note 2 Hesiod, , Theogony 901–3Google Scholar . Cf. Pindar, , Ol. xiii. 6 and ix. 14Google Scholar , Bacchylides xiv. 55, Bergk iii. adesp. 140, Demosthenes xxv. 11 etc.

For an alternative genealogy cf. Alcman fr. 44, where ͤχη is called Εὐνομἱας <τε> κα Πειθος δελφ, κα προμαθεἰας θυγατ7rho;. It is difficult to be certain, without the full context, what Alcman meant by this, but in the context of the quotation (Plutarch, , mor. 318a)Google Scholar it is opposed to the view that Fortune is blind and unstable, and I believe the thought is that good luck will come most readily to those who use foresight and live, or perhaps fight, in a disciplined and orderly way.

An interesting variant of the normal trio is given by Inschr. v. Pergam. 324 line 15 (p. 241), where instead of Δκη we read Εὐσταση.

page 89 note 3 This function of Eunomia is suggested in several of the passages cited in the previous note. Cf. also Bacchylides xii. 158, where she is described in these words: ᾰ θαλας τε λλολχεν, ᾰστε ͤ' εὐσεβων νδρν ν εἰρνᾳ φυλσσει.

page 89 note 4 Pindar, , Ol. i. 37Google Scholar .

page 89 note 5 Aeschylus fr. 198. We owe the line to Strabo's quotation, and he discusses the subject in 300–301—πλουσττους τε γρ αὐτοὺς νομξομεν κα ἢκιστα κακεντρεχεῖς. It is of course more than likely that Aeschylus referred to their pastureland and not at all to their manners, but the interpretation later put upon his words is none the less important.

page 89 note 6 Herodotus i. 97. κα οὕτω ἤ τε χώρη εὐνομ σεται κα ατο πρς ἔργα τρεψμεθα οὐδ ὑπ' νομης νστατοτ σμεθα. Above he describes the situation which drove them to choose a king (ο σης ὦν ρπαγς καἰ νομης ἔτι πολλῷ μλλον ν τς κώμας ἢ πρτρον ἦν) and the nature of their evil and its remedy is perfectly clear.

page 90 note 1 I thank Dr. C. M. Bowra for drawing my attention to this and other passages.

Εὐνομα is also found in an emendation by Herwerden of Theognis 1142, but the alteration of the εὐσβας of the MSS. seems unnecessary. The plural is found in the Homeric hymn to Earth the mother of all (xxx. 11. αὐτο δ' εὐνομῃσι πλιν κατ καλλιγναικα κοιρανουσι), a passage which is obscure to me.

page 90 note 2 For Δυσνομη as the daughter of Eris and the sister of a number of lawless qualities, cf. Hesiod, , Theogony 230Google Scholar . I think that in the passage from Xenophanes the opposite of εὐνομη would be lawlessness of some kind, δυσνομη or στσις.

page 90 note 3 Μχρι μμ 'Ραμψιντου βασιλος οἶναι ν Αἰγπτῳ πσαν οὐνομην, κα εὐθενειν Αἴγυπτον μεγλως μετ δ τοτον βασιλεσαντ σφεων ×οπα ς πσαν κκτητα λσαι. If Egypt lost her εὐνομη after the reign of Rhampsinitus this was due to no constitutional change, but to the unexpected behaviour of Cheops.

Another fifth-century example, if the restoration is correct, is in Collitz, G.D.I. 5075 line 35, where the Cretan officials called [οἱ π τς] εὐνομα]ς] must be responsible for the keeping of the laws and not for the laws themselves. Cf. also Sophocles, Ajax 713.

page 90 note 4 Pseudo-Xenophon, Ἀθ. πολ. i. 8. He does not move far from the original meaning of the word, for his complaint is principally of the disorderliness of the δﱶμος (cf. i. 5. ν δ τῷ δμῳ μαθα το πλεστη κα τ α ξ α κα πονηρα), and in his remedy, εὐνομα, though the legislative power is indeed restricted to the few, the largest factor is the control of the disorderly (i. 9).

page 90 note 5 Aeschines, in Timarch. 5. 31. ντεθεν γρ ἰσχσετε, ὅταν εὐνομσθε κα μ καταλησθε5; ὺπ τν παρανομοντων κα σελγς βιοντων. The passage associates εὐνομα with the democracy, though the word εὐνομσθε is still used in the simple sense of keeping the law, and is directly opposed to παρανομντων.

Demosthenes xxiv. 139–140 is less clear. Locris is there cited as a city that does not readily change its laws, and Demosthenes suggests that Locris, as a πλις εὐνομυμνη, is a good example to bring forward. It is clear that its reluctance to change its laws is not the reason why it is called εὐνουμνη: I think the point is that the Locrian practice is recommended by the fact that the internal politics of the city were quiet and peaceful.

page 90 note 6 Diodorus, vii. fr. 12, 1 Vogel. The couplet is wholly unsuitable to the original oracle: cf. the adaptation in anth. Pal. xiv. 77, and for these oracles at large, Meyer, Forschungen i. 215–244.

page 91 note 1 So the Vatican excerpt: Eusebius reads αἰτεμενος.

page 91 note 2 Plutarch, , Lycurgus 5, 4Google Scholar . He gives a prose version of the ‘well-known oracle’, ending: εὐνομας δ χρῄξοντι διδναι κα καταινεῖν ἔφη τν θεν ἤ πολὺ κρατστη τν ἄλλων ἔσται π ο λ ι τ ε ι ν.

There is possibly a like instance of the concrete use of εὐνομομαι in Diogenes Laertius i. 113 (letter of Epimenides to Solon), where εὐνομημνοις seems to correspond to λευθεριξαντας ν τεθμεῖς ρστοις. I know of no other instance where it could plausibly be said that εὐνομα means a set of good laws.

page 91 note 3 Cf. Politics 1326a and 1327a; de motu animalium 703a; Rhetoric 1354a; etc. Other Aristotelian references are mostly to εὐνομα as the end of the politician, and to use them would be to beg the question.

Cf. also Plato, , Rep. 380bGoogle Scholar ; abd 425am which is almost a pun on the musical sense of the word.

page 91 note 4 Suidas, s.v v. εὐνομα. <εὐνομουμνη.> καλῷ, γαθῷ νμῷ νομῳ διοικουμνη. The reference is probably to Demosthenes xxiv. 139–140 (cited in n. 5, p. 90) and the definition probably rests on a misunderstanding of this passage, taken in isolation.

page 91 note 6 I may perhaps add here a number of musical or semi-musical references; Pindar, , Pyth. v. 67Google Scholar , Plato, , Laws 815bGoogle Scholar (cf. Rep. 425a, cited in n. 3 above), and Archias, in Anth. Pal. vi. 95Google Scholar . These suggest a fairly close connection between this and the ordinary use of the word. Instances like that from Archias, or that from Philippus (ibid. 236), who refers to the εὐνομη achieved by Augustus, are presumably responsible for Suidas' definition.

page 92 note 1 Cf. Gery, Wade in C.A.H. iii, p. 562Google Scholar , n. 2.

page 92 note 2 Much has been placed to the credit of Spartan ingenuity in perverting legend. But there is no place here for this factor. Sparta's interest lay in the raising of the original date of their present constitution, not in the intrusion of Lycurgus into a setting much later than the Spartan date for him.

page 93 note 1 This summary statement hardly does justice to the varied and ingenious theories which have been put forward. My point is only that they mostly understand from κακονομώτατοι and εὐνομην some constitutional change.

page 94 note 1 That this is not an imaginary difficulty, frivolously conjured up to support the historical credit of Thucydides by a forced interpretation of his text, is shown by the comment fo Steup and Classen, who adhere to the orthodox historical interpretation of the passage, but nevertheless regard the position of the first καἰ with mistrust, and remark that we should have expected it before κ παλαιττου. Steup, in the appendix to ii. 46. 1, distinguishes two classes in his examples of the delayed κα, one in which the idea of joining the two clauses with καἰ … κα was not originally in the writer's mind, and the other in which a word or words have been placed before the first κα, which were originally intended to be common to both clauses, but are not regarded in the second. He does not assign this example to either class (indeed, their reasons for regarding this as a delayed κα are nowhere given), but I imagine that it is nearer to the second. Thucydides set out, so to spead, to say that Sparta had had no tyrant since the recovery from στσις, and then superimposed the fact that she had never had a tyrant at all. The root of the matter is that Thucydides moves very fast, and does not always wait for the completion of his own constructions. But though dissections are bound to be clumsy, we cannot neglect any factor in his building of a sentence.

page 95 note 1 Herodotus ii. 179: the peculiar position of Naucratis under Amasis. [Cf., however, J.H.S. 1937, pp. 227 ff. If Mr. Cook's view is correct, the reference is to a date c. 615–610, not c. 570: but this need not seriously affect my argument.]

page 95 note 2 I am assuming throughout this section that there was a seventh-century poet named Tyrtaeus, and that we have some fragments of his works. In particulr, I wish to see if any coherent and credible picture of the poem can be formed on the hypothesis that Tyrtaeus wrote fragment C. Previous writers have too readily assumed that the content of fragment C was certain, and have judged its authorship by the light of their historical views on Tyrataeus or the rhetra. The literary and metrical arguments I cannot discuss, except to say that to the best of my belief the lines I have assigned to Tyrataeus could have been written by him.

page 96 note 1 It is true that the phrase ὑπ τν πλεμον is in itself uncertain, and could as well mean ‘just after the war’. But this seems to be excluded by the context. Aristotle has just said that such things are especially liable to happen during wars, and ὑπ τν πλεμον in this sentence echoes the ν τοῖς πολμοις of the last.

page 96 note 2 The main grounds for the date here assigned to the war are these: (1) Tyrtaeus himself ascribes the first war to αἰχμητα πατρων μετρων πατρες. Such evidence as there is for the date of the first war points without exception to the latter half of the eighth century, and I think that Tyrtaeus meant literally ‘our fathers’ fathers'. (2) The second Messenian war is somehow to be identified with the war in which Sparta broke the power of Pheidon, and the decline of Argos is to be measured by the rise of tyrannies in Sicyon, Epidaurus and elsewhere. I cannot here argue this thesis at length, but I think the list of allies in Pausanias iv. 15. 4 entirely worthless, and the grouping given in Strabo, 355, 358 and 362 not only possible but likely. [Of Pausanias' allies, only Arcadia and Corinth can be traced with any plausibility to Rhianus, while the allocation of Lepreon and Elis suggests the conditions of tha late fifth century and is probably influenced by Thucydides v. 31 ff., entirely in the manner of the authour of the Anaxilas story. CF. J. Kroymann, Sparta und Messenien, the latest statement of the Rhianus question.] I would accept Ure's connexion of Herodotus iii. 47 and 59 (The Origin of Tyranny, p. 177). (3) The Eusebian dates (c. 635) and Suidas' date for Tyrataeus (640–637) are uncertain ground, and in this class comes also Rhianus' attribution of the war of Anaxandros and Latychidas I. (4) I see not reason to regard as authentic the figure ascribed to Epaminondas in Plutarch, mor. 194b, or to prefer it to the unreliable figures of Isocrates, Archid. 26, Dinarchus, in Dem. 99, 29, or Lycurgus, in Leocr. 62: nor do I greatly care for the figures of Pausanias iv. 23 and 27.

page 96 note 3 For this date see below, p. 99. It is at least certain that the number of the tribes had not yet been changed when Tyrtaeus, still during the second Messenian war, wrote the line (i. 12) χωρς Πμφυλο τε κα 'ͤλλεῖς ἠδ [ Δυμνες.]

page 96 note 4 Whether this name was given to the poem before or after 600 makes little difference.

page 97 note 1 The Heraclidae must here be the kings. Elsewhere Tyrtaeus calls the Spartans at large sons of Heracles (8. 1, if this is Tyrtaeus), but here, in the second couplet, they are marked off from the main body of the Spartans. He can hardly mean, as Pindar sometimes does, the tribe Hylleis, and must refer to the kings.

page 97 note 2 Strabo, 362. The meaning of στρατηγσαι in this passage is not entirely clear. Dr. Bowra has drawn my attention to hte importance of fr. 1. 12–17 in this connection.

page 97 note 3 Cf., for instance, Ehrenberg, Neugründer des Staates, p. 33: ‘Daran, dass sie den Inhalt der grossen Rhetra widergeben, kann kein ernstlicher Zweifel sein. Dann aber können sie nicht von Tyrtaios stammen’.

page 97 note 4 Provided always that the restoration of the corrupt ending (γαμωδανγοριανημην κα κρτος) follows, as I think it must, the lines usually attempted. Cf. Wilamowitz, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyrik: Wilamowitz, who recognizes most of the difficulties of the normal interpretation, declines any decision. Cf. also Meyer, , Forschungen i. 227–9Google Scholar .

page 97 note 5 It makes a certain difference whether we accept the το which follows πρεσβτας in Plutarch's text or the δ of the Vatican palimpsest. The latter would place the council in an intermediate position between kings and people. But the readings of the palimpsest are mostlhy inferior: βουγενας, which can easily have crept in from the rider to the rhetra (Plutarch, mor. 789e, surely refers to the rhetra and not, as Edmonds appears to think, to this poem.) On the other hand, ἰσχερεσσα seems an unlikely corruption of ἱμερεσσα, though I have no clear idea what it would mean if true. For the sade of the construction, τε seems preferable. The whole difficulty of the sentence is to continue ᾰρχειν βουλ as a verb through the second couplet, and this is easier with τε. The council, then, is joined with the kings in the initiation of state business, not subordinated to them. But it remains true that the kings bulk very large in these two couplets, while the council is passed over in three words.

page 98 note 1 There is of course no difference in practice, so far as the people are concerned, between this and teh rhetra, for the rhetra gains them no more than the power to decide on the proposals set before them. But the difference of emphasis is very great.

page 98 note 2 Cf. Meyer, op. cit. pp. 228–9, and n. 2, p. 96. But the collocation is more probably a pure accident.

page 98 note 3 See below, p. 99, on the opening couplets.

page 99 note 1 This suggestion was made by Wilamowitz, in Homerische Untersuchungen, p. 282Google Scholar , but later withdrawn in Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyrik, on the ground that τῇδε was inexplicable.

page 99 note 2 Meyer, who kept the text of line 8, insisted that the subject of line 7 must be the Spartans at large, and joined lines 7–8 with 9–10, as polemic against the views of 3–6. If the lines are not from Tyrtaeus, we have more latitude in the choice of a subject, but I cannot see why we must choose ‘all the Spartans’, or what is the connection of thought between the two couplets. The connecting τε of line 9 only makes matters worse.

page 99 note 3 His immediate authority is no doubt Ephorus, but the original adaptor remains obscure. The doctrine of the lines would suit Pausanias, but he would hardly have ascribed the oracle to his enemy Lycugus. Perhaps the position will be clearer if we are ever delivered from the reading τ' γκωμων πλεστων in Strabo 366.

page 99 note 4 Hellanicus, F.G.H. 4 F 116, or Ephorus 70 F 118 (Strabo 366) Hellanicus is the only known dissentient from the Lycurgan tradition, for we have no right to extract an opinion from Thucydides' silence.

page 99 note 5 This disposes of Meyer's objection that the Delphic origin of the Lycurgan constitution was not belived in Sparat at this earl date, and that the lines are therefore a fourth-century fabrication.

page 100 note 1 Cf., for instance, the ταμπλαιοι δ τινες χρησμο of Plutarch, , Lysander 26Google Scholar .

page 100 note 2 For this and subsequen references to the archaeological evidence, cf. Blakeway, in Class. Rev. 1935, p. 185Google Scholar .

page 101 note 1 Tyrtaeus fr. 1. 12, and Herodotus ix. 10, etc.: and plutarch, . Solon 10Google Scholar , ad fin. (the five Spartan arbitrators). Herodotus i. 67. 5. (the five γαθοεργε).

page 101 note 2 Cf. Meyer, , Forschungen i. pp, 246–8Google Scholar , and for interpretation of the rhetra, Ehrenberg, , Neugründer des Staates, pp. 22 ffGoogle Scholar .

page 101 note 3 Ephorus, F.G.H. 70 F 149 (Strabo 482). Cf. Aristotle, , Politics, 1272aGoogle Scholar .

page 102 note 1 Ehrenburg, op. cit. p. 106, draws this paralel.