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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2020
At Pol. 7.12, 1331a19–20, Aristotle states it as a matter of fact that the citizenry of the best city should be divided into ‘public messes’ (syssitia). His primary concern in the rest of the chapter is to uncover the optimal way in which syssitia should be organized, and the way in which they should be situated in relation to other facilities, public buildings, agorai and temples in the city. The proposed plan is roughly as follows. Syssitia would be divided into three main sections. First, the syssitia of soldiers would be held at the guardhouses located at strategic points along the walls surrounding the city (1331a20–3). Next come ‘the most supreme syssitia of the magistrates’ (τὰ κυριώτατα τῶν ἀρχείων συσσίτια: 1331a24–5) and the syssitia ‘of the priests’ (τῶν ἱερέων: 1331b5). These would be held at a place appropriately having ‘an appearance directed at establishing virtue and [being] more strongly positioned than the neighbouring parts of the city’ (1331a28–30), that is, the highest place in the city. This envisioned acropolis would also house temples (1331a24–5). Situated below it would be the ‘free agora’, which would include gymnasia (1331a35–7) and would be generally directed at leisurely activity (1331b12). Finally, below the free agora, a ‘necessary agora’ and buildings of officials entrusted with legal, commercial and municipal duties would be established, at a location conducive to importing and exporting goods (1331b6–12).
1 Smith, W., Wayte, W., Marindin, G.E., A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London, 1891), 749Google Scholar.
2 Węcowski, M., The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet (Oxford, 2014), 108–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Węcowski (n. 2), 110.
4 Węcowski (n. 2), 115.
5 David, E., ‘The Spartan syssitia and Plato's Laws’, AJPh 99 (1978), 486–95Google Scholar, at 486–7.
6 See Smith, Wayte and Marindin (n. 1), 750; Erickson, B.L., ‘Public feasts and private symposia in the Archaic and Classical periods’, Hesperia Supplements 44 (2011), 381–91Google Scholar, at 384–6.
7 Reeve, C.D.C. (transl. and comm.), Aristotle: Politics (Indianapolis, 1998), 208 n. 48Google Scholar.
8 Kraut, R. (transl. and comm.), Aristotle Politics Books VII and VIII (Oxford, 1997), 110Google Scholar.
9 Kraut (n. 8); Reeve (n. 7), 225.
10 Reeve (n. 7), 34 n. 28.
11 It is true that Aristotle says that ‘contemplations and thoughts’ (θεωρίας καὶ διανοήσεις) are not necessarily done ‘in relation to others’ (Pol. 7.3, 1325b16–21). However, in Eth. Nic. 9.9, Eth. Eud. 7.12 and [Mag. mor.] 2.15 it is made clear that human beings do need friends in order to be happy and self-sufficient.
12 Dickenson, C., On the Agora (Leiden, 2017), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, Dickenson also notes that ‘[f]or the Classical period securely attested examples of political buildings standing on the edge of an agora are surprisingly few’ (at 88).
13 Dickenson (n. 12), 112.
14 Alternatively, as an anonymous referee helpfully pointed out to me, by ‘fear’ here Aristotle might have in mind ‘shame’, as Plato discusses it in Leg. 1, 647a–b; cf. Newman, W.L. (ed. and comm.), The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1902), 3.416–17Google Scholar. There, shame is described as one of two kinds of fear, and is praised for its positive impact on both individual and civic behaviour.
15 Kraut (n. 8), 121; cf. Eth. Nic. 8.12, 1161b33–5.
16 Solmsen suggests that Aristotle uses σχολή in two distinct senses, one (predominantly in the ‘middle books’ of the Politics) to designate freedom to engage in political activity, and another (in Politics Books 7–8) to designate ‘“leisure” from private as well as from political obligations—and for the καλά’; see Solmsen, F., ‘Leisure and play in Aristotle's ideal state’, RhM 107 (1964), 197–8 n. 19Google Scholar. But Aristotle speaks, for example, of just actions aimed at honour and welfare not only as καλά but indeed as κάλλισται πράξεις (7.13, 1332a10–16). At least political actions of that kind should not be excluded from his conception of σχολή in Politics Books 7–8. I am thankful to the anonymous referee for a helpful comment on this issue.
17 Kraut (n. 8), 203. See also Caston, V., ‘Aristotle's two intellects: a modest proposal’, Phronesis 44 (1999), 199–227CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at n. 19; cf. De an. 408b19–25.
18 Dickenson (n. 12), 149.
19 Newman (n. 14), 414.
20 Kraut (n. 8), 122.
21 See Smyth, H.W., A Greek Grammar for Colleges (New York, 1920), 446 [§2008]Google Scholar; cf. Xen. An. 2.2.3.
22 Newman (n. 14), 414.
23 Waywell, G., ‘Sparta and its topography’, BICS 43 (1999), 1–26Google Scholar, at 8.
24 Rabinowitz, A., ‘Drinking from the same cup: Sparta and Late Archaic commensality’, in Hodkinson, S. (ed.), Sparta: Comparative Approaches (Swansea, 2009), 113–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 141.
25 Erickson (n. 6), 383, discussing this passage, raises difficulties involved in imagining a single building designed to accommodate the syssitia of an entire citizenry of a polis.
26 Prent, M., Cretan Sanctuaries and Cults (Leiden, 2005), 452CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Prent (n. 26), 467.
28 Erickson (n. 6), 387–8; cf. Haggis, D.C., Mook, M.S., Fitzsimons, R.D., Scarry, C.M., Snyder, L.M. and West, W.C., ‘Excavations in the Archaic civic buildings at Azoria in 2005–2006’, Hesperia 80 (2011), 1–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Newman (n. 14), 410.
30 Newman (n. 14), 410, however, nevertheless takes Aristotle to mean that only the highest magistrates would have their meals at the acropolis: ‘the soldiers will have their syssitia on the walls, the highest magistrates and the priests on the hill on which the temples stand, and the less dignified magistrates near the commercial agora.’
31 Reeve (n. 7), 211 translates: ‘As for the boards of officials …’.
32 Thus Jowett, B. (in Barnes, J. [ed.], The Complete Works of Aristotle [Princeton, 1995], 2112–13)Google Scholar translates 1331b6–11: ‘The magistrates who deal with contracts (…) ought to be established near an agora and some public place of meeting’; Rackham, H. translates: ‘And all the magistracies that superintended contracts (…) should have buildings adjacent to an agora or some public place of resort’ (Aristotle: Politics [Cambridge, 1932], 593–5)Google Scholar.
33 Some temples will be located at the acropolis, to the convenience of the elderly priests, but others will also be scattered throughout the city, as ordained by law or divination (1331a24–8).
34 Simpson, P.L.P., A Philosophical Commentary on Aristotle's Politics (Chapel Hill, 1998), 230Google Scholar; Davis, M., ‘Politics and poetry: Aristotle's Politics, Books VII and VIII’, Interpretation 19 (1991–2), 157–68Google Scholar, at 163.
35 Davis (n. 34), 164: ‘Now it is only in a political order of this sort that the distinction between the good as useful and the good as kalon can be overcome. (…) When I open my eyes and see not only where things are, but in seeing where they are see also what they are, then the objects around me become not only things utilized by the city, but the city itself.’
36 P. Zucker, Town and Square (New York, 1966), 34.
37 Davis (n. 34), 163–4. Davis (n. 34), 164 traces this idea back to Plato's Laws, in which the Athenian Stranger describes the constitution he envisages as akin to the ‘realest tragedy’ (τραγῳδίαν τὴν ἀληθεστάτην), since it provides an ‘imitation of the most beautiful and best life’ (μίμησις τοῦ καλλίστου καὶ ἀρίστου βίου) (7, 817b1–5).
38 See Downey, G., ‘Aristotle as an expert on urban problems’, Talanta 3 (1971), 56–73Google Scholar; White, T.I., ‘Aristotle and Utopia’, Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976), 635–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cahill, N., Household and City Organization at Olynthus (New Haven, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E.A. Irvine, ‘The place of politics: Heidegger on Aristotle's topos and the polis’ (Diss., Villanova University, 2016).
39 Newman, W.L. (ed. and comm.), The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1887), 1.339Google Scholar.
40 On this point, see Carson, S., ‘Review of Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity by Mary Louise Gill’, AJPh 113 (1992), 286–9Google Scholar, contra Gill, M.L., Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity (Princeton, 1989)Google Scholar.
41 For a defence of this view, see Keyt, D., ‘Three basic theorems in Aristotle's Politics’, in Keyt, D. and Miller, F. (edd.), A Companion to Aristotle's Politics (Oxford, 1991), 118–41Google Scholar; Kraut, R., Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2002), 240–6Google Scholar. For a different view, according to which the naturalness of the polis consists merely in its being the outcome of the natural impulses of individual human beings, see Miller, F.D., Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar. I return to this issue at the end of this paper.
42 See Bodnár, I., ‘Teleology across natures’, Rhizai 2 (2005), 9–29Google Scholar, contra Matthen, M., ‘The holistic presuppositions of Aristotle's cosmology’, OSAPh 20 (2001), 171–99Google Scholar.
43 See Miller, F.D., ‘Aristotle's divine cause’, in Feser, E. (ed.), Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics (London, 2013), 277–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Newman (n. 14), 411.
45 Newman (n. 14), 411.
46 On this passage and the following ones, see Lloyd, G.E.R., Polarity and Analogy (Bristol, 1962), 61–5Google Scholar.
47 Though, as noted previously, there is no evidence for a hierarchy between the four sublunary elements in Aristotle's view, he does make it clear that they are collectively inferior to ether. See Cael. 1.2, 269a30–2, 269b13–17.
48 Of course, relinquishing his view of the heart as the seat of cognition and recognizing the function of the brain would have allowed Aristotle to argue for this point more convincingly.
49 Miller (n. 41), 28 and 80–1.
50 A predecessor of this account is found in Pl. Ti. 69c–70a. There, the physical constitution of a human being is likened to a city, with the head (the seat of reason), corresponding to the acropolis, separated by the neck, corresponding to an isthmus, from the chest (housing spirit) and the abdomen (housing the appetites), corresponding to the ‘dwelling’ (οἴκησιν) of men and of women. For a recent discussion of this passage, see Renault, P., ‘Political images of the soul’, in Edmonds, R. III and Destrée, P. (edd.), Plato and the Power of Images (Leiden and Boston, 2017), 138–57Google Scholar. I am thankful to David Kaufman for bringing the connection between this passage and Pol. 7.12 to my attention.
51 For one version of this interpretation, see Keyt (n. 41) and Kraut (n. 41). For a rebuttal and an alternative, see Miller (n. 41).
52 Previous versions of this article were presented at Transylvania University, at the 29th International Conference of Philosophy in Greece, and at the 2017 Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies conference at the University of South Florida. I would like to thank my audiences for the helpful discussion. I also wish to thank Joanne Waugh, David Kaufman, Patrick Finglass and the anonymous referee at CQ for their useful comments and suggestions.
