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Zeno's Ideal State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

H. C. Baldry
H. C. Baldry
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Extract

Although we have more references to the Politela of Zeno of Kition than to any of his other works, our evidence for its character and content is so slight, open to dispute on so many points, and at first sight so inconsistent, that there is a strong temptation to follow other guides: our conception of Stoic doctrine as a whole; a particular theory of the development of such an idea as the ‘brotherhood of man’; or even the general tendency to read modern ideas into ancient thought. It is hardly surprising that such material has led to a bewildering variety of interpretations. Thus while Zeller, followed by Barth and others, describes Zeno's ideal as a ‘polity of the wise’, Pöhlmann makes it include both wise and foolish. Pöhlmann, Dyroff and Karst place it in the future, Pohlenz in the past. Whereas Pearson, Hicks, Bidez and others see it as a world state embracing all humanity, for Tarn it is ‘a very limited State … a quite small community’. Recent discussions appear only to have increased the confusion, and it seems worth while to make a fresh attempt to gain clarity on the subject.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 79 , November 1959 , pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1959

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References

1 Zeller, , Philos. d. Gr. iii 1, 302Google Scholar; Pöhlmann, , Gesch. d. sozialen Frage u. d. Sozialismus in d. antiken Welt 3 ii 273Google Scholar; Dyroff, , Ethik d. alten Stoa 220Google Scholar; Kärst, , Gesch. d. Hellenismus 2 ii 125Google Scholar; Pohlenz, , Die Stoa i 137Google Scholar; Pearson, , Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes 191Google Scholar; Hicks, , Stoic and Epicurean 9Google Scholar; Bidez, , La Cité du Monde et la Cité du Soleil chez les Stoiciens 29Google Scholar; Festugière, , Le Dieu Cosmique 264, 270Google Scholar; Tarn, , Alexander the Great ii 418.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Wachsmuth, , Rhein. Mus. xxxiv (1879) 42.Google Scholar

3 vii 4. Cf. Dyroff, 214, n. 2. On paralleled in Diog. L. vii 187, 188, see Wachsmuth, 38–51. For Stoic brevity, cf. Diog. L. vii 59 (συντομία).

4 Zeno's rejection of ‘ordinary education’ as useless clearly implies criticism of Plato's proposals to reform it. Stein, (Die Erkenntnistheorie d. Stoa 303, n. 689)Google Scholar has suggested that an alternative curriculum, involving the allegorical interpretation of Homer, was put forward in the books on Greek Education, Homeric Problems, and Hearing Poetry mentioned in Diogenes Laertius' list of Zeno's works (vii 4),

5 Philod., col. 15; Pohlenz, ii 75. Crönert, 57, seems equally wrong in limiting the reference to Antisthenes and Diogenes. Cf. Aristotle's use of οἱ ἀρχαῑοι to describe the early philosophers (Met. Λ 1, 2, etc.).

6 E.g. Pohlenz, i 137, ii 75. On this passage cf. Merlan, P., Cl. Phil. xlv (1950) 161–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 For ὑπόθεσις here, cf. Arist. Pol. 1261a17, 1263D31.

8 I am indebted to Mr. F. H. Sandbach for valuable comment on this and other points.

9 Dyroff, 211, suggests that is a denial of Plato's claim (Rep. 402, 485; Laws 836) that Eros produced wisdom and virtue: for the Stoics, virtue begets Eros. Or Pontianus may mean that Eros leads to spiritual effects, not physical relations. (Cf. Diog. L. vii 130: ). Tarn's difficulties over this passage (ii 420–1) result from his misinterpretation of passage 4. For ὁμόνοια among the wise, cf. SVF i 630, 635.

10 A similar comparison is given in passage 6 by the reading Πλάτωνι in some MSS. after This is printed by Pearson and von Arnim, but rejected by Hübner, Cobet and Hicks, and is probably to be regarded as an interpolation.

11 Cf. Lucian, , Vit. Auct. 9Google Scholar (Diogenes describing the Cynic way of life): Another way of reconciling passage 8 with 6 and 7 is to suppose that Zeno accepted marriage and the family as a natural institution (Crates and Hipparchia made a permanent union, Diog. L. vi 96–8) but believed at the same time in promiscuity of sexual intercourse—the fulfilment of a natural appetite unconnected with love.

12 Cf. Philod., col. 14: both Chrysippus and Diogenes wrote In genrel, cf. ibid. It seems to me uncertain whether this passage refers to Cynic or Stoic doctrine.

13 EN viii i 1155a26. Cf. Plato, Rep. 405a–c. Zeno's argument against the practice of hearing both sides in a law-court (SVF i 78) can hardly be his main reason for excluding law-courts from Utopia.

14 Athen, iv 59c; Philod., col. 14.

15 Diog. L. vii 124, 125. Cf. Arist. EN viii 9, 1159b29 ff.

16 Cf. also ibid. 328d. Merlan, 161, gives other reasons for rejecting Tarn's argument.

17 Tarn (ii 419, n. 4) says that the ‘human herd’ ‘was a Cynic idea, not Stoic; and this comparison is not from Zeno, but is Plutarch having a hit at the Stoics’. But Zeller, to whom this attribution to the Cynics seems to be due, gives as his main ground for it the use of the phrase in this account of the Politela and the fact that ‘this treatise of Zeno was always considered to express the opinions of the Cynic School’ (op. cit. ii i 325, n. 5). Actually, the chief precedents for the analogy are in Plato, e.g. Polit. 267d ff., 271e, 274e, Laws 680e. Cf. also Xen., Mem. i 2, 32.

18 Nor, I think, is anyone else of his time. I find the arguments claiming such a view for Alexander unconvincing. Cf. Badian, E., Historia vii (1958) 425–44Google Scholar for criticism of them.

19 But cf. 330d:

20 Rhein. Mus. xl (1885) 252–4. Cf. Badian, 432–9.