Obituary
Gilbert Murray
- M.I.H.
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. xv-xvi
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Export citation
Other
List of Subscribers
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. v-vi
-
- Article
- Export citation
Research Article
Note on the Peace of Nikias
- A. Andrewes, D. M. Lewis
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 177-180
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
In the early part of the fourth century it was the regular practice for Athenian treaties to specify the authorities who were to swear the oath on either side, and, although the fifth-century material is more scanty, three clear instances suggest that the habit was already established by 425. The notable exception is the Peace of Nikias, and with it the Spartan alliance of 421, in which not the quality but the number is prescribed, seventeen from each city. Kirchhoff suggested that this odd number might be built up, on the Spartan side, from the two kings (who in fact head the list), the five ephors (the eponymous ephor Pleistolas comes third and the next four might be his colleagues; cf. Tod, GHI 99), and a board of ten. Kirchhoff refused to speculate about these ten beyond saying that it was a normal number, but this gap in his argument can perhaps be filled from a passage in Diodorus (below) which has received no satisfactory explanation. Normal Athenian practice would not oblige Athens to conform to the Spartan number, and if Kirchhoff is right we should perhaps suppose that Sparta asked for numerical parity. The next question will be, how the Athenians made up their seventeen.
Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251–259
- J. L. Ackrill
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 1-6
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
My purpose is not to give a full interpretation of this difficult and important passage, but to discuss one particular problem, taking up some remarks made by F. M. Cornford (in Plato's Theory of Knowledge) and by Mr. R. Robinson (in his paper on Plato's Parmenides, Classical Philology, 1942). First it may be useful to give a very brief and unargued outline of the passage. Plato seeks to prove that concepts are related in certain definite ways, that there is a συμπλοκὴ εἰδῶν (251d–252e). Next (253) he assigns to philosophy the task of discovering what these relations are: the philosopher must try to get a clear view of the whole range of concepts and of how they are interconnected, whether in genus-species pyramids or in other ways. Plato now gives a sample of such philosophising. Choosing some concepts highly relevant to problems already broached in the Sophist he first (254–5) establishes that they are all different one from the other, and then (255e–258) elicits the relationships in which they stand to one another. The attempt to discover and state these relationships throws light on the puzzling notions ὄν and μὴ ὄν and enables Plato to set aside with contempt certain puzzles and paradoxes propounded by superficial thinkers (259). He refers finally (259e) to the absolute necessity there is for concepts to be in definite relations to one another if there is to be discourse at all: διὰ γὰρ τήν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν So the section ends with a reassertion of the point with which it began (251d–252e): that there is and must be a συμπλοκὴ εἰδῶν.
The question I wish to discuss is this. Is it true to say that one of Plato's achievements in this passage is ‘the discovery of the copula’ or ‘the recognition of the ambiguity of ἔστιν’ as used on the one hand in statements of identity and on the other hand in attributive statements? The question is whether Plato made a philosophical advance which we might describe in such phrases as those just quoted, but no great stress is to be laid on these particular phrases. Thus it is no doubt odd to say that Plato (or anyone else) discovered the copula. But did he draw attention to it? Did he expound or expose the various roles of the verb ἔστιν? Many of his predecessors and contemporaries reached bizarre conclusions by confusing different usesof the word; did Plato respond by elucidating these different uses? These are the real questions.
False Statement in the Sophist
- R. S. Bluck
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 181-186
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Various attempts have been made to find a satisfactory alternative to Cornford's explanation of what the Sophist has to say about false statement, and in particular to his interpretation of the passage in which the statements ‘Theaetetus is sitting’ and ‘Theaetetus is flying’ are discussed. The difficulty with Cornford's view is that he wants to find the explanation of truth and falsity entirely in the ‘blending’ or incompatibility of Forms, but that in the examples Socrates chooses, while Sitting and Flying may be Forms, Theaetetus cannot be. Hence Cornford has to say, ‘It is not meant that Forms are the only elements in all discourse. We can also make statements about individual things. But it is true that every such statement must contain at least one Form’. Unfortunately, when talking about the ϵἴδων συμπλοκή at 259e, the Stranger seems clearly to envisage a blendin g of ϵἴδη with each other:. How can this be reconciled with an ‘example’ in which only one term stands for a Form?
I do not propose to discuss in detail the various solutions that have been offered, but to set forth my own interpretation of the whole passage. This may be regarded as to some extent a ‘blending’ of what has been said by Professor Hackforth and Mr. Hamlyn, but a number of points arise which deserve further discussion, and it may perhaps be hoped that such a σύνθϵσις as this may prove to be .
Magna Moralia and Nicomachean Ethics
- D. J. Allan
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 7-11
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
In what relation the Magna Moralia stands to the genuine works of Aristotle, and to what phase of Peripatetic doctrine it belongs, are questions which have been discussed with a fair measure of agreement by living scholars. Jaeger described the revolution within the Peripatos which, within two generations, led Dicaearchus to reject the ideal of the contemplative life, making human happiness depend on moral virtue and the life of action. Walzer showed beyond reasonable doubt that the M.M. was influenced by Theophrastus's terminology and statement of problems, and was led to infer that the writer, in his treatment of phronesis and sophia, had formed an uneasy compromise between the views of Theophrastus and Dicaearchus (p. 191). Brink proved from the terminology and style of the treatise, and in amore general way from the structure of its argument, that the author was expounding, probably at an interval of several generations, a received doctrine which he failed to think out properly for himself. Building upon their results, Dirlmeier boldly tried to fix the absolute date of the work within half a century. He argued that it must have been in existence before the first century B.C., since it was used as an authoritative text by the Peripatetic writer from whom Arius Didymus took his compendium of Peripatetic ethical doctrine. On the other hand, a terminus post quem can be obtained from 1204a23, where we read that ‘some persons either equate happiness and pleasure, or regard pleasure as essential to happiness; others, unwilling to reckon pleasure as a good, nevertheless add absence of pain (sc. to ἀρετή in their definition of happiness). Who then were these others? Cicero provides the answer: Diodorus, eius [Critolai] auditor, adiungit ad honestatem vacuitatem doloris (de Finibus V 5, 14, cf. Tusc. Disp. V 30, 85). Now this Diodorus lived in the second half of the second century B.C., and the M.M. mustbe nearly contemporary with him. In confirmation of this, Dirlmeier showed that the writer uses without comment terms which are unquestionably of Stoic origin, such as προθετικός, ἐπιτευκτικός, κατόρθωμα, ἀποκατάστασις, which are coinages not of the earliest Stoicism but of Chrysippus or his followers. Both Walzer and Dirlmeier have called attention to the fact that the writer shows himself to be wholly without understanding of Aristotle's theology, and actually becomes polemical, refusing to contemplate a God who contemplates himself (1212b37–13a10).
Zeno's Paradoxes
- N. Booth
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 187-201
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The incessant labours of British industrialists have sent up a pall of smoke over our larger cities. Sometimes the pall descends and causes fog. So it is also with scholarship; the incessant labours of modern scholars often cause a fog to descend upon our understanding of ancient philosophers. A case in point is Zeno of Elea. The paradoxes of Zeno have aroused much discussion ever since they were first propounded; the long history has been recorded by Florian Cajori (The History of Zeno's Arguments on Motion, reprinted from American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 22, 1915). But it was not until quite recent times that men began to doubt the correctness of Aristotle's account of the paradoxes. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a number of French writers built up elaborate reconstructions of Zeno's four arguments on Motion. Refusing to accept the explicit testimony of Aristotle on a number of points, they argued, first, that Zeno must have been more intelligent than Aristotle made him out to be; and secondly, that the arguments, when rightly interpreted and reconstructed, follow a certain pattern. Thus in their praise of Zeno they could not help including an element of denigration of Aristotle.
Gorgias and the Socratic Principle Nemo Sua Sponte Peccat
- Guido Calogero
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 12-17
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
More than a century ago the great German scholar Welcker tried to confirm the tradition that amongst the sophists the real master of Socrates had been Prodicus. Welcker called him his ‘forerunner’. In our century this valuation was once exaggerated to the extent of maintaining that the ‘principle of Prodicus’—that is, the care for the exact distinction and usage of the meanings of synonyms—had been the starting-point for every sound development in logic, whereas the methodical pattern presupposed by Socrates in his discussions was, on the contrary, a Prinzip der absoluten Vieldeutigkeit, a principle of absolute equivocation and ambiguity, and therefore the starting-point for every kind of trouble in that field.
Of course, the connection of Socrates with Prodicus was justified by the fact that both, in their conversations, appeared frequently to be dissatisfied with certain answers or expressions of their interlocutors, and therefore discussed the meanings of certain terms used by them. But the difference between the two approaches was very sharp, as appears from every passage of the Socratic dialogues of Plato, in which Prodicus is introduced to explain the demands of his synonymies in the midst of the debate. He wants everybody to use, for example, the verb εὐφραίνεσθαι in some cases and the verb ἥδεσθαι in some others, following what he thinks to be the right usage, the ὀρθότης ὀνομάτων; whereas Socrates does not care what kind of words one may use, but is only interested in what one really expresses by these words, that is, the meaning which he gives to them. Both search for meanings of words: but Prodicus' question is: What does it mean?—and Socrates' question is: What do you mean?—Prodicus says: ἀνδρεία means this, θρασύτης means that: so you shall use ἀνδρεία in the first case and θρασύτης in the second. Socrates asks: What do you mean by ἀνδρεία? (τί λέγεις τὴν ἀνδρείαν;).
Minoan Linear B: A Reply
- John Chadwick
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 202-204
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The tragic death of Dr. Michael Ventris in September 1956 has thrust upon me the task of answering the criticisms made by Professor A. J. Beattie of his decipherment of the Minoan Linear B script [JHS lxxvi (1956) pp. 1–17]. Reasons of time and space preclude more than a summary reply; but fortunately almost all his points are covered by our discussion in Documents in Mycenaean Greek (Cambridge University Press, 1956), to which the reader is referred. I judge it necessary, however, to correct some wrong impressions and comment on some of Professor Beattie's methods.
The account of the decipherment is tendentious and distorted. The need for brevity prevented a fuller account in Evidence [JHS lxxiii (1953), pp. 84–103]; a more detailed version appears in Documents; but the whole story as it unfolded month by month can still be traced in the duplicated work-notes which Dr. Ventris circulated during the period 1950–52. It should be enough to say that the crucial step of applying phonetic values to the grid was based upon the reasonable hypothesis that certain words found only at Knossos represented the names of important Cretan towns. At that stage the language was still unidentified; it was as the result of the values obtained from the place-names that Dr. Ventris was forced to the conclusion that the language was Greek. This led to the recognition of Greek declensions in the Linear B inflexions, not the other way about.
Timaeus 38A8–B5
- Harold Cherniss
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 18-23
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
In a recent article written by Mr. G. E. L. Owen to prove that contrary to the general current opinion the composition of the Timaeus must have antedated that of the Parmenides and its dialectical successors, it is contended that when the Timaeus was written the analysis of negation given in the Sophist could not yet have been worked out. ‘For’, Mr. Owen writes, ‘the tenet on which the whole new account of negation is based, namely that τὸ μὴ ὄν ἔστιν ὄντως μὴ ὄν (Soph. 254D1), is contradicted unreservedly by Timaeus' assertion that it is illegitimate to say τὸ μὴ ὄν ἔστι μὴ ὄν (38B2–3); and thereby the Timaeus at once ranks itself with the Republic and Euthydemus.' After brushing aside Cornford's attempt to reconcile this passage of the Timaeus with the Sophist, Mr. Owen concludes his treatment of it with the words: ‘So the Timaeus does not tally with even a fragment of the argument in the Sophist. That argument is successful against exactly the Eleatic error which, for lack of the later challenge to Father Parmenides, persists in the Timaeus.’
An examination of the other arguments put forward by Mr. Owen in support of his thesis concerning the relative chronology of the Timaeus I reserve for another place. Here I propose to consider only the meaning of this one passage and whether it really does imply that the Timaeus must have been written before Plato had conceived the doctrine enunciated in the Sophist. It is a question not now raised for the first time. More than half a century ago Otto Apelt asserted that this passage of the Timaeus is enough to prove that work earlier than the Sophists. His assertion did not go unchallenged; and Apelt himself appears to have lost his original confidence in it, for in his later writings on the relative chronology of the two dialogues he did not again refer to it.
Notes on Some Manuscripts of Plato
- E. R. Dodds
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 24-30
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
‘Critical work on the text of Plato, which in the second half of the nineteenth century had taken an all too easy but mistaken path, had to make a fresh start in the last years before the war (of 1914–18) and is still in its beginnings.’ Thus Pasquali in 1934; and as regards the text of the first seven tetralogies the subsequent twenty years have not produced any marked progress—certainly nothing comparable in precision and thoroughness to the work of Sir David Ross and other contemporary scholars on the text of Aristotle. This has been due in part, I suspect, to the prevalent impression that Burnet's text is, if not final, at any rate firmly based on trustworthy and sufficient foundations. And this impression has in turn been encouraged by the paucity of fresh collations: I think I am right in saying that to this day only two manuscripts of this part of Plato's work, B and T, have been accurately collated in their entirety. In this situation it seems worth while to publish the following notes, which are based on fresh collations made in preparation for an edition of the Gorgias. I am well aware of the danger of founding any general judgement of a manuscript upon a study of one part of it; but I hope that scholars interested in the text of other dialogues may be induced to check and revise my provisional conclusions.
An Interpretation of AR. Vesp. 136–210 and its consequences for the stage of Aristophanes
- A. M. Dale
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 205-211
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
In front of the house are two slaves, one of whom, the company's chief actor, has been commending the play to the public and explaining the situation. Bdelycleon, who has been asleep on the flat roof, wakes up and calls to the slaves: ‘One of you run round here quick; my father has got into the kitchen and he is scuttering around like a mouse inside; mind he doesn't get out through the waste-hole. And you, up against the door with you!’ Slave A, the chief actor, disappears round the side of the house, to take up position as Philocleon inside. A rapid change of mask would enable him to poke a head up through the chimney—144 —only to be extinguished by the bread-trough and log which his watchful son claps on. (How the chimney was represented, if at all, is anybody's guess.) Now comes a diversion from the ground floor, the exact form of which is unfortunately uncertain. RV give the unmetrical , (imperative): whether this is to be emended as Hermann , or whether it is a gloss on the following which has displaced the original text, it is clear that after being warned of the new situation Bdelycleon tells Slave B to press well and truly against the door—which implies that Philocleon is pushing from the inside. ‘I'll be down there in a minute myself,’ he goes on; ‘look out for the bolt, and keep an eye on the bar to see he doesn't gnaw out the pin.’ (βάλανος was edible as ‘date’, ‘acorn’.) Bdelycleon thereupon disappears down the back of the roof [there was of course a staircase or ladder giving access to the roof out of sight of the spectators, as required on occasion by tragedy too (Ag., PV, Psychostasia, HF, Or., Phoen.)] and comes round on to the stage presumably by the same way as Slave A left it. This would take one or two minutes, and of course the next few remarks in the dialogue with Philocleon are made by Slave B, not by Bdelycleon as in the Oxford Text; he would in any case not address his father as Philocleon (163). The ‘net’ which Philocleon threatens to gnaw through (164) cannot be stretched across the door, which has to open unimpeded the next minute; it is over the upper part of the house only, covering the window or windows, as we learn from 367 ff., having been put up to prevent him from hopping over the courtyard wall behind (130 ff.). 164 suggests that Philocleon is talking through a window during this exchange, which would make him more easily audible.
A Group of Vases from Amathus1
- V. R. d'A. Desborough
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 212-219
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The vases published below were found during the excavation of foundation trenches for a seaside ‘kentron’ between the main road and the sea at the western limits of the site of Amathus. They were in clean sand, at a depth of about 2 metres; no traces of bones were observed. The finds were removed in the presence of Mr. Perikleous, Honorary Curator of the Limassol Museum.
There is little doubt that these objects constituted a tomb-robber's cache: Mr. Perikleous was convinced that there was here no question of a tomb, a fact which would seem to detract from the value of the find. Furthermore, the objects are not all contemporary: about half belong to the fifth century, the rest to Cypriot Geometric, with the exception of two imported Protogeometric vases.
In spite of this, it is quite possible that all the objects came from one tomb. Secondary burials after a long period are by no means infrequent in Cyprus. The vases obviously came from a tomb or tombs in view of their completeness—and the Amathus cemetery area is very close. Cypriot tombs are rich in vases, and one tomb would make a sizeable haul for a robber.
I do not propose to publish the later vases. But what I hope to show is that the earlier vases are sufficiently homogeneous to constitute a true burial group, and that the Protogeometric vases are most likely associated with them. So far as concerns the Cypriot vases of earlier type, I propose to set them against vases from Amathus Tomb 101 wherever possible, as this burial seems to provide vases nearest in type.
Empedocles and the Clepsydra
- D. J. Furley
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 31-34
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Empedogles' simile of the clepsydra (DK6 31B100) is a crucial document for historians of ancient science. It has been much discussed, and often quoted in evidence, in spite of formidable differences of opinion about its significance. ‘Empedocles undertook an experimental investigation of the air we breathe’ (B. Farrington). ‘The star example of a physical “experiment” in the natural philosophers, the clepsydra, was not an experiment at all, in the proper sense of the word’ (G. Vlastos). ‘All Empedocles did was to draw the explicit inference: “the vessel cannot be simply empty: the air in it cannot be nothing at all”. He did not invent the clepsydra in a laboratory’ (F. M. Cornford). The simile ‘ha tutto il carattere di una esperienza scientifica’ (A. Traglia). Now whether the fragment describes an experiment or not, it is certainly a simile, and the first step must be to understand the force of the simile. It is possible, in my view, that the differences of opinion about the fragment spring from various misunderstandings of the simile; and I propose in this article to offer an explanation of its details which I think is new and which may enable us to form a clearer picture of its place in the history of science.
The Danaid Tetralogy of Aeschylus
- A. Diamantopoulos
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 220-229
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The humour of the passage in the Frogs (1419 ff.), in which the tragic poets reply with riddles on burning political issues, is explicable: research on the Eumenides shows that in this play Aeschylus projected political notions in much the way that he is presented by Aristophanes speaking in the Frogs: concentrating the attention of the spectator on the past of the Areopagus and on the circumstance of its foundation, he touches directly on the question which arose in 462–1 through the abolition of the political competence of this body, but he replies to it through a parable which is enigmatic for us. It is obviously such an expression as this that Aristophanes had in mind. It rests with philological and historical criticism to show whether in surviving tragedies other than Eumenides themes of an immediate public interest are put forward under the cover of myth, themes which, through ignorance of the date or of the exact conditions of the composition of the plays, have so far not been revealed. This essay examines from this point of view the Danaid tetralogy of Aeschylus.
The subject of the Danaid tetralogy is taken from the story of Danaos and his daughters. For this, Aeschylus could draw on both a literary source, the Danais, and probably also on Argive traditions.
Very little is known about the Danais. It did, however, include an account of the events which took place in Egypt between the houses of Danaos and Aigyptos, and it is likely, therefore, that it traced the course of this quarrel from the beginning.
Aristotle as a Historian of Philosophy: Some Preliminaries
- W. K. C. Guthrie
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 35-41
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The work of Cherniss on Aristotle's criticism of the Presocratics may be compared with that of Jaeger on the development of Aristotle's own thought as contained in his Aristoteles of 1923. Jaeger modestly described that epoch-making work as a Grundlegung or foundation for the history of the philosopher's development, and as such it has been of value not only for itself but in the stimulus it has given to further study, in the course of which the balance of its conclusions has been to some extent altered. Cherniss's own study is of the same pioneer kind, and if I confess to a feeling that it goes rather too far, the comparison with the now classic work of Jaeger will, I hope, make clear my general admiration and appreciation of the fact that it is a permanent contribution with which all future scholarship will have to reckon.
I cannot at this stage even begin to discuss in detail the mass of erudition on which Cherniss's case is built up. Nevertheless, the very widespread acceptance of his strictures on Aristotle's historical sense suggest that anyone to whom they seem extreme should lose no time in giving voice to his misgivings, even in general terms, before they become irrevocably canonical. This thought has been prompted by the recent monograph of Mr. J. B. McDiarmid, Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes, at the beginning of which we read simply that ‘the question of Aristotle's bias has been dealt with exhaustively by H. Cherniss’, whose views then become, without further remark, the starting-point of the younger scholar's own inquiry into the reliability of Theophrastus. Since in what follows I may speak critically of McDiarmid on several points, let me say that his main thesis, the dependence of Theophrastus on Aristotle in much of his φυσικων δόξαι and the consequent danger of regarding him as a separate authority for Presocratic thought, seems true enough. The derivation of Theophrastus's judgments from those of his master was already beginning to be recognised with fruitful results, and the time was ripe for a general review of the evidence.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, and the Law of Athens
- A. R. W. Harrison
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 42-47
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The publication posthumously in 1951 of Professor Joachim's commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics has raised again in an acute form the question of Aristotle's use of Athenian law as the basis of his discussion of justice in Book V. We are told that Joachim In his interpretation of this book made much use of an unpublished essay of Professor J. A. Smith. It is particularly unfortunate that it has not been found possible to trace the manuscript of this essay among Professor Smith's papers since there is a good deal that is new and unorthodox in the resulting interpretation. It is also unfortunate that, because Joachim's publication was posthumous, there could be no reciprocity as between his and some other relatively recent and important discussions of the subject, especially those of H. D. P. Lee and of L. Gernet, while these last two, publishing in the same year, were ignorant of each other's work. I have felt drawn to a brief re-examination of the question because I am sceptical of the general lines of Joachim's treatment, rash though it be to differ from both him and J. A. Smith on the interpretation of Aristotle.
The specific question I propose to ask is whether in N.E. V Aristotle is basing himself at all closely on the substantive law of Athens, and my main conclusion is negative. I think that there is a tendency, particularly in Joachim, to read too much law into what Aristotle says, to force his discussion into a juristic mould into which it simply does not fit. Aristotle after all is attempting to describe a ἔζις, a tendency to feel and act in a certain way; and, close as may be in his thought the connection between the man and the citizen, we perhaps ought not tolook for too exact a mirror of the character of the good citizen in the external institutions of the city.
The Political Aspect of Aeschylus's Eumenides
- K. J. Dover
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 230-237
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The ransacking of Tragedy for indications of the political views of tragic poets is seldom profitable and may be disastrous. But Eumenides, like much that Aeschylus wrote, is unusual, and one of its unusual aspects is the clarity and persistence with which the hearer's attention is engaged in the political present as well as in the heroic past; one might almost say, directed away from the past and towards the present. The nature of this re-direction, and its implications, if any, for Aeschylus's own standpoint, are no new problem. My reason for discussing it once more is that not enough attention has been paid to the immediate dramatic context of the passages by which this re-direction is effected or to the relation between these passages and the language of Greek politics in general.
I. The Central Stasimon 490–565
.
Editors of Aeschylus have assumed that these words cannot mean what they appear to mean: ‘Now new ordinances are overthrown, if the cause pleaded, and the injury done, by this matricide are going to prevail.’ The old laws, not the new, it is said, are in danger of overthrow, and it can only be the old laws which the Chorus defend and lament. Attempts to escape the prima facie meaning have taken the following forms:
(a) Emendation to give the sense ‘overthrow of old ordinances’ (ἕνων κ. θ., Cornford), ‘overthrow of ordained laws’ (κ. νόμων θ., Ahrens), ‘overthrow of my ordinances’ (ἐμῶν κ. θ., Weil), or ‘change to new ordinances’ (μεταστροφαὶ ν. θ., Meineke).
Solon and the Megarian Question
- A. French
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 238-246
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The capture of Salamis from Megara in the sixth century B.C. can safely be said to mark a turning-point in Athenian development. Considerations both of economics and defence would lead one to expect the island to be a natural bone of contention between the two mainland cities, and hence for it to be controlled by the one which was temporarily stronger. The surprising thing is that in the early part of the sixth century the stronger should have been Athens.
We have, it is true, one piece of evidence which suggests that Athenian naval power and interests were already considerable in this period. This is the account, in Herodotus, Diogenes, and Strabo, of the struggle against Mytilene for Sigeion, a struggle terminated by the arbitration of Periander in favour of the Athenians. The causes and aims of the Athenian venture are a matter for speculation, but whether they went as traders, pirates, or settlers, or as all three, their going underlines the fact that there were in the Athenian community at the time a number of men who had invested their capital and were prepared to risk their lives in a distant naval venture: their successful opposition to the forces of Mytilene in its turn suggests that the naval strength at the disposal of the Athenians was correspondingly formidable. It is possible that the expedition began as a private venture, financed, directed, and executed by a band of interested Athenians without any official backing. In view of the position of Sigeion it seems most probable that the venture was connected with the flow of trade to and from the Pontus: Sigeion was perhaps the base at which friendly ships bound for Attica could find rest and refuge, and from which other ships coming from the straits could be raided with the object of diverting corn cargoes to the home market.
Knowledge and forms in Plato's Theaetetus
- Winifred F. Hicken
-
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 December 2013, pp. 48-53
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
In the last pages of the Theaetetus Socrates is made to present four versions of a final attempt to define knowledge, as true opinion accompanied by logos, and to reject them all; yet in earlier dialogues ‘ability to give account’, λόγον ἔχειν or λόγον διδόναι δύναδθαι is closely associated with knowledge, not always, or not necessarily, knowledge of Forms, and in the Republic it is said to be the essential mark of the dialectician. These facts are exceedingly hard to interpret. In recent years the passage has been read as an indirect defence of the earlier theory of Forms, as the statement of a problem answered in the Sophist by a revision of that theory and as a piece of radical self-criticism. No one of these interpretations seems tome without difficulty, and in this article I shall attempt to argue for yet another solution which owes something to all three.
Professor Cornford, pressing the fact that Socrates draws all his illustrations from the world of concrete things, believes that Plato intended by criticism of the different versions to point the way to an old and invulnerable sense of λόγον διδόναι, which implies that the proper objects of knowledge are Forms. This is the statement or understanding of grounds for judgments which in the Meno is said to turn true opinion into knowledge. A rather similar line has been taken by Professor Cherniss. Professor Stenzel thinks that the earlier theory of Forms is vulnerable to Socrates' criticism of what I call ‘the first version’, the ‘dream’, but he believes that all three of the later versions ‘recover their meaning’ when the problem of definition has been solved in the Sophist with the help of the method of diaeresis; and so restated they can be shown to apply to particulars as well as to Forms.