This book concerns certain forms (mainly those of aggregation and antithesis) that are found in literature, cosmology and visual art, and their relationship to the socio-economic development of the polis in the archaic and classical periods. In its adoption of a socio-economic perspective, it is a sequel to my previous books on the developing polis: Reciprocity and Ritual (1994), Money and the Early Greek Mind (2004) and Cosmology and the Polis (2012). But the concepts of aggregation and antithesis, as well as the extension of the analysis to visual art, are new.
Like its predecessors, this book takes an unusual perspective on the archaic and classical periods, one which does not ignore economic reality. My main focus, on Homer, presocratic philosophy, vase-painting, and Plato, may seem diverse, but it does cohere, in that all this material is, I contend, best understood as based not only on their great aesthetic qualities and inherent interest, but also on the considerable amount that we know about the ancient Greek economy (mainly from other sources), regarding both pre-monetary accumulation and monetised exchange. Such an approach, which may be called holistic, is fundamental to the sociology of knowledge, and there is no reason to dismiss its relevance for antiquity. I suspect that a reason for the neglect of this approach is the effectiveness of much traditional classical scholarship, which generally depends on the intellectual division of demanding labour that operates within its limits.Footnote 1 Another central theme in my approach is the idea that because it was both novel and important, money had a more obvious impact on thought than it does now, relative to other practical preoccupations.
The stress on the significance of money for Greek culture reflects my earlier work. What is new here is primarily the extension of the argument to acts of individual exchange in general (many of them likely, in fact, to be inspired by transactions involving money), to the pre-monetary accumulation of wealth, as well as to the analysis of visual art, mainly vase-painting.
The book has four parts. The first part (Chapter 1) performs the small but essential task of defining our terms, which are here introduced for the first time to the analysis of the archaic period. Money will be defined in 3.6 and commerce in 2.5. The second part (Chapter 2) is mainly about aggregation in Homer and Geometric vase-painting, and its relation to the aggregation of goods in the pre-monetary economy of (roughly) the eighth century bce. The third part (Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6) is about antithesis in presocratic philosophy, in tragedy and in vase-painting, and its relation to the monetised exchange of the sixth and fifth centuries. The fourth part (Chapter 7), which moves on to the fourth century, is about the individual possession of money, which excludes both aggregation and exchange, in the influential metaphysics of Plato. In Greece money transformed the thought world of at least some writers and some visual artists.
My project is to apply the concepts of aggregation and antithesis to interpersonal processes and the expression of these processes in various Greek cultural phenomena in what I will call ‘our period’ (from the eighth to the fourth century bce):Footnote 2 verbal style, narrative shape, visual art, society and cosmology. This will also require the use of further concepts such as (we will soon see) opposition, antagonism, domination, symmetry, unity, focus and comprehensiveness.
A verbal or visual aggregate I define as a paratactic sequence, namely an assemblage of items which seem to have no relation to each other apart from belonging to the same sequence.Footnote 3 The items in a visual aggregate are often (but not always) near identical.
Antithesis is more complex. I define it as the symmetrical representation of opposites. (This is not the only possible definition.) The opposites may be antagonistic, such as two lions fighting, or non-antagonistic, such as two lions facing each other peacefully. In between these extremes is a range of phenomena, including contraries such as day and night or life and death.
Antagonistic antithesis is the symmetrical representation of contrary or conflicting items, which, even if very different from each other, must be capable of symmetry. Examples include a Lapith fighting a Centaur on Parthenon metope XXXI; or ὃ μὲν εὔχετο πάντ’ ἀποδοῦναι (‘the one claimed to pay back everything in full’) and ὃ δ’ ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι (‘the other refused to accept anything’), at the end of successive hexameters (2.2); or Herakleitos B62 ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι (‘immortals mortals, mortals immortals’) (4.4).
Antagonistic antithesis may be unbalanced (i.e. when one opposite is prevailing over the other) or balanced. The symmetrically opposed figures of the Assyrian king and a rampant lion that he is in fact killing constitutes unbalanced antithesis; and so does a sequence of two Homeric hexameters describing successively a dog throttling a fawn and the fawn struggling to escape (2.1).
The symmetrical representation of non-antagonistic oppositions, for instance two figures (animals or men) peacefully facing each other, I call peaceful antithesis. The two figures may sometimes each face a third item occupying the centre. If the central item is a king, deity, altar or tree, then the attitude of the two figures to it is probably one of reverence. But if the central item is an animal, or if conversely there is an animal on either side of a man, then the relation of the two side figures to the central figure may be antagonistic, although the side figures remain non-antagonistic (to each other) – that is, the antithesis remains non-antagonistic. I call this focused antithesis.
In all forms of antithesis there may be several parties on either side. I call this aggregative antithesis. If there is in such cases a central item, this is focused aggregative antithesis.
Asymmetrical representation of opposites, in which I have less interest, I do not call antithesis, whether the opposition is unbalanced (e.g. the Pharoah smiting his enemies) or balanced (the asymmetrical representation of an equal fight).
All this and more can be tabulated as follows:
(1) Aggregation
(2) Antithesis (symmetrical opposition), which may be
(a) Antagonistic
(b) Peaceful/cohesive
(c) Balanced (neither opposite is prevailing over the other)
(d) Unbalanced (one opposite is prevailing over the other)
(e) Focused (each opposite faces an – animate or inanimate – individual or group placed between them)
(f) Unfocused (there is nothing placed between them)
(g) of individual figures
(h) of aggregates of figures
(3) Asymmetrical opposition. This form, which is of only peripheral interest for us, consists of three sub-forms: it may be (a) antagonistic and balanced, (b) antagonistic and unbalanced or (c) non-antagonistic.
I will sometimes use these numbers to refer to the various sub-forms: for example, antagonistic balanced antithesis is 2ac and (if also aggregative) 2ach. Antithesis, as I have defined it, is distinct from mere symmetry, in that the former is produced by the act of symmetrically juxtaposing opposites, and so excludes symmetries in nature or, for example, a circle cut in half. Antithesis may even include abstract visual designs, with which, however, we will barely be concerned.
An aggregate is felt as a unity to the extent that perception of the whole effaces the perception of the components. Every antithesis (balanced or unbalanced) may be felt as a unity of opposites, in other words a self-contained configuration whose unity is constituted by a single opposition. Even asymmetrically represented oppositions (balanced or unbalanced) may be felt as a unity. The unity is either that of the opposites or (in some cases of unbalanced opposites) that which expresses the power of a dominating opposite, which at its extreme produces unity by entirely overcoming or absorbing the dominated. Aggregate, antithesis and opposition may, in addition to these forms of unity, be endowed in various ways with aesthetic unity.
Aggregation is naturally expressed by parataxis, which may intensify the sense of uniform sequence. Visual parataxis is exemplified by a line of soldiers, such as we find painted on Geometric vases or sculpted at Persepolis. Verbal parataxis is the juxtaposition of verbally unconnected semantic units (a softer form is one where connectives such as τε or δέ express mere aggregation).
Parataxis cannot itself express antithesis, which it can however intensify, by requiring the hearer to supply the antithetical connection. This special effect is common in ritual formulae. In the Eleusinian mysteries, for instance, the initiands uttered the words ὕε κύε:Footnote 4 ‘Rain! (to the sky) Conceive! (to the earth)’. Here parataxis is combined with antithesis, as also in the first half of the Eleusinian formula: Ἐκ τυμπάνου ἔφαγον· ἐκ κυμβάλου ἔπιον· ἐκερνοφόρησα· ὑπὸ τὸν παστὸν ὑπέδυν, ‘I ate from drum. I drank from cymbal. Ι carried the κέρνος (a sacred vessel). I stole into the bridal chamber.’Footnote 5 We will return to these ritual formulae in 4.4.
In an antithetical dyad the semantic units are single words (e.g. Il. 2.821: Aphrodite gave birth to Aineas, θεὰ βροτῷ εὐνηθεῖσα, ‘a goddess who slept with a mortal’). Some antithetical dyads are semantically self-contained (e.g. Aesch. Sept. 941: παισθεὶς ἔπαισας). A rare example of a paratactic self-contained antithetical dyad is ὕε κύε. We will be paying special attention to the rare instances of self-contained antithetical dyads in Homer.
My classification of forms is neither simply given by the material nor imposed on it but is merely heuristic: it makes no claim to exhaustiveness, and is to be judged by its results alone. Further, it goes without saying that these forms can co-exist in the same visual or verbal representation. It must also be emphasised from the beginning that my interest is not in merely formal analysis. The purpose of the formal analysis, facilitated by my classification of basic forms, is to explore the relationship between interpersonal processes (economy, society, politics) and cultural products (texts, visual images, cosmological constructs).
