The piano represented a springboard for Beethoven's achievements and a primary vehicle for the pathbreaking innovations of his evolving musical style. His early reputation as a prodigy at Bonn rested on his playing of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and his success at Vienna after 1792 was founded in no small measure on his ability to improvise at the keyboard. In assessing Beethoven's musical legacy for the piano, we should first consider the cultural context of his music and the relation of his works to his activities as a performing virtuoso. As some recent studies have emphasized, Beethoven's career coincided with and lent support to the rise of the notion of the autonomous musical artwork – the unique composition regarded as independent of specific conditions of performance. The fulfillment of Count Waldstein's famous prophecy made at Bonn “you shall receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands” – as well as the fortification of Beethoven's style from earlier models, such as J. S. Bach, reflected the high cultural ambitions of his art as an indispensable basis for his originality. The negative tone of some early reviews of Beethoven's works sprang from perceptions of their challenging character and their overturning of conventions – reasons why a more thorough acquaintance based on repeated hearings was appropriate.

In evaluating this change in aesthetic reorientation, it is tempting but misleading to oppose the improvisatory tradition of Mozart and Beethoven as orators in tones with the growing recognition of autonomous works at the threshold of the nineteenth century. Important musical forms and procedures such as sonata designs, fugue, rondo and variations were established vehicles for extemporized performance. The performance context in private aristocratic salons is poorly documented, and public concerts of solo piano works hardly existed; yet the evidence available indicates that published solo works were often formalized versions of music originally presented as improvisation or fresh composition.

Introduction

This chapter discusses four leading intellectuals in the first and second centuries ad. Their surviving or reported work (together with that of Seneca) provides points of access to the form that political thought took in a period in which there is no extant text that deals, in an obvious and systematic way, with political philosophy. These figures are interconnected in various ways. Musonius Rufus (c. 30–c. 101, these and all subsequent dates ad) taught both Dio Chrysostom (c. 40–c. 112) and Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135). The Stoic notebook (Meditations) of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–80) is avowedly influenced by Epictetus’ Discourses; and his version of Stoic theory is broadly similar to that of Epictetus and Musonius. Dio Chrysostom differs from the others in combining the roles of philosopher and ‘sophist’ (public speech-maker), and in his philosophical eclecticism. But a significant element in the thought of his speeches is Stoic (of a type comparable with that of the other three thinkers); he also sometimes deploys the Stoicized Cynicism that appears in Epictetus.

The lives and thought of these individuals illustrate certain more general features of the period. Dio Chrysostom was a leading figure in the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’ movement; and his career displays how sophists, as public performers, functioned as intellectual communicators and as vehicles of Greco–Roman culture throughout the (Greek-speaking) Eastern part of the Roman empire. More broadly, the careers of all four men exhibit the interlinking of Greek and Roman intellectual (and political) life, and the interplay between philosophy and politics in the period.

Preliminary considerations

The Platonism of the first centuries of the empire does not constitute a single current of thought, still less the work of a school. To refer to Platonist authors from the time of Eudorus (active c. 25 bc) until the rise of Neoplatonism the term ‘Middle Platonism’ is often employed: a historiographical category which poses considerable problems. There is not in fact any single Middle Platonist philosophy, but rather a group of writers who may be described as Platonist by virtue of their allegiance to a nucleus of ‘orthodox’ positions, contaminated in many instances by Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, and not the same nucleus in all cases. That is true for political thought too. The authors of most interest from this point of view, Philo of Alexandria (20/15 bc– ad 45/50) and Plutarch of Chaeronea (ad 45–100), despite sharing features in common, stand far apart from each other. For the political thought of other Platonists of the period we do not have sufficient evidence, but there is nothing to suggest political theories of any great originality or with significant contemporary impact. The consolidation of Rome’s supremacy on the world stage in the first centuries of the empire certainly did not provide favourable conditions for theoretical political thought to flourish: the apparent inevitability of Roman domination limited the scope for political reflection. It tended to oscillate between wary pragmatism and purely theoretical idealism.

The Cynics had no ideals of their own and assumed the worst of everybody else; hence the modern usages ‘cynic’ and ‘cynical’.

Among non–classicists today these are perhaps the two dominant, although contradictory, images of Cynicism. The first projects Diogenes’ behaviour, which some might regard as merely loutish, as illustrating a truly admirable independence of spirit; indeed, some versions add that Alexander delightedly exclaimed: ‘Had I not been Alexander, I would have wished to be Diogenes’ (Plu. Alex. 14. 5; D.L. VI. 32). The second projects the Cynics as, if not positively immoral, at least unpleasantly amoral. Neither seems to encourage claims that the Cynics made an important contribution to ancient political thought, and the contradiction between the two is but a pale reflection of the many difficulties involved in the attempt to uncover a true picture of Cynicism. Any assessment, therefore, of the Cynic contribution must begin by resolving these difficulties.

Introduction: the nature of the Politics

One of the chief problems about discussing any aspect of Aristotle’s political thought, but especially his thinking about constitutions, is the apparent disorder of the Politics. The relatively loose and dialectical nature of the argument is certainly responsible for some of its unevenness: the repetitions, the omissions of promised discussions of particular topics, and the sudden turns, perhaps as the focus changes between two opposing series of reflections. But even when all of this is taken into account, it is hard not to conclude that at least some of the larger pieces do not quite fit together. This fact is reflected in the old fashion, begun in the nineteenth century, for placing Books VII and VIII after the end of Book III. Books VII and VIII contain a treatment of the ‘best constitution’; since the end of Book III, as it stands, promises one, there seem to be good grounds for allowing that promise to be fulfilled. Yet this easy solution turns out to cause as many problems as it resolves, since not only do Books IV–VI turn out to contain more backward references to III than VII and VIII, but IV–VI are a considerably more inappropriate sequel to VII–VIII than they are to III. In that case, the most that can be said is that VII and VIII might once, in some different Politics, have followed Book III.

According to W.K.C.Guthrie in his A History of Greek Philosophy ‘the primary aim of education for statesmanship never left [Plato’s] thoughts. It was certainly his intention that many of his pupils should leave the Academy for politics, not as power-seekers themselves but to legislate or advise those in power, and we have the names of a number who did so.’ The distinguished historian P. A. Brunt takes a different view:

As these contradictory assessments suggest, the sources on Plato and practical politics are not easy to handle, and interpretation tends to reflect the more or less self-conscious preconceptions of the interpreters about for example the Academy (how far was it yet an institution?), or the general credibility of ancient biography and epistolography, or the still more general issue of the impact on public life made by philosophy now or then. The present writer inclines to scepticism or minimalism in all these areas.

There is in Plato’s early dialogues (here labelled ‘Socratic’) a certain ‘intellectualism’ that is quite foreign to the middle and later dialogues (here labelled ‘mature Platonic’ dialogues). Indeed, that intellectualism, with its implication that only philosophical dialogue can improve one’s fellow citizens, is decisively rejected by Plato in the parts of the soul doctrine of the Republic. On that doctrine, it is essential to the improvement of citizens that their appetites and spiritedness be controlled, either by their reason or by the reason of the intellectual elite. This contrast between dialogue in ‘Socrates’ and control of one’s lower parts in ‘the mature Plato’ – one which even those most opposed to ‘developmentalism’ will be hard pressed to deny – is explored in section 1 below. But there are also striking continuities between ‘Socratic’ and ‘mature Platonic’ thought, of a sort sometimes missed by ‘developmentalists’. If for ‘Socrates’ what is required for an individual’s human goodness is that individual’s full intellectual grasp on the real human good, so for ‘the mature Plato’, such a grasp by those in the intellectual elite is quite as necessary for the goodness of all the citizens. These continuities (concerning attitudes to the good, the ideal, the sciences and practical politics) are explored in sections 2 and 3 and section 5 ad finem. Sections 4 and 5 explore these continuities and contrasts as they show up in the three most overtly political ‘Socratic’ dialogues: the Protagoras, the Apology and the Crito.

Amid the enormous collection of Beethoven-inspired lyric in the Beethoven-Haus archives of Bonn stands a thick folder overflowing with poems “on single sheets,” in other words never published. Hand-written or carefully typed, these verses were submitted by their authors themselves, often after visits to the Geburtshausmuseum. Such amateur but heartfelt works remind us that the majority of artistic responses to Beethoven come from men and women whose names remain unfamiliar to the world of high letters; they might reveal more about how his music and life-story move general listeners than all “expert” disputations. Above all the collection symbolizes a compulsion widely felt by persons who encounter this composer, his music, or simply memorabilia and places associated with him: Beethoven lovers tend to react to his art in active, often creative fashions, not passively. Such is the intense, ongoing influence that he and his works have on Western and even world cultures, both inside and outside musical life.

The history of Beethoven's impact on the Western music tradition, discussed in this volume by Margaret Notley and Scott Burnham, contains myriad examples of his incomparable effect on nineteenth- and twentieth-century musicians. Here we will explore how his life and music also motivate endeavors in non-musical areas, including literature, the visual arts, philosophy, politics, even religion. Beethoven has been idolized by persons of all walks of life, and many nationalities, as a “role model” or an “educator.”

A century after Cicero’s death, another Roman senator, also a gifted orator, again demonstrated the power of philosophical writing in Latin, but in a different vein and a different style. Like Cicero Seneca regarded the moralis pars philosophiae, which traditionally included political theory, as the most important branch of philosophy, but unlike Cicero, who used a leisured periodic style suited to the balanced tone of a sceptical Academic, Seneca expounded ethics in a nervous epigrammatic style suited to the passionate tone of a committed Stoic. And whereas Cicero had been inspired by the example of Plato and the Peripatetics to compose a de Re Publica and to embark on a de Legibus, Seneca did not write about the relative merits of different constitutions and showed little confidence in what could be achieved by legislation. Indeed it is often said that Seneca showed no interest in political theory and restricted the moralis pars philosophiae to individual ethics.

Similar points have been made about Hellenistic philosophy itself, including Stoicism, and Seneca’s de Clementia, his most explicit work of political theory, is clearly indebted to lost Hellenistic works on kingship, of which there were many Stoic examples. Moreover, between Cicero’s time and Seneca’s there had been important political developments with the advent of the Principate. Cicero had placed his faith in the Roman Republican constitution which, he believed, had once realized the Greek ideal of the mixed constitution, equitable and durable. The divisive trends he perceived, however, led to protracted civil wars and Caesar’s dictatorship, which shattered the dream of constitutional stability.

The transition from Classical to Hellenistic philosophy coincided with the passage from a Greek world in which the polis was the dominant political formation to one presided over by large central states. The first of these was the kingdom of Macedon. The advance of Macedon was swift. In no more than four decades, beginning with the rise to power of Philip II in 359bc, Greece was subdued, the massive Persian empire conquered (334–327), and democracy in Athens crushed (in 319). In this last act Macedon was all but finishing off not only democracy (only Rhodes remained democratic, for a time), but also the independent polis. In fact, freedom and independence had been enjoyed in their fullness in the fifth and fourth centuries only by a few hegemonic poleis (principally Athens, Sparta and Thebes), which dominated the mass of smaller Greek poleis through their leagues, or polities (such as Caria under Mausolus in 377/6–353, and Thessaly under Jason in the 370s). Athens was the last of the hegemonic poleis. After the death of Alexander in 323, the unified Macedonian empire quickly gave way to the Successor Kingdoms of the Hellenistic age based on Macedon, Syria and Egypt, which in turn were absorbed, finally and conclusively, by Rome. After establishing itself, at the expense of Carthage, as the leading power in the Western Mediterranean, Rome in the course of the second century bc became dominant also in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The sophists

Let us begin by considering three Athenian texts of the fifth and fourth centuries bc.

The first, short enough to quote in full, is a fragment of what was probably a satyr (i.e. serio-comic) play. Controversy continues as to whether the author of these forty-odd lines of verse was the tragedian Euripides (c. 485–c. 406), or Critias, uncle of Plato, versifier, political pamphleteer, and leading member of the oligarchic junta that overthrew Athenian democracy in 404 following Athens’ defeat by Sparta, who was killed in the course of its suppression the following year. The speaker is Sisyphus, archetype of villainy and cunning – whose never-ending punishment was and remains legendary:

As later chapters will show, Plato’s political ideas were immediately and immensely influential. Aristotle’s own political thinking largely starts where Plato left off, and much of Hellenistic constitutional theory shows an indelibly Platonic imprint. However, at least at first sight, this influence seems to owe relatively little to the post-Platonic Academy itself. The major figures who immediately succeeded Plato, Speusippus and Xenocrates, seem by and large to have been more interested, or at any rate more innovative, in ethics (and metaphysics) than in politics, though Speusippus is reported as having written an On Legislation, Xenocrates a Politicus, in one book, and – interestingly – an Elements of Kingship for Alexander, in four. Polemon, who took over the headship from Xenocrates, and taught the Stoic Zeno, was also primarily known for his contributions in ethics. After him, with Arcesilaus, the Academy takes a sceptical turn; when Antiochus of Ascalon, in the first century bc, announces a return to the positive doctrines of the ‘Old Academy’, his version of ‘Platonic’ (and Aristotelian) political ideas turns out to be a heavily Stoicized one.

Yet this broad-brush picture cannot be quite right. There clearly was continuing and direct engagement with Plato’s political writings on the part of the Academy: the field was not left entirely to Aristotle. Thus the second part of the famous two-day disquisition at Rome, for and against justice, by the Academic sceptic Carneades seems to have exploited Glaucon’s case against, in Republic II; and we also have fairly secure, and reasonably extended, evidence of the close reading of both the Republic and the Laws within the ‘Old Academy’ itself.