This chapter investigates Thucydides’ views about morality and justice and the role that these concepts play in his work. It argues that Thucydides’ own ideas about justice were conventional, but that his understanding of the role of justice in shaping human affairs was more novel. The chapter explores the methodological problem of reconstructing Thucydides’ views about justice and morality, given that most statements on these themes are made by characters rather than the author. It then analyses the text’s representation of key ideas about justice, morality and other virtues; it explores how these are manifested in Thucydides’ characterization of individuals in the work; and it surveys the differences between Thucydides’ representation of Spartan and Athenian approaches to justice and morality.

Socrates’ life coincides with a period in which various intellectual movements seemed, to conservatives, to mount a concerted attack on traditional values. These movements I will gather under one name, “the new learning,” without meaning to imply that any one person subscribed to all of them. The two elements in the new learning that seem to have troubled traditionalists the most were natural science and forensic argument. Socrates was associated in the public eye with the new learning; this association is one of the few things we know about him with historical certainty. Probably he was part of the movement in his own unique way, although he had little to do with science and was opposed to the teaching of public speaking.

science and argument

The natural science of the day differed from modern science in many ways, but it has this similarity: it sought to displace traditional supernatural explanations with natural ones, and in so doing it encountered resistance (though not so fierce as the modern American resistance to the teaching of evolution). Early cosmologists proposed accounts of the beginnings of things in terms of familiar natural processes, while early anthropologists explained culture as produced by human invention, and one historian explained human events in terms of an empirical theory of human nature. Taken together, these theories leave no room for traditional explanations that appeal to action by the gods. The new learning offered the ancient Greeks cosmology without creation, human progress without divine teaching, and human history without divine intervention.

The Pyrrhonian Modes are argument schemata for general use against dogmatism. We have records of two main lists of Modes, the Ten and the Five, which were used at various times in the history of ancient scepticism, either independently or in some sort of systematic connection. These Modes use strategies with ancient roots in such thinkers as Protagoras, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, but users of the Modes were not committed to positions held by those thinkers. They were compiled long after Pyrrho (the Ten probably by Aenesidemus and the Five by a shadowy figure named Agrippa) during the first phase of the Pyrrhonian revival. In addition, we have a list of eight causal Modes attributed to Aenesidemus.

The second and final phase of Pyrrhonism occupies most of the works of Sextus Empiricus (apart from Against the Ethicists, M 11). Although he has different strategies from Aenesidemus, he lays out the Ten Modes in some detail and makes extensive use of the Five. His account of the Ten is sometimes at odds with his general practice, and this is most likely due to his use of sources from the first phase of the revival.

Besides Sextus (PH 1.36–163), we have two main sources for the Ten Modes: Diogenes Laertius (9.78–88) and Philo of Alexandria (On Drunkenness 169–202), both of whom seem to have a source independent of Sextus. Diogenes is just reporting what he knows, whereas Philo appropriates eight of the Modes for his own purpose and leaves out the other two (the Third and Ninth in the list according to Sextus). Brief mentions by Aristocles and Herrenius do not add to our understanding.

Protagoras and Gorgias are the most significant of the early sophists. Although philosophy as we understand it was not their chief business, they taught views and methods of argument that have fascinated subsequent philosophers. In their own context they exhibit the spirit of the new learning, the cultural and intellectual revolution of the fifth century B.C. in Greece. This revolution - or, rather, the reaction against it - is illustrated in Aristophanes' comic play, The Clouds, by a character enrolling in a sophistic school in order to learn the “unjust argument.” This, he has heard, can win a jury's favour for the worst of offenders. The syllabus, he finds, involves science as well as rhetoric, both laughable in this satire. What is not laughable is the popular animosity against the school that leads to its incineration (at least one student included), a grim sign of the strong feelings that would later contribute to the death of the man whose name Aristophanes uses for the leader of his imaginary school - Socrates.

Xenophanes of Colophon was a philosopher and poet of the late sixth and early fifth centuries. Although an Ionian by birth, he evidently lived as an exile in Sicily.

(DK 2, W2, lines 11–19)

(DK 15)

(DK 16)

(DK 11)

(DK 34)

The “Old Oligarch” is the name commonly given by modern scholars to the author of this anonymous treatise on the government of Athens, which was preserved among the writings of the Athenian historian and thinker, Xenophon (born c. 430). Technically it is called pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians. The date of the treatise is uncertain, but the consensus is that it was written after 446 (because of events mentioned in 3.11) but probably before 424 (because of an event not mentioned in 2.5).

The author may be an Athenian in exile, for he speaks of Athenians as “they” (1.1 etc.) but also as “we” (1.12 etc.). He disapproves of their democratic constitution but admires the skill with which they have implemented this system. His style is very uneven, and the purpose of the treatise has long puzzled scholars. In our view the treatise belongs to the fifth-century debate about the relative merits of different constitutions and may have been an exercise that, like the Dissoi Logoi, required the assessment of both pros and cons.

[1] My subject is the constitution (politeia) of the Athenians. I do not approve their choice of this type of constitution, for in making their choice they preferred the well-being of the inferior class (ponēroi) at the expense of the better class (chrēstoi). For this reason, then, I do not approve of it.

Critias was a relative (probably cousin) of Plato's mother, from an old and wealthy Athenian family which, like most such families, traditionally favored close relations with Sparta; he seems to have been a vocal advocate of Spartan customs (see frs. 18–21). He is best known as one of the leaders of the Thirty, a group of oligarchs who with the support of Sparta staged a coup against the democratic government of Athens in 404–403. The Thirty had some reasonable goals but their regime soon turned brutal, and democrats regained power in 403. Critias was killed in the final battle at about the age of fifty. The moderate tone of his surviving fragments seems strangely incongruent with the cruelty and violence that characterized his last year. See the Bibliographical Note, § B.5, for details of the fragments in our selection.

Tragedies

Pirithus

Ancient sources ascribe Pirithus to Euripides, but most scholars accept Critias' authorship.

(DK 21, S 10)

(DK 22, S 11)

Protagoras was born in Abdera around 485 and enjoyed a career of forty years as a professional teacher. He traveled widely and was richly paid for his efforts. The tradition that he was a student of Democritus is probably false, although he too came from Abdera. Most scholars also doubt the story that Protagoras was tried in Athens and condemned for atheism.

We translate here all of the generally accepted fragments, as well as texts in which Protagoras is paraphrased or closely imitated. We have shown only as much of the context as is needed for comprehension. Irrelevant intrusions of context have been omitted without comment. Some passages contain only a word or phrase that is a quotation from Protagoras; in such cases we have underlined the quotation and supplied the necessary context in normal print. We have included titles of works by Protagoras that are well attested and are interesting in their own right. We have also included passages that probably represent teachings of Protagoras that have been filtered through the teachings of other thinkers; these passages are labeled “reconstruction.”

In a few cases we print passages that have long been associated with Protagoras, even though we are not convinced that their content is due to Protagoras. In such cases we preface our designation with the comment “doubtful.”