Greek literature had been concerned with incentive problems long before the classical era. According to a tradition recorded in the Ehoiai (Hesiod frr. 196-204 MW; cf. Eur. lA 75 ff.), the suitors of Helen bound themselves by an oath to act in concert in the interests of Helen’s husband if Helen were abducted. By this act of self-binding, the Achaean leaders had cut off the option of staying home. The oath, by providing a credible precommitment to a particular line of joint action, solved the coordination problem (‘‘I won’t act until you do’’) necessary to begin the Trojan War. Yet once they arrived at Troy, sustained joint action required that each hero have an incentive to stay: the plot of Homer’s Iliad is driven by the incentives of fairly shared booty and honors: When Agamemnon seized Briseis, Achilles lost his incentive to cooperate. The Iliad explores the consequences of Achilles’ rationally self-interested defection, and the difficulties attending Achilles’ eventual return, in the context of a culture that included personal honor, friendship, and fame, as well as material goods in the calculation of utility. The Odyssey is also much concerned with incentives: Odysseus’ act of binding himself to the mast in order to listen to the Sirens has become a standard trope in the contemporary literature on precommitment (Elster 1979, 2000). Odysseus solves his problem (his desire to hear the Sirens, without losing his life) by eliminating in advance his option of acting on the new desires that will be stimulated by the Siren’s song. His precommitment (self-binding and orders to the crew not to release him) prevented him from acting on reformed, self-destructive, preferences.
Many other works of Greek literature address aspects of incentive problems: Hesiod’s didactic poetry is informed by a worldview that takes for granted the tendency of rational individuals to defect from cooperative behavior when it will advance their own interests. The Works and Days is motivated by Hesiod’s brother Perseus’ defection from the cooperative order of family land distribution and his strategic use of a corrupt legal order (the bribe-swallowing basileis) to carry out his plan. Hesiod urges avoidance of public space and great care in lending and borrowing. Yet his enjoyment of trade goods (wine from Byblos) shows that he participates in a system of exchange in which interpersonal and intercommunity cooperation underwrites his way of life: Hesiod is far from a Hobbesian solitary. Aristophanes’ characters tend to defect from cooperative public behavior when they perceive that others are not acting cooperatively; an example is Dikaiopolis’ private market in Acharnians. The ‘‘skeptic scene’’ in Ecclesiazusae (770-806) is a pointed case of the difficulty of coordination in the absence of credible precommitment: the skeptic character refuses to donate his private goods to a common store established by the new women rulers of Athens until he sees others doing likewise. Obviously, if no one is willing to go first, the women’s revolutionary scheme will not get off the ground. Pseudo-Xenophon (2.17) links the problem of commitment directly to the institutions of democracy, claiming that in an oligarchy, the state’s commitments are guaranteed by the names of the rulers, whereas in a democracy, treaties are underwritten only by the impersonal collectivity ‘‘demos’’ - to which no personal responsibility can attach. Lycurgus’ case, in his law court speech Against Leocrates, revolves around the conception of the polis as a common possession and the looming danger of a commons tragedy: If the jurors acquit Leocrates, the democracy’s commitment to sanction malefactors will be proven hollow. If and when that commitment ceases to be credible, other individuals will rationally choose defection over self-sacrificing cooperation. And thus Athens will be more vulnerable to its enemies.
The two preceding paragraphs are exempli gratia; cases of Greek authors addressing incentive problems could easily be multiplied. Of course, it is absurd to think that classical literature can be reduced to a meditation on incentives; the point is only that Greek authors recognized choice problems as a rich source of narrative. The remainder of this chapter looks at how the baseline concern with rationality and incentives developed into sophisticated treatments of public action by Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle.
World History
