A central concern of early Greek philosophy was the study of human nature and society. The Sophists’ inquiries into law, politics, and power find many parallels in the tragedians, especially Euripides. The Sophists also had a great impact outside literature on the political life of Athens, where their role as public intellectuals and educators brought them both success and notoriety: Aristophanes’ Clouds, for example, parodies their new educational techniques, particularly in the domain of rhetorical training. (On the universally negative portrayal of the Sophists in Old Comedy, see Carey 2000.) Yet the interests of the Sophists ranged wider than day-to-day politics. As with the origins of religion, the Sophists speculated on the origins of human society, and the laws that (ought to) govern it (for these early ‘‘social contract theories,’’ see Kahn 1981, 92-93). The development of human civilization from primitive beginnings was treated as a form of cultural progress, in contrast to the Hesiodic myth of human decline from a distant Golden Age (cf. Plato, Protagoras 320c8-322d5). A number of passages in tragedy share the Sophists’ focus on the development of various skills (technai) and their capacity to improve human life (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 442-68, 478-506; Sophocles, Antigone 332-67; Euripides, Suppliants 201-18; cf. [Hippocrates], On Ancient Medicine 2-3; Cole 1990, 1-24). However, the dramatic context discourages any naive optimism about the human condition: suffering and death dominate the action of these plays (cf. Segal 2003, 30-31).
Athenians were aware not only of the distinctiveness of their mass participatory government (cf. Aeschylus, Persians 241-42; Euripides, Suppliants 403-8) but also of its openness to manipulation by clever speakers (Sophocles, Philoctetes 98-99). Just as it is wrong to regard the Sophists solely as rhetoricians, so it is misleading to see rhetoric itself as a fifth-century invention with no regard for truth (on Plato’s key role in the development of such antisophistic ideas, see Cole 1991). Nevertheless, the peculiarly important role of rhetoric in Athenian politics and law ensured that it became an issue in tragedy, for in this arena (as elsewhere) the plays’ heroic settings and characters address the concerns of contemporary Athenian society. Confronted by the Egyptian herald, the Argive king Pelasgus stresses his freedom of speech, which was a proud Athenian boast (Aeschylus, Suppliants 946-49).4 Elsewhere characters deplore the power of rhetoric, which can be learned for a fee and deployed for unscrupulous ends (Euripides, Hecuba 255-57, 814-20, 1187-94). However, democratic rhetoric is also seen to have a positive impact, leading to social advancement for lower-class citizens who can master it (Euripides, Suppliants 423-25).
The Sophists were itinerant teachers, whose travels fostered the comparison of different communities and their respective nomoi (social, political, and ethical norms). As Herodotus noted, each community naturally thinks that its own nomoi are best (3.38). The debate over nomos (in its twin senses of‘‘convention’’ and ‘‘law’’) and phusis (‘‘nature’’) exercised all the major thinkers of the fifth century, including the tragedians. Champions of nature over convention ranged from those who equated ‘‘the good’’ or true/natural ‘‘justice’’ with pure self-interest (so Callicles and Thra-symachus: Plato, Gorgias 482d7-484b1, Republic, book 1) to those like Antiphon and Hippias who, although aware of the artificiality of the laws (Antiphon, DK44a), also invoked the concept of universal human nature (cf. Sophocles fr. 591) to challenge popular stereotypes of ‘‘Greek’’ versus ‘‘barbarian’’ (Antiphon, DK 44b; Plato, Protagoras 337d-338b; cf. Euripides, Andromache 243-44, Trojan Women 764-65). In Phoenician Women, the debate over justice between Eteocles and Poly-nices is framed in terms ofnature and power: Eteocles embraces absolute self-interest, ‘‘Tyranny, greatest of the gods’’ (506; compare also Thucydides 5.105.2 for the idea that both gods and men rule wherever they have the power to do so). In a reversal of the common link between ‘‘nature’’ and the ‘‘survival of the fittest’’ (cf. Hesiod, Works and Days 202-12), Eteocles’ mother Jocasta appeals to the equality that is found in nature (541-48), but her plea fails and the brothers fight to the death.
By contrast, nomos was typically viewed by its defenders as ‘‘the foundation of all social life and the guarantee of justice’’ (Lanza 1963,439). Although justice had long been seen as a peculiarly human institution (cf. Hesiod, Works and Days 274-80), Protagoras and Democritus explored in detail the importance of nomoi for the growth of human communities and the development of civil society. On this more positive view nomoi are essential for human societies to flourish - contrast the monstrous Cyclops, for whom laws are a nuisance (Euripides, Cyclops 338-40). Democratic Athens also boasted of its isonomia (‘‘equality before the law’’: cf. Herodotus 3.80.6, Thucydides 2.37.1-3; for the right to an impartial trial, see Aeschylus, Eumenides 482-89; Euripides, Hippolytus 1055-56), and in Euripides’ Suppliants the Athenian king Theseus insists on the role of written law in ensuring ‘‘equal justice’’ for all, rich and poor alike (433-37; cf. Thucydides 2.37). At the same time, however, there was an awareness of the fragility of law and the moral values it embodied: Thucydides depicts what could happen to a community when human nature is no longer restrained by nomoi, whether through the effects of plague (2.5253) or civil war (3.82-83), and Euripides explores similar themes of demoralization in The Children of Heracles (961-1025; cf. Allan 1999-2000, 151-53).
World History
