In the first half of the fourth century BC thinkers came to realize that more was needed of a political leader than the traditional qualities of good birth and intelligence, or even the new rhetorical training advocated by the sophists. Even the rigid Spartan civic structure and educational program was no longer able to produce successful leaders. Xenophon, Isocrates, Plato, and Aristotle attempted to define the virtues necessary for political leadership; Plato also attempted to describe new programs of education and of civic life and structures or constitutions which could inform citizens with these virtues (see in this volume, Hedrick, chapter 27, and Forsdyke, chapter 15).
Xenophon, a young Athenian gentleman and contemporary of Plato’s, lived through the defeat of Athens in 404. He was particularly conscious of the effect of character in politics in the narrative of his Greek History (Hellenica) and in other semihistorical works. In the Anabasis, he offered sketches of many leaders, including the admirable Persian prince who had hired the army, but had lost his life in a rash cavalry charge, and three Greek commanders killed by the Persians: Clearchus, the Spartan ‘‘war-lover,’’ a stern and often violent martinet, who was nevertheless valued by his men in the moment of battle; Proxenus, Xenophon’s personal friend, ‘‘who thought all men were as good as he was’’ and so could not control his troops; and Meno, who considered duplicity and treachery as the best route to success. Meno, after betraying his fellow generals, was tortured and killed by the Persians (Anab. 2.6). Xenophon’s own character as commander emerges in contrast to these: responsible, firm, quick to learn and to innovate, and devoted to his troops but not soft on them. Throughout, Xenophon consciously distinguishes different character traits by behavioral patterns and appropriate adjectives, and relates these traits to actions and consequences.
The formation of the character of a good leader by proper training and self-fashioning is the grand theme of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a fictional biography of Cyrus the Great of Persia. The good ruler must keep focused on one goal, deserving and winning the support of others. To do this he must self-consciously keep his own desires under careful control and instead think constantly of the needs of his allies and subjects and win them with generosity, while keeping a cool eye on the realities of power. The Cyropaedia is meant to inspire the reader to shape his own life in similar fashion; it was often cited by Cicero and other Roman authors.
Xenophon also exalts the virtue of a real leader whom he had known, King Agesilaus of Sparta, in an encomium, Agesilaus, which lists the king’s virtues and gives examples of each in action, drawn from the history, while tacitly passing over his weaknesses. Isocrates’ Euagoras similarly presents the virtues of a recently deceased king of Cyprus as a model for the king’s son and for all political figures. In both works, the subject’s virtues are seen as the product of conscious choice, which others might imitate.
Plato and Aristotle attempted to formulate a more theoretical understanding of the interaction of different elements within the self and the individual’s role within a society, building on Greek traditions going back to Homer. Within the self, reason ideally should set goals according to universal values and moderate and direct the dynamics of the self’s irrational tendencies and passions in the pursuit of these goals. Aristotle argued that virtues are dispositions which permit us to choose to act according to reason so as to attain our proper (good and noble) goal. Good character is learned, though innate qualities will affect the individual outcome. The principal sphere of action of the virtuous man is in society and his virtues are the same as the virtues of a ruler or leader. Practical reason is prized, not simply because it is useful, but because reason is the highest human capacity and is intrinsically noble, since it helps us to see what is the true good, independent of an individual’s preexisting preferences or tendencies.
Unlike Enlightenment thinkers, classical writers attributed a person’s character much more to moral training than to preformed desires inherent from birth. Proper training depended on the community’s encouragement of right behavior through laws, customs, and the structures of civic government, as well as teachers and individual self-improvement. For this reason Plato and other philosophers gave special emphasis to the description of the ideal community, one suited to produce good character.
Ancient historians attributed different character traits to different peoples, based on their different customs and civic constitutions. Polybius is noteworthy for devoting the whole of book 6 to the special qualities of the Romans, discussing the army, honors for military success, and the role of religion. He discusses the particular excellence of the Roman constitution at length, comparing it to those of other states - Thebes, Athens, Crete (which he considers steeped in treachery), Carthage, and Sparta. Livy touches on the qualities of peoples encountered by the Romans, noting for example the Greeks’ preference for talk over action and the Numidians’ sexual appetite (8.22.8, 29.23.4, 30.12.18). In his Germania, Tacitus admires the freedom and rough simplicity of the German tribes, contrasting it to the subservience and decadence of contemporary imperial Rome. Pliny speaks of the responsibility of ruling Greeks, who ‘‘gave us justice and laws,’’ and where ‘‘civilization, literature, and agriculture are thought to have originated’’ (Pliny, Ep. 8.24). However, apart from Polybius, such evaluations are usually hardly more than stereotypes and have relatively little influence on the historians’ analysis of political action or of individual character.
Ancient views of the person focus on his or her role as a moral agent. Although individuals may be constrained by poverty or by a weak and factious state, or buffeted by external circumstances, it was considered a fallen state, not the norm, for them to be passive objects of internal impulses or upbringing. Thus descriptive adjectives describing character tend to be evaluative, either directly or implicitly. Different thinkers gave different emphases, but generally speaking, the good man, and the ideal leader of a state, is one who through his training has learned to channel his irrational urges and desires toward rationally chosen and noble goals, that is, to exercise virtue.
World History
