Table Of ContentLanguage and History in Ancient Greek Culture
Language and History
in Ancient Greek Culture
Martin Ostwald
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2009 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none
of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the
publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ostwald, Martin, 1922–
Language and history in ancient Greek culture / Martin Ostwald.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4149-5 (alk. paper)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Political science—Greece—History—To 1500. 2. Political science—Philosophy—
History—To 1500. 3. Civilization, Modern—Greek infl uences. 4. Greece—Civilization—To
146 B.C.
JC73.O88 2008
320.938—dc22 2008035359
Contents
Introduction 1
A. Political Culture of the Polis
Chapter 1. S hares and Rights: “Citizenship” Greek Style
and American Style 7
Chapter 2. Isokratia as a Political Concept 22
Chapter 3. Oligarchy and Oligarchs in Ancient Greece 39
Chapter 4. Stasis andAutonomia in Samos: A Comment on an
Ideological Fallacy 52
Chapter 5. Peace and War in Plato and Aristotle 69
B. Nomos in Greek History and Thought
3
Chapter 6. P indar, Nomos, and Heracles (Pindar, frg. 169 [Snell ] and
POxy. No. 2450, frg. 1) 93
Chapter 7. Was There a Concept Agraphos Nomos
in Classical Greece? 125
Chapter 8. Nomos and Physis in Antiphon’s (cid:781)(cid:801)(cid:812)(cid:1184) ’(cid:766)(cid:807)(cid:803)(cid:804)(cid:801)(cid:1185)(cid:797)(cid:813) 158
C. Constitutional and Political Institutions of Athens
Chapter 9. Athenian Democracy—Reality or Illusion? 175
vi Contents
Chapter 10. Public Expense: Whose Obligation?
Athens 600–454b.c.e. 191
Chapter 11. Diodotus, Son of Eucrates 205
Chapter 12. Athens and Chalkis: A Study in Imperial Control 214
Chapter 13. The Areopagus in the Athenaion Politeia 230
Chapter 14. The Sophists and Athenian Politics 245
D. Literature and History
Chapter 15. Herodotus and Athens 265
Chapter 16. Thucydides 278
Bibliography of Martin Ostwald 297
Index 301
Acknowledgments 323
Introduction
It is an honor to have been invited by the University of Pennsylvania Press to
publish in book form a selection of my articles and essays.
To make the selection was diffi cult, chiefl y because the Press mandated
that the book cohere thematically, that it not be (merely) a collection of my
best essays. The variety of my publications makes it hard to determine what
is “coherent” in what I have published. My interest in classical antiquity was
aroused in high school and turned to Greek in preference to Latin when I
read large sections of the Iliad. Homer’s bracing narrative art evoked in me a
youthful admiration of Achilles, which convinced me that there was nothing
to which I’d rather devote myself than the study of the culture that produced
and eternalized a character of such dimensions. Further study made me add
to my passion other Greek poetry, history, and philosophy, especially of the
Classical period.
This passion was reinforced by forays, formal and informal, into the
development of Western civilization, and the realization that much of it was
based on what the Greeks had created. Moreover, it made me aware of the
close relation between language and thinking. Even as a mature scholar, my
favorite teaching subject had always remained elementary Greek; no other
subject offers the same excitement of daily watching the students’ intellectual
growth within the compass of one academic year from ignorance of even the
Greek alphabet to the reading of a giant such as Plato.
It had occurred to me earlier that learning any new language is tanta-
mount to imbibing a new system of thought. Every language contains its
own view of the realities of life, and refl ects the social organization, values,
and perception of the world of its speakers in a way that differs, more or less
subtly, from all others. That English has only one form (“you”) to address
another individual as well as a group of individuals, while German, French,
Italian, Spanish, and other languages differentiate between group and indi-
vidual not only is a grammatical phenomenon, but refl ects a considerable
difference in social norms between any two given societies. Some languages
2 Introduction
have different forms for addressing an individual in a common or in a polite
form; others have not. This recognition leads almost automatically to an
interest in social and political institutions. The functions of the senatus of
the Romans are not identical with those of the sénat of the French. One can
go even further: different languages do not express identical perspectives on
the same matter. This is true of trivial as well as of serious expressions: an
empty stomach makes an English speaker confess that he or she “is hungry,”
while a German “hat Hunger” and a Frenchman “a faim.” The substance
expressed is identical in every case, but the form in which it is expressed is
different. Similarly, what precisely an English speaker means by “mind” can-
not be accurately rendered by German terms such as “Geist” or “Ansicht” or
the French terms “esprit,” “mentalité,” or “intelligence.”
Examples of different expressions for similar or identical concepts
can be multiplied to demonstrate that an exact, nuanced translation from
one language into another is impossible. Each language has its own way of
seeing the world. That does not mean that verbal communication between
speakers of different languages is impossible; it merely means that differ-
ent languages look differently at the world, and ultimately develop differ-
ent philosophies and different perspectives on human relations and social
and political priorities. The meticulous study of languages is, therefore,
the most basic of “liberal” studies: it enriches the human mind by absorb-
ing new ideas and using them as a foil in subjecting its own to comparison
and criticism.
The recognition of differences and their signifi cance becomes especially
important in the study of languages that are no longer spoken, especially
when they are so remote from us in time that they lack many preconcep-
tions we take for granted. The tremendous development of means of
production, transportation, and communication, of scientifi c discoveries
and exploitation of new sources of energy, have made the exploration of
classical antiquity equivalent to a jump into another world, which we have
to construct in our imagination through a study of the languages in which
people communicated with one another in conditions we do not know by
personal experience. That we can do that at all is recognized in the hypoth-
esis, fi rst articulated by Thucydides, that the nature of the human animal has
remained constant over the millennia. Our physical and psychological needs
have not changed; we depend on the same nature for our sustenance as did
the Ancients; we have to learn to cope with our environment just as they did;
we have the same problems as they to deal with our helplessness in the face
of the forces that confront us.
Introduction 3
It is a common humanity that enables us to understand the past,
and the different terms and perspectives in which our ancestors couched
their experience of the world, and it enables us at the same time to recog-
nize the difference between their values and perceptions and our own. By
understanding their perception of the world, we are in a better position to
understand our own.
From a wise remark once made to me by the late Professor W. L.
Westermann I hope to have learned that the essence of classical scholarship
consists in discovering how different, rather than how similar, the Ancients
were from us. The study of the distant past enables us to gain more profound
insights into what has shaped our own lives and values than would a study
confi ned to the values and preoccupations of our own society. Moreover,
although we stand to gain no material profi t from the study of antiquity, it
trains us to appreciate the value of immersing ourselves in matters that shape
and sharpen our intellectual perception of the world in which we live.
I believe that this view of the study of Greek antiquity brings with it a
unity that has informed the essays included in this volume. In view of my
preoccupation with Greek social and political thought, it seemed sensible
to divide them into the major themes which I have explored in my writing
and teaching. The fi rst section deals with fundamental concepts that domi-
nated the political life of Greek states. The second discusses various aspects
of nomos, a key term found in discussions of all kind of social, political,
economic, and philosophical thought. The third section veers slightly away
from philological concerns and concentrates on concrete institutions and the
situations in which they operated. Finally, I turn to the relation of language
and historical narrative in the works of the two greatest Greek historians,
Herodotus and Thucydides. I hope that this classifi cation will fairly repre-
sent what I regard as the central contributions philology has made to our
understanding of Greek and in particular Athenian history, and thus to our
own self-perception.
