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5. Isocrates’ “Republic”
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WERNER JAEGER began the first of the chapters dedicated to Isocrates in his magisterial book, Paideia (1957: 830), with the observation that “Isocrates, as the most prominent representative of rhetoric, personifies the classic antithesis of what Plato and his school stood for.” Jaeger’s view, and the contrast between philosophy and rhetoric which it presupposes, have had an enormous influence on classical scholarship, and especially on the modern image of Isocrates, although there has been significant dissent, especially in recent years.1 In what follows, I shall put the emphasis rather on what Isocrates and Plato had in common as thinkers about the nature of society and, more particularly, in their response to the democratic experiment in Athens that was unleashed by the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508 b.c.2 I shall conclude with a consideration of how their views of civic education were shaped by this shared political attitude.3 The Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. typically identified three kinds of political regime: democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, under these or similar labels. In approaching Isocrates’ and Plato’s conceptions of civic society, it is instructive to examine what innovations they brought to this traditional classification. The subject has a special interest in the case of Isocrates, insofar as he was a political philosopher and public figure who professed himself to be committed to democracy and, at the same time, both eulogized and served as tutor and counselor to reigning kings. We may begin by taking a backward look at how the topos was treated in the previous century, during the heyday of the Athenian empire. Although there are hints of the threefold classification as early as Pindar ’s second Pythian ode (ca. 475),4 as Jacqueline de Romilly (1959) has noted, the locus classicus is the famous debate that Herodotus (3.80 –83) 107 5 david konstan Isocrates’ “Republic” stages between three members of the Persian aristocracy, after the death of Cambyses and the thwarted plot of a pretended magus to seize power. In this discussion, Otanes defends democracy as the best form of rule, emphasizing the value of equality before the law (isonomia), Megabyzus makes the case for aristocracy, and Darius, who wins the day, argues in favor of monarchy, citing among other reasons that this is the traditional form of government in Persia, and it has brought the empire to its present grandeur. The alternatives imagined by all the speakers are precisely three in number, a point that Darius states explicitly (cf. de Romilly 1959: 82). In fifth-century texts this ternary pattern may be reduced to a polar contrast between two forms, one of which is always democracy, while democracy ’s opposite may be figured as aristocracy or as kingship.5 An early example is the contrast between democracy and tyranny or absolute monarchy drawn in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women: when Pelasgus, king of Argos , insists on the need to consult the astoi or citizens before making a decision about protecting the Danaids who have fled Egypt (365), they reply: su toi polis, “But you are the city” (370; see 370 –375). The importance of the dēmos or people in the political process is a leitmotif throughout the tragedy (cf. 397– 401, 417, 600 – 624, 739–740, 942–949). But Pelasgus is acutely conscious of the difference between Greeks and barbarians in this regard: he notices Danaus’ outlandish attire, which prompts Danaus to recount his Greek origins, and later insults the Egyptian herald as being a barbarian and offending the Greeks (914). In this respect, Aeschylus reproduces the Hellenic ideology implicit in Herodotus’ account: barbarians are characterized by tyrannical behavior and a preference for monarchy. In Euripides’ Suppliant Women, produced around 420, there is a formal debate or agōn (403– 466) between Theseus, king of Athens, who affirms the value of democracy, and a Theban herald, who defends monarchy. The irony is that a king is assigned the role of vindicating popular government (at 404 – 405, Theseus declares: “this city is not ruled by one man, but is free”), while a common herald insists on the superiority of kingship. That there is a relationship between this passage and the debate recorded by Herodotus is commonly assumed,6 even though Euripides reduces Herodotus’ three variants to two: democracy vs. tyranny.7 Of particular significance is that Euripides locates the contrast between monarchy and democracy within Greece itself, rather than between Greeks and barbarians...