Isocrates I

Areopagiticus

7. AREOPAGITICUS introduction The Areopagiticus is generally thought to have been composed between 358 and 352, either just before, during, or just after the disastrous Social War (357–355) in which Athens was left with a weakened naval empire after her stronger allies, Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium , gained their independence from the Confederacy. The positive and confident mood of the work (7.1–3) suggests a date before the war, perhaps 358/7,1 but the speech also raises issues of particular poignancy for the conflict and its outcome. The speech is one that expresses strong dissatisfaction with the current democracy and espouses a return to thepoliteia patrios, or ‘‘ancestral constitution,’’ as a solution to the city’s problems and as a guarantee of its supremacy. In particular , Isocrates urges Athens to give back to the Areopagus Court its historical authority to maintain the laws and to supervise the behavior of citizens. This political program was extremely conservative. The Areopagus Court was founded before Solon as a powerful, aristocratic council of state to ensure the preservation of Athens’ laws (cf. Arist.,Ath. Pol. 3.6, 4.4, 8.4) and to hear and punish cases of homicide. Its membership consisted of all individuals who had held the annual office of archon, of which there were nine each year. The Court may have also included a powerful subgroup of fifty-one citizens, known as the ephetai, who heard the legal cases (see Arist., Politics 1273b35–1274a7 and Wallace 1 See Jaeger 1940 and Wallace 1986: 77 and notes for summary of the debate. 1985: 12). In 462/1 bc Ephialtes reformed the Court in response to its mismanagement of the city’s affairs. It seems that he took away the special privileges of its members and gave to the people the guardianship of the laws.2 In the fourth century, the Court dealt with cases of homicide, wounding, arson, and various religious offenses.3 Toward the end of the fifth century, the Areopagus became a focus for conservative, and even oligarchical, ideology as espoused by individuals such as Theramenes, Xenophon, Plato, and Timotheus. Isocrates ’ articulation of Areopagus ideology in this work is somewhat idiosyncratic , for it presents a pedagogical ideal both distinct from and complementary to that offered in his other paideutic works, Against the Sophists (speech 13) and Antidosis (speech 15). If these two works portray the rhetorician as a teacher of the youth of Athens and the larger Greek-speaking world in ‘‘philosophy’’ (i.e., rhetoric4 ) in opposition to the contemporary sophists, the Areopagiticus concerns itself above all with the moral instruction to the city as a whole. According to Isocrates, in Solon’s time, the Areopagus guarded the laws, educated the young, and oversaw the maintenance of Athens as a democratic state (7.37–38), preventing what the rhetorician caricatures as the corruptions and excesses of the populist democracy. Isocrates now presses for the restoration of the Court as the only institution with the authority and capacity to rehabilitate Athens from the moral decadence that has resulted from the education of the sophists and from the culture of litigation produced by it. 7. areopagiticus [1] I suppose many of you are wondering what my intention is in coming forward to speak about our security as if Athens were in danger , or its affairs were in a perilous state, or it did not possess more than two hundred triremes, enjoy peace in its territory, and rule the sea. [2] Indeed, our city has many allies who will readily help, if the 7. areopagiticus 183 2 The founding of the Areopagus Court to hear the case of Orestes in Aeschylus ’ Eumenides pays tribute to the reforms. 3 Wallace 1985: 106–110. 4 On the meaning of ‘‘philosophy,’’ see the Introduction to Isocrates. need arises, and many more paying contributions and carrying out its orders. In this situation, one might say that it would be reasonable for us to have confidence that we are far from danger and that our enemies should be afraid and take thought for their own security. [3] You,5 as I know, accept this argument and despise my address, for you expect to rule all Greece by this power. Yet I fear for just these reasons. I see cities that think their circumstances are best making the worst decisions, and those which are particularly confident soon finding themselves...