Introduction

Summary

Western political thought begins with the Greeks – not just with recognized masterpieces, such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics, but with a host of earlier thinkers who are less well known. The purpose of this volume is to present the broad range of ideas about politics and the nature of human society that were proposed and debated before the more formal works of Plato and Aristotle began to dominate and control the expression of political theory.

Greek political thought before Plato comprises everything the Greeks deemed important to the functioning of the city-state, or polis: political theory, sociology, anthropology, ethics, rhetoric, and more. These issues come together in the last half of the fifth century in the teaching of the sophists, whose profession it was to prepare young adults for participation in public life. Long before the sophists, however, such issues were central to the poetry that served as the cultural memory of the Greeks. Accordingly, the texts in this volume represent more than thirty authors, including poets, philosophers, playwrights, historians, medical writers, and, of course, sophists. Because the sophists made the most striking contribution to political theory in this period, their surviving works are translated here in their entirety. In the case of other writers, we have included texts that reflect sophistic influence, as well as earlier texts with themes relating to the political thought of the time on such matters as human nature, the origin of human society, the origin of law, the nature of justice, the forms of good government, the distribution of wealth, and the distribution of power among genders and social classes.