3 - James Harrington and the “balance of justice”

Summary

Ever since J. G. A. Pocock tried to place James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana at the center of an “Atlantic republican tradition,” controversy has swirled around this text to an unprecedented degree. Recent scholars have wanted to see Harrington as a “republican,” a “civic humanist,” a Hobbesian, a “natural philosopher,” an Aristotelian, and, most influentially, as a Machiavellian. Accordingly, Oceana's argument has been said to turn on a defense of the citizen soldier, a search for effective civic religion, an application of Hobbesian “mechanism,” an endorsement of widespread political participation, an embrace of Venetian serenity, or an enthusiasm for Roman liberty. But Harrington himself announces the basic theme of Oceana in the epigraph on the title page – a passage which has gone almost completely unnoticed:

Tantalus a labris sitiens fugientia captat

Flumina: quid rides? mutato nomine, de te

Fabula narratur.

Harrington introduces and encapsulates his treatise with the lines: “Thirsty Tantalus grasps at streams escaping from his lips. What are you laughing at? With the name changed, the story is told about you.”

Scholars have rarely commented on this passage, except to point out that, for Harrington, the story of Oceana is actually told about England “with the name changed.” This is certainly the case, but what exactly is the story we are being told? A brief look at the source of this passage makes clear that there is much more to be said.