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Athenian beliefs about revenge: problems and methods*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Gabriel Herman
Gabriel Herman
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Extract

In a short article published in The Classical Quarterly, Professor W.V. Harris questioned some of the opinions that I have put forward concerning revenge in Athenian society. His reservations presupposed certain methodological premises that he believes the researcher should adopt when dealing with ancient sources that reveal sentiments and emotions. In expressing the aforementioned opinions I criticised these premises by implication, but without dealing directly with the methodological problems surrounding the issue. Professor Harris's article has now provided me with an excellent opportunity to confront these problems explicitly and to examine how two different methods of analysis have given rise to diametrically opposed opinions concerning revenge in Athenian society. Revenge is a common human sentiment that is expressed in the individual's outward behaviour, influences social behaviour and has implications for society as a whole. The question of whether it was controlled and repressed or fostered and stimulated in classical Athens is of no trifling importance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 46 , 2001 , pp. 7 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

1 ‘Lysias III and Athenian beliefs about revenge’, CQ 47 (1997) 363–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 ‘Tribal and civic codes of behaviour in Lysias 1’, CQ 43 (1993), 406–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘How violent was Athenian society?’, in Osborne, R. and Hornblower, S. (eds), Ritual, finance, politics. Athenian democratic accounts presented to David Lewis (Oxford, 1994), 99–117Google Scholar; ‘Honour, revenge and the state in fourth-century Athens’, in Eder, W. (ed.), Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Stuttgart, 1995) 43–60Google Scholar (with discussion on pp. 61–66). Harris does not seem to be aware of my ‘Ancient Athens and the values of Mediterranean society’, Mediterranean Historical Review 11 (1996) 5–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I shall here also refer to my review of Cohen, D., Law, violence and community in classical Athens, in Gnomon 70 (1998), 605–15Google Scholar, and to my article ‘Reciprocity, altruism, and the prisoner's dilemma: the special case of classical Athens’, in Gill, C., Postlethwaite, N. and Seaford, R. (eds), Reciprocity in ancient Greece (Oxford, 1998) 199–225Google Scholar, even though they post-date the publication of Harris's article.

3 Kitto, H.D.F., The Greeks (Harmondsworth, 1969, ed. I, 1951) 243–7Google Scholar.

4 See Ehrenberg, V., ‘Greek civilization and Greek man’, in Aspects of the Ancient World (Oxford, 1946) 53–62Google Scholar, at 55, referring, in particular, to the section in Burckhardt's, Griechische Kulturgeschichte entitled ‘Zum Gesamtbilanz des griechischen Lebens’Google Scholar.

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12 Cohen, D., Law, violence and community in classical Athens (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar throughout.

13 Burnett's, A.P.Revenge in Attic and later tragedy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1998)Google Scholar has been brought to my attention too late for systematic consideration.

14 Fisher, N.R.E., Hybris. A study of the values of honour and shame in ancient Greece (Warminster, 1992)Google Scholar, for example, shows very clearly that hybris was a pattern of behaviour that was disapproved of in Athens. I agree with this entirely, but have more of a problem with Fisher's non-committal conclusion that ‘violent and hybristic behaviour was not eradicated’ (p. 67).

15 This is a little surprising, since I have dealt extensively with passages from, for example, Thucydides, Plato's Crito and Protagoras and Aeschylus' Choephoroi.

16 Cf. Herman, , ‘How violent …’, 108–9Google Scholar, and the review of Cohen in Gnomon (both n. 2 above). I remain singularly unimpressed by Harris's suggestion that I should reconsider my position in view of the fact that generations of scholars have regarded this method as graven in stone.

17 The best collection of the material is to be found in Blundell, Helping friends (n. 7 above), ch. 2.

18 Gauthier, Ph. and Hatzopoulos, M.B., La Loi gymnasiarchque de Beroia (Athens 1993)Google Scholar Face A.

19 Cf. Elias, Norbert, ‘On transformations of aggressiveness’, Theory and Society 5 (1978), 229–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 234: ‘There is abundant evidence that attitudes towards life and death among the secular upper classes of the Middle Ages by no means always accorded with those which prevail in books by the clerical classes and which are quite often considered typical of the period.’

20 ‘To take vengeance (to … timoreisthai) on one's enemies is nobler than to come to terms with them; for to retaliate (to … antodidonai) is just (dikaion), and that which is just is noble (kalon, Rh. 1367a24–5); ‘And revenge (to timoreisthai) is pleasant; for it is pleasant to get anything which it is painful to fail to get; those who are resentful (orgizomenoi) are pained beyond measure when they fail to secure revenge, while the hope of it delights them’, Rh. 1370b30); ‘ … it is considered servile (andrapododes) to put up with an insult to oneself (to de propelakizomenon anechesthai) or suffer one's friends to be insulted’, EN. 1126a6, all adapted from the Loeb translation.

21 Cf. Harrison, A.R.W., ‘Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics, book V, and the law of Athens’, JHS 77 (1957), 42–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who considers whether Aristotle based his theoretical work on the substantive law of Athens, and arrives at the answer that he did not.

22 I am even prepared to go further than that. I would be unlikely to change my mind even if by some miraculous coincidence a hitherto unknown Aristotelian treatise were to be found that said something such as, ‘Athenian litigants sought to win their court cases by posing as arrogant, vindictive males.’ In view of the attitudes that I have extracted from the speeches, attitudes that represent not the cogitation of an armchair philosopher but appeals to the Athenian central value-system, made in real-life circumstances in an attempt to sway public opinion, I would then be tempted to suggest that Aristotle had got it all wrong.

23 For which see Vlastos, G., ‘Socrates' rejection of retaliation’, in Socrates. Ironist and moral philosopher (Cambridge, 1991) 179–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Cf. Easterling, P.E., ‘Constructing the heroic’, in Pelling, C. (ed.), Greek tragedy and the historian (Oxford, 1997) 21–37Google Scholar, with which I find myself in full agreement.

25 I borrow the phrase from Harold Perkins' review of Gay's, PeterThe cultivation of hatred (London, 1993)Google Scholar, a study of the interplay between the psychological roots of violence, aggression and historical change during the Victorian period.

26 Lionel Pearson, for instance, proceeding on the assumption that there is one, draws inferences about popular ethics (in my view totally mistaken ones) from Aeschylean tragedy (Popular ethics in ancient Greece (Stanford, 1962)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 4: ‘Justice and revenge: the tragedies of Aeschylus’).

27 Law, violence (n. 11 above) 125.

28 I explore this suggestion in ‘How violent …?’ (n. 2 above).

29 This is a point that he makes explicitly: ‘In the name of the gods, Athenians, I ask you to reflect and calculate in your minds how much more reason I had to be angry when I suffered so at the hands of Meidias, than Euaeon when he killed Boeotus … And, Athenians, I consider that I was prudent, or rather happily inspired, when I submitted at the time and was not impelled to any irremediable action’ (Dem. 21.73–4).

30 As A.H. Sommerstein has pointed out, the conventions of the tragedy ‘forbid it to take explicit notice of the audience's presence’ (in Pelling, C. ed., Greek tragedy and the historian (Oxford, 1997) 65)Google Scholar.

31 Cf. Gregory, J., ‘The encounter at the crossroads’, JHS 115 (1995) 141–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 ‘La Vengeance comme explication historique dans l'oeuvre d'Hérodote’, REG 84 (1971) 314–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. She points out, amongst other things, that Herodotus disapproves of vengeance but uses it as a literary tool, that he finds it hard to reconcile it with the rational face of his outlook, and that in his later books vengeance gives way to ‘political causality’. It should be noted that Herodotus' use of vengeance as a stylistic tool does not tempt de Romilly to jump to any conclusions concerning its importance in his Weltanschauung: ‘La vengeance constitue un lien linéaire, superficiel, artificiel parfois, mais qui permet de coudre ensemble un nombre plus grand d'anecdotes ou de descriptions’ (p. 320).

33 Cairns, Douglas L., ‘Hybris, dishonour and thinking big’, JHS 116 (1996) 1–32, at 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 New edition (London, 1870) V412–13, my italics.

35 Cf. Adkins, A.W.H., ‘Problems in Greek popular morality’, CT 73 (1978) 143–58Google Scholar, and ‘Gagarin and the “morality” of Homer’, CP 82 (1987) 311–22Google Scholar.

36 The language of morals (Oxford, 1978; ed. 1 1952), 1Google ScholarPubMed, his italics.

37 Thuc. 3.81. trans. Rex Warner.

38 A point that, contrary to Harris's imputations, I have never sought to deny. Cf. Herman, , ‘How violent…’ (n. 2 above) 111ffGoogle Scholar; ‘Honour, revenge …’ (n. 2 above) 56 n. 28.

39 Thuc. 2.37, trans. Rex Warner.

40 Cf. Herman, ‘How violent …?’ (n. 2 above).

41 Plato, , Seventh letter, 325b5Google Scholar; Aeschin. 3.208, to be read with Dorjahn, A.P., Political forgiveness in old Athens (Evanston, 1946)Google Scholar.

42 Cf. most recently Cartledge, Paul, ‘Introduction: defining a kosmos’, in Kosmos. Essays in order, conflict and community in classical Athens, eds Cartledge, P., Millett, P. and von Reden, S. (Cambridge, 1998) 1–12Google Scholar, at 9.

43 Cf. Herman, ‘Honour, revenge …’ (n. 2 above), and G. Vlastos, ‘Socrates' rejection of retaliation’ (n. 23 above). Vlastos offers a marvellous description of the idea itself, but, accepting the traditional interpretation of revenge in Athenian society, is at a loss to account for its origins.

44 A good example of the latter type is furnished by Cohen's Law, violence and community in classical Athens (n. 12 above). Fully embracing the first three of the assumptions criticised in this article, and employing extremely loose criteria, Cohen proceeds to compare Athenian society with societies such as those of contemporary Anglo-America, ancient Rome, Renaissance Italy, Turkey, Japan, France, Corsica, the Tonga and the Tallensi. He reaches the conclusion that I outlined on p. 9 above. Cf. my review in Gnomon (n. 2 above).

45 This point has been brought out by Gehrke, , ‘Die Griechen und die Rache’ (n. 6 above) 129ffGoogle Scholar.

46 I should perhaps stress that to the best of my knowledge no modern scholar has ever dreamt of translating the famous passage in [Arist.], Ath. pol. 9.1 as ‘permission for anyone who wished to take revenge on behalf of the injured party’; it is generally translated as ‘permission for anyone who wished to secure punishment on behalf of the injured party’.

47 I elaborate upon this point in ‘How violent…’, and in my review of Cohen, p. 8 (both n. 2 above).

48 I resent Harris's imputation that I left the reader ‘wondering which societies are comparable’. I clearly defined and provided concrete examples of the sorts of society that I thought comparable. Cf., for instance, Herman, ‘How violent…’, (n. 2 above) 102 esp. n. 3.

49 Cf. Herman, ‘Reciprocity, altruism …’ (n. 2 above).