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Xenophanes, Aeschylus, and the doctrine of primeval brutishness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Michael J. O'Brien
Michael J. O'Brien
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

The belief that primitive men lived like beasts and that civilisation developed out of these brutal origins is found in numerous ancient authors, both Greek and Latin. It forms part of certain theories about the beginnings of culture current in late antiquity. These are notoriously difficult to trace to their sources, but they already existed in some form in the fifth century b.c. One idea common to these theories is that of progress, and for this reason a fragment of Xenophanes is sometimes cited as their remote prototype: ‘The gods did not reveal all things to men from the beginning; instead, by seeking, men discover what is better in time’. Mainly on the strength of this fragment, Ludwig Edelstein devoted the first chapter of his book The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity to Xenophanes, and W. K. C. Guthrie has even declared that there is good reason to attribute to him a fuller account of progress, one that would include details found in later authors who speak of the early life of mankind. One of these details is the statement that the life of primitive men was ‘brutal’ or ‘beastlike’ (θηριώδης). In these authors the implication of that term varies from ‘unschooled in the basic crafts’ to ‘inhumanly violent and bloodthirsty’. In one sense or the other it is repeatedly encountered in ancient references to this subject. Accounts of primitive brutishness which make use of the word θηριώδης (or θηριωδ⋯ς can be found in the Suppliants of Euripides, in the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine, in three passages of Diodorus, one of which is thought by some to contain Democritean doctrine, in four passages of Isocrates, in a fragment from a satyr-play Sisyphus which the ancient sources attribute variously to Euripides and to Critias, in a fragment of Athenion, in a second-century inscription, in Plutarch, in Tatian, in Themistius, and in a scholion to Euripides.

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Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , December 1985 , pp. 264 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

1 The following works are referred to by author alone, or by author and short title: Edelstein, Ludwig, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore, 1967)Google Scholar; Cole, Thomas, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (Western Reserve Univ. Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Guthrie, W. K. C., History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1962–1981) i (1962), iii (1969)Google Scholar; Havelock, E. A., The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (New Haven and London, 1957)Google Scholar; Heinimann, F., Nomos and Physis (Basel, 1945)Google Scholar; O'Brien, Michael J., The Socratic Paradoxes and the Greek Mind (Chapel Hill, 1967)Google Scholar; Woodbury, L. E., rev. of Guthrie iii, cited above, in Phoenix 24 (1970), 348–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; op de Hipt, Dieter, Adjektive auf -ώδης im Corpus Hippocraticum (Hamburg, 1972)Google Scholar; Uxkull-Gyllenband, Woldemar Graf, Griechische Kultur-Entstehungslehren (Berlin, 1924)Google Scholar.

2 See Cole, 10 ff., and other works there cited. Cole's theory that Democritus is the central figure in the development of these theories revives a thesis of Karl Reinhardt. Even in the cautious form in which Cole restates this it remains very controversial. See, e.g., Solmsen, F.'s review in Phoenix 23 (1969), 399–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I discussed these fifth-century theories of progress in another context in The Socratic Paradoxes, 56–82.

3 Vorsokr. 21 B 18.

4 Guthrie, , HGP i. 400–1Google Scholar, iii. 62–3 and the notes to 80–2. Havelock, 106–7, had already put forward similar speculations about the lost anthropological doctrines of Xenophanes. Their influence can be seen in the discussion of Ionian contributions to the history of civilisation found in Maguire, Joseph P., ‘Protagoras…or Plato? II. The Protagoras’, Phronesis 22 (1977), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Contrast the more cautious statements of Edelstein, 10 n. 20, and 24 n. 7. Guthrie's argument is much more tentatively expressed in his later volume (where Xenophanes is ‘possibly’ the common source [62]), but it is here that he makes the point that θηριώδης, though excluded from the hexameter, would have been metrically possible in Xenophanes' iambic or mixed poetry (63 n. 2).

5 The passages mentioned that contain θηριώδης (or θηριωδ⋯ς) are Eur. Supp. 202; Critias 88 B 25 (Vorsokr.) = 43 F 19 (TrGF) = Eur. frag. [894A] (see Mette, H. J., ‘Euripides 1976/77 Erster Hauptteil: Die Bruchstücke’, Lustrum 19 [1976], 67–70, and note 54 infra)Google Scholar; Diod. 1.8.1 (see Democr. 68 B 5 [Vorsokr.]), 1.90.1, and 3.56; Hippoc. V.M. 3 and 7 (1.576 and 585 Littré); Isoc. Paneg. 28, Antid. 254, Nic. 6, Bus. 25; Athenion, frag. 1 (Kock); SIG 704 E 11; Plut. De Is. et Os. 13 (356a); Tatian, , Orat. ad Graecos 39.2Google Scholar; Themistius, Orat. 30.349b; schol. Eur. Or. 1646. The other references are Hom. Hymn. Vulc. 4; trag. adesp. 470 (TGF 2 and TrGF); Moschion, frag. 6, line 4 (TGF 2 and TrGF); FGrHist 680.3; Diod. 5.66.4, 13.26; schol. Hom. Od. 3.441. Some of these, along with examples in Latin, are discussed in Spoerri, W., Späthellenistische Berichte über Welt, Kultur, und Götter (Basel, 1959), 152–6Google Scholar. See also Guthrie, , HGP iii. 80 n. 2Google Scholar; Gatz, B., Weltalter, golden Zeit, und sinnverwandte Vorstellungen (Hildesheim, 1967), 230–1Google Scholar.

6 Examples (aside from those in n. 4 supra) can be found in Kleingünther, A., Πρ⋯τος Εὑρετής (Leipzig, 1933)Google Scholar = Philologus Suppl. 26, Heft 1, 72; Lämmli, F., Vom Chaos zum Kosmos (Basel, 1962), 69Google Scholar; Lanza, D., Anassagora, Testimonianze e Frammenti (Florence, 1966), 251Google Scholar; Müller, R., ‘Die “Kulturgeschichte” in Aischylos’ “Prometheus”’, in Aischylos und Pindar, hrsg. E. G. Schmidt (Berlin, 1981), 230–1, 235Google Scholar; de Romilly, J., ‘Thucydide et l'Idée de Progrès’, ASNP 35 (1966), 148Google Scholar; and Cantarella, R., ‘L'Incivilimento umano, dal “Prometeo” all' “Antigone”’, RAL 22 (1967), 153, 163Google Scholar. The evidence, as it affects Aeschylus, , consists of P.V. 447 ffGoogle Scholar. and trag. adesp. 470 (TGF 2 and TrGF), both of which are discussed in the text infra.

7 Guthrie's proposal has already been questioned in Woodbury's review. I am in debt to this piece for several important observations and will refer to it further in the course of the argument. See especially notes 39 and 49. The other implications of Xenophanes B 18 have long been the subject of controversy. Interpreters have often been charged with importing into it anachronistic or otherwise alien ideas. See Shorey, P., ‘Note on Xenophanes fr. 18 (Diets) and Isocrates, Panegyricus 32’, CP 6 (1911), 88–9Google Scholar; Chemiss, H., ‘The History of Ideas and Ancient Greek Philosophy’, in Estudios de Historia de la Filosofia en Homenaje al Prof. R. Mondolfo, Fasc. 1 (Tucuman, 1957), 96Google Scholar; Verdenius, W. J., ‘Xenophanes Frag. 18’, Mnem. Ser. IV, 8 (1955), 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwabl, H., ‘Die Eleaten’, AAW 10 (1957), cols. 206–7Google Scholar.

8 Guthrie, W. K. C., In the Beginning (London, 1957), 95Google Scholar, and HGP iii. 63 n. 2. His own list of these ‘echoes’ is incomplete, as are all others that I have seen. So too, no doubt, is mine (see text and n. 5 supra).

9 See n. 6 supra. Possible Xenophanean influence on Aeschylus is seen by Uxkull-Gyllenband, 4; Müller (supra, n. 6), 230–7; Conacher, D. J., ‘Prometheus as Founder of the Arts’, GRBS 18 (1977), 205Google Scholar (repeated in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound [Toronto, 1980], 96Google Scholar). Contrast Rösler, W., Reflexe vorsokratischen Denkens bei Aischylos (Meisenheim am Glan, 1970), 10 n. 25Google Scholar.

10 For this aspect of the problem the most useful general studies and compendia are: Buck, Carl D. and Peterson, Walter, A Reverse Index of Greek Nouns and Adjectives (Chicago, 1948)Google Scholar; Chantraine, P., La Formation des Noms en Grec Ancien (Paris, 1933), 429 ff.Google Scholar; Debrunner, A., Greichische Wortbildungslehre (Heidelberg, 1917), 194–6Google Scholar; Kretschmer, Paul and Locker, Ernst, Rückläufiges Wörterbuch der griechischen Sprache, 2. Aufl. (Göttingen, 1963)Google Scholar, with a supplement by Kisser, Georg; and Wackernagel, Jacob, Das Dehnungsgesetz der griechischen Komposita (Basel, 1889)Google Scholar, reprinted in Kleine Schriften (Göttingen, 1955), 2Google Scholar. Halbband, no. 51. There exist as well two monographs on the subject, each of which prints lists of words in -ώδης from early authors which are meant to be illustrative rather than complete: Droste, P., De Adjectivorum in -ειδής et in -ώδης Desinentium apud Platonem Usu (Marburg, 1886)Google Scholar; and Dieter op de Hipt, Adjektive auf -ώδης.

I have listed δυσώδης (text infra) as a compound of the earliest period on the basis of Epicharmus 61 (Kaibel) as emended by Casaubon.

11 That expression is not too harsh for tragedy. Cf. [?Aesch.] P.V. 610, Soph. O.T. 439, and Eur. El. 946.

12 See Adcock, F. E., ‘Literary Tradition and Early Greek Code Makers’, Cambridge Historical Journal 2 (1927), 95–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Diels-Kranz, Vorsokr., print ⋯δρομελέστεροι ἄνδρες, an emendation proposed by Karsten and later corroborated by the Arabic version, as noted by Deichgräber, in Gnomon 6 (1930), 375ffGoogle Scholar. So does Wright, M. R., Empedocles: the Extant Fragments (New Haven and London, 1981), 118, 220Google Scholar. But the manuscript reading is defended by Bollack, Jean, Empédocle, iii. Les Origins, Commentaire 2 (Paris, 1969), 545 n. 3Google Scholar, and by O'Brien, D., Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge, 1969), 285 n. 2Google Scholar. Traglia, Antonio, Studi sulla Lingua di Empedocle (Bari, 1952), 72Google Scholar, observes that similar apparent tautologies are tolerated at Aesch. Persae 986 and at P.V. 585.

14 See Herter, Hans, ‘Xanthos der Lyder’, RE 2.18 (1967), 1365Google Scholar.

15 I follow the interpretation of Kamerbeek, J. C., Trachiniae (Leiden, 1959)Google Scholar, ad loc., which is apparently also that of Dain, A., Mazon, P., Sophocle, i. Les Trachiniennes, Antigone (Paris, 1955)Google Scholar (‘du haut d'un terrasse des remparts’) and of LSJ, 7th ed. (sic), s.v. πλάξ (‘from the top storey of a tower’). Other ancient versions of the incident are listed by Kamerbeek and by Jebb, R. C., Trachiniae (Cambridge, 1892)Google Scholar, ad loc. The latest commentary leaves the question open (Easterling, P. E., Sophocles, Trachiniae [Cambridge, 1982], 114)Google Scholar.

16 See Hunt, A. S., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Papyracea Nuper Reperta (Oxford, 1912) (cf. POxy, ix. pp. 55, 80)Google Scholar; Vollgraff, W., ‘Ad Sophoclis Indagatores’, Mnem. N.S. 42 (1914), 173–4Google Scholar; TrGF IV, p. 295. No consensus exists about the date of Ichneutae. See Lesky, A., Die Tragische Dichtung der Hellenen, 3. Aufl. (Göttingen, 1972), 258Google Scholar.

17 The date of Supp. is discussed by Zuntz, G., The Political Plays of Euripides (Manchester, 1955), 89Google Scholar. Hippoc. V.M., which also uses the term in a similar way (see n. 5 supra), may be slightly earlier than Supp. Cantarella (supra n. 6), 172, argues that the medical writer has directly influenced the tragedian, but his case is weak, and the exact date of V.M. remains obscure. A consensus places it near the end of the fifth century. Bibliography in M. J. O'Brien 66 n. 23, and Cantarella, 172 n. 46.

18 Actually βίοτον ⋯κ…θηριώδονς (Eur. Supp. 201–2). The construction is of a type found also at Soph. Ant. 1092–3.

19 See Buck-Peterson (supra, n. 10), 698.

20 ⋯νεμώδης (frag. 553 [TrGF]), δυσώδης (Phil. 1032), εὐρώδης (Ajax 1190), θρομβώδης (Trach. 702), λυσσώδης (Ajax 452), μιτώδης (Ant. 1222), παγετώδης (Phil. 1082), πετρώδης (Ant. 774, 958), πυργώδης (Trach. 273), σισυρνώδης (frag. 407a [TrGF]), στομώδης (frag. 1098 [TrGF]), ὑλώδης (Ichneutae, frag. 314, line 221 [TrGF]). The references for the extant tragedies are those found in F. Ellendt, H. Genthe, Lexicon Sophocleum.

21 ⋯κανθώδης (1.126.1), ⋯ργιλώδης (2.12.3), αὐχμώδης (1.142.2), δυσώδης (2.94.2), εὐώδης (3.112), θηριώδης (1.110.1, 1.111.3, 2.32.4 [twice], 2.32.5, 2.65.2, 4.174, 4.181.1 [twice], 4.181.2, 4.191.2, 4.191.3, 6.44.3), ἰχθυώδης (7.109.2), λιθώδης (4.23.1), ποώδης (4.47.1), σαρκώδης (3.29.2), ταραχώδης (1.32.1), ψαμμώδης (2.32.6, 4.191.3). Of these, θηριώδης occurs thirteen times, ψαμμώδης twice, the rest once each. References are from J. E. Powell, Lexicon to Herodotus.

22 Meanings of the word in medical texts are discussed by D. op de Hipt, 71–4.

23 At Tro. 671 τ⋯ θηρι⋯δες means ‘the nature of a beast’.

24 Aelian, N.A. 12.20 = 68 A 155; 68 B 105 (Vorsokr.).

25 Some evidence is not even approximately datable. Into this classification must fall the following terms and phrases: τυντλώδης λόγος, ‘muddy discourse’ (com. adesp. 909 [Kock]), and ⋯ρεβώδης θάλασσα, ‘a sea dark as Erebus’ (adesp. 999 [81] [PMG] = TGF 2adesp. 377). Examples from the Hippocratic Corpus are also omitted here because there is no agreement as to when its parts were written. See Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘The Hippocratic Question’, CQ 25 (1975), 171–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See Guthrie, , HGP i. 363Google Scholar; Woodbury, L. E., ‘Apollodorus, Xenophanes, and the Foundation of Massilia’, Phoenix 15 (1961), 134–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and von Fritz, Kurt, ‘Xenophanes’, RE 2.18 (1967), 1542Google Scholar. Recent literature on the question of his dates is reviewed in Wiesner, J., ‘Xenophanes 1957–1969’, AAHG 25 (1972), 2–4Google Scholar.

27 The evidence for non-medical authors cited by D. op de Hipt does not pretend to be complete, but the observations he bases on it are generally consistent with mine. He maintains that -ώδης words bearing the sense ‘Ähnlichkeit dem Wesen, dem Kern der Sache nach’ are a logically late development in the history of the word-group (257, 284). (But I would not cite as an example of this sense, as he does, the doubtful reading ⋯νδρωέστεροι at Empedocles 31 B 67 [Vorsokr.]. See text supra and n. 13.) The evidence he prints would seem to warrant extending the judgement of lateness to terms expressing similarity of any kind. The only apparent impediment is the adjective in the (questionably) Parmenidean phrase ⋯τάρπιτος…πηλώδης(28 B 20 [Vorsokr.]). This, however, does not refer to ‘stoffliche Ähnlichkeit’, as he says on p. 257, but rather to material.

28 Renehan, Robert, Studies in Greek Texts (Göttingen, 1976) 146Google Scholar, warns that in pronouncing on the currency of words we should not confuse ‘earliest’ with ‘earliest extant’. This cautionary principle, which is true and relevant to the examples he mentions, might be thought relevant here. But it is not. I am not denying to Xenophanes an existing text of an alleged quotation with the argument that it contains a word or usage that is ‘too late’. There is no existing text. If there were, the probabilities would have to be recalculated.

29 Other fragments and testimonia of Xenophanes are sometimes cited as relevant to this issue (see Havelock, 106–7). In 21 B 15 (Vorsokr.) animals are imagined as making gods in their own images. Even if this willingness to compare men and animals expresses something more than satirical fantasy, the idea of a shared crudeness and savagery has still not appeared. Again, 21 B 14 refers to the invention of coinage and shows the same interest in discovery as does 21 B 18. But it brings us no closer to a brutish stage in history.

30 A passage of Hesiod and one of Anaximander have also turned up in some discussions. Hes. Op. 276–9 contrasts men with animals on the ground that the former possess justice and the latter do not. Instead, animals eat one another. If proof were needed, this would show that ‘brute’ had long possessed connotations of moral and social deficiency. What the passage does not say is that the moral distinction between men and animals arose in the course of time. The relation between the two takes a different form in Anaximander 12 A 30 (Vorsokr.), where the first men were said to have grown inside a kind of fish. Only, however, in an avowedly speculative account, such as that offered by Havelock (105), can this statement, along with others about the origin of animal life and the invention of the alphabet (12 A 30, 12 C), be taken to imply animal-like behaviour on the part of primitive men.

31 Theiler, W., Zur Geschichte der teleologischen Naturbetrachtung bis auf Aristoteles (Zürich, Leipzig, 1925), 39–40Google Scholar. Useful comments on the problem of dating can be found in Richardson, N. J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974), 3Google Scholar; Humbert, J., Homère: Hymnes (Paris, 1959), 214Google Scholar; Kleingünther (supra, n. 6), 75.

32 It is left unassigned by Nauck in TGF 2; by Stoessl, F. in ‘Die Palamedes-Tragödien der drei grossen Tragiker’, WS 79 (1966), 94 n. 5Google Scholar; and by Griffith, M., Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, 1983), 167, 169Google Scholar, and in ‘Aeschylus, Sicily and Prometheus’, Dionysiaca: Nine Studies…Presented to Sir Denys Page…, ed. Dawe, R. D. et al. (Cambridge, 1978), 110Google Scholar. It is referred to the Palamedes of Euripides by Hermann, G., Aeschyli Tragoediae (Leipzig, 1852)Google Scholar, in his note on P.V. 460, and also, more tentatively, by Jouan, F., Euripide et les Légendes des Chants Cypriens (Paris, 1966), 350 n. 2Google Scholar. It has been more usual to assign it to the Palamedes of Aeschylus. Wachsmuth, K. emended the text of Stobaeus to reflect this judgement (I. Stobaei Anthologium [Berlin, 1884], i. 15)Google Scholar, and an equally confident line was taken by H. J. Mette, who adopted the adespoton as Aeschylean frag. 303 in Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos (Berlin, 1959)Google Scholar and explained his reasons in Der verlorene Aischylos (Berlin, 1963), 107Google Scholar. Mette's judgement has recently been adopted in TrGF ii. 138. Nauck's suspension of judgement was better advised.

33 See Griffith, M., The Authenticity of the Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, 1977), 253Google Scholar.

34 Der verlorene Aischylos (supra, n. 32), 107. The link would be the words ⋯κατοντάρχους and τρίτα in the Palamedes fragment.

35 See Stallbaum, G., Platonis Opera Omnia iii.1 (Gothae et Erfurdiae, 1858), 143–4Google Scholar; James Adam, rev. Rees, D. A., The Republic of Plato (Cambridge, 1963), ii. 107–8Google Scholar.

36 See Herington, C. J., The Older Scholia on the Prometheus Bound (Leiden, 1972)Google Scholar, Mnemosyne Suppl. 19, 143–4.

37 See TrGF iv. 355, 386. Carden, R., The Papyrus Fragments of Sophocles (Berlin, New York, 1974), xCrossRefGoogle Scholar, has some good comments on the general issues relating to adespota. With particular reference to Mette, he decries the invention of ‘bad arguments’ to justify the attachment of authors' names to them. Jouan (supra, n. 32), n. 2, has further bibliography.

38 ‘Tierhafte Behausung’ (Dierauer, U., Tier and Mensch im Denken der Antike [Amsterdam, 1977], 28 n. 17Google Scholar). Cf. Heinimann, 148; Griffith, , P.V. (supra, n. 32), 166Google Scholar. Edelstein, 55 n. 73, says that the expression ‘brutish’ occurs at P.V. 453. This is a slip, but it may reflect what he thinks is implied. See n. 48 infra. My own wording at Socr. Paradoxes 68 n. 26 was inaccurate.

39 A similar point has already been made by Woodbury (rev. of Guthrie, 353). Commenting on the absence of θηριώδης or a like term in P.V. 452 ff., Protagoras 320c ff., and Antigone 332 ff., he sees in it evidence of a distinction between earlier and later sophistic doctrine about human nature. Cf. Heinimann, 148. Edelstein had also concluded that for Protagoras ‘the beginnings of mankind were savage rather than brutish’ (24 n. 7). He evidently does not think of this, however, as a distinction between earlier and later doctrine, since he speaks of Anaxagoras as identifying ‘man's first form of life with that of animals’ (ibid.). This last judgement, however, appears to be reached partly by imputing to Anaxagoras some views of his pupil Archelaus found in 60 A 4 (Vorsokr.), and partly by assuming an implicit reference in 59 A 102 and B 21b to an animal-like stage in human history. Both passages speak of man's superiority to the animals, but neither speaks of it as the result of an historical change. In particular δι⋯ τ⋯ χεῖρας ἔχειν ɸρονιώτατον εἶναι τ⋯ν ζώων ἄνθρωπον (59 A 102 = Arist. P.A. 687a7) should not be paraphrased ‘it is because man has hands that he becomes wiser than the brutes’ (italics mine).

40 The reliability of the passage as a source for Protagorean doctrine is discussed in M. J. O'Brien, 62–3, and Guthrie, , HGP iii. 64 n. 1Google Scholar.

41 See Johansen, H. F., ‘Sophocles 1939–1959’, Lustrum 7 (1962), 193Google Scholar. Uxkull-Gyllenband, 10, sees the influence of Anaxagoras and Archelaus, citing the fragments now numbered 59 B 21b, 59 B 4, and 60 A 4 in Vorsokr. A fragment of Eur. Aeolus (no. 27, TGF 2) also speaks of man's subjection of the animals.

42 The evidence for a belief in primitive cannibalism is assembled by Festugière, A. J., ‘A Propos des Arétalogies d'Isis’, Harvard Theol. Rev. 42 (1949), 215–20Google Scholar. He regards the date of frag. 292 as uncertain (219 n. 36). The matter is complicated by the controversy over the antiquity of the Orphic myth of the dismemberment and eating of Dionysus by the Titans. This is discussed in Linforth, I., The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1941), 307 ffGoogle Scholar. Contrast Nilsson, M. P., Geschichte der griechischen Religion i. Band, 3. Aufl. (Munich, 1967), 686Google Scholar. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1964), 155–6Google Scholar, gives a clear summary. See now West, M. L., The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983), 140–75Google Scholar.

The references in the text above are to Kern, O. ed., Orphicorum Fragmenta (Berlin, 1922), 303Google Scholar; Maass, Ernst, Orpheus (Munich, 1895), 77 n. 104Google Scholar; Ed. Norden, , Agnostos Theos (Berlin, 1913), 371 n. 2Google Scholar. Others who think that Orphic doctrine affected theories of progress include Dierauer (supra, n. 38), 28; Graeser, A., rev. of Cole, in Gnomon 41 (1969), 12Google Scholar; Heinimann, 149–52; and Guthrie, W. K. C., Orpheus and Greek Religion (London, 1935), 24 n. 5, and 40Google Scholar. Heinimann relies in his argument on the reference to Orpheus in Dem. 25.11, in a context which also refers to the development of civilisation. But the reasons for mentioning Orpheus here that are proposed by Linforth, 98–100, 144–6, seem sufficient: the rhetorical effectiveness of the allusion and the availability of Orphic poetry. Nor is there any need to assume that the author would have drawn his ideas and allusions from a single source. Linforth, discusses Frogs 1030–6 on pp. 67–71Google Scholar.

Graf, F., Eleusis and die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Berlin, New York, 1974)Google Scholar, would derive frag. 292 from a late fifth-century Eleusinian-Orphic poem, but one composed under sophistic (perhaps specifically Prodican) influence (31–39, 158–63, 176–81). M. L. West (supra, this note), though he cites with approval Graf's theory of a probable Eleusinian origin (268), seems elsewhere to imply that such a poem could have appeared no earlier than the mid-fourth century, because only then does Eleusinian poetry begin to be ascribed to Orpheus (23–4, 41, 261).

43 Cf. Empedocles 31 B 136 (Vorsokr.).

44 For Phoroneus see Paus. 2.15.5, 2.19.5, and Tatian, , Orat. ad Graecos 39.2Google Scholar. For Isis and Osiris see IG XII. 5.739 (1st cent. b.c.); Diod. 1.14; Plut. De Is. et Os. 13 (356a); and Solmsen, F., Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, Mass., London, 1979), 27–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some nations had their civilisers too, of whom the usual formulas are used. See schol. Eur. Or. 1646 (Pelasgus); Diod, 3.56.3 (Uranus), 5.66.4 (Kronos); Berosus, FGrHist 680.3–4 (Oan).

45 Themistius Orat. 30.349b (=Kern, frag. 112, p. 33).

46 Linforth (supra, n. 42), 359.

47 See n. 17 supra.

48 Disorder and brutishness go together in some other descriptions of primitive life too, e.g. in Diod 1.8.1. If ἔɸυρου at P.V. 450 is the earliest reference to primitive disorder, it may show that this idea antedates that of primitive brutishness. The same might be said about another detail in P.V., viz. cave-dwelling, which is there sufficiently accounted for as the natural recourse of men who cannot build houses. Elsewhere, e.g. in Hom. Hymn. Vulc. 4, it has become a sign of brutishness. Since inherited detail can acquire new significance in the context of a new theory, we are not entitled to say that in the former, and possibly earlier, account cave-dwelling already implies brutishness. See n. 38 supra.

49 Rev. of Guthrie, 353. Antiphon the Sophist 87 B 44 (Vorsokr.) is an extended example of argument based on this antithesis.

50 Ar. Nub. 1427 ff.; Philemon, frag. 93 (Kock); Pl. Grg. 483d; Lys. 2.19; Dem. 25.15–16 and 20. The authorship of Lys. 2 and of Dem. 25 is in doubt. See Guthrie, , HGP iii. 74–7Google Scholar. Pohlenz, Max, ‘Anonymus περ⋯ νόμων’, NGG (1924), 19–37Google Scholar, maintains that the general discussion of law in the latter speech is a later addition taken from a treatise written at the end of the fifth century, one which shows Pythagorean and Orphic influence. See also Jackson, D. F. and Rowe, G. O., ‘Demosthenes 1915–1965’, Lustrum 14 (1969), 74Google Scholar; Sealey, R., ‘Pseudo-Demosthenes XIII and XXV’, REG 80 (1967), 250–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similar ideas were expressed by the Epicurean Colotes. See Plut. Adv. Col. 1124–5.

51 See Isoc. Paneg. 28, and Hippoc. V.M. 3 and 7 for the latter reference, and Critias 88 B 25 (Vorsokr.) and Isoc. Bus. 25 for the former.

52 Kirk, G. S., Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1971), 152–3, 168Google Scholar. It should not be forgotten either that the man-eating savage is known to Greek poetry as early as the Odyssey (9.291 ff., 10.116 ff.).

53 The references are 60 A 4 ad fin. and 60 A 1 and 2 (Vorsokr.). Uxkull-Gyllenband, 11 n. 21, proposes using Isoc. Nic. 5 ff., where a sequence of ideas similar to that in 60 A 4 occurs with the phrasing το⋯ θηριωδ⋯ς ζ⋯ν ⋯πηλλάγημεν, as a way of supplementing our knowledge of Archelaus' views. Pohlenz, Max, moreover, in ‘Nomos and Physis’, Hermes 81 (1953), 423Google Scholar, argues that the antithesis ɸύσις/νόμος is discernible in Hippocratic writings that he dates to the period around 430, and that here too Archelaus is the source. The attribution to Archelaus of the antithesis in Diogenes Laertius and the Suda (60 A 1 and 2) is part of his evidence. Not to speak of the disagreements about the dates of the medical treatises (see n. 25, above), the value of what Diogenes and the Suda tell us is very differently appraised by Guthrie, , who accepts it (HGP ii. 340, iii. 58)Google Scholar, and by Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E., Schofield, M., who are sceptical (The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. [Cambridge, 1983], 389Google Scholar). Heinimann, 113–14, doubts at least the form of expression. W. Burkert cites it along with 60 A 4 as evidence of Archelaus' great importance in cultural history (rev. of Cole, , in AGPh 51 [1969], 296Google Scholar). In this he agrees with Lämmli (supra, n. 6), 63–71.

54 See note 5 above. The possible influence of this and related doctrines on Euripides' view of human nature is a subject worth study, particularly in Ba. and Or. (See Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Euripides and Dionysus [Cambridge, 1948], 112–13Google Scholar.) The clearest evidence is at Supp. 200–1 and Or. 524. To these one would have to add frag. 894A, line 2 (see Mette, n. 5 supra) if it were in fact from the Sisyphus of Euripides, a play of 415 b.c. A. Dihle's case for believing that he rather than Critias is the author is set out in ‘Das Satyrspiel “Sisyphos”’, Hermes 105 (1977), 28–42Google Scholar. It seems a serious objection to his theory that the fragment contains a far lower proportion of lines with resolutions than (i) Euripidean tragedies of this period and (ii) the satyr-play Cyclops. See Sutton, Dana, ‘Critias and Athens’, CQ 31 (1981), 34 n. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Devine, A. M., Stephens, L. D., ‘A New Aspect of the Evolution of the Trimeter in Euripides’, TAPA 111 (1981), 44Google Scholar.

55 See Democritus 68 B 144 and 154,68 A 151, and the controversial 68 B 5 (Vorsokr.). The history of the dispute over the last is outlined by Cole, 11. The relevant texts for Archelaus are cited in n. 53 supra.