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Isocrates and Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Jacqueline De Romilly
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Extract

Isocrates was perhaps the first in antiquity to focus his political theories on the idea of Europe and the opposition between Europe and Asia. No doubt, if we look into his doctrines and what he said about that theme, they seem to our modern eyes terribly simple and sketchy: they just provide a beginning, a starting point. But even that is remarkable; and it seems worth going into the trouble of seeing what he meant by ‘Europe’, and what place the notion had in a programme which he never stopped defending, all through his life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , April 1992 , pp. 2 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1992

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References

1. έлì τ⋯ρμασı τοīσıν ⋯ĸείνης.

2. Nemean 4.70.

3. Helen 67.

4. He only keeps the notion of a difference in treatment, when he advises Philip, to be ‘a benefactor for the Greeks, a king for the Macedonian and a master for as many barbarians as possible’ (Philippus 154)Google Scholar. See also his advice in 80: Philip should inspire ‘good-will to the Greeks and fear to the barbarians'.

5. The passage gives as a special example the fights of the Anabasis and the battle of Cunaxa. On these facts, see what he says in 145–6, and also in the Philippus 80–92 or the Panathenaicus 104.

6. This is one of the cases where the political conditions are mentioned – but they are mentioned in a very vague and allusive manner.

7. In the passage of the Panegyricus 150 quoted above, see the word τρεϕομ⋯νους, coming even before πολιτευομένους.

8. It must be kept in mind that not all Greeks, or all Athenians, shared this contempt. They had not felt it in early times (as can be seen in Homer), and didn't feel it later (as can be seen with the Stoics).

9. 180: ĸαθ’ ὅλης τής Ἑλλά8μς; These examples are all from the Panegyricus, but the general trend is to be found in all the speeches; and the hesitation about Sparta, at the end of the Panathenaicus, is only related to her politeia.

10. See Paneg. 36; Philippus 120; Panath. 167. On the limits offered to this expansion, see the texts in Mathieu (n. 11), p. 60.

11. For more details, see Mathieu's, G. book Les idées politiques d'Isocrate (Paris, 1925Google Scholar, reprinted 1956), which remains a clear and lucid survey.

12. For the Panegyricus itself, see already § 3: ‘I came here in order to give some advice as regards war against barbarians and concord among us’ and also the conclusion, particularly 174: ομὐĸ ἒστıν ὂлως μὐχ oμμνμ⋯σομεν…

13. See Antidosis 77; Philippus 16, 40, 83; Panath. 42, 77, 167.

14. ‘Eunoia in Isocrates or the political importance of creating good-will’, JHS 78 (1958), 92–101Google Scholar.

15. This idea was, of course, formed during the last years of the 5th century: Euripides' Iphigeneia says to her mother ‘You have given me birth for all the Greeks, not for you alone’ (Iph. Aul. 1386): one would expect ‘for all our country’, but the country, here, is Greece.

16. Thirty years is a decent duration: see the peace of 445 between Athens and Sparta, and the treaty of 450 between Argos and Sparta. For a hundred years’ agreement, Thuc. 3.114.3.

17. See La notion juridique d'indépendance et la tradition hellénique, autonomie et fédéralisme aux Vèrne el IVème siècles av. J. C. (Athens, 1954)Google Scholar , and Droit international et communautés fédérates dans la Gréce des cités, Ve–IIIe siècles av. J.C. (Leyden, 1958)Google Scholar.

18. See 110–17, and Matthieu, G., op. cit., pp. 82ffGoogle Scholar.