Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T20:29:25.203Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SŌPHROSYNĒ AND JUSTICE IN ARISTOPHANES' WASPS *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2016

Nikoletta Kanavou
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Aristophanes' Wasps is primarily a satire of the Athenian judicial system: the audience is particularly invited to laugh at ridiculous manifestations of this system and to reflect on its shortcomings. I argue here that the satire of Athenian justice in Wasps is intertwined with Aristophanes' treatment of sōphrosynē, the notion of ‘temperance’ and ‘sound-mindedness’ in both public and private life. I further show that the connection between sōphrosynē and justice in Wasps has implications for the characterization of the play's protagonists, as well as for our reading of its basic plot and its politics. Finally, I demonstrate that these two notions are central to the self-image projected by the poet in Wasps and in other comedies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , October 2016 , pp. 175 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This article has profited from discussion at the 9th Workshop of the Working Group of Practical Philosophy (Gesellschaft für Antike Philosophie) on ‘Dikē – Iustitia’ held at the University of Marburg, 15–16 May 2015. Thanks go to the organizers, Prof. Sabine Föllinger and Dr Diego De Brasi, for inviting my participation. I am also grateful to Prof. William Furley for a number of useful comments, and to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for its generous support of my research. Translations of all ancient texts presented here are based on the most recent Loeb editions, with occasional alterations.

References

1 Chantraine, P., La Formation des noms en grec ancien (Paris, 1933), 211 Google Scholar; see also Havelock, E. A., ‘Dikaiosynē: An Essay in Greek Intellectual History’, Phoenix 23 (1969), 51 Google Scholar.

2 On justice, see further Slote, M., ‘Justice as a Virtue’, in Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 edition)Google Scholar, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/justice-virtue/>, accessed 23 May 2016; Schmidtz, D. and Thrasher, J., ‘The Virtues of Justice’, in Timpe, K. and Boyd, C. A. (eds.), Virtues and Their Vices (Oxford, 2014), 59–60 Google Scholar. See North, H., Sōphrosynē. Self-knowledge and Self-restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, NY, 1966), 97–9Google Scholar, on the combination of moral and political aspects in Aristophanic sōphrosynē.

3 It is a sign of the importance of sōphrosynē as a Greek ideal of behaviour and life that it has received two book-length discussions: North (n. 2) and Rademaker, A., Sōphrosynē and the Rhetoric of Self-restraint. Polysemy and Persuasive Use of an Ancient Greek Value Term (Leiden, 2005)Google Scholar.

4 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 10 Google Scholar. Note that Plato defines justice in the Republic (441e–442d) as a psychological state characterized by the optimal balance between the different parts of the soul, as well as a universal requirement of the ideal city (433a).

5 An enduring idea; see Rawls (n. 4), 3, on the primacy of justice as a social virtue in modern philosophical thinking. Aristotle dedicated the fifth book of his Ethica Nicomachea to the nature of justice. On its importance in classical thought, see also Nussbaum, M. C., The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, revised edition (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.

6 Thgn. 379 and 1326. See also in particular 378–9, where it is implied that the mind of the ‘just man’ (δίκαιον) is disposed to sōphrosynē.

7 A total of four times: Nub. 962; Av. 1540; Lys. 508; Plut. 563.

8 It is found frequently in philosophical prose from Plato onwards; the term is newer than, and not interchangeable with, dikē, which connotes justice as paying one's debts rather than as ‘righteousness’. The examples from Herodotus (1.96.2; 2.151.1; 6.86.2–4; 7.52.1; 7.164.1), discussed in Havelock (n. 1), 49–70, include dikaiosynē as judicial practice and as the relationship between judge and litigant, as well as justice in politics and society. Thucydides' only example is used for ‘debt…incurred in a just manner’ (‘χάριτας…τὰς μετὰ δικαιοσύνης μὲν ὀϕειληθείσας’; 3.63.3–4). Euripides (TrGF, fr. 486 Kannicht) praised dikaiosynē as a virtue. She appears once in Old Comedy as a personified female divinity, to whom (the also personified) Mousike recounts the injustices done to her by poets (Pherecrates, fr. 155 KA).

9 As a Thesaurus Linguae Graecae search shows. Alternatively, see Dunbar, H., A Complete Concordance to the Comedies and Fragments of Aristophanes (Oxford, 1883), 294–5Google Scholar.

10 See F. R. Adrados et al. (eds.), Diccionario Griego-Español, 7 vols. (Madrid, 1980–), s.v. δίκαιος.

11 On Aristophanes' treatment of sōphrosynē, see North (n. 2), 66, 96–7; D. E. O'Regan, Rhetoric, Comedy and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds (Oxford, 1992), passim, focusing on Clouds; and more recently Rademaker (n. 3), 223–33, who dedicates half a chapter to the topic.

12 See North (n. 2), 66, 110–5; Rademaker (n. 3), 5–6, 191–4, 216–18.

13 This rather ambiguous ‘σωϕρόνως τραϕῆναι’ receives no comment from A. H. Sommerstein in his commentary to the play (Aristophanes' Wasps [Warminster, 1983]). A long time ago, B. B. Rogers (Aristophanes. Knights [London, 1910], 53) interpreted it as ‘proper restraint’ vs. ‘licence or insolence’; perhaps it also includes apragmosynē (thus Rademaker [n. 3], 232), on which see below.

14 The seemingly paradoxical fact that the virtue of self-control and moderation may be immoderately practised was explored by tragedians, especially Euripides in his Hippolytus; see Rademaker's analysis, (n. 3), 163–73. Sōphrosynē features as austerity and frugality in the philosophy of the cynics; see North (n. 2), 133–4.

15 A similar sense (with a touch of irony) is implied in Ar. Peace, 1297: Kleonymos was sensible (sōphrōn) to have fled from battle and saved himself.

16 I do not agree with North's ([n. 2], x) interpretation of it as a sort of media vox (a conservative force, neither positive nor negative). The term ‘negative’ sōphrosynē was seen as acceptable by Dover, K. J., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristophanes (Oxford, 1974), 68 Google Scholar, ‘so long as we recognise that abstention from evil is often much more difficult than performance of good’. I shall refer to ‘positive’ sōphrosynē to single out instances where it is praised by Aristophanes.

17 On this, see further Dover, K. J., Aristophanes' Clouds (Oxford, 1968), lvii–lviii Google Scholar; Schiappa, E., Protagoras and Logos. A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric, second edition (Columbia, SC, 2003), 111 Google Scholar.

18 North (n. 2), 97–9. O'Regan (n. 11), 203–4, n. 24, associated ‘serious’ sōphrosynē exclusively with Clouds, but she exaggerated in seeing its uses in other comedies as ‘passive’ and ‘stupid’.

19 σώϕρονας is here used in an aristocratic context (given the education these men are associated with, and the contrast with the ponēroi, 729–33), but this is not the case in all Aristophanic uses of sōphrōn (see also below, section III).

20 See Thuc. 1.84.2–3, and Dunbar's, N. note in Aristophanes' Birds (Oxford, 1995), 705–6Google Scholar.

21 The term is found in the Aristophanic Scholia (e.g. on Ach. 375; see also on Plut. 171). The adjective ϕιλόδικος occurs in classical prose (Lys. 10.2; Dem. 56.14; Arist. Rh. 1400a19). Note also Φιλοδικαστής, the title of a play of the fourth-century poet Timocles (reminiscent of the ϕιληλιαστής of Wasps, 88). On Athenian litigiousness, see further Christ, M. R., The Litigious Athenian (Baltimore, MD, 1998)Google Scholar.

22 Vesp. 244, 340, 414, 453, 455, 505 (note the funny compound), 508, 515, 726, 776, 1149, 1298.

23 aphrōn: Vesp. 729; sōphronein: Vesp. 748 (on Philokleon's conversion) and 1405 (in the context of a joke at the expense of Myrtia the bread-seller). On the sense and English renditions of these instances, see below and see also Biles, Z. P. and Olson, S. D., Aristophanes. Wasps (Oxford and New York, 2015), 315, 319, 487Google Scholar.

24 On sōphrosynē as a virtue connected with discernment (mainly the ability to distinguish those able to perform well the various activities of the polis), cf. Pl. Chrm. 170d ff. with Wallach, J. R., The Platonic Political Art. A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy (University Park, PA, 2001), 137–8Google Scholar.

25 For a close definition of the group, see Mirhady, D., ‘Is the Wasps’ Anger Democratic?’, in Cousland, J. R. C. and Hume, J. R. (eds.), The Play of Texts and Fragments, Mnemosyne suppl. 314 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2009), 378 Google Scholar.

26 On Kleon's misuse of the law courts (mainly attested in comedy, but also implied in Thucydides), see further Ostwald, M., From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law. Law, Society, and Politics in Fifth-century Athens (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 204, 211, 220–1Google Scholar; Harris, E. M., The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens (Oxford and New York, 2013), 334 Google Scholar.

27 Wasps, 758–9, 896, 927–8, 971–2, 1224–7; cf. Knights, 65–70, 775. On the dubious historical circumstances of the comic trial (which, however, must reflect a real enmity between Kleon and Laches), see Ostwald (n. 26), 212, n. 59. Lawsuits known as euthynai (examination of public officials) seem to have been a favourite activity of the demagogues: see ibid., 211–12.

28 Wasps, 236–8, 354–7, 554–7, 1200.

29 The corruption of the jury service was a lasting concern of comedy: see the interesting comments in Wealth (1166–7).

30 See Rawls's (n. 4) definition of justice (9–10), as deriving from the Aristotelian sense: refraining from gaining some advantage for oneself by seizing what belongs to another, his property, his reward, his office, and the like, or by denying a person that which is due to him, the fulfilment of a promise, the repayment of a debt, the showing of proper respect, and so on.

31 Dikaiopolis' characterization has divided scholarship, especially in terms of the question whether altruism or individualism prevails. See Kanavou, N., Aristophanes' Comedy of Names. A Study of Speaking Names in Aristophanes (Berlin and New York, 2011), 25–6Google Scholar, for a summary of the problem; and Ludwig, P. W., ‘A Portrait of the Artist in Politics: Justice and Self-Interest in Aristophanes' Acharnians ’, American Political Science Review 101 (2007), 479–92Google Scholar, for a stimulating liberal reading of Dikaiopolis' self-interest as a form of justice. On Ecclesiazusae, see further Rothwell, K. S., Politics and Persuasion in Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae, Mnemosyne suppl. 111 (Leiden, 1990)Google Scholar, 44 ff. More generally on the tension in comedy ‘between an individualistic and a communal ethos’, see Sommerstein, A. H., ‘An Alternative Democracy and an Alternative to Democracy in Aristophanic Comedy’, in Bultrighini, U. (ed.), Democrazia e antidemocrazia nel mondo greco (Alessandria, 2005), 195–6Google Scholar.

32 See Mirhady (n. 25), 374, and above.

33 See further Sommerstein, A. H., Aristophanes' Wealth (Warminster, 2001), 17–20 Google Scholar, on the agōn between Penia and Chremylos; comic phantasy demands that Chremylos be successful in restoring the god Wealth at Athens at the end of the play.

34 See R. C. Roberts, ‘Temperance’, in Timpe and Boyd (n. 2), 97.

35 Note the psychological portrait painted by Konstan, D., ‘The Politics of Aristophanes' Wasps ’, TAPhA 115 (1985), 32–3Google Scholar. On anger in Wasps, see further Mirhady (n. 25), who makes an interesting case for its connection with the play's politics.

36 It is worth keeping in mind the inherent weaknesses (even amateurism, compared to modern standards) of the ancient Athenian judicial system. Jurymen acted as judges, without receiving legal guidance, and law was a rather loose concept: see further Lanni, A., Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2006), 41, 52–3, 179CrossRefGoogle Scholar (and especially the chapter entitled ‘Legal Insecurity in Athens’). The idea that jury pay (instituted by Perikles and increased by Kleon) had a corrupting effect is first found in Plato's Gorgias (515e).

37 The term is used by the Chorus in the Parabasis (Wasps, 1040), for the ‘peaceable folk’ who fell victim to the ‘monster’ Kleon.

38 A memorable example is provided by the two Athenians in Birds, who leave the city in search of an apragmōn place (44; note that they call themselves ἀπηλιαστά ‘jurophobes’ [110]). Plato connects dikaiosynē with μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν and τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν (‘mind one's own affairs’; Resp. 433a, 441e). For further discussion of apragmosynē and for references, see North (n. 2), 97–9; Rademaker (n. 3), 230–3; and Carter, L., The Quiet Athenian (York, Oxford and New, 1986), esp. 81–7Google Scholar, on the association of apragmosynē with country life in Aristophanes, which is opposed to polypragmōn (city life). The hēsychia (‘tranquillity’) propounded in Wealth, 921, is an equivalent term (ἡσυχίαν ἔχων; ‘[minding] your own business' [transl. Loeb]; notably hēsychiotēs/hēsychia is named as a first definition of sōphrosynē in Pl. Chrm. 159b). Apragmosynē seems comparable to Adam Smith's ‘mere justice’ (fulfilling the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing): see further Schmidtz and Thrasher (n. 2), 67–8.

39 A gradual process: he is allowed at first to indulge his addiction by judging the household servants (765–70) – or dogs, as it happens (835–997). The conversion appears complete when Philokleon claims to no longer tolerate lawsuits (1335–41).

40 ‘πῶς δῆτα δίκης οὔσης ὁ Ζεὺς / οὐκ ἀπόλωλεν, τὸν πατέρ’ αὑτοῦ / δήσας’ (‘If that's where justice is [with the gods], then how come Zeus hasn't been destroyed for chaining up his own father?’; 904–6). See Dover (n. 17), 211: Hetton Logos probably refers to Dikē the deity – see Hes. Op. 256). Indeed, this is a reversal of the accepted practice of a father beating a son when necessary for the purposes of paideia; see Strauss, B. S., Fathers and Sons in Athens. Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See further Whitman's, C. H. analysis of the play in Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, MA, 1964), 143–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Strauss (n. 40), 161–3, rightly notes that ‘Wasps refuses to give either generation the last word’. Note the inversion of the motif: in Clouds it is the father who takes charge of the son's ‘education’ (ἐξέθρεψα, Strepsiades to Pheidippides, 1380); in Wasps it is the opposite (θρέψω, Bdelykleon to Philokleon, 736, 1004).

42 Pheidippides' obsession with horses is reminiscent of Philokleon's with law courts. Strepsiades fought to divert Pheidippides' interest from expensive horses to sophistry and rhetoric, and came to regret it (Clouds, 1406–7) – he committed a similar error of judgement to that of Bdelykleon.

43 MacDowell, D. M., Aristophanes. Wasps (Oxford, 1971), 7, n. 1Google Scholar; MacDowell, D. M., Aristophanes and Athens. An Introduction to the Plays (Oxford, 1995), 178 Google Scholar (‘it is the character of Philokleon that unifies the play’); Konstan (n. 35), 42–4. See Olson, S. D., ‘Politics and Poetry in Aristophanes' Wasps ’, TAPhA 126 (1996), 143 Google Scholar, for further connecting elements.

44 See further MacDowell (n. 43 [1971]), 10–11; Olson (n. 43), 130–1. Philokleon is at first comically separated from his son's ideology and united with the Chorus, who seem to hail from a different social class, but they all later change their views and attitudes. See Ostwald (n. 26), 235 and Konstan (n. 35), 35–6, 45–6, who further saw in the Philokleon–Bdelykleon–Chorus triptych a reflection of Athenian class conflict, as well as the ‘collapse of class distinctions’. See also Biles and Olson (n. 23), xxxiv–xxxviii, for a ‘Dionysian’ interpretation of Philokleon's character.

45 This connection is also found in the orators, who define the sōphrōn citizen in their speeches as someone who loathes injustice and avoids lawsuits (see the references in Rademaker [n. 3], 243–4 and 229–30, for Aristophanic passages that imply a similar idea).

46 See also Balot, R. K., Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 197 Google Scholar; Mirhady (n. 25), 374, on self-interest as a democratic value (against interest in the good of the polis – an aristocratic concern). Note that the ‘Old Oligarch’ criticizes the self-interest of the demos: see further Balot (this note), 186 ff.; Marr, J. L. and Rhodes, P. J., The ‘Old Oligarch’. The Constitution of the Athenians Attributed to Xenophon (Oxford, 2008), 17–18 Google Scholar and passim.

47 See also Arist. Pol. 1277b16–18. The idea was present in the archaic period (e.g. Hes. Theog. 82–92), as was the realization that the demos is unable to resist politicians who are persuasive speakers (Solon fr. 11 West).

48 E.g. Dem. 57.56 on the power of juries; see also Lanni (n. 36), 131.

49 Pace MacDowell (n. 43 [1995]), 177–8, who claimed that the play did not have any ‘ambitious aims’ like Acharnians or Clouds – though he admitted that the satire of courts is ‘food for thought’.

50 Konstan (n. 35), 39–40.

51 Olson (n. 43), esp. 145–9; see also Biles and Olson (n. 23), lx.

52 See Mirhady (n. 25), 375–7, 380, who reviews the Konstan–Olson debate and concludes that the poet's stance is hard to discern. Aristophanes' politics indeed remains a tangled issue; but clearly in Wasps Kleon is met with dislike (as in other comedies), while the poet pokes fun at the malfunction of democratic institutions (such as the judicial system), but without subverting the sovereignty of the demos: see Wasps 1120–1: the wasps will carry on in their capacity as jurors. Aristophanes also makes some appeal to traditional virtues (which is why – among other reasons – he is usually described as a conservative; a clear-cut view of him as a radical democrat, as in K. Sidwell, Aristophanes the Democrat. The Politics of Satirical Comedy during the Peloponnesian War [Cambridge and New York, 2009], is an eccentric one). See also Sommerstein (n. 31), 196 ff. (on the selectivity of the poet's satire); Sommerstein, A. H., ‘The Politics of Greek Comedy’, in Revermann, M. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge, 2013), 294–9Google Scholar (a sober description of the poet's inclinations), with further bibliography; and, most recently, Lutz, L., Aristophanes Wespen (Berlin and New York, 2014), 5–6, n. 9 (rather ambivalent)Google Scholar. For a study of the poet's politics as an examination of the irrationalities of Athenian life, rather than as a search for concrete political views, see now Nelson, S., ‘Aristophanes and the Polis’, in Mhire, J. J. and Frost, B.-P. (eds.), The Political Theory of Aristophanes. Explorations in Poetic Wisdom (Albany, NY, 2014), 109–36Google Scholar.

53 Also the basic premise of Knights. Wasps combines themes previously used in Knights and Clouds (written about the same time, 424 and 423 bce respectively), as noted also by Lutz (n. 52), 41. On the special similarities between Wasps and Knights, see Mirhady (n. 25), 372 ff.

54 Wasps, 344–5, 417, 470, 473–7 (see, in particular, μισόδημε καὶ μοναρχίας ἐραστά, ‘enemy of the people, lover of monarchy’), 482–3. Note also that Kleon explicitly aligns himself with the poor Athenians (the rhyppapai, 909) and that Philokleon identifies himself with the people (the koinon, 917).

55 Pace ‘Old Oligarch’ 1.6–9, where it is stated that the demos derive their freedom from bad government, and that worthy, high-class governors would neglect the interests of the people – a ‘crude’ and ‘simplistic’ analysis indeed. See further Marr and Rhodes (n. 46), 68–9.

56 On this ‘very real fear of tyranny and oligarchy’, also attested by Thucydides, see Ostwald (n. 26), 224.

57 As Rademaker (n. 3), 141 and 223, has shown, along with his respective chapters for references to ancient authors. See also E. M. Harris, ‘Was all Criticism of Athenian Democracy Necessarily Anti-Democratic?’, in Bultrighini (n. 31), 18–19.

58 Rademaker (n. 3), 225 (with references).

59 On the much-discussed concept of the comic poet as an educator, see e.g. Bertelli, L., ‘Democracy and Dissent: The Case of Comedy’, in Arnason, J. P., Raaflaub, K. A., and Wagner, P. (eds.), The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy. A Politico-cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations (Chichester, 2013), 99–125 Google Scholar, with bibliography. Note another famous man praised as both sōphrōn and dikaios (in the superlative form), and perceived as an educator of the people: Perikles (Isoc. 16.28; see further Kagan, D., Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy [New York, 1991], 151–71Google Scholar).

60 It is admittedly hard to identify concrete, ‘serious’ advice amid comic jokes and contradictions, but Aristophanes clearly had a sense of the seriousness of the issues addressed in his comedies and this sense would not have been entirely lost on his audience. See further Wright's, M. useful analysis in The Comedian as Critic. Greek Old Comedy and Poetics (London 2012), 18–20 Google Scholar. Sommerstein (n. 31), 197–201, listed concrete changes in Athenian public life (suggesting an ‘alternative democracy’), which Aristophanes might have wished for.

61 See in particular Knights, 1119–20, with Ostwald (n. 26), 226–7.

62 It is virtually certain that the play which won first prize (Proagon) was also by Aristophanes (MacDowell [n. 43 (1971)], 20; Biles and Olson [n. 23], xxviii). It apparently had Euripides as a main subject (KA iii.2: 253); there is reason to think, in that case, that Wasps was the more provocative of the two; see lines 54–66: Wasps is not just another play to make fun of the (much ridiculed) dramatist, but a more intelligent work than the average comedy. The poet would have wanted Wasps to win.

63 On the relationship between poet and audience in Wasps, marked by Aristophanes' recent disappointment at the reception of Clouds, see further Biles and Olson (n. 23), xxviii–xxix, xxxiii, xliv, 379, 392–3.