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"Xenophon at His Most Socratic (Memorabilia 4.2)."
Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy for 2005.
In his first conversation with the young Euthydemus, Xenophon's Socrates
employs a Socratic elenchus--refuation via questioning--something very
common in the early dialogues of Plato, but quite rare in Xenophon. I
argue that this chapter of the Memorabilia shows that Xenophon understood
not only how the elenchus works, but how it helps to overcome the inherent
deficiencies of the written word. I try to show also that this conversation,
which is often taken to be a derivative and confused jumble, presents
a sound introduction to Socratic moral philosophy.
"Persians
as Centaurs in Xenophon's Cyropaedia." Forthcoming in Transactions
of the American Philological Association for 2005.
Most of Xenophon's Cyropaedia ("The Education of Cyrus")
seems to be meant as a positive account of the founder of the Persian
empire
in the 6th century BC. In the final chapter, however, Xenophon bitterly
remarks upon the immediate decline in the Persian character following
the death of Cyrus. I argue that this decline is actually unsurprising,
if we more carefully examine the compromises Cyrus must make to turn
the Persians into an imperial people. One such compromise is his move
to make the Persians, who had been presented as something like ideal
Greek infantrymen, into horsemen—a move one Persian compares to
making them into Centaurs (at Cyropaedia 4.3). In Greek art,
Centaurs are often used to represent Persians as half-human beasts, unable
to control themselves in the presence of women and wine. I claim that the
comparison appears in the Cyropaedia as one hint that even Cyrus' Persians
must be corrupted, if they are to be successful imperialists.
"Xenophon's Socrates on Justice and the Law." Ancient
Philosophy 23 (2003) 255-281.
In one chapter of Xenophon's Memorabilia, Socrates discusses
the relationship between justice and law with the sophist Hippias. The
discussion begins
with Socrates arguing that justice can be identified with the laws passed
by the people of Athens, but then turns to a discussion of unwritten,
divine laws. This second sort of law, a variety of natural law, can come
into conflict with the positive law of the city. This conflict is most
famously illustrated by Sophocles' Antigone, where Antigone
upholds divine law against Creon's advocacy of the laws of the city.
While Sophocles
leads us to be sympathetic toward Antigone and her stand on behalf of
divine law, Athenian democrats tended to be suspicious of any sort of
law deemed superior to the laws passed by the people of Athens. I argue
that Xenophon means us to read the Memorabilia passage with
this conflict in mind, and to recognize that for Socrates unwritten,
divine law is
a surer guide to justice than is positive law. But as Xenophon is eager
to defend Socrates against the attacks made by Athenian democrats, he
leaves this point implicit beneath Socrates' overt praise of the laws
of Athens. [My reading is criticized for being too ironic in Ancient
Philosophy for 2004, where I also briefly respond.]
Socrates and Alcibiades:
Four Texts. Focus, 2003.
I here introduce, translate, and annotate four texts involving Socrates
and Alcibiades, the gifted and controversial Athenian leader whose
relationship with Socrates was probably a factor in the Athenian decision
to execute
Socrates in 399 BC. The best known of my four texts is Alcibiades'
speech about Socrates from Plato's Symposium. Lesser known—and therefore
less often translated and commented upon—are three dialogues entitled
Alcibiades, two attributed to Plato (the Alcibiades I and Alcibiades
II), and one the work of Plato's contemporary, Aeschines of Sphettus,
which exists now only in fragments. Aeschines' work is nowhere else conveniently
accessible in translation. In my introduction I argue that all these
works similarly address the central problem of how to turn a talented
and ambitious youth toward philosophy and away from personal aggrandizement.
"Herodotus' Storytelling Speeches: Socles (5.92) and Leotychides (6.86)." Classical
Journal 97 (2001) 1-26.
I here analyze two speeches presented by Herodotus (c. 480-425 BC),
who is usually considered the first historian. Each speech has been
deemed
problematic, for in neither case does the speaker appear to directly
face the situation before him. Instead, each tells a story which seems
to undercut his position. Scholars have therefore argued that Herodotus
is either simply presenting good stories for their own sake, or perhaps
addressing concerns of his own day, some 75 years after the occasions
of the speeches, rather than the situation confronted by the historical
speakers. I argue that each speech does fit its own context, once that
context is properly understood. Socles' speech is not meant simply
to condemn tyranny—which would make much of it irrelevant to his goal—but
rather to show his audience how they could, by failing to oppose their
Spartan allies, themselves end up being tyrannized. Leotychides is
forced to speak on behalf of a policy he opposes, but delivers a speech
that
while apparently fulfilling that request actually attacks his opponents.
"
Hesiod's Descriptions of Tartarus." Phoenix 53 (1999) 8-28.
One of the most problematic passages in Hesiod, the contemporary of
Homer, is his description of the underworld (Tartarus) in his Theogony.
Hesiod describes many
houses, prisons, doors, walls, and gates in the underworld, without
making it at all clear just where they are located vis a vis one another,
or
even how many different houses and walls there are. The passage has
seemed so confused that many scholars believe the text was altered
after Hesiod's
death, or that Hesiod's primitive mentality made it impossible for
him to coherently locate items in space. I argue that the passage is
not
intended to describe multiple structures in the underworld, but instead
gives multiple descriptions of the underworld as a whole. The underworld
is both a house for recurring phenomena like day and night and a prison
for linear creatures who live but once. A clearer understanding of
Hesiod's descriptions of Tartarus also helps us understand his cosmology,
a crucial
step in understanding the early Greek understanding of the world, from
which Greek philosophy, and hence Western science, would take its start.
As I conclude the article, Hesiod's underworld "has much to teach
us, then, about the origins and stability of the universe and of Zeus'
reign, and about the ongoing cycles of day, night, sleep, and death.
Only the dead need a map of the underworld: Hesiod provides us with
images we can use now."
"God as the True Self: Plato's Alcibiades I." Ancient
Philosophy 19 (1999) 1-19.
The Alcibiades I has been unduly neglected because of doubts about
whether or not Plato wrote it. Ironically enough, the central point
of the dialogue,
as I see it, is precisely that we as individual human beings are essentially
the same—so that it should not matter what individual wrote the
work. In the dialogue, Socrates shows Alcibiades that the self of the
famous maxim "Know Thyself" is to be identified with the
soul, and particularly with the intellect which is revealed in its
purest form
in the divine. Hence where moderns may well seek for self-knowledge
by trying to understand what makes them unique individuals, Plato argues
that what we share in common, our capacity for reason, is far more
important
than any individual differences.
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