Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:20:31.700Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Merit, Responsibility, and Thucydides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. W. H. Adkins
Affiliation:
University of Chicago

Extract

Since other readers of Mr. Creed's recent interesting article may find themselves in a similar puzzlement to my own over certain statements there made, I offer this reply in the hope of providing elucidation. It is clear that someone named Adkins has perpetrated something heinous; but that ‘someone’ manifestly holds views which differ in a number of important respects from my own. The most convenient method of demonstrating this fact would be to juxtapose passages of Creed with passages of my Merit and Responsibility; but since space does not permit the juxtaposition of whole passages, I confine myself in the first part of this article to juxtaposing the references.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1975

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.)

References

page 209 note 1 ‘Moral Values in the Age of Thucydides’, C.Q. N.S. xxiii (1973), 213 1T., hereafter referred to as ‘Creed’.

page 209 note 2 Merit and Responsibility: a study in Greek values (hereafter referred to as MR) (Oxford, 1960).

page 209 note 3 For funeral speeches see MR 171 n. 3.

page 210 note 1 For Pindar see p. 165 and note b; and for a fuller discussion see now my Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece (Chatto and Windus, 1972), 75–98 (hereafter referred to as MV).

page 210 note 2 And cf. Odyssey 5. 7 ff.

page 210 note 3

page 210 note 4 In the fourth century, one might cite Theodectes frag. 8 (Nauck/Snell); but the sentiment is rare even at this much later date, when the nature of piety has been debated by philosophers (as in Plato, Euthyphro, esP. 14 e 6f.).

page 210 note 5 The dikaiosune demonstrated by Plato to be an arete in the Republic is of course ‘valued for itself alone’ in the sense that it is per se a ‘good thing’ for its possessor and benefits him (see MR 284 ff.). It is not suggested that it would be worth pursuing if it were not good for its possessor; the dikaiosune concerned is a very curious quality; and to prove even so much is evidently a novelty, and requires many pages of elaborate argument.

page 210 note 6 And at greater length MV 48 f.

page 211 note 1 One should not assume the identity of eunomia with justice (see MV 46 ff., 56, 84 f.). It is, however, ‘co-operative’ in implications.

page 211 note 2 Depending upon the reconstruction of the disiecta membra found in Plato's Protagoras. I discuss the poem, MR 165, 196, 355 ff.

page 211 note 3 ‘Blameless’ need have no reference to co-operative excellences. See MR 81 ( II).

page 212 note 1 Since to interpret agathos and kakos ‘co. operatively’, eu prattein and kakōs prattein it success-terms, produces a sense which muse appear implausible to us, and would have appeared even more implausible to the Greeks of this period, who regarded hubris as a likely outcome of good fortune.

page 212 note 2 e.g. 75 f., 238 f., 259.

page 212 note 3 MV 65 ff.

page 213 note 1 MR 201 ff., MV 119 ff.

page 213 note 2 Discussed MR 192 (is), MV 70. I refer my readers to the examples and argument of MV chapter 4 as a whole for further material.

page 213 note 3 The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, 16.

page 214 note 1 Which I discuss, MR 230 ff.

page 215 note 1 Cf. also my remarks on ‘stress’ at MR 38.

page 215 note 2 The phenomenon of ‘cultural time lag’ is prevalent (see MR, e.g. 75 1., 238 f., 259); but the touchstone of these values is reference to the demands of the actual situation and the needs of the community as the community understands them.

page 215 note 3 On this see MR 164 ff., 238 f., and generally chapters vii-xi, MV gg fr.

page 215 note 4 Thucydides' Mytileneans agree, 3. II. 2, even in the case of allies. I shall discuss the passage in a subsequent article.

page 216 note 1 For this see MV chapter 4 and index, s.v. ‘Hubris’. 2 193 nn. 16, 17.

page 216 note 2 193 nn. 16, 17

page 216 note 3 My contention that some values are new, some traditional, rests on different evidence, as I have shown.

page 216 note 4 As is, for example, that of Euripides before a popular audience in Elec. 386 ff, discussed in MR 177, 195 if.

page 217 note 1 D. M. MacDowell, and Generosity', Mnem. 4th ser. xvi (1963), 127 ff.

page 217 note 2 C. Q. ii.s. xiii (1963), 30–45.

page 217 note 3 Though he may have ‘no literary or intellectual axe to grind’ (MacDowell 130), in the situation in which he finds himself, Andocides has a vested interest in the acceptance of this usage: another reaon for suspecting a ‘persuasive definition’.

page 217 note 4 See MR 70, 78 (on Theognis 147 f.), 195, etc.

page 218 note 1 MacDowell, D. M., Andocides on the Mysteries (Oxford, 1962), ad loc.Google Scholar

page 218 note 2 See ‘Friendship’ 36.

page 218 note 3 ‘Friendship’ 39 ff.

page 218 note 4 See C. L. Stevenson in Mind, 1938, 331 ff., where the usage of this phrase is explained at length.

page 219 note 1 For example, the suppliants at Corcyra, 3. 70; 80; 81. Traditionally, to kill a suppliant at an altar or on consecrated ground was a most heinous offence, as in Thucydides I. 126. io (the conspiracy of Cylon).

page 220 note 1 On the whole question of see now Gould, J. P., ‘Hiketeia’, J.H.S. xciii (1973), 74 ff.Google Scholar

page 220 note 2 See MR chapters viii-xvi, ‘Aristotle and the best kind of tragedy’, passim.

page 220 note 3 See 26, 78 ff., 188 ff., 347, 360, etc.

page 220 note 4 See 113, etc. The reluctance of Theseus, 195 ff., later overcome by Aethra, 297 ff., to acknowledge the claims of the suppliant may have contemporary relevance: has less force than was once the case.