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Lysias III and Athenian beliefs about revenge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. V. Harris
W. V. Harris
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

It has recently been argued by Gabriel Herman that fourth-century Athenian citizens, or at least the majority of them, believed that even under the impact of serious private aggression a man should not pursue revenge. The general ideal, so it is maintained, was to avoid not only violent revenge but also revenge through prosecution. Herman recognizes that other Athenian texts of the same period take the propriety of exacting revenge for granted, and he explains this in part by reference to a supposed ‘double standard’—a rather strange expression in this context, because it suggests that the propriety of revenge in classical Athens depended on the status of the victim of the revenge—which is not in fact the burden of Herman's doctrine.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 1997 , pp. 363 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

1 ‘Honour, Revenge and the State in Fourth–century Athens’, in W. Eder (ed.), Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert v.Chr. (Stuttgart, 1995), pp. 43–60 (with discussion, pp. 61–6); cf.Google Scholar‘Tribal and Civic Codes of Behaviour in Lysias I’, CQ 43 (1993), 406–19,Google Scholar‘How Violent was Athenian Society?’, in R., Osborne, S., Hornblower (edd.), Ritual, Finance, Politics. Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis (Oxford, 1994), pp. 99–117.Google Scholar

2 In Die athenische Demokratie, pp. 62–63.

3 In Die athenische Demokratie, p. 62.

4 See Griechische Kulturgeschichte II (Basel Stuttgart, 1956 [1898]), pp. 422–5. Other important discussions of classical Greek revenge includeGoogle ScholarK. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), esp. pp. 181–1;Google ScholarS. Said, ‘La tragedie de la vengeance’, in G., Courtois (ed.), La Vengeance. Etudes d'ethnologie, d'histoire et de philosophie (Paris, 1984), IV, pp. 47–90;Google ScholarH.–J. Gehrke, ‘Die Griechen und die Rache. Ein Versuch in historischer Psychologie’, Saeculum 38 (1987), 121–49;Google ScholarD. Cohen, Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1995), esp. chs 4–6.Google Scholar

5 ‘HowViolent.’, p. 109.Google Scholar

6 Nicomachean Ethics iv.5.1126a7–8, which is evidently meant to represent the normal view.Google Scholar

7 ‘Honour, Revenge.’, p. 65, with a dry comment by D. Cohen.Google Scholar

8 ‘Honour, Revenge. ’, p. 47.Google Scholar

9 The charge is usually said to have been something like ‘wounding with murderous intent’, but in interpreting in that sense J.H., Lipsius(Das Attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren 2 [Leipzig, 1912], pp. 605–607), who is the source of modern teaching on the subject, seems to put too much faith in the transparently special pleading of Lysias iii.41–2 and iv.4–5.Google Scholar

10 ‘What especially vexes me, members of the council, is that I shall be compelled to speak to you of the facts of this case; for it was my feeling of shame at the mere thought that many would know of my troubles that made me put up with my wrongs. But since Simon has obliged me to do so, I shall relate all the facts to you without the slightest concealment. If... I prove my innocence, but seem to you to have adopted a rather foolish attitude, unsuitable for my age, towards the boy, I ask you not to think the worse of me for that. You know that desire is part of every human being.’ (iii.3–4). Cf. K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978), p. 33.Google Scholar

11 E. Cantarella, usually very accurate, fails to notice the disapproval which the speaker, whom she takes to be Lysias himself, expected to encounter (Secondo natura. La bisessualita nel mondo antico [Rome, 1988], p. 65). She sees no upper limit for the proper age of an taking the stories in Athenaeus xiii.603e–604f about that aging Sophocles to be proof of this; they should rather (as the context requires) be seen as indications of how Athenaeus defined amatory excess.Google Scholar

12 See esp. ‘Honour, Revenge. ’, pp. 51–4.

13 Herman makes rather too much use of such phrases as ‘It is almost as if Euphiletus was saying...’ (‘Honour, Revenge’, p. 52).

14 It was presumably necessary that the adulterers, as in this case, be caught in front of witnesses.

15 ‘Honour, Revenge.’, p. 52. But this does not extend to his search for witnesses (see previous note).

16 Herman, ‘Tribal and Civic.’, p. 408.

17 Herman, ‘How Violent’, p. 107.

18 In his 1994 paper he preferred the contrast between ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’. For effective criticism of such a simple dichotomy, when applied to revenge in the Oresteia, see Said, op. cit. p. 55.

19 ‘Honour, Revenge ’, pp. 45–8, 55, 57.

20 ‘How Violent’, pp. 99, 102–5, the starting–point being Thuc. i.6.

21 Said, op. cit. pp. 66–73.

22 Thuc. vii.68.1, Arist. Rhet. i.9.1370b30,1367a20–2.