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From Aphorisms To Theoretical Analyses: the Birth of Human Sciences in the Fifth Century B.C

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Jacqueline de Romilly
Jacqueline de Romilly*
Affiliation:
Académie française
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Often it is useful, if one wishes to understand how major transformations in intellectual disciplines came about, to examine the manifestations of these transformations in specific details. But it is necessary that these be facts sufficiently well attested to to constitute probative indicators. This condition is fulfilled with regard to the use of general reflections among the authors of ancient Greece. Their presence is indeed one of the characteristic features of Greek literature, in particular from the Seventh to the Fourth centuries B.C. However, we can observe that their nature clearly changes in the last third of the Fifth century, precisely at the moment when, in an abrupt surge of rationalism, we suddenly see born in Athens a whole series of areas of research on man that Western civilization would later take up once more and develop further. This coincidence cannot be accidental; and it is permitted to think that there is an indicator here capable of revealing in greater detail the manner in which this development, so important for the history of thought, occurred.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 36 , Issue 144 , December 1988 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 See, for example, VII, 181-185; VIII, 167-176; XVIII, 130-132; XIX, 562-563.

2 The remark is similar in verse 213, after the myth of the sparrowhawk and before the long general tirade against immoderation (214 and ff.); this tirade ends with a counsel to kings (248: "For you, kings …"), and he only returns to Perses in 274: "For you, Perses …".

3 General reflections in tragedy have often been studied; various German dissertations can be cited as well as the work by H. Fr. Johansen, General Reflection in Tragic Rhesis, Copenhagen, 1959. Finally see our study entitled "Les réflexions générales d'Euripide: analyse littéraire et critique textuelle", in Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, avril-juin 1983, p. 405-418.

4 They range from 6% to 16% depending on the plays.

5 For more on this see our book Les grands sophistes dans l'Athènes de Périclès, Paris, Éd. B. de Fallois, 1988 (355 pages); some of the ideas presented here have been borrowed from this.

6 The plea, in its principal argument, does not say that his treason is implausible, but that it is impossible. Nevertheless, verisimilitude appears in the secondary arguments (see also the word in § 9).

7 These three examples correspond to titles from Protagoras.

8 For example II, 8, 1 on zeal at the beginning of a war (the reflection confirms the remark that a reaction of this type is "normal"). But Thucydides especially loved to refer to a common rule in parenthetical remarks saying, "like a mob, or an army, the fact in general"; see also II, 65, 4; III, 81, 5; IV, 125, 1; V, 70.

9 The ratio is around 1 to 20.

10 The Greek employs a characteristic expression with the indefinite relative: "we, people who …".

11 Without mentioning more subtle schemas, we thus find pairs of speeches in I, 32-43 (Corinthians against Corcyreans); I, 120-124 and 140-144 (Corinthians and Pericles, beyond the difference of time and place); II, 87-89 (Cnemos and Phormion); III, 37-48 (Cleon against Diodotes); III, 53-67 (Plateans against Thebans); VI, 9-23 (Alcibiades against Nicias); VI, 33-40 (Hermocrates against Athenagoras); VI, 76-87 (Hermocrates against Euphemos); VII, 61-68 (parallel exhortations of Nicias and the leaders commanding the Syracusan troops). We have studied the use of these "antilogies" in Thucydides in a book entitled Histoire et raison chez Thucydide, Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, 1967, 314 pages.

12 See, among others, 371-374; 394-395; 426-431; 553-558; 940-944; 1097-1099; 1131. Interest in this topic is not unique to this play; it can often be found in Euripides (particularly in The Phoenicians). Only the number of reflections noted here is remarkable.

13 On the relationship between the two see, among others, J. Jouanna, in Hippocratica (Actes du colloque de Paris), Paris 1980, pp. 298-318.

14 See, among others, the declaration of Pericles in I, 141, 5: "For the reserves sustain wars better than taxes extracted forcefully." Conversely, it can be noted that Thucydides prepared the path for archaeology (I, 8, where he uses the testimony of tombs for ancient tribes, and I, 10, where he speaks of destroyed cities and their ruins); but he limits himself to initiating the method, with no commentary or general reflection. He also used the medical method in his description of the plague, and he suggests its possible recurrence. But the only general reflections in the passage relate to moral effects.