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Civic education in the classical Athenian democracy

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Civic education in the classical Athenian democracy

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CIVIC EDUCATION IN THE
CLASSICAL ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

by

Joshua Allbright

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CLASSICS)

August 2023

Copyright 2023 Joshua James Allbright

ii

Acknowledgements
I wish to express my sincerest thanks to the many people involved directly or indirectly in this
project. My adviser, Susan Lape, is most deserving of gratitude for the years of help and guidance she
offered as I developed and completed this project. I am also very grateful to Josiah Ober, who devoted
much time and energy to advising me on this project. At his invitation, I was able to spend the Spring
quarter of 2022 at Stanford University, where I made many great, new friends and scholarly connections
in the departments of Classics, Philosophy, and Political Science. Christelle Fischer-Bovet provided much
support and feedback both on this and other projects during my time as a graduate student at USC, and
special thanks go to Ralph Wedgwood for stepping in to join my committee at the last minute. My
friends, family, and fellow graduate students also provided endless support and encouragement over the
long course of this project.
Research for this dissertation was also made possible by departmental funding and travel
fellowships generously provided by USC for conferences and international travel. My work on epigraphy
benefitted from training at the British School at Athens and the Hellenic Education and Research Center,
along with other independent work carried out in Athens and elsewhere in Greece.

iii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………........ ii

Abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………………… v

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………….. vi

Chapter 1: Introduction ……………………………………………………………………… 1
Authority and Authoritarianism in Athenian Democracy ………………………...... 4
Authority and Civic Education ……………………………………………………... 8
Summary of Chapters ………………………………………………………………. 12

Chapter 2: Civic Education after the Thirty ………………………………………………… 16
Athens in Crisis …………………………………………………………………….. 18
Corrupting Civic Education: The Thirty at Athens ………………………………… 21
Civic Education and Accountability in Democratic Institutions …………………... 27
Outcomes of the Debates about Civic Education ………………………………...... 45
Toward a Typology of Civic Values ………………………………………………. 50
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………. 54

Chapter 3: The Trial and Death of Socrates ………………………………………………… 56
The Death of Socrates and the Aftermath ………………………………………….. 57
Euthyphro …………………………………………………………………………... 60
Apology …………………………………………………………………………….. 68
Crito ………………………………………………………………………………… 75
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….. 81

Chapter 4: The Authoritarian Turn ………………………………………………..………… 84
Athens and Other Authoritarian Regimes …………………………………………... 85
Philosophy as a Response to a Crisis of Education ………………………………… 89
Some First Principles of Isocrates’ philosophia ……………………………………. 92
Isocrates and Authoritarian Education ……………………………………………… 106
Plato, Authority, and the Laws ……………………………………………………… 118
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….. 134

Chapter 5: Civic Education and Athenian Epigraphy ………………………………….…….. 137
The Athenian “Epigraphic Habit” in the 4
th
century ………………………………… 138
Early Honorific Practices ……………………………………………………………. 144
The Social War: A Watershed Moment in Athenian Epigraphy …………………….. 150
Inscriptions as Tools of Civic Education ……………………………………………. 154
Athens Without Honors? Demosthenes against Leptines …………………………… 172
The Cult of Democracy ……………………………………………………………… 178
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………… 183

Chapter 6: Civic Education in Lycurgan Athens ……………………………………………… 185
The Ephebeia: Sources and Controversies …………………………………………… 185
Ephebic Learning Objectives ………………………………………………………… 189
Models for Ephebic Education ……………………………………………………….. 191
Ephebes: Periphery and Center ………………………………………………………. 196
Philosophy and the Ephebeia ………………………………………………………… 199

iv

Civics for Adults in the 330s …………………………………………………………. 202
Lycurgan Civic Education ……………………………………………………………. 206
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………… 223

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………….. 230

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………… 235

v

Abbreviations

APF J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600-300
B.C., Oxford, 1971.

CAH Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn.
Cambridge, 1961–; 1st edn. Cambridge, 1923–39.

FGH F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker, 3 vols. Berlin and Leiden, 1923–58.

HCT A.W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. J. Dover,
A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, 5 vols.
Oxford, 1945–81.

IG Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin, 1873–

RO P. J. Rhodes and R. Osborne, Greek Historical
Inscriptions 404–323 B.C. Oxford, 2003.

SEG Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum. 1923–

vi

Abstract
This dissertation analyzes the discourse concerning civic education in Athens (Greece) in the 4th century
BCE. Civic education, the process by which the citizens of a city learn behaviors and values appropriate
for their political system, was an important facet of ancient Athenian democracy that has received little
scholarly attention. Athenian civic education was informal and relied on exemplary displays of citizenship
by citizens themselves in lieu of formal, state-run institutions of education. It was thus the duty of all
Athenian citizens to display good democratic behaviors both to prove their proper education and to
educate others. Drawing on oratorical, philosophical, historiographical, and epigraphic material, I argue
that the discourse around civic education reveals a broader concern with the authority of both individuals
and the collective, especially when it came to education. Athenians were largely suspicious of
professional teachers and preferred an educative authority that was distributed among the domains of the
city, its constitution, and the household. Critics of this system argued for centralized, authoritative forms
of education that relied on experts rather than the relatively haphazard and unreliable informal system of
education. Despite the citizenry's reliance on informal means of civic education, over time Athens saw
increased centralization of educative authority in response to various crises. By the end of the 4th century,
attitudes toward civic education had shifted significantly, causing the Athenians to create their first state-
run institution of civic education while according paradigmatic individuals more authority than ever
before.

1

Chapter 1: Introduction
This dissertation offers a study of the discourse surrounding Athenian civic education and its
development in the 4th century BCE. It covers the period of approximately 404-322 BCE, that is, the end
of the Peloponnesian War down to what is often considered the “end” of Classical Athenian democracy
before its transition into its Hellenistic form.
The topic of civic education in 4th century Athens before the ephebeia has not yet been studied in
any extensive way, and no book-length study of it exists yet. The most specific treatment it has received
has been done by Josiah Ober. In a chapter of his Mass and Elite (1989), he demonstrates the importance
of education in rhetorical ability and the role of democratic institutions in collecting and deploying the
wisdom of the masses. He also highlights the risks of appearing too educated for an orator, because
deceptive rhetoric was seen as dangerous to the democracy and the power of the masses.
1
In a later article
titled “The Debate over Civic Education in Classical Athens”, he examines in closer detail the
mechanisms and theory behind civic education. He shows that a central goal of civic education was
“thinking alike and thinking differently”, i.e. learning how to agree on fundamental principles but being
able to debate and deliberate on specific issues of policy. This was achieved through active participation
in political life, or “working the machine”. He also traces some important developments in the Athenian
ethical code upon which their civic education was built that emphasized the need for education in
democratic values for their society to flourish. Finally, he shows that the debates around civic education
in Athens led to meaningful change in the democracy. Other work of his, especially Political Dissent in
Democratic Athens (1998) and Democracy and Knowledge (2008), supplements this focus on education
with analyses of the way knowledge was created and disseminated in the democracy and used to criticize
it for the sake of improvement.
Foundational work done on Athenian education in general has been done by scholars such as
Henri Marrou, Werner Jaeger, F.A.G. Beck, and W.K. Lacey; more recent work has been done by

1
Ober 1989: 157-191.

2

scholars such as Mark Golden, Yun Lee Too, and Niall Livingstone. None of these scholars take civic
education specifically as their focus. Studies of other closely related topics also come to bear on my study
of civic education. These include but are not limited to: Nicole Loraux’s work on the funeral oration in
Athens; work on Athenian law and institutions by Adriaan Lanni, P.J. Rhodes, and Robin Osborne; the
epigraphic work of scholars such as Elizabeth Meyer, David Whitehead, Stephen Lambert, Charles
Hedrick, Merle Langdon, and Steven Tracy; work on the philosophers by scholars such as Andrea
Nightingale, Takis Poulakos, Edward Schiappa, Christopher Bobonich, Danielle Allen, Andre Laks, and
Malcolm Schofield; the studies of the ephebeia by Chrysis Pelekidis, Oscar Reinmuth, John Friend, and
Thomas Henderson; and the work on Lycurgan Athens by scholars such as Sally Humphreys, Vincent
Azoulay, and Johanna Hanink. My approach to these topics is also indebted to modern theories of civic
education in liberal democracies, political theory, and systems thinking.
The main question driving my study is: how did the Athenians successfully educate their citizenry
in the absence of a centralized educational authority? What kind of civic values and behaviors did the
Athenians consider desirable? How did they decide on these values? What strategies did the Athenians
employ and how did they evolve over time? How did historical, social, and political circumstances affect
the way the Athenians educated their citizenry? I hope to answer these questions and others that arise in
my study of civic education.
In its broadest sense, civic education can be defined as the practices and theories by which a
person learns to be a member of a political community. One complication with the use of “education” in
the Athenian context is that it calls to mind societal structures and institutions that did not necessarily
apply to them. Often we think of education as something done in schools by teachers for students, who
are usually children, teenagers, or young adults. But these qualifications were much more fluid for the
Athenians. Civic education could affect enfranchised adult male citizens, disfranchised men (atimoi),
female citizens, the youth, foreign residents (metics), and slaves. Young children were probably not the
target audience for civic education, but it is conceivable that the broader civic values that directed citizen

3

behavior were inculcated at a young age since they are applicable to home and personal life.
2
There were
schools and private teachers who could teach about politics (especially the Sophists), but they were not
widely used and were generally unpopular. As for those who were barred from politics (esp. women,
slaves, and foreigners), they were affected by civic education in their own way and were sometimes used
as tools for showing citizen men how not to behave.
Importantly, there was no institutionalized, state-run educational system in 4th century Athens.
There were certain venues, however, that were considered “educational”. City-wide ritual activity was
especially important. Religious festivals and the dramatic performances that accompanied them, as well
as funeral orations for war dead provided a way to educate the population of Athens and develop a
collective Athenian identity.
3
Both tragedy and comedy served to inculcate civic values and deter bad
behaviors. Aristophanes, in his Frogs, complains that the tragic poets are failing at their duty to educate
the Athenians, so he has to take up the mantle.
4
He won the comedic competition at the Lenaia in 405
with the Frogs, and the Athenians honored him for his guidance with a reproduction of his play at the
Lenaia in 404, when the city was facing the reality of defeat in the Peloponnesian War. The Assembly,
courts, and Council were also places used for civic education, along with other public areas like the
Agora—essentially any public place where conversation about the goings on of the city was happening.
The closest thing to an educational institution that existed in the 4th century was the ephebeia, which was
a training program for ephebes (18-year-old men newly enrolled as citizens). It seems to have existed in
some ambiguous form with the ephebes employed as border guards since the second quarter of the 4th
century and was turned into an institution with a definite educational component around 336/5 BCE. Its
4th century form was short-lived, however, being ended in 322 by the Macedonian regent of the city, and
it was revived in a substantially different form in the Hellenistic period.

2
Plato is the only source from this period that discusses childhood education extensively.
3
Loraux 1986.
4
Frogs 686-737.

4

Civic education was instead achieved through a series of informal processes of learning and
teaching by observation of paradigmatic displays of civic values and behaviors. Different ways of
deploying this mechanism came about at different times in response to different historical moments. In
general, a carrot-and-stick method was followed: citizens were expected to observe the example set by
other citizens for better and for worse. In forensic oratory, more often than not a defendant was held up as
an example of bad behavior that all good citizens should avoid. In other instances, litigants would give an
account of the benefactions they conferred upon the city or the eager fulfillment of their liturgical duties.
Later in the 4th century, honorific inscriptions for Athenian citizens set up in prominent places around the
city encouraged others to repeat good behaviors and specific civic values such as philotimia, arete, and
dikaiosyne. Often paideia, paideusis, or verbal forms of paideuein are mentioned by Athenian authors,
but just as frequently our sources refer to the “improvement of citizens/others”.
5
The implication is that
civic education is a constant process that has no clear beginning or end. There is always room for
improvement, always a need for civic education. In a sense, then, we are dealing with a constant process
of becoming better citizens, rather than a terminal education that qualifies a person for citizenship. But in
order for this to happen, the Athenians needed an authoritative source of knowledge and a way to deploy
it authoritatively. The Athenians would grapple with the issue of authority in both politics and education
for most of the 4th century as their democracy developed authoritarian features that risked infringing on
democratic freedoms.

Authority and Authoritarianism in Athenian Democracy
At this point I must digress a little to explain what exactly I mean by the terms “authority”/
“authoritative” and “authoritarian”. My understanding of “authority” draws on Hannah Arendt. In an
essay titled “What is Authority?”, Arendt argues that authority has disappeared from modern day (the
1950s in this case) society and political theory, and that the distinctions between authoritarianism,

5
τοὺς πολίτας/τοὺς ἄλλους βελτίους ποιεῖν.

5

tyranny, and totalitarianism have become blurred beyond recognition. She argues that the idea of the
authoritarian government has been erroneously absorbed into theories of tyranny, dictatorship, and
totalitarianism, when in actuality there are crucial distinctions between them. Authoritarianism, Arendt
argues, is characterized by restriction (as opposed to eradication) of freedoms, and an authoritarian
government acquires its power from the unequal relationship between ruler and ruled, and from beyond
its own ruling capacity, such as from the gods, laws, or the members of the political community that do
not nominally hold the power. Thus “the source of authority in authoritarian government is always a force
external and superior to its own power”, which “transcends the political realm”.
6
Importantly, political
violence does not feature in the use of true authority because it presupposes power inherent to the ruler,
and not sourced from an external power. She proposes the shape of a pyramid: at the top, the authoritarian
ruler, and each successive layer below maintains some lesser amount of authority than the layer above it.
7

My conception of an “authoritarian” regime also draws on the work of Juan Linz. The hallmarks
of an authoritarian regime, as described by Linz—restriction of freedoms and pluralism, lack of formal
ideologies, ill-defined limits of power, and political mobilization at only small scales
8
—are reflected in
certain aspects of Athenian democracy. But the distinction must be stressed between particular
authoritarian features of the demos as opposed to an actual authoritarian regime, which, though defying

6
Arendt 1969 [1954]: 97. I do not agree with her assertion that authority is incompatible with persuasion because,
she claims, persuasion implies a level of equality which does not exist in a purely authoritarian regime. It is unclear
what kind of persuasion Arendt is supposing here, and she does not explain further in the essay how persuasion is
based on the premise of two equals. Is it that an authoritarian leader cannot use rational argument to convince their
subjects of the legitimacy of their authority because the subjects would be just as capable of arguing against it?
Surely persuasion through non-rational means (esp. emotion) can be of use in an authoritarian regime because
emotion is easily bound up with extra-political powers like religion or reverence for ancestors. This would certainly
be the case with Plato as Bobonich 1992 argues.
7
Arendt 1969: 98. By contrast, she claims tyranny abolishes political freedoms entirely and its ruler acts according
to their own will, supported by violence; totalitarian governments limit even the most basic of freedoms
(“spontaneity” in Arendt’s phrasing) through intricate conditioning, a layering of spheres of influence at once
normalizing and extremist, and cutting off access to the outside world. Karl Popper (1945) also influentially argued
that totalitarianism has its roots in ancient Greek thought (especially that of Plato), though few scholars follow his
arguments anymore.
8
I follow Linz (1964: 297) for these characteristics of an authoritarian regime, recognizing at the same time that
when applying these definitions to ancient democracy not all of these features will be applicable in their stricter
senses.

6

precise definition, has certain qualities that the Athenian democracy did not have.
9
We cannot reasonably
call the Athenian democracy a totally authoritarian regime because, for example, it did, to an extent,
prioritize individual autonomy. But this only applied to enfranchised citizens. In all other cases, the
demos exerts considerable repressive power: citizen women, metics, enslaved people, and disenfranchised
former citizens had no direct say in politics and had severely limited freedoms, if any at all.
10
The
addition of a limited political pluralism of Athenian democracy, induced by a broader preoccupation with
homonoia (see Chapter 2), likewise points to a more authoritarian style of democracy, but the presence of
ad hoc factionalism within the demos still suggests an adequate political plurality to keep the regime
democratic. The Athenian democracy was therefore still a democracy in its purest sense—rule by the
demos and not a king, dictator, or tyrant—and its ideological commitments were opposed to totally
“authoritarian” styles of rule.
11
But still it was built on the restriction of freedoms of parts of even its
citizen population and relatively little tolerance for a wide array of political viewpoints.
In the context of Athenian democracy, then, I aim to locate the source of authority (both to rule
and educate) outside of the power of the government itself. To understand the source of authority in
Athens I am proposing a model that views Athenian society as composed of three things: the oikos, the
polis, and the politeia:
(1) The oikos consisted of the family unit, its patriarchal structure, and the customs and
practices of family life conceived as the “private” sphere as well as religious functions for
the public. By “private” sphere, I do not mean that it was “pre-political” (as Arendt

9
Thus we could understand the Four Hundred, the Five Thousand, and the Thirty as authoritarian regimes of
varying types, the Five Thousand being the loosest in its exercise of authority, the Four Hundred more authoritarian,
and the Thirty the most authoritarian.
10
See Saxonhouse 1992 for how the “fear of diversity” and limitations of political activity gave rise to political
thought in Athens.
11
For a fuller discussion of the characteristics of ancient and modern democracies see Robinson 1997: 25-64. The
emphasis on individual freedom to “do as one wishes”, the maintenance of widespread and frequent voting
procedures that assign equal weight to each vote, and stringent anti-tyranny legislation are examples of distinctly
democratic features of the Athenian politeia. In many respects, though, Athenian democracy resembles what modern
political scientists call “polyarchy” than the modern conception of democracy (see Dahl 1989:233 for characteristics
of polyarchy).

7

believes)
12
or immune to political intervention or scrutiny. Rather “private” describes the
expressions of authority inherent to it: husband over wife, parent over child, master over
slave.
13
Children were expected to care for their parents with near religious devotion until
their death; failure to do so could mean failure to pass the scrutiny held before entering
public office, or rejection by other members of the community. Transgressing the
theoretical realm of the oikos was a capital offense in the case of Socrates, who was
accused of stealing the youth away from their families with his revolutionary ideas.
(2) The polis was made up of the population of Athens and its monuments, buildings, and
public spaces, including temples and sacred spaces.
14
When the polis is invoked in our
sources it is firmly grounded in the physical world. Orators refer to temples, shipsheds,
trees, government buildings, the Parthenon and Propylaia, etc.; Plato’s Callipolis cannot
exist as a polis until a place is found for it far from existing cities. The physical
dimension of the city was a source of authority, in that monuments and temples
represented the power of those who built them, usually that of the people of Athens or the
gods.
(3) The politeia corresponded to the type of government, laws, civic duties, and the very
notion of citizenship in Athens.
15
This is a particularly tricky term because it is not used
consistently by our sources. In the orators it usually means “citizenship” and/or
“constitution”. For Isocrates, it is the “soul of the polis”. Plato’s Republic is titled, in
Greek, Politeia, thus involving it in his larger philosophical project.
16
Meanwhile,

12
Arendt, The Human Condition (1958: 24).
13
See Humphreys 1993: 1-21.
14
Aristotle uses the term polis both to refer to geographical location and the aggregate sum of citizens (Pol.
1274b32-41); see further Ober 1995: 131-133. Murray 1995 emphasizes the difficulty Aristotle has of reconciling
his two competing conceptualizations of the polis (is it an expression of the politeia or a place and its inhabitants?).
Viewing both the polis and politeia as parts of a dynamic system with the oikos resolves this theoretical
complication, as both of Aristotle’s suggestions become possible simultaneously.
15
See Bordes 1982, whose study of the idea of the politeia shows that it is organized primarily through laws and
public offices; Schofield 2006, Harte and Lane 2013: 1-3.
16
For the meaning of politeia for Plato see Laks 1990, Schofield 2006: 31-43.

8

Aristotle uses it to refer to the basic types of constitutions (democracy, monarchy,
oligarchy), and then classifies what he sees as the best constitution simply as politeia.
17

However it may be construed, it was a source of authority as the organizing principle for
the political activity of Athens.
These three components constitute a dynamic system: they are in constant interaction with each
other and thus co-constitutive and non-hierarchical, they have complex structures, and they are stable
because of their dynamism.
18
Removal of one element would cause the system to collapse and civic life
would be fundamentally altered. Though I present them as three different categories, their
interconnectedness means that they do conceptually overlap with each other. The individual citizen, for
instance, is a part of each of them depending on context; but the total sum of people living in Athens falls
under the polis because inevitably some people are excluded from the politeia. The authority of the
government of Athens is thus derived from these fundamental elements that transcend the political power
of the demos itself.

Authority and Civic Education
Already in the 5th century, the expression of the power of the democracy over other poleis was
viewed through authoritarian lenses. Thucydides makes this clear enough at several points in his history.
19

Pericles famously declares to the Athenians that their empire is “like a tyranny” over their subject states
(2.63.2). Thucydides then goes on to say in Pericles’ obituary that while Athens was in name a
democracy, in practice it was the rule of the best man (2.65.9-10). Cleon goes so far as to declare that he
thinks democracies are unable to have empires and complains that the Athenians do not realize that they
in fact possess a tyranny (3.37.1-2). Likewise, the chorus of Aristophanes’ Knights proclaimed that the
Demos is feared like a tyrant (Ar. Knights 1111-1114). The trope of the demos as tyrant was one that

17
Arist. Pol. 1293b22-1294b40.; Murray 1993: 201-202.
18
Thelen 2005 offers a useful and accessible summary of dynamic systems theory.
19
1.122-124, 2.8, 2.63, 3.37.

9

endured even after the Athenians lost their empire. By the end of the 4th century Aristotle would theorize
that in a democracy the demos, being the ruling body of the polity, acted in place of a tyrant or monarch
and that its decrees were no different than the edicts of a tyrant.
20

That the democracy possessed authoritarian features necessarily had implications for its processes
of civic education. The democracy constantly struggled under the conflicting need for an educative
authority and distrust and contempt for those authorities, such as teachers, who most commonly fill that
role. When translated to the realm of politics, this posed an unusual problem for the Athenians because
they knew that education does not guarantee either a more or less authoritarian polity. The educative
authority is ultimately the one in control of the kind of knowledge, its transmission, and the way it is
taught.
21
This much is evident from the oratory of the 4th century, such as Lysias’s speech against
Eratosthenes (Lys. 12), in which people like Theramenes are characterized as “teachers of crimes”.
22
The
responsibility of education fell upon the examples of one’s parents, fellow citizens, and the laws and
customs of the city itself, which left education open to a large range of variability, quality, and utility. The
authority to educate was thus divided among several parts of the whole of civic life rather than invested in
a central authority. This is how the Athenians attempted to minimize the authoritarian nature of the
otherwise authoritarian enterprise of education.
The problem of an authoritarian model of education was one that the demos, as the authoritative
ruler of Athens, was constantly up against. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates cross-examines Meletus to find
out who is responsible for the education and improvement of the Athenians. Meletus responds that it is
the laws, the jurors, the audience at the trial, the members of the Council and Assembly—all Athenians
except for Socrates (24e-25a). The means by which authority obtains obedience in an authoritarian regime
exists outside of the regime itself and emerges from the inherent inequality of the relationship between

20
Arist. Pol. 1292a
21
There is a body of scholarship on the problem of implementing democratic civic education in real world settings
(namely, schools) that do not operate under the ideal circumstances assumed by modern theories of liberal
democratic civic education. See e.g. Simpson 1972, Gutmann 1998, Merry 2020.
22
See Chapter 2. There are, as far as I can tell, no references to “teachers of good” in these sources.

10

ruler and ruled. Meletus’ claim that everyone but Socrates educates the citizenry provides us with a model
for how education can be anti-authoritarian by depriving it of structures that grant authority founded in
unequal relationships. In the case of Athenian democracy, this is further complicated by the fact that the
ruled are sometimes the rulers and sometimes not, depending on how authority is instantiated, distributed,
and utilized. Lacking a centralized authority figure, the Athenian citizen body came to rule itself through
the discursive construct they called the demos, instantiated or “personated” by the aggregation of citizens
in Councils, Assemblies, juries, and other political practices.
23
Nevertheless, their authority remained: just
as under a single ruler, the demos derived its legitimacy from the tripartite structure of civic life
composed of the oikos, polis, and politeia

and the ruler-ruled relationship between the abstract demos and
the citizens of Athens. Because the demos itself only exists because of the interactions of the oikos, the
polis, and the politeia the power of these three elements is superior and external to the political power of
the demos. Should the demos violate any of them, as when it voted the democratic politeia out of
existence in 411, it lost its authority and its democratic regime, thereby transforming itself into a despotic
oligarchy. The relationship between enfranchised citizens was, in theory, egalitarian and thus their
education in good citizen behavior through observation of other citizens did not rely on the artificial
hierarchy of teacher and student, but rather the “natural” hierarchies of parent and child, city and citizen,
collective and individual.
The authority of the demos was evidently threatened by the presence of teachers in the city.
24

When citizens observed other citizens to model their good behaviors and avoid their bad ones, it was as if
the demos were looking to itself for education, never allocating authority to distinct individuals who
could generate new hierarchies outside of the one that prioritized the demos. Teachers (or those perceived
to be teachers), like the Sophists and Socrates, thus became immediate objects of suspicion. The subject
matter they were teaching, varied as it was, hardly posed immediate threats of political upheaval. Rather it
was the authority they subtracted from the family and the demos that incurred the rancor of the Athenians.

23
Anderson 2009.
24
It was probably not coincidence that the teachers by whom they felt threatened were also not Athenian citizens.

11

The lessons the Sophists taught served only to diminish the authority of the demos, in the eyes of the
general Athenian public. Instead of teaching pro-democratic, prosocial values, they only taught their
students how to manipulate democratic institutions to serve their own interests. This was especially true
of the relationship of the teachers and young Athenian men who were on the cusp of citizenship or had
recently become citizens. The obedience of the youth should have only been paid to their parents (as
private individuals) and the Athenian demos (as citizens), but these teachers were perceived to be
upsetting the natural order of things and threatening the democratic way of life. In addition, as Dover has
suggested, it was only the wealthy who could supply the money and leisure time a Sophistic education
required, thus tipping the scales of political power toward the elite through their education.
25

Scholars have often believed in a tenacious spirit of “amateurism” in the Athenian political
practice that slowly gave way to specialization over the course of the 4th century.
26
But this is not quite
the case. The Athenians did in fact value specialization in things like crafts and warfare, as well as
knowledgeable leaders in their government. Rather the sources, control, and implementation of
knowledge raised concerns about power, freedom, and the welfare of the state, thus fueling controversy
around Sophists, philosophers, and other forms of private education. For some reason—be it ardent
adherence to tradition, anxieties about the welfare of the individual and the city, democratic ideology, or
belief in natural hierarchies—the Athenians truly valued their informal modes of educating their citizenry
and often resisted dramatic changes to it. The knowledge passed down from one’s parents and familiars
was appreciated far more than anything learned from a Sophist. Observing one’s fellow citizens perform
their democratic duties could not be replaced by an outline for deliberative rhetoric. The account of one’s
life delivered in a forensic speech could teach more about good and bad behavior than any lecture given
by a philosopher.
The ancient evidence I deploy to make these arguments comes from oratory, historiography,
philosophy, law, epigraphy, archaeology, and visual art. Because civic education was happening in many

25
Dover 1988 [1976]: 155–6.
26
Rhodes 2004?

12

places in Athens and, theoretically, almost all the time, a wide assortment of literary and material sources
is needed to provide the fullest account possible. The orators, legal, and material sources give us the
closest idea of the theories and practice of civic education going on among the “masses”. The
philosophers are decidedly more idiosyncratic in their views though still, I will argue, embedded in the
political, social, and historical environment of democratic Athens. While I try my best to bring all the
different types of evidence to bear on each other, each chapter will focus on one or two types.
My framework is diachronic and focuses on change over time. While synchronic studies of
Athens have been useful for bringing Athenian civic and cultural features to the surface, a diachronic
analysis allows us to see with precision when those features developed, why they developed, and their
relationship with other factors in and outside of Athens. Thus each of the five following chapters uses a
major political or historical event as an anchor for situating their individual topics: the falls of the Thirty
Tyrants in 402/1 BCE, (Chapter 2), the trial and death of Socrates in 399 BCE (Chapter 3), the formation
of the Second Athenian League in 378 BCE (Chapter 4), the Social War in 357-355 BCE (Chapter 5), and
the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE (Chapter 6).

Summary of Chapters
Chapter 2 begins the diachronic analysis of civic education by situating the first major
developments in civic education in the context of late 5th-century Athens. I show how Athens’ defeat in
the Peloponnesian War, the oligarchic regime of the Thirty, and the ensuing civil war (stasis) between
democrats and oligarchs forced the Athenians to think about their civic values and how to learn and
display them. The Amnesty agreement that reconciled the democratic and oligarchic factions placed limits
on how citizens could present themselves and others. Thus through years of public discourse, the
Athenians were able to negotiate a loose set of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors that citizens should
observe. The primary goal was establishing homonoia (like-mindedness, unity) among the citizenry. I
suggest that in the early 4th century this is less of a positive value and more of the negative space around

13

stasis. That is, homonoia is simply the lack of civil strife in Athens. Thus the Athenians were able to use
the authority of their collective action for inculcating values that lead to political stability.
But there were certain aberrations in the course of these developments, most notably the trial of
Socrates in 399 BCE, which I discuss in Chapter 3. Socrates was accused of impiety and corrupting the
youth. His ties to certain members of the Thirty tyrants led his accusers to initiate a political prosecution
against him, which resulted in his execution. I argue that Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, taken
together, level serious criticisms of the way the demos exercised their political authority and the
detrimental effects of the lack of centralized educative authority. Plato argues that relying on haphazard
education from the oikos, polis, and politeia is only harmful to democracy because it causes the demos to
act against its best interests. The Euthyphro highlights the instability of familial authority and the notion
of filial piety. In the Apology, Socrates launches a last-ditch effort to correct the Athenians by
demonstrating where their civic education has failed. Finally, the Crito proposes a solution to the disorder
of Athenian democratic civic education by suggesting that there is inherent, reliable authority in law.
Socrates’ conversation with the personified Laws presents this authority in familiar ways, creating a
parallel between city-citizen, god-man, parent-child, and master-slave relationships. The Laws in the
Crito fill the role of a natural authority which Socrates must honor, revealing hope for a way to organize
epistemic authority for the good of the people of Athens.
Chapter 4 extends this analysis of philosophy and civic education, highlighting the developments
toward a more authoritarian democracy from the 380s to the 350s. In this chapter I use the work of
Isocrates and Plato to show how philosophy emerged from the crisis of authority in Athens at this time.
As the Athenians built up their Second Athenian League, the philosophers feared that the Athenians were
returning to the old tyrannical ways of their 5th century empire. The outbreak of the Social War in 357
BCE seems to have confirmed those fears. Both Isocrates and Plato argued for a top-down imposition of
authority as the key to ensuring an educated citizen body that would resist tyrannical desires. Over the
trajectory of his career, Isocrates argued for a centralized educational authority that would teach citizens
characteristics (tropoi) that would lead to prosperity for the Athenians and unity among the Greeks. Plato,

14

on the other hand, argued that ties to a higher authority—law and the gods—was needed for the city to
achieve the greatest happiness. In the Laws, he lays out a detailed plan to educate (or indoctrinate) the
citizens of his “second-best city” Magnesia, which could feasibly be applied to a regime like Athenian
democracy.
Chapter 5 further develops the authoritarian trends in Athenian democracy by looking at the
epigraphic evidence. By focusing on the evolution of the Athenian epigraphic habit, I show that
inscriptions took on an increasingly important role in civic education. Those with political ambitions
could use them to promote themselves as paradigmatic citizens since decrees carried the names of all
those involved in the process of publishing the inscription. Honorific inscriptions were especially useful
for this purpose because they were permanent testaments to good civic behavior. Over time the Athenians
narrowed down the loose set of civic values seen in Chapter 2 into a more concise, codified set of values
through honorific inscriptions. At first, honors were inscribed almost exclusively for foreign benefactors
of the city and ascribed a very limited set of exemplary virtues to them. But by the 340s, the Athenians
were honoring their own citizens for expressing virtues such as arete (“excellence”), philotimia (“love of
honor”), and dikaiosyne (“doing the right thing”). This kind of language was circulating in public
discourse for decades before it was literally set in stone. The evolution of honorific practice and language
reveals a tension between the individual, paradigmatic citizen and the authority of the collective, inducing
the Athenians to once again place limits around their informal system of civic education. Public
benefactions had to be made for the sake of the collective, not individual gain, and honors were to be
widespread so as not to afford too much privilege to honorands. This trend shows that the citizen was to
show not just subordination, but devotion, to the democracy, to the point that a cult of Demokratia was
even established in the 330s.
Chapter 6 follows this thread of authoritarian civic education in the period known as “Lycurgan
Athens”, roughly from 338, after the Macedonians defeated the Athenians at the Battle of Chaeronea, to
Lycurgus’ death in 325/4 BCE. Lycurgus was a prominent statesman and minister of finance who did
much to revitalize Athenian culture and religious life. During his tenure as minister of finance the

15

Athenians established the ephebeia in 336/5 BCE. The ephebeia was a training program for ephebes, 18-
year-old Athenian men who had just been enrolled as citizens in their deme registers. It had a military
component and an educational component, and the ephebes served for 2 years, during which time they
were effectively removed from civic life in Athens and sent to guard the borders of Attica. The ephebes
were supposed to learn self-control, obedience, and order, thus priming them for their future lives as loyal
citizens of the Athenian democracy. As the first educational institution in Athens, it was a significant
development in Athenian practices of civic education, which, up to this point, had so strongly resisted
centralization of educational authority. This trend continued for citizens outside of the ephebeia as well.
Through a reading of Lycurgus’ speech Against Leocrates, I show that Lycurgus’ rather authoritarian
approach to democratic politics was reflected in his approach to civic education. As the inheritor of public
discourse, honorific culture, and philosophical thought of the 4th century he sought to wield educational
authority himself, carefully framed through lessons in patriotism, care for the family, and respect for the
gods. He uses his prosecution of Leocrates for treason as a guide to good citizen behavior that aims to
protreptically turn the citizenry toward excellence through a long list of positive and negative paradigms
for behavior.
I aim to show just how crucial civic education was to the Athenian conception of citizenship and
the effort they expended in honing their informal and formal ways of inculcating civic values. In the
process I hope to both deepen and complicate our understanding of the intersection of politics and
education, especially with respect to the issue of authority. As any teacher can attest, there is an art to
establishing authority in the classroom; in the realm of politics, it is no different.

16

Chapter 2: Civic Education after the Thirty
This chapter will discuss the nature of Athenian civic education after the fall of the Thirty tyrants
and Amnesty of 403/2 as a response to stasis (civil war). My central claim will be that the rule of the
Thirty brought new challenges for the Athenian system of civic education, which was largely dependent
on the use of paradeigmata, exemplary behaviors which were embodied, performed, and consumed by
the citizens of Athens themselves. The issue of the paradigmatic citizen became complicated by the fact
that both democrats and (former) oligarchs now inhabited the city. Before this critical moment in the
political life of the city, the paradigmatic status of the citizen did not seem to occupy much space in
public discourse. The only explicit references to individuals as παραδείγματα come from tragedy and
comedy, whose mythological or fictitious characters permit a certain level of exemplarity. In prose, only
groups of people are used as examples: the Athenians, the Mytilenians, the Spartans, the Greeks enslaved
by the Athenians.
27
Pericles’ Funeral Oration reveals much about the flexibility of the ideology of
paradigmatic citizenship in the fifth century democracy (2.37.1):

‘χρώμεθα γὰρ πολιτείᾳ οὐ ζηλούσῃ τοὺς τῶν πέλας νόμους, παράδειγμα δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτοὶ ὄντες
τισὶν ἢ μιμούμενοι ἑτέρους. καὶ ὄνομα μὲν διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐς ὀλίγους ἀλλ᾽ ἐς πλείονας οἰκεῖν
δημοκρατία κέκληται: μέτεστι δὲ κατὰ μὲν τοὺς νόμους πρὸς τὰ ἴδια διάφορα πᾶσι τὸ ἴσον, κατὰ
δὲ τὴν ἀξίωσιν, ὡς ἕκαστος ἔν τῳ εὐδοκιμεῖ, οὐκ ἀπὸ μέρους τὸ πλέον ἐς τὰ κοινὰ ἢ ἀπ᾽ ἀρετῆς
προτιμᾶται, οὐδ᾽ αὖ κατὰ πενίαν, ἔχων γέ τι ἀγαθὸν δρᾶσαι τὴν πόλιν, ἀξιώματος ἀφανείᾳ
κεκώλυται.

“We make use of a constitution that does not emulate the laws of our neighbors, but we ourselves
are a paradigm to some rather than imitate others. And its name is democracy because we manage

27
These all come from Thucydides, who is the only extant prose writer of the 5th century who uses the word
παράδειγμα in this way (2.37.1, 3.10.6, 3.11.8, 3.39.3, 3.40.7, 3.57.1, 3.67.6, 4.92.4, 5.90.1, 6.77.1). The unusually
high frequency of this term in Book 3 may place its date of composition or revision around the very end of the 5th
century.

17

it not to the advantage of the few but of the many. In terms of the law there is equality for all with
respect to their private differences; in terms of social status, inasmuch as each has garnered a
reputation, he is not esteemed more highly because of his rank among the collective than because
of his excellence; and not even in poverty is he hindered by the obscurity of his station if there is
some good he does to the city.”
28

In this sense the Athenians were collectively paradigmatic because of the excellence of their form of
government. Pericles’ shift from the group level to the individual (ἕκαστος), from social status to personal
excellence, only serves to reinforce the overwhelming importance of being a part of the whole. Thus
paradigmatic citizens served both to reproduce the democracy and to differentiate Athenians from other
Greeks as exceptional in their political life, instead of differentiating among themselves. Any deviations
from good behaviors were simply ascribed to bad leaders that represented the collective action of the
demos.
The famously “bad” citizens, such as Cleon or Socrates, featured prominently as targets of
political attacks in comedy but were not presented as negative paradigms for democratic citizenship.
Rather they were used as tools used to criticize political or cultural issues in Athens.
29
Drama, the most
productive vehicle for civic education in the fifth century, is also largely devoid of the use of the word
παράδειγμα. This is striking not only because of the prolific use of this word in 4
th
century texts, but
because theater was a critical vehicle for education in the polis. Apparently, the 5
th
century playwrights
did not feel the need to point out the good and bad behaviors of their characters as “examples” to be
followed, and from this we can suppose that there was no urgent need to do so. Unfortunately there are no
surviving court speeches from this period to compare with those of the fourth century, but the fact that
neither Antiphon’s Tetralogies nor his forensic speeches make use of the trope of making an example of

28
All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
29
For the role of Aristophanes’ comedies in political criticism, see e.g. McGlew 1996, Edmunds 1988, Halliwell
1991, Ober 1998: 122-155. The difference between Aristophanes’ criticisms and the orators’ construction of
negative paradigms lies in the reaction of the audience: in comedy, laughter; in court, hostility.

18

someone further indicates that it only becomes a rhetorical commonplace after the reign of the Thirty.
Thus it seems that Athenians became especially interested in paradigmatic behaviors in the fourth century
as a reaction to the oligarchic coups of 411 and 404 and the threat of future ones in Athens.
After reintegrating oligarchs into the city, the paradigmatic status of the democratic citizen
became a matter not only of differentiating Athenian from other Greeks, but “good” Athenian from “bad”
Athenian. The demos thus had to inculcate a set of shared values that would lead to homonoia (unity) in
the city in order to reconcile the fact that democratic citizens had to live with and make peace with former
supporters of the oligarchy.
30
Through continuous debate in the city, the Athenians were able to arrive at a
certain set of behaviors and attitudes deemed appropriate to a democratic “character” (ethos) or general
“way of being” (tropoi).
31
These would teach current and future citizens how to ensure the success of the
democracy and maintain peace. Importantly, the ways that Athenian civic education was adapted to this
challenge show that homonoia did not mean identicality or indiscriminate and total mimesis. The goal was
not to make everyone the same, but rather to find common ground that would incorporate difference
without disturbing the dynamic system of Athenian civic life.

Athens in Crisis
A series of largely self-inflicted disasters plagued the Athenians in the last ten years of the
Peloponnesian War. The failure of the Sicilian Expedition in 413 BCE and the oligarchic coup of the Four
Hundred in 411 (which itself collapsed under its own weight) revealed the extent of the weakness of
political leadership in Athens. A glimmer of hope appeared in 406 with a victory over the Spartans at the
battle of Arginusai; an untimely storm, however, prevented the victorious generals from recovering both
the living and dead who were stranded at sea.
32
When news of this arrived in Athens, the Assembly

30
For homonoia, see Funke 1980, Strauss 1986. Funke paints perhaps too optimistic a picture of Athenian like-
mindedness in the period after the Peloponnesian War but his analysis of the sources is still useful.
31
The consequences of this process of discovery will be discussed in Chapter 3 in the context of philosophical
debates about civic education.
32
Arginusai: Roberts 1982, Carawan 2007a

19

wasted no time in holding a trial for the generals in absentia. They condemned them all to death. At the
same time the politician Cleophon convinced the Athenians to reject the Spartans’ overture for peace. As
if the catastrophic outcome of the Sicilian Expedition were not enough to dissuade the Athenians from
pursuing the war further, even in victory they found ways to ruin any advantage they may have had due, it
would seem, to hawkish, reactionary leaders and a citizen body willing to follow them. The Athenians
were facing a fatal crisis of authority in their democracy.
When the Spartans decisively defeated the Athenians at Aigospotami in 404 BCE, they
established an oligarchic regime in Athens composed of thirty Athenian citizens who would keep the city
loyal to Sparta. Their first order of business was to limit the citizen body and convert the democratic city
into an oligarchic one. They exiled all but 3,000 of their most loyal citizens, who remained in the city (ἐν
τω ἄστει) and executed another 1500 or so without trial. Many of the exiles fled to Thebes and other parts
of Boiotia; but after Thrasybulus of Steiria, a leading citizen of the time, had gained enough support he
moved to a town northwest of Athens called Phyle and managed to defeat the oligarchs in battle. From
there the democrats in exile occupied Munichia hill in the Piraeus, mounted an attack against the
oligarchs, and won an unexpected and decisive victory in 403.
33
Support for the democrats continued to
grow and the stability of the oligarchic regime began to falter; eventually the two parties reached a
reconciliation agreement with the help of Spartan intervention. The supporters of the Thirty were allowed
to live in Athens, while the Thirty themselves had to pass a rendering of accounts in order to be accepted
back into the city.
34
Those who chose not to live in Athens were granted land in Eleusis. But with the
threat of another attack on the city by the oligarchs looming, the democrats of Athens once again engaged
them in battle and put an end once and for all to the (immediate) oligarchic threat to the democracy.
But there was still the matter of the former oligarchs living in the city. After wars, plagues, famine, stasis,
and summary executions, Athens was left in a pitiful state, its citizen population nearly halved compared

33
The victors at Phyle were honored with an inscription commemorating the individuals who fought there (RO 4).
34
This was not a merely symbolic gesture, as we have evidence of at least one of the Thirty successfully passing his
euthuna.

20

to pre-Peloponnesian War demographic estimates, and many of the rest of its inhabitants starving, injured,
or ill.
35
Certainly in this we can see some motivation for allowing presumed enemies of the democracy to
continue to live in Athens. The reconstruction process became not just a matter of rebuilding and
repopulating, but also of learning to get along with one’s enemies. The necessity and desire for social and
political cohesion induced a heightened sensitivity to the role of individual citizens in directing the
collective toward a stable democracy.
My approach to this issue will be to consider how civic education played a part in the
reconciliation process after the Amnesty. The Amnesty was an impressive feat of collective action and a
clear expression of the demos’ authority which introduced restrictions that affected the way civic
education developed in this period. Since it was impossible to prosecute others for most crimes
committed under the Thirty, the Athenians brought into focus the behaviors and civic values of litigants,
rather than their past crimes, which aimed both to demonstrate the harm a litigant might cause to
democracy and to educate other citizens in good citizenship by example. The usual rhetorical strategies in
this case appealed to the dynamic system of civic life made up of the oikos, polis, and politeia (family,
city, and constitution). The interdependent relationship of these three parts of civic life is already apparent
in the passage from Pericles’ Funeral Oration quoted above. Pericles uses the language of household
management (oikein) to describe the administration of the politeia, which serves the many and not the
few, and a citizen taking part in this constitution can achieve greatness by engaging in a reciprocal
relationship of benefaction with the polis itself. This dynamic system, according to Pericles, is what
makes Athens itself paradigmatic. Through the discourse about proper citizen behavior as interactions
between these three elements going on in the courts in Athens of the 4th century, we will see that the
demos exploited the dynamic nature of civic education to drive the democracy away from stasis and
toward homonoia.

35
M.H. Hansen 1985; B. Strauss 1986: 70-86; Akrigg 2007. For the changes in Athenian politics from the 5th
century to the 4th due to these demographic and cultural changes, see Taylor 2007.

21

The earliest speeches we have from the period following the Amnesty come from Lysias,
Isocrates, and Andocides. The first two were logographers and wrote their speeches for other people (with
the exception of Lysias 2 and 12, though whether these speeches were actually delivered is doubtful).
Andocides’ speeches concern his complicated political past from before the Amnesty and show his
attempt to exploit the political turmoil in Athens to resume his political life there. Another important
speech, that of Socrates at his trial in 399 BCE, comes to us in two versions from Plato and Xenophon,
written, perhaps much later, after the fact. Most of these speeches share a common goal of setting
paradigms for behaviors in both public and private and constitute much of what the Athenians conceived
to be ‘civic education’. However, these behaviors are at times disparate or even entirely antithetical and
thus the Athenians engage in a ‘debate’ over civic education, as Ober has shown.
36
Many Athenian
citizens from both the masses and elite, democrats and oligarchs, had quite an interest in how the current
and future citizens of Athens should be educated in political life. Citizen men were not the only ones
involved in such debates, as women, foreigners, and slaves also play a part shaping discussions about
proper behavior in the polis. And with the various courts (dikastic courts, Council, Assembly, and
Areopagus) offering a public forum for not only airing grievances surrounding the events of 404-403 but
also for negotiating behavioral norms, it is no wonder that we find so many references to certain people,
such as litigants, or entire groups of people, being presented as paradigms for what to do or not to do in
the city. We will see that civic education in Athens undergoes some critical changes in this period that
pave the way for its further development in the rest of the fourth century.

Corrupting Civic Education: The Thirty at Athens
When the Thirty overthrew the democracy and dismantled its institutions, it interrupted the
democratic system of civic education as well. The Athenians seem to have perceived the education of the

36
Ober 2005, Chp. 6.

22

Thirty themselves as a factor in the way they ruled, as evidenced in the trial of Socrates, and this idea
clearly stuck with the Athenians throughout the fourth century.
37

Lysias 12 (Against Eratosthenes), one of our few contemporary sources for what happened under
the Thirty, frames his attacks on Eratosthenes, Theramenes, and the Thirty in such educational terms. He
begins the speech by self-consciously poising himself as inexperienced and nervous to take part in public
affairs for the first time (12.3, a claim rendered somewhat lame by the highly sophisticated style of the
rest of the speech).
38
In any case, inexperience will be to Lysias’ advantage as a contrasting feature to his
characterization of the Thirty-two paragraphs later:

ἐπειδὴ δ᾽ οἱ τριάκοντα πονηροὶ μὲν καὶ συκοφάνται ὄντες εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν κατέστησαν, φάσκοντες
χρῆναι τῶν ἀδίκων καθαρὰν ποιῆσαι τὴν πόλιν καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς πολίτας ἐπ᾽ ἀρετὴν καὶ
δικαιοσύνην τραπέσθαι, καὶ τοιαῦτα λέγοντες οὐ τοιαῦτα ποιεῖν ἐτόλμων, ὡς ἐγὼ περὶ τῶν
ἐμαυτοῦ πρῶτον εἰπὼν καὶ περὶ τῶν ὑμετέρων ἀναμνῆσαι πειράσομαι. (12.5)

Since the Thirty, criminals and sycophants as they are, set themselves up in office, saying that
they needed to cleanse the city of wrongdoers and turn the rest of the citizens toward excellence
and justice, and though saying these things did not dare do anything of the sort, I will try to
refresh your memories, speaking about my own affairs first and then about yours.

37
Cf. Aeschines in his prosecution of Timarchus in 345 BCE: “So then, Athenians, did you execute Socrates the
sophist because he was shown to have educated Critias, one of the Thirty who overthrew the democracy and now
will Demosthenes take companions from you? The very man who is exacting penalties to this day from private
citizens and friends of the people for their freedom of speech? Some of his students have even been invited to come
here to listen to him.” (ἔπειθ᾽ ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, Σωκράτην μὲν τὸν σοφιστὴν ἀπεκτείνατε, ὅτι Κριτίαν
ἐφάνη πεπαιδευκώς, ἕνα τῶν τριάκοντα τῶν τὸν δῆμον καταλυσάντων, Δημοσθένης δ᾽ ὑμῖν ἑταίρους ἐξαιρήσεται, ὁ
τηλικαύτας τιμωρίας λαμβάνων παρὰ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ δημοτικῶν ἀνθρώπων ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰσηγορίας, ᾧ
παρακεκλημένοι τινὲς τῶν μαθητῶν ἥκουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκρόασιν (1.173).
38
The claim of inexperience and incompetence was not uncommon in forensic oratory. Cf. eg. Lys. 17.1, 19.2,
24.24; Mantitheus in Lysias 16 (see below) worries that his go-getter attitude for speaking in the Assembly will be
to his disadvantage as such political ambition appeared suspicious, especially from a young man such as himself.
Isocrates in particular crafted an entire persona around his weak voice and awkwardness in public performance, esp.
in speech 15 (Antidosis): see Isoc. 15.1, 140, 153, 310. On the topos of unskilled speakers, see Lateiner 1982,
Hansen 1983: 43-44 , Carter 1986: 105-10, Ober 1989:174-7.

23

In one respect, Lysias’ claim of inexperience contrasts sharply with the Thirty’s criminal and sycophantic
nature, as it pits a good man who has never been in court against thirty who have made a career out of
maliciously prosecuting and committing crimes against that good man. In another respect, one that Lysias
will resume several times throughout the speech, the lack of experience juxtaposed with the Thirty’s
unfulfilled plan to “turn the remaining citizens toward excellence and justice” exploits the jury’s assumed
unease with professional teachers to condemn the corrupt form of civic education displayed by the
Thirty.
39
This rhetorical strategy removes Lysias from the position of paradigmatic speaker and the power
(and, implicitly, suspicion) associated with that status. Faced with a society that is sensitive to individuals
with power over the collective, Lysias tries very hard to blend in with the crowd, so to speak: first by
aligning his personal enmity with the enmity that the demos has against Eratosthenes (12.2),
40
and then by
explicitly denying himself the authority to teach the wrongs of the Thirty. Instead, Lysias’ account will
force the Thirty to teach about their wrongdoing themselves without implicating him in them.
Though Lysias is silent about what exactly “turning the rest of the citizens toward excellence and
justice” means, we can nevertheless infer from the rest of the speech how the oligarchs both appropriated
democratic structures of civic education and corrupted them entirely, leading to sustained debate and
negotiations about civic education in the restored democracy explored in the rest of this chapter. If Robin

39
The Socratic undertone of the wording of this passage is interesting given the supposed relationship between
Socrates and Lysias (or at least his friends and family) in the Phaedrus and Republic. Certainly Lysias has shown
himself to be critical of, if not downright hostile toward, sophists and philosophers (8.11, 33.3, cf. the mock-
declamatory style of 24.11-12), but whether Socrates would be included in this category is unclear. Though with no
certainty can we ascertain whether Lysias was in fact referencing Socrates, surely his audience, be that a jury or
readership of a pamphlet, would have had Socrates and his student Critias in mind when hearing this; it is hard,
however, to tell what kind of stance Lysias is taking. On one hand, the fact that the Thirty did not carry out this
promise to turn the citizenry to virtue and justice shows that they were unable to practice their supposed Socratic
teaching and failed as his students. On the other hand, the fact that Socrates educated them in the first place
implicates him both in their crimes and the very fact that they failed to implement his teachings about virtue and
justice. As we already know, his association with the Thirty was a major strike against him during his trial and led to
his execution by the state (Aes. 1.173 above). Cf. the Socratic undertones of Lys. 24.3.
40
This same unorthodox strategy is used in Lysias 13 (Against Agoratus) and Lysias 31 (Against Philon), both of
which were likely delivered very soon after the restoration of the democracy. Lycurgus will use the same rhetorical
stance in his speech Against Leocrates.

24

Osborne is right that the Thirty did devote some thought to their new regime,
41
then it would not be
surprising if they did in fact consider how they would educate their limited citizen body as well. The
Thirty did not start out as a terror regime, after all, and seemed to desire substantive change for the
betterment of the city. Unfortunately they chose to do this through violence, their arrest and execution of
well-known sycophants being met with tolerance more than approval.
42
But it seems clear that the Thirty
recognized that they could not sustain a government without buy-in from their citizens and a way to
reproduce it (as opposed to the Four Hundred, who seemed, if their general disorganization described in
[Lys.] 20 is any indication, not to have thought that far ahead). Perhaps they did this through propaganda,
as Luciano Gianfrancesco (1974) has suggested. Others have suggested that the Thirty aimed to reform
Athens after the Spartan model, and this may have included instituting something similar to the Spartan
educational program (agoge) for their limited citizen body as well.
43

Whatever (failed) plan they had for positive reform, certainly they worked negatively as well to
take away the democratic aspects of civic education, first by disabling the courts, then by packing the
Council with supporters of the regime, and by coercing the Assembly to approve their agenda.
44
They also
destroyed inscriptions that contained laws of the democracy and honors for proxenoi in allied cities
signaling a definitive shift in regime, its policies, and its means of civic education.
45
In doing these things
the Thirty showed one of the major faults in the democratic model of civic education: the need for
voluntary, active role models in educating the citizenry. Lysias criticizes the democrats who stayed in the
city, asking, “As for those who say they have goodwill, how come they did not show it then and there by
giving the best advice and deterring those in error?” (12.49: ὁπόσοι δ᾽ εὖνοί φασιν εἶναι, πῶς οὐκ ἐνταῦθα
ἔδειξαν, αὐτοί τε τὰ βέλτιστα λέγοντες καὶ τοὺς ἐξαμαρτάνοντας ἀποτρέποντες;). The participle

41
Osborne 2003.
42
Xen. Hell. 2.3.12, Lys. 25.19. Krentz 1982 seems to interpret these passages, a bit uncritically, to indicate general
support from the citizens of Athens for the execution of sycophants.
43
Krentz 1982: 64–67; Whitehead 1982–1983:106–130; Ostwald 1986 :485–487. Spartan education (agoge): Xen.
Lak. Pol. 2; Cartledge 1987; Kennell 1995; Ober 2005: 138-139; Lanni 2016: 175-6.
44
Lys. 12.44. See also Osborne 2003: 262-4.
45
Shear 2011: 176ff. For the use of inscriptions for civic education see Chapter 5 of this dissertation.

25

ἀποτρέποντες even seems to echo the τραπέσθαι of 12.5, drawing another uncomfortably close
comparison between the democrats and oligarchs who are now living together in Athens and who
comprise Lysias’ audience and jury.
Lysias, in this succinct description of the Athenian theory of paradigmatic citizen behavior (‘to
say the best things and deter those in error’), thus highlights the practical failure of that theory and the
need for both democrats and oligarchs to fix it. He offers an out for those who worked under the Thirty:
punish the “teachers of their crimes” (τοὺς διδασκάλους τῶν σφετέρων ἁμαρτημάτων) and break their
oaths of oligarchy for the good of the city (12.47). Framing oligarchic behavior as learned traits from the
Thirty instead of naturally inherited ones
46
grants the oligarchs in the audience the affordance to unlearn
oligarchy and relearn democracy and severs their loyalty to the Thirty. Later in the speech, Lysias singles
out Theramenes as a citizen who “using the most beautiful name became a teacher of the most awful
deeds” (12.78: τῷ καλλίστῳ ὀνόματι χρώμενος δεινοτάτων ἔργων διδάσκαλος καταστάς). The rhetorical
strategy is clear enough: Lysias attacks the career of the already dead Theramenes, because he anticipates
that Eratosthenes will try to align himself with Theramenes. He was generally favored by the demos for
being a moderate oligarch, and this move might garner more votes in Eratosthenes’ favor. Interestingly, it
is on this note that Lysias closes his attack on Theramenes, as if the trajectory of his crimes led him to
become an expert and teacher of them. He then moves on to what kind of punishment the jury should levy
on Eratosthenes. The implicit assumption here is that the jury will follow the same educative model: if
they choose to acquit Eratosthenes, they “will be seen as desiring the same things as these men (i.e.,
Eratosthenes and others), and [they] will not have the excuse that [they] were working under the Thirty”
(12.90), and thus also become teachers of crime. Furthermore, their decision will not be secret and their
“opinion will be known to the city” (12.91), including to foreigners, who will take the precedent of this
case as an indication for whether to look after Athens’ interests (12.35).

46
Hereditary goodness and badness was a frequent topos in Lysias. For goodness see Lys. 16.20-21, 18.6, 20.24,
26.22; badness: 13.67-68, 14.40. Yet another instantiation of the commonplace physis/nomos dichotomy. For
Athenian democratic citizenship as something inherent and heritable, see Lape 2010.

26

Lysias ends the speech on a powerful note about the precedent that the Thirty set for the jury’s
deliberation:

βούλομαι δὲ ὀλίγα ἑκατέρους ἀναμνήσας καταβαίνειν, τούς τε ἐξ ἄστεως καὶ τοὺς ἐκ Πειραιῶς,
ἵνα τὰς ὑμῖν τούτων γεγενημένας συμφορὰς παραδείγματα ἔχοντες τὴν ψῆφον φέρητε. καὶ
πρῶτον μὲν ὅσοι ἐξ ἄστεώς ἐστε, σκέψασθε ὅτι ὑπὸ τούτων οὕτω σφόδρα ἤρχεσθε, ὥστε
ἀδελφοῖς καὶ ὑέσι καὶ πολίταις ἠναγκάζεσθε πολεμεῖν τοιοῦτον πόλεμον, ἐν ᾧ ἡττηθέντες μὲν
τοῖς νικήσασι τὸ ἴσον ἔχετε, νικήσαντες δ᾽ ἄν τούτοις ἐδουλεύετε.

I want to remind each of you, both those from the city and from Piraeus, of a few things and then
step down, so that you take the disasters caused by these men that have befallen you as examples
and cast your vote. First, those of you from the city: consider that you were ruled so terribly by
these men that you were forced to go to war against your brothers, sons, and fellow citizens, in
which after being defeated you have equality with the victors, but had you won you would have
enslaved them.

The former oligarchs are once again his target and he attempts to reform them as democrats by making
the example of the Thirty very clear: under oligarchy there is no good governance or equality, but under
democracy they can achieve unity and freedom. We should be especially attentive to the reference to the
war against “brothers, sons, and fellow citizens”. As Barry Strauss has shown, the Athenian
conceptualization of stasis in the city was often presented as a metaphor for internal strife in the family
and vice versa.
47
In other words, when the family unit is unstable, so is the city. This leads to stasis, or
worse, the death of the city entirely. The Thirty are a bad model then, because they brought ruin to the

47
Strauss 1993.

27

polis and its laws and institutions, established a politeia that was unstable and prone to endless violence
and conflict (cf. 12.51), and also caused the disintegration of the oikos through interfamilial conflict.
Throughout his prosecution of Eratosthenes, Lysias touches on the intersection of a number of
cultural anxieties about civic education prevalent among the Athenians: the first, about young male
citizens becoming their teachers instead of their fathers and possibly being removed from the political
community, which disturbs the natural (democratic) order of things; the second, that the young citizen
men who are rightly involved in politics and are receiving their civic education from their fellow citizens
will learn from oligarchs and thus fail to reproduce the democracy; and the third, that the disruption of the
family model and the failure to successfully reproduce the democracy will upset the dynamic system of
civic life created by the interactions of oikos, polis, and politeia and plunge the city once again into stasis.
He thereby shows that under oligarchy, attempts at establishing a form of civic education simply do not
work, and the regime is therefore untenable because it will only lead to more stasis. The stability of the
city thus depended on the reinforcement of democracy and the peaceful coexistence of oligarchs and
democrats in the city. The Athenians now had to put before themselves the task of negotiating and
creating a shared set of values and acceptable behaviors that would ensure cooperation and peace between
the two conflicting groups.

Civic Education and Accountability in Democratic Institutions
With the Thirty gone, the Athenians could resume their democratic way of life. The primary
venues for publicly debating civic education, and in turn being educated, in Athens were the courts, the
Assembly, the Council, the theater and religious festivals,
48
and military sites, such as army camps and
triremes.
49
These were the places and institutions that provided opportunities for the Athenians to
negotiate competing ideas about political and social issues and to mediate the interactions of polis,
politeia, and oikos. In the courts especially, which include the Assembly, Council, and Areopagus in

48
The dramatic context of civic education will be discussed in the first chapter.
49
For education through hoplite and trireme service, see Hanson 1996 and Strauss 1996.

28

addition to the dikastic courts, many litigants, juries, and trials themselves were presented as
paradeigmata for the city, its citizens, foreigners, and even slaves in an attempt to “better” the population
of Athens. However, it is not just the institutions which make the democracy, but their role in holding
citizens accountable for their civic behaviors as well.

The courts
The Amnesty made legal processes for accountability more difficult as it expressly forbade
prosecution for crimes committed under the Thirty, except for murder committed “by one’s own hands”.
One way to circumvent the Amnesty was through impiety trials. Since much of a citizen’s civic education
occurred in ritual contexts, such as in the theater, laws and customs about piety had a direct relationship to
the education of the citizenry in democratic values. Violating these laws indicated not just disrespect to
the gods but disrespect, and danger, to the community and its constitution as a whole. At the beginning of
the 4th century there was a wave of prosecutions for impiety in Athens. Andocides (discussed below) and,
more famously, Socrates, were two victims of such litigation. Andocides was attacked by his political
opponents for his involvement in the profanation of the Mysteries and the destruction of the Herms in
415, about 15 years before his trial took place. He had returned to Athens after the Amnesty of 403 was
put in place and uses it to argue that he should be absolved of whatever crimes he may have committed
(and he does admit guilt to some extent) because the Amnesty prevents prosecution for crimes committed
before 403. He was acquitted, showing that such attempts at circumventing the Amnesty were not always
successful.
50

The charge against Socrates was formally asebeia and tacked on to this was a charge of
corrupting the youth.
51
But the accounts of the trial written by Plato and Xenophon, as well as later

50
It appears that there were enough attempts to carry out prosecution prohibited by the Amnesty that the Athenians
created a new law of paragraphe, which was a countersuit a defendant could file against their accuser on the
grounds that the original charge was one of those protected by the Amnesty. See Isoc. 18, Dorjahn 1946:34-39;
Todd 1993:136-8; Carawan 2007b, 2011, 2013 (Chp. 5).
51
Nails 2006 and Ober 2010 are useful overviews of the trial and death of Socrates. For the charges against Socrates
and the crime of impiety see Parker 1996 (history of religion).

29

testimony from people such as Aeschines (see above) make it clear that the trial was, as with Andocides,
entirely political in nature. The case was prosecuted by Meletus, a staunch democrat, and his associates
Anytus, a wealthy supporter of the Thirty turned leader of the democracy, and Lycon, who is depicted in
Xenophon’s Symposium as a devoted father of a son who was killed by the Thirty. Socrates, on the other
hand, was the teacher of Alcibiades, who was instrumental in installing the Four Hundred in 411 BCE,
and Critias, considered the most violent and extreme of the Thirty. Though Socrates admits that he stayed
in Athens under the Thirty and met with no harm from them, he defends himself from accusations of
cooperation with them, describing, for example, how he refused to arrest Leon of Salamis for execution.
52

Still, he was considered a teacher, which already drew suspicion from the demos; and it certainly did not
help that he taught one of the most hated people in Athenian history. Plato’s dialogues taking place before
and after Socrates’ trial give us many clues as to the problem teachers pose toward the dynamic system of
Athenian civic life, and these will be discussed in the next chapter. But suffice it to say here that
corrupting the youth translated to the corruption of the oikos, thus also corrupting the city, the democracy,
and the very idea of citizenship.
Similarly, the laws relating to military activity, particularly cowardice (deilia), desertion
(lipotaxion), and failure to report for military duty (astrateia) were critical to the civic education of the
Athenians as well.
53
The military was a medium for inculcating civic values, and with military service
being compulsory for many citizen men, one’s military behavior had a direct relationship with one’s civic
behavior. This was especially true for the (usually quite wealthy) members of the cavalry. Alcibiades, son
of the infamous 5th century general and statesman Alcibiades, was subject to such a trial for which we
have two speeches from Lysias (14 and 15). Some time before this trial, Alcibiades junior was supposedly
the victim of a malicious prosecution (so he claims) concerning a team of horses entered in the Olympics

52
Plato, Apology 32c-d.
53
For the difference between these laws and complications with these cases, see Todd 1993. Lysias 14 claims that
Alcibiades is liable to prosecution for all three of these crimes (14.7) though lipotaxion seems to be the formal
charge, but another supplementary speech to this trial (Lysias 15) claims he is being prosecuted for astrateia.

30

in 397 (Isocrates 16, On the Team of Horses).
54
Both of these trials tie the younger Alcibiades’ crimes
back to his father, who died before the Thirty came to power. And both of them present both Alcibiades
and his father as negative paradigms for citizen behavior. Lysias wastes no time making this clear in his
speech Against Alcibiades I:
ἡγοῦμαι μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, οὐδεμίαν ὑμᾶς ποθεῖν ἀκοῦσαι πρόφασιν παρὰ τῶν βουλομένων
Ἀλκιβιάδου κατηγορεῖν: τοιοῦτον γὰρ πολίτην ἑαυτὸν ἐξ ἀρχῆς παρέσχεν, ὥστε καὶ εἰ μή τις ἰδία
ἀδικούμενος ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τυγχάνει, οὐδὲν ἧττον προσήκει ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἐχθρὸν
αὐτὸν ἡγεῖσθαι.

I think, men of the jury, that you have no desire to hear an explanation from those wishing to
prosecute Alcibiades: for he has presented himself from the very beginning as such a citizen that
even if someone happens not to be wronged by him, it is no less appropriate to consider him an
enemy based on his other behaviors. (14.1)

The emphasis here is on Alcibiades’ epitedeumata (“behaviors”), specifically those not involved in
committing a crime but in his public life. The speech goes on to elaborate just how the rest of his life is
relevant. To isolate a few of the many claims: he is badly behaved and must be used as an example to
improve the discipline of others (14.12); his conviction will be known to the city, their allies, and their
enemies (14.13); his father was a “teacher of evils for the city” (14.30), and even he was scandalized by
Alcibiades junior’s behavior and the way he taught it to others (14.26); Alcibiades junior learned from the
virtues of the Athenians to commit his own crimes (14.32) and is a “hereditary enemy” of the city (14.40).
Lysias ends the speech by asserting that the jury should make an example of Alcibiades for other citizens
and especially his friends to learn that they cannot just do whatever they want. Here we can see once
again the intersection of the concerns of the city (i.e., the breaking of the laws and its reputation on an

54
See Carey 1989: 148-150, who argues that Isoc. 16 was not actually delivered in court.

31

international scale), the family (Alcibiades’ hereditary badness and his family’s inability to teach him
right from wrong), and citizenship (he teaches bad citizen behavior to others). A bad soldier was a threat
to civic life just as much as any other bad citizen. Thus such trials could be manipulated in a way that
allowed litigants to take legal revenge on someone, especially well known citizens, through accusations of
crimes that affected the entire community.

The dokimasia
Both public (graphai) and private (dikai) suits carried with them some risk for the prosecutors,
usually a fine for losing the case.
55
More resourceful litigants often found ways to circumvent the
Amnesty’s prohibition of retaliatory litigation with relative impunity by exploiting the dokimasia
procedure that took place in the city every year.
56
A dokimasia was essentially a scrutiny of one’s
eligibility for something, be that for public office, citizenship, a pension, or military duty.
57
The original
dokimasiai were a ceremonial event for registering ephebes coming of age as citizens in their demes.
58

But the kind of dokimasia under scrutiny here was for candidates allotted or elected to public office. After
appointment or election to office, each magistrate-to-be had to go through one of these scrutinies (and in
some cases two), adding up to about 1700 dokimasiai in Athens per year.
59
The candidate was asked a
series of questions to prove his citizen status and eligibility, concerning things such as parentage and
fulfillment of citizen duties. Once this was completed any citizen could come forward to raise issues that
might disqualify the candidate for office, and the candidate was allowed to respond. Unlike all other
prosecutions in Athens, there was no penalty for loss on either side, beside the defendant’s potential

55
Todd 1993: 109.
56
Discussions of the dokimasia: Glotz 1929: 217-18; Bonner 1933: 12-13; Bonner and Smith 1930-38: 2.243-45;
Headlam 1933: 96-102; Hignett 1958: 205-8; Harrison 1971: 200-203; MacDowell 1978: 167-169; Rhodes 1981:
542; Roberts 1982: 16-17, 20; Krentz 1982: 117-119; Adeleye 1983; Ober 1989: 110 (dokimasia rhetoron); Hansen
1991: 218-220; Hunter 1994: 106-108; Wolpert 2002: 67-70, 97-98; Lanni 2016 193-197.
57
There is a debate over how many kinds of dokimasiai there were, from just one to up to seven by some scholars’
reckoning. Feyel 2009 has recently argued for two different categories (technical-financial and political) under
which we can classify dokimasiai. See Todd 2010 (with Gagliardi 2010 in the same volume) for a summary of the
issues around the dokimasia in Athens.
58
For interpretations of the ephebic dokimasia see Whitehead 1986, Farenga 2006, Lape 2010.
59
For a detailed description of the dokimasia of magistrates see Hansen 1991: 218-20.

32

disqualification for office that year, making the dokimasia a unique stage for addressing issues facing the
polis. And since the dokimasia procedure was useful for spreading gossip and other information that
might affect the social behavior of other citizens,
60
it was an important site for negotiating a wide-
reaching issue like civic education. Adriaan Lanni has recently shown that such trials were an important
venue for resolving tensions between democrats and oligarchs because it offered some amount of
accountability for crimes perpetrated under the Thirty.
61
But its use for the purposes of civic education—
specifically for the negotiation and inculcation of civic values and behaviors— has thus far gone largely
unstudied.
62

As a citizen goes through the process of scrutiny, with both his “public” and “private” lives in full
view, he fills an educative role. The virtues or vices that appear in the account of his life necessarily set
examples both for those who witness the account firsthand and those who learn of it by hearsay later on.
In this way a paradigm for democratic citizenship is created: the approbation or condemnation of certain
behaviors by fellow citizens set a standard for how the democracy is to be run and how one is to act
within it. Of course, not all citizens necessarily believed in or abided by the same models of citizenship.
But the ability, and perhaps need, to differ in opinion and criticize the democracy was one its very
hallmarks.
63
Thus necessary debates took place and changes were made to ensure the health of the
democracy.

60
Hunter 1994: 107-111.
61
Lanni 2016: 193-197.
62
The purpose of the dokimasia for magistrates in Athens has been the subject of much debate by scholars
attempting to fit it into an overall picture of the “nature” of Athenian democracy and has limited our view of the
functions it actually filled in the civic life of Athens. Some have argued that it was strictly to confirm one’s legal
qualifications for the office and not their ability to perform their duty, while others have argued that it acted to filter
out those who were allotted to offices they were not suitable for. An Athens obsessed with accountability and
procedure would be only interested in the proper legal qualifications of a candidate (so Harrison 1971 and Roberts
1982: 20-21), while an Athens that was chiefly concerned with the effective administration of the democracy would
want to control candidacy based on skill and experience. Adeleye 1983 argues, correctly I think, that the dokimasia
served to confirm both the legal qualifications of the candidate and to examine the candidate’s private life for ability
to perform the office as well as signs of behavior that might threaten the polis (though calling this a “purpose” as
opposed to simply “practical use” seems to want to prove an unprovable hypothesis). See further Feyel 2009 and
Todd 2010.
63
Ober 1998.

33

In the entire corpus of Attic oratory we only have five dokimasia speeches for magistracies and
one for a pension, all written by Lysias within 20 years of the Amnesty.
64
The defendants seem mostly to
be wealthy elite, which is unsurprising given that the dokimasia was often used by democrats for revenge
against former oligarchs. Even though the Amnesty absolved former oligarchs of crimes they had already
committed, the burden was still on them to prove that they were loyal to the democracy and would not
corrupt its institutions like the Thirty did.
It seems that in the years after the Amnesty the dokimasia was already being exploited more than
usual for such purposes. The speaker of [Lysias] 6 (Against Andocides), supposedly delivered in 399,
informs us that Andocides was a frequent challenger at dokimasiai as a way to make a name for himself
in public.
65
Though the speaker is silent as to what exactly was the nature of his challenges, we can infer
that Andocides was trying to fashion for himself a distinctly pro-democratic image by accusing others of
oligarchic behavior in order to combat his own oligarchic reputation, as he does in Andocides 1.
Andocides himself is silent about such political activity in our extant speeches, though it is clear from
Andocides 3 (On the Peace with Sparta) that he was trying at a political career in the late 390s during the
Corinthian War. In any case, the dokimasia seemed to be a democratic feature of the city, par excellence:
the speaker of Lysias 26 (Against Evandrus) even claims (falsely) that the dokimasia was created to
prevent oligarchs from gaining power over the city and the laws (26.9).
Lysias’ dokimasia speeches are particularly interesting for the way they articulate theories of
citizen behavior and their function as paradeigmata. By the late 390s and 380s, it is apparent that the
dokimasia was not an unusual place to show one’s loyalty to the democracy while arguing for certain
values and behaviors that the citizens of Athens should take as examples of good and bad citizenship. The
speaker of Lysias 16, a young aristocrat named Mantitheus who has been challenged at his dokimasia for

64
Dover (1968) questions whether some of these speeches were actually delivered or if they were just pamphlets. I
see no reason to doubt their authenticity as real speeches, but even if they were pamphlets, the fact that the
dokimasia is considered a suitable setting for the content of the speech shows its importance in discussing such
issues.
65
Lys. 6.33

34

having served in the cavalry under the Thirty, begins his speech by expressing gratitude to his opponents
for giving him the opportunity to put his exemplary life on display. The charge he is facing is that he was
one of the cavalry under the Thirty, and thus should not be allowed to hold office in the city. But
Mantitheus counters this by showing how much good he did and would do for the city. Of course he
glosses over things that would make him suspect, such as being routed at the Nemea River during the
Corinthian War.
66
Of more immediate concern was his philotimia (love of honor)
67
for the public good: he
made himself an example for others (παράδειγμα τοῖς ἄλλοις) by giving money for weapons for his
demesmen (16.14) and learned to speak in the Assembly having just become a citizen because of the
philotimia he learned from his ancestors (16.20-21). Manitheus taps into the dynamic system of polis,
oikos, and politeia that I have elaborated so far to show his value as an actor in the system of education. If
he passes his dokimasia, he will provide benefit to the polis through his benefactions (small though they
may be), the oikos through his ancestral philotimia, and the politeia by exhibiting good citizen behavior
(16.18: φιλοτίμως καὶ κοσμίως πολιτευόμενος).
Other dokimasia speeches reveal certain behaviors that were perceived as distinctly anti-
democratic. In Lysias 31 (Against Philon), delivered sometime around 400 BCE, the speaker, an outgoing
Councilmember, challenges Philon’s eligibility for the office of Councilmember on a number of charges.
He claims the following: Philon fled into exile when the Thirty came to power, but instead of joining the
democrats at Phyle or the Piraeus he remained in Oropus, where he carried out various acts of banditry
and extortion against the locals. Meanwhile in Athens, he did not provide for the funeral arrangements for
his elderly mother, who had to pay a man named Antisthenes to take care of it, since Philon was in
Oropus, thus failing to fulfill his duty to care for his mother. And on top of it all, he did not pick a side in
the civil war. The speaker uses Philon as a negative paradigm for bad citizen behavior and, against that
paradigm, constructs a model for good behavior.

66
Christ 2006: 107-109.
67
For an overview of the meaning and use of philotimia, see Whitehead 1983.

35

From the outset, the speaker of Lysias 31 makes it clear that this prosecution is about much more
than Philon’s eligibility for office. The speaker claims that he is speaking “to advise the best things for the
city” and that this prosecution is based on his sense of citizen duty and not personal enmity.
68
The
rhetorical strategy is similar to that of Lysias 12, discussed above, in that the speaker positions himself as
a paradigmatic citizen for giving the best advice (cf. Lys. 12.49) and contrasts this good paradigm with
the bad paradigm embodied by Philon. It also highlights his intent to use the dokimasia as a site for wide-
reaching debate over policy at a time of crisis. He then proposes a model for good citizen behavior:
ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐκ ἄλλους τινάς φημι δίκαιον εἶναι βουλεύειν περὶ ἡμῶν, ἢ τοὺς πρὸς τῷ εἶναι πολίτας
καὶ ἐπιθυμοῦντας τούτου. τούτοις μὲν γὰρ μεγάλα τὰ διαφέροντά ἐστιν εὖ τε πράττειν τὴν πόλιν
τήνδε καὶ ἀνεπιτηδείως διὰ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἡγεῖσθαι εἶναι μετέχειν τὸ μέρος τῶν
δεινῶν, ὥσπερ καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν μετέχουσι.

I say that no others have the right to take part in our Council about our affairs than those who
want to be a citizen in addition to being one. For these men there is an important difference
between the city faring well and poorly because they consider it necessary for themselves to have
a share in the bad times just as they have a share in the good. (31.5)

The exemplary citizen is proactive and cares about whether the city is doing well or poorly because his
own welfare depends on that of the city. In other words, he is an integral and inextricable part of the polis
itself. Philon is not this citizen, since he valued his own safety over that of the city, fled to Oropos,
neglected his dying mother, and severed his ties to the polis. Furthermore, it would be one thing if Philon
had left and never came back, but his attempt at reintegrating himself into the city by holding office
corrupts the very meaning of citizenship.

68
31.2: εἰσῆλθον εἰς τὸ βουλευτήριον τὰ βέλτιστα βουλεύσειν τῇ πόλει, ἔνεστί τε ἐν τῷ ὅρκῳ ἀποφανεῖν εἴ τίς τινα
οἶδε τῶν λαχόντων ἀνεπιτήδειον ὄντα βουλεύειν, ἐγὼ τὴν κατὰ τουτουὶ Φίλωνος ποιήσομαι κατηγορίαν, οὐ μέντοι
γε ἰδίαν ἔχθραν οὐδεμίαν μεταπορευόμενος, οὐδὲ τῷ δύνασθαι καὶ εἰωθέναι λέγειν ἐν ὑμῖν ἐπαρθείς, ἀλλὰ τῷ
πλήθει τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων αὐτοῦ πιστεύων, καὶ τοῖς ὅρκοις οἷς ὤμοσα ἐμμένειν ἀξιῶν.

36

Toward end of the speech, the speaker makes more explicit this concern for the polis at large. He
says that allowing Philon to pass his dokimasia would corrupt all citizens in the polis, bringing an end to
their democracy once again. The very education of the citizenry, which depends on exemplary citizen
behavior in public, is at stake. The speaker asks,
ἀλλ᾽ ἄρα ἵνα βελτίους ὦσιν οἱ πολῖται ὁρῶντες ἅπαντας ὁμοίως τιμωμένους, διὰ τοῦτο
δοκιμαστέος ἐστίν; ἀλλὰ κίνδυνος καὶ τοὺς χρηστούς ἐὰν αἰσθάνωνται ὁμοίως τοῖς πονηροῖς
τιμώμενοι, παύσεσθαι τῶν χρηστῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων, τῶν αὐτῶν ἡγουμένους εἶναι τούς τε κακοὺς
τιμᾶν καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀμνημονεῖν (31.25)

But is it so that the citizens become better by seeing all honored alike that he must pass his
dokimasia? But the danger is that even good citizens, if they sense they are honored just like bad
ones may cease from their good behavior, thinking that the same people honor evil men and
forget the good ones. (31.25).

The speaker defines the good (χρηστοί) citizens by their behaviors (epitedeumata), not just by virtue of
being a citizen. These behaviors involve the citizen in the reciprocal relationship of honor and charis that
has long been a major component in Greek ethics but is taking new shape at this time in Athens, as now
good citizenship requires visible proof. The speaker also asks an important question of the Amnesty’s
project of forgetting: if wrongs are forgotten, what prevents the good from being forgotten too? He later
reminds his audience that they honor the good and punish the bad “not for previous citizens but rather for
future ones, so that they will purposely become good and not try to be bad in any way” (31.30). Philon’s
appointment as Councilmember, the speaker claims, will throw all the good done in the city into oblivion
and Athens as they know it will cease to exist. The values that the citizenry should learn will be forgotten
and the new generations of citizens will learn from a bad paradigm for civic values and ethics. The
speaker concludes the speech to this effect: “This man’s behaviors are new paradigms and foreign to the
whole democracy” (31.34: ἔστι γὰρ τὰ τούτου ἐπιτηδεύματα καινὰ παραδείγματα καὶ πάσης δημοκρατίας

37

ἀλλότρια.) Just as the good citizens have their good epitedeumata, the bad ones like Philon have their
own, which have no place in Athenian democracy. His presence in the city upsets the paradigm for good
democratic citizenship that the speaker has created for his audience. And it is up to the good citizens, like
the speaker, to (re)educate the rest of the citizenry by preventing bad citizens from shifting the paradigm.
Only then can a stable democracy be established.
Lysias 25 (On a Charge of Overthrowing the Democracy) presents us with yet another theory of
citizen behavior. The speaker of Lysias 25, who is defending himself at his dokimasia against accusations
of misconduct under the Thirty, begins with a peculiar theory of citizen behavior. He argues that citizens
do not by nature prefer a certain politeia, but rather lean toward whatever best serves their self-interest
(25.7-11). This is important for his defense because he claims that democracy best serves his interests, so
he theoretically cannot be an oligarch. But this formulation of political motivation also challenges the idea
that democratic education happens as an organic process free from the necessity of explicit instruction.
The speaker strikes a didactic pose throughout the speech to suggest that in order for the democracy to
work, the citizens must buy into it, either through indoctrination or by explicitly educating the citizenry in
the ways that democracy is best for them.
What makes a good democratic citizen then, if self-interest is all that matters? The speaker of
Lysias 31, as we have seen, considers the best citizen who desires citizenship so much that he devotes
himself to the best interest of the polis in times of both prosperity and hardship. The speaker of Lysias 25
explains his own motivation for his good citizen behavior:

ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, μεγίστην ἡγοῦμαι περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ πίστιν δεδωκέναι. ὅστις γὰρ
τότε οὐδὲν ἐξήμαρτον οὕτω πολλῆς δεδομένης ἐξουσίας, ἦ που νῦν σφόδρα προθυμηθήσομαι
χρηστὸς εἶναι, εὖ εἰδὼς ὅτι, ἐὰν ἀδικῶ, παραχρῆμα δώσω δίκην. ἀλλὰ γὰρ τοιαύτην διὰ τέλους
γνώμην ἔχω, ὥστε ἐν ὀλιγαρχίᾳ μὲν μὴ ἐπιθυμεῖν τῶν ἀλλοτρίων, ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ δὲ τὰ ὄντα
προθύμως εἰς ὑμᾶς ἀναλίσκειν. (25.17)

38

Men of the jury, I think that I have given the greatest pledge of allegiance to the democracy for
my part. For I did nothing wrong even when so much license to do so, and indeed now I will
endeavor to be a good citizen knowing well that if I do wrong, I will immediately face
punishment. But actually, I have always been of the opinion that under oligarchy one must not
covet the property of others, while under democracy one must eagerly spend their own on you.

Fear of punishment motivates the speaker to good behavior, and this good behavior manifests itself in two
ways: not causing trouble, even with impunity, and spending money on the city. This is a model of
behavior that anyone, democrat or oligarch, can adhere to in order to avoid punishment and augment their
status in the city. The emphasis on self-interest reorients citizen behavior around holding oneself
accountable regardless of the political regime, instead of the strictly extrinsic strategies of accountability
that the democracy employed. His claim to doing no wrong even when that kind of behavior was
acceptable fashions him as a paradigmatic citizen who puts his theory into practice. To avoid an
accusation of oligarchic sympathies, a (presumably wealthy) citizen needs simply to resist the oligarchic
urge to covet property and show loyalty to the democracy through liturgies. In so many words the speaker
appeals to the aristocratic virtue of sophrosyne (‘self-control’, perhaps more so than ‘moderation’) at the
same time as what appears to be the distinctly democratic value of prothymia.
69
The aristocratic citizens
had to police themselves to promote behavior that was conciliatory to the masses.

Non-citizens and civic education
The courts were also a place where non-citizens became involved in civic education. This is a
point worth highlighting: civic education, though explicitly formulated by politically active citizen men of
Athens, emerged from the behavior of everyone who lived, worked, or had any business in the city. An
Athenian prosecuting retailers of grain living as metics in Athens for profiteering (Lysias 22, Against the

69
Discussions of sophrosyne: De Vries 1943: 81-101; North 1966; Dover 1974: 119-23; Cairns 1993: 168, 314-21.

39

Retailers of Grain) closes his speech with several interesting remarks about the consequences of the case
(17-20).
70
First, that the jury must not acquit the defendants because it will seem as if the Athenians are
collaborating with traders who wish to manipulate the market for grain. Second, that the case is of general
interest to the city, because if the defendants are found guilty, their execution will make other grain
traders better behaved; but if they are not, they will have license to do as they wish (19: κοσμιωτέρους
ἔσεσθαι τοὺς λοιπούς: ἐὰν δ᾽ ἀζημίους ἀφῆτε, πολλὴν ἄδειαν αὐτοῖς ἐψηφισμένοι ἔσεσθε ποιεῖν ὅ τι ἂν
βούλωνται). And finally, the grain traders must be punished so that they will be an example for the future
(20: χρὴ δέ, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, μὴ μόνον τῶν παρεληλυθότων ἕνεκα αὐτοὺς κολάζειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ
παραδείγματος ἕνεκα τῶν μελλόντων ἔσεσθαι). We can see that the Athenians considered anyone who
was subject to Athens’ laws as involved in the system of civic education. Resident aliens, who were
excluded from taking part in politics, still had a role in the regulation of citizen behaviors and values by
acting in ways that juries would find appropriate or unacceptable, thus allowing them to reflect on their
own civic behavior.
Most telling is the central role of Lysias, a non-citizen metic, in our understanding of this time
period. Maybe it is not so surprising that an outsider had such a perceptive view of the inner workings of
Athenian democratic culture, but his activity as a teacher of the demos through his logography is worth
exploring. He made a name for himself at the end of the 5th century through speech writing and support
for the democracy during the civil war to the point that Thrasybulus proposed to honor him with
citizenship for his benefactions to the city. The proposal was struck down, as were other attempts to honor
non-citizens who fought at Phyle. By the Athenians’ own logic it would seem appropriate to honor these
people so that other residents of Athens would behave the same way and continue to sustain the
democracy. But apparently the patriotic sentiment that spurred the democrats to victory over the Thirty
further solidified their already exclusionary view of Athenian citizenship. Besides the issues of
autochthony and the “purity” of the racial composition of the demos, could it be that the Athenians did

70
For analyses of the legal and economic aspects of this speech, see Todd 1993: 316-320; Moreno 2012: 213-220.

40

not want foreigners involved in the ideology of paradigmatic citizenship? Evidence from Lysias’ own
speeches seem to support this idea. We have already seen how Lysias attempts to obscure himself in his
prosecution of Eratosthenes (Lys. 12), as well as the hostility toward Philon’s rejection of his native
Athens and his inability to belong to any political regime in Lysias 31. Another speech (Lys. 23), written
against a man named Pancleon who claimed to be a Plataean from Decelea registered as a citizen in
Athens, highlights his status as a kind of deceptive interloper. He does not neatly fit into the categories of
citizen, metic, or even slave and nearly the entirety of the short speech is aimed at determining his status
in the city. Somehow he is involved in litigation that went before the Polemarch (who deals with metics)
but he was also claimed as a slave by two different people, who then physically fought over him. We
return here to the dynamic system of polis, politeia, and oikos. Pancleon disturbs each component in this
system by transgressing them all with his mutable and undefined civic status. In the process of
reconstruction, it seems that the Athenians did not want foreigners as part of their citizen body because
they are inherently incapable of maintaining balance in the dynamic system of civic life and educating
other citizens toward stability in the city.
Perhaps even more complicated is the role of slaves in Athenian civic education.
71
Slaves
occupied a place somewhere between human agent and object (an “object with a soul”, ὄργανον ἔμψυχον,
Aristotle’s formulation).
72
Some were cruelly forced into hard labor under dangerous working conditions
while others were educated and held professions such as banking.
73
In the years after the Amnesty, there

71
Slavery in ancient Athens and Greece broadly has been studied intensely. Much of the scholarship has focused on
the economic aspects of slavery, the political ramifications of slavery, and the relationship of master and slave
(especially in regard to treatment of slaves). The following are some of the ‘standard’ studies: Ste. Croix 1957,
1981; Finley 1959, 1968, 1980, 1981; Mactoux 1980; Garlan 1988; Garnsey 1988; Vidal-Naquet 1986; Osborne
1995. More recently, scholars such as Kostas Vlassopoulos have questioned the seemingly static history of slavery
in ancient Greece by placing emphasis on slaves as human agents in themselves (2007a, 2007b) and questioning the
assumption that slaves are simply property in the eyes of both their masters and the law (2009, 2011).
72
Aristotle, Politics 1253b23–1254a13. The status of slaves in ancient Greece has been much debated. The general
scholarly consensus, drawing on Aristotle, holds that slaves in ancient Greece were viewed as mere property. Kostas
Vlassopoulos (2011) argues against this, claiming that the term δουλεῖα refers to the relationship of a master’s
dominance over the slave, not the master’s owning of property. In other words, what makes a slave is not their status
as property but their lack of bodily, social, and political autonomy and agency as a product of their relationship to
their master, and this leads to the slave being treated as property.
73
For the full range of occupations forced upon enslaved people in Athens, see Schumacher 2001.

41

seemed to be a marked anxiety about slaves engaging in political life or doing anything for freedom.
Perhaps even more frightening to the Athenians was the inability to distinguish a free person from a slave
at a time when following the example of the good, upright citizen and condemning the bad one was
critical for rehabilitating the democracy. Such was the case with Pancleon in Lysias 23; a few other
examples will further elucidate the issue.
The speaker of Lysias 13 (Against Agoratus), who accuses Agoratus of being an informer and
having been personally responsible for the death of the speaker’s brother-in-law, at a key moment reveals
Agoratus’ heritage: “for you must know that he is a slave and a descendant of slaves, so that you know
what kind of man it was that inflicted indignities upon you” (δεῖ γὰρ ὑμᾶς εἰδέναι ὅτι δοῦλος καὶ ἐκ
δούλων ἐστίν, ἵν᾽ εἰδῆτε οἷος ὢν ὑμᾶς ἐλυμαίνετο). The speaker does not explain why this is relevant, but
the implication is clear enough in the context of the speech: Agoratus is responsible for the deaths of
good, free, citizen men, while he is nothing but a slave posing as a citizen. This inverts the social order
and the democracy itself, as those who are to be dominated and ruled are instead dominating and ruling. A
similar claim is made about Nicomachus, the anagrapheus in charge of revising the Athenian law code
from 410-399, in Lysias 30 (Against Nicomachus). The speaker of this speech claims that if the defense
appeals to the glory of Nicomachus’ ancestors, he should be sold into slavery since they themselves were
slaves. The speaker then traces a series of transformations that are dangerous to the democratic city:
“instead of a slave he has become a citizen; instead of being poor he has become rich, instead of a low-
grade clerk, he has become a lawgiver” (27: καίτοι ἀντὶ μὲν δούλου πολίτης γεγένηται, ἀντὶ δὲ πτωχοῦ
πλούσιος, ἀντὶ δὲ ὑπογραμματέως νομοθέτης). These claims are somewhat absurd but still potent: they
tap into fears about the anti-democratic intent of those who rise quickly to prominence and wealth, which
becomes correlated with the behavior of slaves who wish to become free citizens.
This is most clearly exemplified by a short, often overlooked part of a speech by Lysias (5), For
Callias. Callias is a metic in Athens who was denounced by his slaves for some crime, perhaps temple

42

robbery, and seems to be one of a number of defendants.
74
From what little remains of this speech, we can
see that one of the defense’s main strategies is to cast doubt on the slaves’ testimony and on their motives
as a whole. First the speaker claims that it would be wrong to trust the slaves’ statements and not Callias’.
He goes on to say that anyone who makes such claims for personal gain are untrustworthy, a common
rhetorical stance taken to discredit one’s opponent. The final paragraph of the extant portion of this
speech typically broadens the import of this speech to the city as a whole, but with an unusual audience:
ἄξιον δέ μοι δοκεῖ εἶναι οὐ τούτων ἴδιον ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν ἀγῶνα, ἀλλὰ κοινὸν ἁπάντων τῶν ἐν τῇ
πόλει: οὐ γὰρ τούτοις μόνοις εἰσὶ θεράποντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν, οἳ πρὸς τὴν τούτων
τύχην ἀποβλέποντες οὐκέτι σκέψονται ὅ τι ἂν ἀγαθὸν εἰργασμένοι τοὺς δεσπότας ἐλεύθεροι
γένοιντο, ἀλλ᾽ ὅ τι ψεῦδος περὶ αὐτῶν μηνύσαντες …

To me it seems worth considering this trial not as the private concern of these men, but common
to all in the city: for these are not the only people with slaves; everyone has them. The slaves,
seeing the misfortune of the defendants, will no longer think that they will become free by
serving their masters well, but by falsely denouncing them...

The ubiquity of slavery and the sheer number of enslaved people in Athens had always been a concern for
free people, but now more than ever they saw the slaves as a threat. Already it is apparent that the
slaveowners dangle the prospect of freedom for “good service” in their slaves’ faces: a form of
democratic charis that, it would seem, rarely played out in the slaves’ favor. But now, if slaves can
achieve freedom by simply denouncing their masters for crimes, they have been given much more power
than their masters would like. The speaker of Lysias 7 (On the Sekos) uses this anxiety to his advantage
when he points out that if he had removed the sacred olive tree, his slaves would have denounced him for

74
Most of this speech is missing, so we do not know which crime exactly he was denounced for. The title of the
speech in the Palatinus manuscript is “ὑπὲρ Καλλίου ἱεροσυλίας ἀπολογία” (On behalf of Callias against a charge of
hierosylia), which could mean temple robbery, fraud, or some such crime against a sacred treasury. In any case, the
extant portion of the speech makes no mention of the specifics of the crime.

43

their freedom (7.16). Thus, theoretically, the slaves engage in quasi-oligarchic behavior by turning
informers, just like Agoratus in Lys. 13, or by disrespecting and corrupting the laws like Nicomachus in
Lys. 30. Civic education did not just serve to keep the citizens in line with democratic values; it also
educated citizens to further oppress and suppress those whom they considered threats to their way of life,
be they oligarchs, foreigners, or slaves.
These speeches reveal to us the free Athenians citizens’ anxiety about slaves and metics in the
city and remind us that they too were part and parcel of the civic life of Athens and necessarily had a
share in civic education. Indeed, most of the speeches I have discussed in this chapter were written by a
metic who technically had no political presence. Yet Lysias clearly had his finger on the political pulse of
the city. He himself was an educator of the demos through his speechwriting and was in turn educated by
merely paying attention to what was going on in the city (though we should also not underestimate his
connections to prominent citizens in Athens, such as Thrasybulus or the family of Pericles). It was, of
course, easy to vilify metics and slaves and present them as examples of bad civic behavior. But there is
implied in this process of making an example of these non-citizens a process of education of their own.
Slaves and foreigners were forced to act in a certain way and were themselves held up as models for good
and bad behavior. Thus civic education was a tool to reinforce the hierarchy of citizen over non-citizen
and free over enslaved.

The Assembly
The Assembly was also an important site for civic education because it was where most of the
public deliberation in the city took place. Any citizen male could attend and vote in the Assembly,
whereas one had to be allotted to the Council or to a jury. Unfortunately, very few Assembly speeches
survive from this period, and those that do are from Lysias (28 and 34, possibly 27), who himself could
not have participated. Speeches 27 and 28 (Against Epicrates and Against Ergocles) were delivered for
political prosecutions being conducted in the Assembly (eisangeliai) and not for the purposes of
deliberation. Speech 34 is the only example of a deliberative speech written by Lysias. It is unclear

44

whether the trial for Epicrates (Lysias 27) was an eisangelia in the Assembly, or some other procedure
tried in the dikasterion.
75
Both cases present the defendants and their trials as examples: in Epicrates’
case, that punishing capable (i.e., well-known) speakers who commit crimes will stop others from
committing crimes and will encourage just behavior (27.5-6); Ergocles’ trial will show that punishing
wrongdoers is more important than profit or pity.
Lysias 34 (Preserving the Ancestral Constitution) provides more insight into the role of
democratic deliberation outside of litigation in negotiating civic values and behaviors.
76
In the years after
the restoration of the democracy, possibly around 403/2, a man named Phormisius proposed that
citizenship (politeia) be restricted to only the Athenians who owned land, which supposedly would have
disenfranchised around 5000 citizens. This speech was written against the proposal, which ultimately
failed, for deliberation in the Assembly. It is unclear whether it was actually delivered or circulated as a
political pamphlet. The extant part of the speech discusses the differences in behavior between oligarchs
and democrats as a way to present the proposal as typically undemocratic. The speaker begins his attack
on the proposal by categorizing the proposers as men who “took part in the activities in the Piraeus but
share the mindset of those from the town” and tells his fellow citizens that they will “enslave [themselves]
through an Assembly vote” (34. 2).
77
The oligarchic mindset, he goes on to elaborate, is about coveting
property, and those with land were some of the first to be killed and exiled when the Thirty came to
power. The demos, however, returned from exile and restored the city to its people without taking it for
itself (34.5). The lesson the speaker is trying to teach is that an oligarchic politeia is hardly a politeia at all
because it only seeks to pick apart and own the polis instead of engaging its citizens in a form of civic
life.
Though we lack Assembly speeches from Athenians who actually spoke in the Assembly, we can
see from Lysias’ speech that the context of the Assembly allowed plain and open discussion of the events

75
For the role of the Assembly in eisangelia trials, see Hansen 1975.
76
For a general analysis of this speech and the use of the phrase patrios politeia, see Fuks 1971: 33-48, Finley 1986
(use and abuse of history), Shear 2011: 167-175.
77
Cf. Lys. 12. This is how the Thirty took over in the first place.

45

of 404/3 that the nature of a trial did not allow. The Assembly could focus on the collective instead of the
individual and craft a narrative about the political identity of the demos itself. In addition, the views about
civic values and ethics presented in a speech such as Lysias 34 could be met with support or opposition,
thus engaging in a debate free from the formal procedure of the courts.

Outcome of the Debates about Civic Education
So far we have seen the effect that the Thirty had on democratic civic education by complicating
the idea of the paradigmatic citizen and disrupting the interactions between polis, oikos, and politeia
which constituted civic life in Athens. We have also seen how the Athenians began to restore harmony in
the city in public fora such as the courts, Assembly, and Council, which allowed the Athenians to deploy
a number of other reconciliation strategies.
78
Unifying the democrats and oligarchs was no easy task and
depended on the debates and discussions about civic education going on throughout the city. In this
section I will show the two major outcomes of these debates, which will affect the way civic education is
approached for the rest of the democracy’s history: the concept of homonoia and political character types.
Learning and teaching homonoia, the meaning of which will be explored below, was critical to
establishing peace and stability in the polis. The ability of the citizens of Athens to find common ground
was the prerequisite for developing political character types, which helped Athenian citizens differentiate
between good and bad examples set by other citizens as they conduct themselves in civic life.

Homonoia
Niceratus, the nephew of the famous general Nicias and speaker of Lysias 18, was probably safe
in speaking for the polis when he said that “homonoia is the greatest good for the city and stasis is the
cause of the worst evils”.
79
However, despite the almost propagandistic use of this term in post-Thirty

78
Bibliography for the reconciliation: Cloche 1915 (restauration), Loraux 1986 (invention), Loraux 1997 (Cite
divisée), Wolpert 2002, Ostwald 1986 (sovereignty) 460-500, Loening 1987 (reconciliation agreement), Lanni 2016
(law and order), Cohen 2001 (rhetoric of justice); Krentz 1982
79
Lys. 18.17.

46

Athens, there is still a problem with the ideology of homonoia.
80
As Ober rightly points out, homonoia is
(in theory) antithetical to the Athenian ideal of freedom, yet the Athenians managed to reconcile the two
conflicting concepts.
81
Its core meaning of “like-mindedness” does not leave much room for difference of
opinion in the polis, which was one of the hallmarks of democratic civic life and education.
82
This is
probably why the proponents of this civic value left its practical meaning relatively vague. It is a good
thing, as we hear time and time again,
83
but in what particular way? The ambiguity of this term is due to
its definition relative to stasis; that is, homonoia is generally defined by our sources as being “not stasis”,
the absence of civil war or factionalism. Indeed, the dynamic system of civic life in Athens was such that
the Athenians were always in motion toward homonoia or stasis; how the Athenians educated their
citizenry determined where they would end up.
The first and most important step toward homonoia was the oath of Amnesty taken by all
Athenians in 403 BCE.
84
One of the most contentious stipulations was that the Athenians swear “not to
recall past wrongs” or “not to bear grudges” (me mnesikakein). Some scholars have shown the ways the
“not remembering” part of the oath has been used to create continuity between the democracy before and
after the Thirty and how this served to unify the demos by establishing a shared democratic identity.
85

Others have emphasized the legal aspect of this oath, showing how the reconciliation agreement aided in

80
A recent book by Benjamin Gray (2015) attempts to provide two competing theories of reconciliation and
homonoia in Greek cities, which Gray calls ‘Nakonian’ (based on a decree found at Nakone in Sicily) and
‘Dikaiopolitan’ (based on a decree from Dikaia in northern Greece). The former offers a radically community-
oriented approach to ending stasis, while the latter offers a radically individual basis for reconciliation. Gray
suggests that these are the two archetypal paradigms for ending stasis in Classical and post-Classical Greek poleis,
but his adherence to this bipartite framework causes a number of problems of interpretation. For my purposes, the
amount of time Gray spends discussing the “tension” caused by litigants in Athens discussing reconciliation in terms
of both of these models would suggest that the Athenians in fact had their own paradigm for homonoia in the city.
The model I have suggested, in which the dynamic interactions of polis, oikos, and politeia thrust Athenian civic life
toward either stasis or homonoia with civic education acting a a determinant in that movement, accounts for what
Gray sees as “contradictions'' in models of reconciliation.
81
Ober 1989: 297-299. For positive freedom and “doing as one wishes”, see Farrar 2010, Campa 2018.
82
“Thinking alike” and “thinking differently”: Ober 2005: 129-156. Critics of democracy: Ober 1998.
83
Lys. 2.18, 18.17.
84
For the text and analysis of the Amnesty, see Carawan 2013
85
E.g. Loraux 1986, 1997; Wolpert 2002; Shear 2010.

47

resolving conflict through legal means, be that by restitution of property or protections for those who
committed crimes under the Thirty for the sake of social stability.
86

In the context of civic education, the Amnesty was important not just for its role in reconciling
democrats and oligarchs, but because it was itself a paradeigma of sorts, both in the sense of a guideline
for the behavior of the people in Athens and as legal precedent.
87
After the Thirty were deposed it
provided the Athenians a concrete other against which to define their set of democratic principles.
88
A
number of litigants make appeals to the “oaths and treaties” (i.e. the Amnesty) as a way to suggest that
the jury vote in the way proper to a democratic citizen body, however the litigant may define that.
89
The
speaker of Lysias 9 (For the Soldier) even seems to be making a reference to it when he says that
Athenian juries forgive “even the most obvious crimes” and should therefore acquit him of the fine he is
supposed to pay (9.22). “Forgiveness” or “tolerance”, then, may even be a closer approximation to what
the Athenians meant by homonoia.
The dokimasia speeches discussed above also give us insight into the debate over what exactly
homonoia means for the city. The speaker of Lysias 31, presents Philon as an irremediable scourge on
democratic civic values because he does not exhibit any kind of good citizen behavior, going so far as to
offend even the oligarchs in the city (31.13).
90
But unlike Lysias 31, Lysias 25 is careful to avoid a
totalizing model of political education, which alienates the oligarchs who have been reincorporated into
the democracy. At the end of the speech the speaker suggests that the audience regard those who think
alike (ὁμονοεῖν) and stick to the oath of Amnesty as the most democratic (δημοτικωτάτους) (25.23). His
presentation of homonoia does not exclude those who harbor oligarchic sympathies so long as they do not
act on them. Indeed, the oligarchs are the ones who would be most interested in keeping their oath of
Amnesty, because they benefit from it most. Thus he provides for both “thinking alike” and “thinking

86
Restoring law and property: Carawan 2011; legal protections: Lanni 2016.
87
For the use of legal precedent in Athenian litigation, see Lanni 2004, 2006: 118-128..
88
For the Thirty as an external enemy, see Wolpert 2002: and Shear 2010:
89
Isoc. 18, Lys. 18
90
The inability to fit into any kind of politeia is a topos used in [Lys.] 6

48

differently”. The speaker of Lysias 31, on the other hand, seems to believe that “thinking alike” is far
more important than “thinking differently”. Denying an office to Philon sets an educative, negative
paradigm that would force former oligarchs into the democratic mold if they ever wish to participate in
civic life in Athens again, whereas the speaker of Lysias 25’s vision of good citizenship accommodates
the oligarchs in the city.
The oath of Amnesty was vague in both its scope and its aim and left much open to interpretation.
Nevertheless, it also helped open up the discourse surrounding citizen behavior and education in civic
values because it placed limits on what citizens could and could not do. The most inventive (some might
say farfetched) interpretation of the Amnesty comes from Andocides in his speech On the Mysteries, in
which he defends himself against charges of impiety. He argues that a decree passed before the Amnesty,
called the decree of Isotimides, which stripped him of his citizen rights, was null and void because the
Amnesty invalidated all such laws.
91
The speech as a whole has not impressed critics with its style,
argumentation, or historical accuracy, though more recent studies have shown a deeper level of
sophistication to this speech than previously recognized.
92
He was nevertheless acquitted. Perhaps
Andocides was not so concerned about oratorical skill anyway. Rather the speech, and the speaker, fills a
didactic role in the court, and Andocides offers himself as the paradigmatic figure whose fate in this trial
will determine the fate of the whole city and its citizens. Throughout the speech, Andocides offers texts of
decrees and narrations of historical events which, he claims, served to unite the citizens of Athens. By
assimilating himself to these texts, he establishes himself not just as a good, paradigmatic citizen but as
one who brings homonoia by teaching it. Andocides, and many other speakers, use public discourse to
reveal their interior goodness—or an idealized image of it—and the power that their public activity has to
inspire other Athenians to tolerance or acceptance of their political enemies in the name of stability.

91
And. 1.71-72.
92
Nouhaud (1982: 356), for example, says of his historical accuracy that “il est difficile de distinguer entre
mauvaise foi et ignorance.” For his rhetorical sophistication see Missiou 1992, Wohl 2010.

49

Two passages in particular will illustrate this point. The first is the Patrokleides decree, which
Andocides uses to support his point that the Amnesty agreement applies to himself. The Patrokleides
decree was itself an amnesty of sorts, passed in 405 after the disaster at Aigospotami, and restored citizen
rights to several disenfranchised (atimoi) groups. These included state debtors and those who failed to
pass the rendering of accounts at the end of a term of office (euthuna); those convicted of theft or
accepting bribes; those convicted of desertion, evasion of military service, cowardice, withholding a ship
from action as a trierarch, or throwing away their shields in battle; those who were convicted of perjury
three times and those found guilty of mistreating their parents; and, finally, former members of the
oligarchic regime of the Four Hundred.
93
Andocides reminds the jury that the Athenians passed this
amnesty decree after deliberating about creating homonoia in the city
94
and later clarifies that the
Patrokleides decree arranged for the destruction of lists of atimoi and an exchange of an oath of
homonoia.
Andocides then turns from paradigmatic law to paradigmatic events. As an example of how the
city worked together to ensure homonoia, he relates the story of the battle of Sigeum, in which the
Athenians defeated Hippias, the deposed tyrant of Athens, and established democracy. As a number of
commentators have remarked, Andocides’ historical account is not quite accurate. The first problem is
that he confuses this battle with the Battle of Pallene, understandable inasmuch as they both involve
Peisistratids and regime change in Athens.
95
He also suggests that his ancestors Leogoras and Charias had
a leading role in the expulsion of the tyrants from Athens, but this is obviously overstating the case. But
though he may be factually wrong, he is far from a “poor” historian, at least in an ideological sense. When
Andocides overemphasizes the role his ancestors played in this battle and even gets the location of the
battle wrong, he is taking part in the complex process of social memory: writing and rewriting history is

93
And. 1.73-76. For the particular details of this decree and its organization, see Boegehold 1990.
94
1.73: ἐβουλεύσασθε περὶ ὁμονοίας, καὶ ἔδοξεν ὑμῖν τοὺς ἀτίμους ἐπιτίμους ποιῆσαι.
95
The tyrant Peisistratus regained his tyranny in Athens for the third time after the Battle of Pallene, fought against
his rivals for power in 546. His son, Hippias, who was the last tyrant of Athens, was conclusively defeated and
expelled from the city in 510 after the Battle of Sigeum.

50

exactly what the Amnesty has allowed the Athenians to do.
96
His point is that during this battle, as well as
the Persian Wars, the Athenians restored exiles and reinstated atimoi so that they could take part in the
fight for democracy and bring homonoia to the city. Above all else, Andocides wants the jury to
recognize him not as a teacher of history but as a teacher of good civic values, specifically of unity in the
city, and that the Athenians are free to rewrite their history for the sake of social and political stability.
Andocides’ discussion (and exploitation) of paradigmatic law and history shows just how serious the
Athenians considered the project of educating the citizenry toward political stability under the name
“homonoia”.

Toward a Typology of Civic Values
The allegiance to homonoia in the city was necessary for the collective evaluation of good and
bad behaviors and character traits, just as a good character was necessary for homonoia. These traits
would determine how a citizen would behave in public life, and the Athenians were concerned about bad
characters infiltrating and corrupting the city. Thus they needed to cultivate a sort of typology of good and
bad citizens, their behavior, and character traits. Debating and negotiating different aspects of citizen
behavior and civic education offered the Athenians not only models from which to learn and by which to
measure the behavior of others, but also provided the skills necessary for discerning good behaviors from
bad. The constant repetition of these qualities, values, and behaviors facilitated the learning process while
also solidifying these character types. Based on our late-5th and early-4th century sources, these traits can
be summarized thus:

Anti-democratic behavior/character:
- Invasion of the home (e.g., Lys. 1, 3)
- Summary arrests and bringing people to prison/executing them (e.g., Lys. 3.46, 12)

96
For social memory see Steinbock 2012, Shear 2011, etc.

51

- Being an informant (e.g., Lys. 8, 13)
- Malicious prosecution/sycophancy (e.g., Isoc. 18)
- Expel people from the city (e.g., Lys. 12)
- Tear down walls and surrender fleet (e.g., Lys. Fr. 7, 12, 13, 28.11)
- Being a member of the cavalry (e.g., Lys. 14, 16)
- Becoming rich off of someone else’s/the state’s property, bribes, etc. (e.g., Lys. 12, 17, 19, 21,
27, 28, 29, 34)
- Committing violence/hubris (e.g., Isoc. 20, Lys. Fr. 2, Fr. 4)
- No respect for the laws (e.g., Lys. 31, Isoc. 18)
- Using wealth to control people and politics (e.g., Lys. 26, Fr. 9)
- Being pro-Spartan (e.g., Lys. 12, 18, 34)
- Being in an aristocratic club (hetaireia) (e.g., And. 1)
- Young, ambitious men who gamble, drink and show akolasia (e.g., Lys. 16, 20, 24, Frag. 2; Isoc.
20)
- Not belonging to any politeia (e.g., [Lys.] 6, Lys. 13, Lys. 31)

Democratic behavior/character:
- Going into exile/fighting at Phyle (e.g., Lys. 12, 13)
- Performing liturgies for city (e.g., Lys. 17, 18, 19, 25, Frag. 9)
- Philotimia or prothymia (e.g., Lys. 16, 20, 25)
- Minding one’s own business (between meddling and total disinterest in politics)
- Staying out of court (e.g., Lys. 24, Pl. Apol.)
- Selfless devotion to the city (e.g., Lys. 31)
- Homonoia (e.g., And. 1, Lys. 17, 25)
- Respect for the laws, sometimes at the expense of personal freedom
- Goodwill (eunoia) toward city

52

- Share in dangers for freedom, justice, laws (e.g., Lys. 28)
- Hating wrongdoers (e.g., Lys. 28)
- Honoring one’s parents (e.g., Lys. 31)
- Performing military duty (e.g., Lys. 14, 16, Isoc. 16)
- Worshiping the gods
- Sophrosyne (e.g., Lys. 25, Isoc. 20)

Many of these values have been explored in the analyses of the speeches above. Since the Athenians
considered a man’s private a direct influence on his public life,
97
there was some concern over not just
inculcating these values and behaviors but making sure they were part of one’s inner character as well as
their outer persona. Interior goodness must become exterior goodness, and interior badness must be
discovered before it becomes exterior and harms the city. Such is the claim of the speaker of Isocrates 20
(Against Lochites).
98
The speaker, who was assaulted by Lochites, claims that Lochites, “although he is
younger than those in power at that time, nevertheless has the character of that politeia.” (20.11: καὶ γὰρ
εἰ τῶν τότε κατασταθέντων νεώτερός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τόν γε τρόπον ἔχει τὸν ἐξ ἐκείνης τῆς πολιτείας). He
goes on to suggest, somewhat strangely, that it is better to punish future crimes than ones already
committed based on one’s character and their predicted behaviors (20.12-13). This claim perhaps only
makes reasonable sense in the context of the years immediately after the Amnesty. The speech was
delivered sometime between 402 and 400, and, as we saw with Lysias 31 (Against Philon) is a bit more
reactionary than later forensic speeches. The Athenians had yet to develop this system for collectively
inferring a citizen’s disposition at this point, and the speaker highlights the need for it with his somewhat
paranoid stance toward crime and punishment. The speech also brings into focus a class conflict between
poor and wealthy. The speaker claims that convicting Lochites will make other citizens better behaved
and, more importantly, will teach the young men of Athens “not to despise the masses (plethos).” It was

97
Cohen 1991: 70-97.
98
For a useful commentary on this speech see Spatharas 2009.

53

in the interest of avoiding another oligarchic coup and stasis that the Athenians engaged in educating their
citizenry in these values, thus bettering themselves as citizens and enabling themselves to identify threats
to their civic life.
Much of the way the Athenians typified oligarchs was through their obsession with money and
property. Thus the wealthy were likely under frequent suspicion of oligarchic character and needed a way
to circumvent this problem. In response, the performance of liturgies and other monetary contributions
became an important token of loyalty to the democracy in the post-Amnesty period. The speaker of
Lysias 25 claims to have, in the past, performed five trierarchies and undertaken other liturgies in the
event of future prosecution. Mantitheus, the speaker of Lysias 16, rests part of his defense against his
accusers at his dokimasia on his philotimia, under which he includes his expenditure on weapons for the
democrats in exile in order to set an example for his fellow citizens. In addition, he also claims to have
performed his military duty exceptionally well in case of future prosecution (16.17). Lysias Frag. 9 (For
Eryximachus) also tells us that Eryximachus made large monetary contributions to the city in case of
future litigation. The speaker of Lysias 26 (Against Evandrus) warns his audience that Evandrus will try
to claim that he “has performed his liturgies with philotimia” (26. 3: φιλοτίμως λελειτουργήκασι), but the
speaker refutes this by saying it was that very money that helped him overthrow the democracy. From
these examples we can see that in the wake of the Amnesty one of the values that became an important
part of one’s civic education was the outward display of loyalty to the democracy, which, for the wealthy,
came in the form of contribution of material wealth (though to be used strategically).
99

99
The wealthy elite had to strike a careful balance between being seen as conferring benefits on the polis and
appearing oligarchic in their deployment of wealth. See Ober 1989: 192-247. L.B. Carter has argued that the
performance of liturgies by otherwise politically uninvolved (apragmon) wealthy elite is evidence of a sense of duty
and a desire for glory, despite their disinterest in politics, coupled with a fear of the demos in court (Carter 1986:
104, 110-113). But as Paul Cartledge (1987: 63) has rightly pointed out, this is not entirely accurate. The rich
defendants in these prosecutions are concerned first and foremost with showing their loyalty to the democracy and
dispelling fears of hidden oligarchic sympathies. Also, given that all the dokimasia speeches, as well as many other
speeches from this period, involve the wealthy elite and their political activity, it is apparent that they were not as
committed to their apragmosyne as Carter wants to believe. Cf. Taylor (2007), who shows that more non-elite
citizens were becoming politically active in the 4th century, though the number of elites does not change much.

54

The speaker of Lysias 19 (On the Property of Aristophanes) devotes much energy to proving his
father’s democratic character through a detailed account of all the liturgies and other expenditures he
made for the city. The speaker’s father was accused of embezzling some of the now dead Aristophanes’
property which was to be returned to the state; he died before the case came to trial leaving the son to take
on the defense. Thus the speaker contrasts his father’s behavior with the spending habits of Aristophanes:
Aristophanes spent all of his money on liturgies not for the good of the city but for personal gain and
ambition, whereas his father showed a true democratic character in his expenditure. This is one of the few
cases that views philotimia critically: the speaker details his father’s expenditures “not for the sake of
philotimia”, i.e., to augment his personal reputation and personal gain, but to show that his father’s
expenditures are proof of his loyalty to the city.

Conclusion
The way the Athenians confronted and negotiated issues around civic education in the 4th century
was directly and fundamentally influenced by the Thirty, stasis, and its aftermath. Having witnessed how
the Thirty tried to “turn the citizens toward excellence” through coercion, the citizens of Athens were
extremely hesitant to invest authority to inculcate civic values in any one place. Civic education was then
to be a collective effort. The fact that Evandrus in 382/1 was facing similar charges as Philon ca. 400
indicates to us the endurance of the debates surrounding civic education and its relationship to the
democrat/oligarch divide in the city. Lysias’ speech against Eratosthenes, like other speeches of his,
highlights the fact that the Thirty did not immediately do away with democracy, but rather perverted its
institutions toward oligarchic ends. This included the process of civic education. Thus the emphasis on
people like Eratosthenes and Theramenes (and Alcibiades in a later speech) being ‘teachers of evil’, and
later the intense focus on the behavior of Athenian male citizens bettering the citizen body. Perhaps this is
what scared the Athenians most: the features of the democracy they loved so much could be exploited and
transformed into something totally antithetical to its existence, which would produce a corrupt, mutant
brood of oligarchic citizens once more. Their challenge, then, was to make sure this would not happen

55

again. Up to this point in the democracy’s history, the stability of the demos’ educative authority was not
much interrogated and the ideology of the paradigmatic citizen had a less definite form, resting on the
common understanding that one would be a paradigmatic citizen simply by virtue of being an Athenian
citizen. Thus the Athenians would begin to devote much more attention to actively setting good examples
for themselves and preventing others from setting bad ones, accomplished through public debates int the
democratic institutions of the city. This led the city closer to its goal of homonoia and away from further
stasis. The beginning of the 4th century was a critical time for the development of Athenian civic
education as a response to crisis, as the Athenians began to establish authoritative structures for the
education of their citizens.

56

Chapter 3: The Trial and Death of Socrates
In Chapter 2 I argued that after the restoration of the democracy in 403/2 BCE, the Athenians
recognized a problem with the education of their citizens and the need to renegotiate its function. The
locus of the authority to educate was a chief concern. The Athenians relied heavily on their public
institutions—the Assembly, Council, and courts—and a principle of accountability to reconcile former
oligarchs and democrats cohabiting Athens after the defeat of Thirty Tyrants in 403 BCE and the
Amnesty agreement sworn afterward by those who remained in the city. As a part of this reconciliation
process, the Athenians began to devote more of their attention to civic education, which, before the
Thirty, had emerged as an organic process of democracy but, as far as our sources show, had rarely been
placed under any scrutiny. The negotiation of proper citizen behaviors and how to inculcate them in the
citizenry thus became a central part of the workings of the democracy, as citizens were expected to
imitate and demonstrate exemplary democratic behaviors which crystallized into a shared set of citizen
characteristics over time through public discourse. The Athenians were interested above all in keeping the
domains of oikos, polis, and politeia, from which their civic life emerged, intact. By adhering to these
values and behaviors and displaying these characteristics, the Athenians could ensure that their civic life
would tend toward homonoia and away from stasis.
In the fifth century, education was already undergoing changes and debate with the arrival of the
Sophists. These educators charged hefty sums to teach their students a multitude of topics, but the most
concerning was the power of rhetoric. Young Athenians joined their classes to learn how to craft
arguments and speeches for use in the political arenas of Athens in order to convince the demos to follow
their proposals. Though he did not teach for money nor did he establish a school, Socrates was often
lumped together with the Sophists, and was lampooned in Aristophanes’ Clouds for typical Sophistic
activity such as making the weaker argument stronger and contemplating the things in the sky and below
the earth.
100
When the moment of reckoning for civic education came about in the late fifth and early 4th

100
For the Sophists, see Guthrie 1970, Wolfsdorf 2015; for Socrates’ relationship to them see Woodruff 2006.

57

centuries, Socrates became a target for the demos’ outrage over the Thirty’s corruption of their democracy
and its education in good citizenship. It is not a coincidence that Plato wrote so many dialogues set in the
days and months before and after the event of Socrates’ trial and execution.
101
This period was politically
turbulent and showcased what Plato saw as the hallmark of an uneducated citizenry. He was not only
defending Socrates from the unjust charges leveled against him but was also engaging in the newfound
interest and critical approach to civic education that occupied so much of Athenian public discourse of
that time. He was discontent with it because the Athenians’ approach to education lacked a reliable
epistemic authority, which eventually caused the death of his beloved mentor. These dialogues express a
commitment to reforming democratic civic education of the early 4th century by offering incisive
critiques of the diffuse and, to Plato, ineffective authority to educate derived from the oikos, polis, and
politeia.
102

The Death of Socrates and the Aftermath
The trial and death of Socrates in 399 BCE marked a critical moment in the development of
philosophy and civic education in Athens. A man named Meletus and his colleagues Anytus and Lycon,
all staunch democrats who fought against the Thirty Tyrants, brought charges of impiety and corrupting
the youth against the 70-year-old philosopher. Socrates’ association with the Thirty as the alleged teacher
of some of their members, such as Critias and Charmides, seems to have been the final nail in his
(proverbial and literal) coffin. The details of the charges and the trial itself come primarily from two of

101
In this chapter, only the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito will be under consideration, but the subsequent dialogues
Phaedo, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman are also set at the same time as these. The chronology of the dramatic
dates of these dialogues would be: Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Sophist, Statesman (all within a day of each other);
Apology (a month or two later); Crito (another month later); Phaedo (soon after Socrates’ death, but reporting his
final hours on the day of or after the Crito).
102
The question of whether Plato was anti-democratic or merely critical of democracy has been the subject of much
debate. It was supposed for a long time that Plato wished to do away with democracy but more recently scholars
have shown that even the most biting criticism of democracy still does not advocate for its total eradication but
rather his engagement with it (Ober 1998; Saxonhouse 1996, 2009; Roochnik 2003 Allen 2010) and others (e.g.
Farrar 1988; Wood 1988; Monoson 2000) have demonstrated the influence of democratic practice on the
philosophical thought of Plato. Brickhouse and Smith 2004:94-95 argue that Socrates’ arguments in the Apology
show him to be in favor of democratic practice, despite his objections to the quality of their knowledge.

58

his most devoted followers, Plato and Xenophon, who provide differing accounts of the defense. Modern
scholars have attempted to reconstruct the trial and the official charges.
103

In any case, the trial itself is not so much of interest at this moment as what happened after it.
Socrates’ execution was seen by some as a step towards restoring unity in the democracy and by others as
yet another instance of the demos violently and unjustly wielding its powers of punishment against a man
who only wanted the best for Athens. His followers, affected by the loss of their teacher, immortalized
him in philosophical dialogues, which, though they obscure the “historical” Socrates, allow us to perceive
broader trends in the education of Athenian citizens after the crises of the end of the 5th century. While
there was already some uneasiness around teachers in the 5th century, namely the Sophists, the trial of
Socrates further reinforced the general distrust felt toward intellectuals who might persuade the demos to
make bad decisions for the polis, cause young men to abandon their families to follow their teachers, or
corrupt democratic citizenship through the promulgation of anti-democratic political thought. If the Thirty
really did attempt to “turn [their followers] toward excellence and justice” as Lysias says,
104
then it is easy
to see how intellectualism and philosophy could have been seen as a danger to democracy and homonoia.
This is not to say that the Athenians considered all intellectual activity, such as critical thinking, a bad
thing, and indeed they valued their ability to speak freely and discern between good and bad ideas
proposed in the Assembly.
105
Rather, it only became a problem when a single person or small group of
people professed to have knowledge that the demos did not possess about matters pertaining to the oikos,
polis, and/or politeia and then were perceived as trying to “teach” that knowledge. In other words, the
quality and transfer of knowledge had parameters that had to fall in line with the ideological parameters

103
Bauman 1990: 107-116; Hansen 1996; Ober 2011; I.F. Stone 1988, Nails 2005. Burnyeat 1997 appears to take
Socrates’ arguments about the gods in the Euthyphro as an indication that from the standpoint of the jurors who
voted to indict Socrates, he really did worship different gods than the Athenians did. I think this is assuming too
much knowledge of the particulars of Socratic philosophy on the part of the jurors, almost as if they would have
been able to read the Euthyphro before the trial began. Considering the narrow margin of votes, it would seem that
the formal charge of impiety was still a stretch, and those who voted to execute him likely did so more for political
reasons or scapegoating than purely religious ones.
104
Lys. 12.5.
105
Though it would appear that the problem Thucydides’ shows that the demos blindly follows its leaders was still a
problem in the 4th century, as, e.g. Isoc. 7 points out.

59

of the democracy. Any transgression thereof would induce the people of Athens to apply some kind of
corrective: private or public censure, a trial, legislation, exile, death, etc.
Plato took it upon himself to challenge these prevailing cultural attitudes and defend Socrates
from his accusers even long after the latter’s death. There has traditionally been much interest in
deciphering Plato’s political commitments through interpretations of his dialogues. Specifically, whether
Plato (or Socrates) was pro- or anti-democracy. The answer to this question has been quite elusive and
fraught with problems over the authenticity of Plato’s thought and how it changed over time. Thus Peter
Euben notes that “Socrates of the Apology may have believed democracy capable of reform and
reconfiguration but the Socrates of book 8 [sc. of the Republic] surely did not.”
106
I take the mutability
and inherent contradictions in Plato’s thought about democracy as an indication that the question simply
needs to be asked a different way. Whether Socrates and Plato were anti-democratic or not does not
matter so much as how embedded they were in democracy. The philosophers in general famously kept
themselves out of politics (though the same cannot always be said about their students).
107
Yet they were
still deeply invested in democracy. Plato’s early works, especially those surrounding Socrates’ impiety
trial (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito) begin to develop a theory of civic education in response to the political
and cultural context of the late 400s and early 390s.
108
Just like the orators and the people they represent
in the courts and the Assembly, Plato’s concern falls primarily on the issue of who is able to teach, what
they should teach, how they acquire knowledge for teaching, and under what circumstances they should
teach. So as much as Plato likes to present the Athenian demos as an irrational, undifferentiated mass,
they were in fact thinking about the same problems in different ways, further evidenced by Plato’s

106
Euben 1997: 99.
107
This is especially the case with Isocrates, whose educational program intended to better the people of Athens
through political action modeled on the training he provided. A number of Socrates’ students and associates were
known to be politically active as well, such as Pericles, son of Pericles (Xen. Mem. 3.5)
108
The Ion, also supposed to have been written around the same time as these, broaches the problem of poets and
rhapsodes educating people about things which they themselves do not actually know. Plato’s criticism of poets as
educators will be taken into consideration in the discussion of the Republic. I should also specify that I am not
suggesting that the three dialogues listed here are necessarily a coherent whole or that they were written at the same
time or in the order in which I read them. Rather I suggest that their narrative sequence is significant for Plato’s
development of his political philosophy and reform of civic education which will see its fullest form in the Republic.
Important studies of narrative in Plato’s dialogues include Blondell 2002 and Saxonhouse 2009.

60

interactions with popular genres of discourse.
109
It becomes apparent that at issue in these dialogues is the
model of Athenian civic life I have developed thus far, composed of the oikos, the polis, and the politeia,
and its relationship to epistemic authority. Plato’s political and educational philosophy became
fundamentally intertwined in this way; for this reason his thought had measurable impact on later
Athenian policy concerning civic education.
110
In the three dialogues discussed in this chapter, Plato
presents an array of philosophical challenges to prevailing discourses of civic education.

Euthyphro
When Socrates went before the archon basileus to respond to the summons for his upcoming trial
for impiety, he ran into his friend Euthyphro, a well-known priest and expert (one supposes) on piety.
Euthyphro was surprised to find Socrates the victim of a prosecution by Meletus, a man neither of them
has ever heard of (2b: οὐδ᾽ αὐτὸς πάνυ τι γιγνώσκω). Yet Socrates seems to know quite a lot about him
and his motivations:

ἐκεῖνος γάρ, ὥς φησιν, οἶδε τίνα τρόπον οἱ νέοι διαφθείρονται καὶ τίνες οἱ διαφθείροντες αὐτούς.
καὶ κινδυνεύει σοφός τις εἶναι, καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ἀμαθίαν κατιδὼν ὡς διαφθείροντος τοὺς ἡλικιώτας
αὐτοῦ, ἔρχεται κατηγορήσων μου ὥσπερ πρὸς μητέρα πρὸς τὴν πόλιν. καὶ φαίνεταί μοι τῶν
πολιτικῶν μόνος ἄρχεσθαι ὀρθῶς: ὀρθῶς γάρ ἐστι τῶν νέων πρῶτον ἐπιμεληθῆναι ὅπως ἔσονται
ὅτι ἄριστοι, ὥσπερ γεωργὸν ἀγαθὸν τῶν νέων φυτῶν εἰκὸς πρῶτον ἐπιμεληθῆναι, μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο
καὶ τῶν ἄλλων. καὶ δὴ καὶ Μέλητος ἴσως πρῶτον μὲν ἡμᾶς ἐκκαθαίρει τοὺς τῶν νέων τὰς
βλάστας διαφθείροντας, ὥς φησιν: ἔπειτα μετὰ τοῦτο δῆλον ὅτι τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἐπιμεληθεὶς
πλείστων καὶ μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν αἴτιος τῇ πόλει γενήσεται, ὥς γε τὸ εἰκὸς συμβῆναι ἐκ τοιαύτης
ἀρχῆς ἀρξαμένῳ. (2c-3a)

109
Nightingale 1995, Monoson 2000, Tennant 2014.
110
Ober 2001.

61

He claims he knows in what way the youth are being corrupted and who is corrupting them. He
must be wise, and when he sees my ignorance as corrupting the boys of his age, he comes to
accuse me to the city as if crying to his mother. And he alone of our citizens seems to me to have
started off right: for it is right to take care of the youth first so that they will be as good as
possible, just as it is likely that a good farmer would take care of his young plants first and the
others later. In the very same way Meletus claims he extirpates us who corrupt the young shoots;
then it is clear that after he takes care of the elders, he will become responsible for the most and
greatest good for the city, as it would likely happen for someone who has had such a start.
111

Through the figure of Meletus (whose name literally means “studious” or “taking care”), Plato typifies the
non-expert citizen that is harmful to the polis because of his lack of knowledge and carelessness to attain
it, despite his supposed goal of being responsible for the greatest good.
112
Socrates’ ironic
113
and thinly
veiled criticism of Meletus’ alleged (emphasized by the repetition of ὥς φησιν) knowledge of who is
corrupting the youth and how they are corrupted broaches the issue of the bad education of the Athenians
that Plato will explore over the course of these and other dialogues. Socrates surmises that, as the
corrupter of the youth, he corrupts through his own ignorance (ἀμαθία), whereas Meletus’ knowledge will
save them.
But this professed knowledge about corruption of the youth comes from a youth himself, which
Socrates makes abundantly clear by mentioning Meletus’ inclusion in the age group of the youths (τοὺς
ἡλικιώτας αὐτοῦ) and patchy facial hair (2b). Socrates thus compare Meletus making accusations against
Socrates to the city with a child tattling on someone to their mother. Beyond mere mockery and
infantilizing of Meletus and his misguided prosecution, this comment begins an interrogation into the role
of the oikos in the education of the citizen and its relationship with the polis and politeia. Here Socrates

111
All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
112
For the characterization of Socrates’ interlocutors, see Blondell 2002, who notes that Meletus is one of the rare
cases that Plato gives a physical description of an interlocutor, vague as it is, being limited to his “patchy beard and
aquiline nose”.
113
For Socratic irony see Vlastos 2007 Chp. 1.

62

identifies an inherent conflict between the oikos and polis as it relates to citizenship. If the polis is like a
mother, then all of its citizens are her children. This in itself is not a problem until the children begin
fighting among each other and their only recourse to punishment, whether deserved or not, is through the
mother. If the punishment is just then the mother has fulfilled her proper role and all is well; but if the
punishment is unjust, as is implied here with Socrates, then this causes division between the mother and
her children, and the sacred familial bond is ruptured. Meletus’ prosecution thus invites conflict between
the city-mother and one of her citizen-children, which pushes the city and its inhabitants back toward the
stasis they brought to an end only a few years earlier. In his comparison of Meletus to a farmer, Socrates
seems to have some faith in Meletus’ intention to protect the youth, if only he could find proper guidance.
But “extirpating” Socrates is not the right way to do it because he is not taking care of his elders (i.e.,
Socrates). Socrates thus demonstrates a point of conflict between the authority derived from the oikos and
that of the polis and politeia. Meletus wishes to weaponize the hierarchies of elder over youth and polis
over citizen, but in doing so subverts them.
In the character of Meletus, Plato has begun to craft a model of the unwise, indistinct, non-expert
citizen who is hostile toward philosophy because of their commitment to the democracy and the
conservation of the oikos-polis-politeia system. Meletus is entirely unknown to Socrates and Euthyphro;
he thinks he knows best, but in actuality he does not; he engages in inappropriate litigation for the sake of
preserving the false authority of the oikos; he wants to be responsible and a model for the greatest good in
the city; and he is responsible for the death of Socrates. The characterization of Meletus will be further
developed in the Apology. But in the Euthyphro, Plato presents Euthyphro as the archetype of the
(potential) expert citizen
114
who could, but does not, possess knowledge or wisdom, despite possessing
expertise. Consequently, Euthyphro, like all other citizens, does not possess the necessary epistemic
authority to correctly educate others.

114
My definition of the expert citizen is merely someone who claims to have expertise in something, be that piety as
in Euthyphro’s case, or crafts, poetry, politics, etc. For the purposes of Socratic philosophy I do not think it is
important for the “experts” in Athens to be universally recognized by the demos as such but only that they claim to
possess particular knowledge about something which can be tested through elenchos.

63

Immediately following his sketch of Meletus, Socrates describes the formal charge of impiety
against himself. This charge confounds Socrates but seems not to surprise Euthyphro in the slightest.
Perhaps this is because Euthyphro considers himself an expert in piety and thus immediately understands
the reasoning behind the charge (3b), though it seems few others think of him this way. Indeed,
Euthyphro says that when he tries to speak of divine things and tell the future in the Assembly, he is
laughed down. But this does not matter, Socrates says to Euthyphro, because the Athenians do not mind a
person who is clever (deinos)
115
“as long as he is not a teacher of his own wisdom. But if they think he is
making others like himself, they get angry, either out of envy, as you say, or for some other reason.”
116

Socrates could only wish his case would get laughed out of court, but instead he has been identified as
one of those who professes to teach his wisdom and fashion his followers in his image.
117
Since Socrates
was thought to be the teacher of some members of the Thirty, he logically would produce more oligarchs
if he is allowed to continue. Presumably this is the trajectory of the “corruption of the youth” to which
Meletus refers, by which Socrates also corrupts traditional family structures. But as Socrates points out,
the authority inherent to the oikos is not as reliable as the masses would like to think, and its instability,
and thus its preservation, are in fact the real threats to the city and its citizens.
If Euthyphro claims expertise in piety and therefore an epistemic authority that surpasses that of
the demos, why should the demos pay no mind to Euthyphro’s attempts at telling the future in the
Assembly and yet take such issue with Socrates’ daimon as to condemn him to death? It has been shown
that the charges against Socrates are trumped up and that the trial itself is a manifestation of political
action against oligarchic sympathizers in Athens.
118
So it would seem that the issue is not strictly religious
practice but the civic dimension of religious practice and the context in which they are performed.
119

115
Contrary to Thucydides’ description of Antiphon, whose δεινότης made him particularly untrustworthy.
116
3c-d: Ἀθηναίοις γάρ τοι, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, οὐ σφόδρα μέλει ἄν τινα δεινὸν οἴωνται εἶναι, μὴ μέντοι διδασκαλικὸν
τῆς αὑτοῦ σοφίας: ὃν δ᾽ ἂν καὶ ἄλλους οἴωνται ποιεῖν τοιούτους, θυμοῦνται, εἴτ᾽ οὖν φθόνῳ ὡς σὺ λέγεις, εἴτε δι᾽
ἄλλο τι.
117
He will argue to the contrary at Apology 23c2. It was not unheard of to try to mount a defense by ridiculing a
charge until it seems too absurd to be true, as the speaker of Lysias 24 tries to do.
118
For the political nature of this trial, see Chapter 2 and Lanni 2010, Nails 2006, Ober 2011, etc.
119
Blok (2011 and 2017) has convincingly shown that religious duty was a central component of Athenian
citizenship.

64

When Euthyphro speaks of the divine and predicts the future, he does it during the Assembly, in plain
sight of the demos, where controls to his influence can be exerted (in the form of laughter in this case)
and where he can be held accountable. Euthyphro’s participation in democratic politics, especially in the
aftermath of the Thirty, show him to be a cooperative member of the newly restored democratic political
community and thus not a threat to the demos. Moreover, his divination practice does not disturb the
dynamic stability of the oikos, polis, and politeia because, as Socrates supposes (or jokes), he holds back
from teaching the Athenians anything that might be considered sophia (3d).
This problem comes to the fore when Socrates finds out that Euthyphro came to the archon
basileus to file an indictment against his own father for murder. Socrates expresses surprise that
Euthyphro would do such a thing and would lay claim to such knowledge of the pious as to be sure that
prosecuting his father was the right thing to do.
120
As Roslyn Weiss points out, Euthyphro starts from the
assumption that a polluted family member must be prosecuted, even if traditional belief held that a son
should never prosecute his father.
121
But if Euthyphro is right, and does indeed possess knowledge of the
pious, then it is in Socrates’ best interest to become his pupil and to use Euthyphro’s definition of piety as
a model (paradeigma) which will prove that Socrates’ behavior has indeed been pious (6e). Because
Euthyphro is so confident about his knowledge of piety, Socrates proposes becoming his pupil. He
imagines telling Meletus,

‘καὶ εἰ μέν, ὦ Μέλητε,’ φαίην ἄν, ‘Εὐθύφρονα ὁμολογεῖς σοφὸν εἶναι τὰ τοιαῦτα, καὶ ὀρθῶς
νομίζειν καὶ ἐμὲ ἡγοῦ καὶ μὴ δικάζου: εἰ δὲ μή, ἐκείνῳ τῷ διδασκάλῳ λάχε δίκην πρότερον ἢ

120
There is a debate in the scholarship on this dialogue around this moment of surprise about whether Socrates is in
fact advising Euthyphro to drop his prosecution of his father or not, based on a comment made by Diogenes Laertius
(2.29), who claims that Socrates convinced Euthyphro to drop the case. The arguments are long and complicated on
both sides and do little to settle the issue but much to show the complexity of rational deliberation in this dialogue. It
would seem that Plato’s point is to portray Euthyphro as unknowingly engaging in the same abuse of litigation as
Meletus and thus representative of what Plato perceives to be the prevailing citizen behavior of Athens and the
failure of the family unit and city to properly educate the citizens of Athens. This must be corrected not through
advisement from probably unreliable agents but through an overhaul of the character of the citizenry and the
structure of civic life. See Benson 2013, Al-Maini 2011, McPherran 2003, Joyce 2002
121
Weiss 1994: 265.

65

ἐμοί, ὡς τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους διαφθείροντι ἐμέ τε καὶ τὸν αὑτοῦ πατέρα, ἐμὲ μὲν διδάσκοντι,
ἐκεῖνον δὲ νουθετοῦντί τε καὶ κολάζοντι’ —καὶ ἂν μή μοι πείθηται μηδὲ ἀφίῃ τῆς δίκης ἢ ἀντ᾽
ἐμοῦ γράφηται σέ, αὐτὰ ταῦτα λέγειν ἐν τῷ δικαστηρίῳ ἃ προυκαλούμην αὐτόν; (5b-c)

I would say, ‘Meletus, if you agree that Euthyphro is wise about such things [i.e., piety], consider
that I have correct belief too and do not prosecute me. But if not, punish that teacher, rather than
me, for corrupting his elders—me and his father—by teaching me and reprimanding and
punishing his father.’ And if he doesn’t believe me nor drops the trial, or charges you instead of
me, I would say the same challenges in court.

Socrates mimics Meletus’ language and inverts the situation in which Socrates, an old man, is the pupil
and Euthyphro the teacher who corrupts him. By turning the situation on its head Socrates once again
reveals the absurdity of the charge: how can someone corrupt their elders, if the elders are the ones who
know best? Moreover, how can anyone charge Socrates with these crimes if he is still a student? An
admission that the teacher should be held accountable for the misuse of authority is not the same as an
admission of guilt, because, lacking the proper authority to educate, Socrates was not a teacher.
122

This inversion calls Euthyphro’s piety into question.
123
But Socrates still wants to know what
piety is and so enters into an elenchus with Euthyphro. Euthyphro at first conflates piety with a sense of
justice, which Socrates proves to be two different things. It can be therefore just for Euthyphro’s father to
be punished for a crime, yet impious for Euthyphro to prosecute him. Eventually Euthyphro posits that
piety is to care (therapeuein) for the gods, inviting a further problem, namely that the gods cannot be
benefitted by mankind since mankind is wholly inferior to them. Rather, Euthyphro suggests, the care of
man for the gods is like that of a slave for their master. As Doug Al-Maini suggests, this gets around the
issue of the impossibility of benefitting the gods, because a slave carrying out orders is not necessarily a

122
Plato, Apol. 33a.
123
Scholars have argued that Socrates’ case is an inversion of Euthyphro’s

66

benefit to the master; by analogy, a mortal obeying the will of the gods need not benefit the god as long as
their piety is expressed through care for what the gods hold dear. The relationship of parent and child can
also be mapped onto that of god and man.
124
Not only does this reveal Euthyphro’s actions to be impious,
but shows that the traditional structure of authority in the family can lead to injustice in the name of piety.
In other words, the competing authorities of family and the gods can cause tears in the social fabric of the
city.
The Euthyphro thus provides us with two different kinds of citizens—that of the unwise non-
expert and the unwise “expert”—whom Socrates must engage in elenchic dialogue in order to save
himself and ensure proper education of his fellow citizens. But it also shows that, in the absence of
Socratic philosophical inquiry, the “expert” and the non-expert are in fact the same citizen, shown by
parallel features of the characterization of Meletus and Euthyphro. Euthyphro goes unnoticed by Meletus
and the demos despite his best efforts; he thinks he knows what piety is but in actuality does not; he
engages in litigation that upsets notions of piety, the oikos, and its relationship to the polis; he should be a
model of wisdom but cannot be; and because of this he, too, seems to be partially responsible for the
death of Socrates. Plato’s implicit critique of democratic civic education in the Euthyphro highlights the
fact that citizens who make claims to expertise (and claim to teach it) and those who do not are
nevertheless the same because they all fail to understand what is right and wrong. Just because Euthyphro
sincerely wishes to come to Socrates’ defense in this case does not mean he is any less harmful to the
stability of the city than Meletus because his ignorance and unwillingness to pursue true knowledge
hinder meaningful political action for the betterment of his fellow citizens.
With the models of character types that Plato has created we can read the rest of the dialogue as
an exposition of the problems Plato faces in developing his political philosophy concerning civic
education. The ensuing elenchus presents a series of lines of questioning about piety that only result in
exposing Euthyphro’s ignorance. He never seems to answer Socrates’ questions directly and his responses

124
Al-Maini 2011: 13-15; cf. Mann 1998: 128 and Dimas 2006: 24.

67

are easily picked apart. When he gives concrete examples of piety or man’s relation to the gods, it
becomes apparent that Euthyphro’s conception of piety is grounded not in any kind of theoretical
organization but in everyday facets of Athenian life: law (5e), slavery (13d), “private homes and public
affairs of the city” (14b, ἰδίους οἴκους καὶ τὰ κοινὰ τῶν πόλεων), and trade (14e). Euthyphro seems to
have a concrete conception of some qualities of piety and recognizes its significance in civic life, perhaps
more so than the average citizen.
125
But like the non-expert citizens such as Meletus, he is still incapable
of truly knowing what it is because he does not engage in meaningful philosophical inquiry and simply
gives up. Since even the “experts” among the citizenry behave like the uneducated masses and ground
their so-called knowledge in popular conceptions of what knowledge is, Socrates is left without the
wisdom he desperately needs to overcome his misfortune.
Thus in the Euthyphro, Plato takes up the issue of epistemic authority as it relates to the oikos and
piety. He points out the inherent instability of the family unit, with all its infighting, and thus its lack of
real epistemic authority. Socrates quest for a definition of piety could theoretically solve this issue by
figuring out what kind of authority can be derived from the divine. But no one, not Euthyphro nor
Meletus, knows what piety is; and yet Socrates is on trial for his life for violating it. As we have seen,
interrogating the definition of piety has significant consequences not just for the historical fact of
Socrates’ impiety trial but for Plato’s political philosophy. Ritual was a core component of civic life and
had educative authority, but no one seems to really know why.
126

In Plato’s mind the education in the civic value of piety offered by the oikos is not sufficient to
prevent stasis in the city and the oikos itself cannot sustain homonoia. Meletus’ prosecution of Socrates,
as if two brothers fighting, only causes harm to the other youth and conflict with the city. Euthyphro’s
prosecution of his own father upsets notions of piety at the familial and state level as well. And since
religion was a civic matter that involved nearly everyone in the city, how can anyone exhibit good

125
Furley 1985 argues that Euthyphro expresses both traditional Greek religious views and newer stances on the
matter.
126
For the ritual aspects of the restoration of the democracy see Shear 2011, Chp. 10.

68

behavior and thus act as a model for others when no one knows how to be pious?
127
Thus the Euthyphro
develops a thesis about the failures of the prevailing system of democratic civic education and targets the
role of the oikos in Athenian civic life through the issue of piety. This necessarily had consequences for
the polis and politeia. If the oikos is unable to inculcate the most important virtues for the unity of a
community and is constantly threatened by instability, it is unsuitable as a structural element of the
Athenian system of civic education. Its failure means the total failure of the informal system of civic
education to produce knowledgeable citizens.

Apology
Not long after the events of the Euthyphro, Socrates stood trial. The jurors, Socrates’ accusers, his
loyal followers, and a host of other curious or indignant citizens gathered in the Agora to witness the
infamous philosopher state his case. Much to the chagrin of the Socratic circle, Socrates was now forced
to give, in lieu of his trademark elenchos biou, the logos biou that the many who were brought to court in
the years following the restoration of the democracy were forced to give. The need to deflect accusations
of oligarchic sympathies or anti-democratic citizen behaviors made such accounts of one’s life and
political activity commonplace and at times welcome for certain politically ambitious citizens. No matter
the litigants’ feelings about it, this practice was central to civic education on a large scale. Presenting
Socrates’ life and mission in the institutional framework of the courts and the cultural framework of
democratic accountability gives Plato the opportunity to center his critique of democratic civic education
on the misuse of power by the polis, here understood as the aggregate body of citizens, and its role in the
dissemination of knowledge about civic values and behavior.
128

From the very outset of the speech Socrates takes aim at his accusers both new (Meletus, Anytus,
Lycon) and old (namely Aristophanes). Socrates’ enemies made careful use of public occasions to build

127
In the Laws (794a), Plato emphasizes the importance of religion in the education of young children.
128
My arguments in this section build off of Ober’s (1998: 166-179) analysis of how the speech uses typical dicanic
rhetoric to criticize the democratic politeia.

69

their case, even, he claims, over many years, to the point that some of the jurors heard such slander as
impressionable children (18c). The old accusations arose from Aristophanes’ Clouds, claiming that
“Socrates does wrong and busies himself seeking out the things below the earth and in the sky and
making the weaker argument the stronger” (19b) and that he accepted pay for his teachings like the other
Sophists. Such rumors apparently lead the impressionable youth Meletus to prosecute Socrates nearly 25
years later. This new generation of accusers believed that Socrates was committing acts of impiety and
corrupting the youth with his teachings. The way this information spread exposes a significant problem
about the nature of educational authority in civic education. As Socrates says about the accusers, “one
cannot even bring up their names or examine any of them, but one must mount a defense as if fighting
with shadows and cross-examine without anyone responding” (18d; Aristophanes is of course the
exception). Despite its emphasis on accountability, the polis allows such anonymity as to remove the
opportunity to hold the accusers accountable for the things they teach other citizens. Consequently, the
civic education this kind of political structure fosters also evades accountability by allowing children to
learn not from a teacher who can be punished for imparting misinformation about civic practice and
ideology,
129
but an undifferentiated (and most likely “uneducated”) mass. Furthermore, the informal
structure of Athenian civic education provides no legitimate way to test whether the knowledge one has
gained in public venues is true knowledge. Attempting to offer correction to this educational practice is
indeed like fighting with shadows because, Plato suggests, much of the democratic ideal of accountability
and teaching by example is an illusion.
130
This pushes the city toward stasis as there can be no true
knowledge of or consensus about important virtues such as justice or moderation, which are necessary for
stability.

129
As he suggests in the Euthyphro 5b (see above).
130
Saxonhouse 2006: 112-126 highlights another uncomfortable contradiction of the democracy in terms of free
speech: “In Socrates’ handling, this new shame born of the parrhesia he practices at his trial threatens the unity and
stability of the sleeping polity that fails to practice the parrhesia it claims to revere” (113). The emphasis on
accountability in Athens and proper education of the demos are necessary components of free speech.

70

Socrates elaborates this point with his cross-examination of Meletus. The dialogic quality of this
section of the speech may stand out as a departure from the forensic style but was in fact a normal legal
procedure in the fourth century which Socrates is able to exploit for his own elenchic purposes.
131
We
have already seen how Plato uses Meletus in the Euthyphro to represent the unwise non-expert citizen;
that is, he is both product and producer of the kind of civic education that leads Athens toward instability.
The erotesis in Socrates’ trial allows Plato to put into the mouth of Meletus a succinct description of how
the prevailing system of education works:

καί μοι δεῦρο, ὦ Μέλητε, εἰπέ: ἄλλο τι ἢ [24δ] περὶ πλείστου ποιῇ ὅπως ὡς βέλτιστοι οἱ
νεώτεροι ἔσονται; — ἔγωγε.
ἴθι δή νυν εἰπὲ τούτοις, τίς αὐτοὺς βελτίους ποιεῖ; δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι οἶσθα, μέλον γέ σοι. τὸν
μὲν γὰρ διαφθείροντα ἐξευρών, ὡς φῄς, ἐμέ, εἰσάγεις τουτοισὶ καὶ κατηγορεῖς: τὸν δὲ δὴ βελτίους
ποιοῦντα ἴθι εἰπὲ καὶ μήνυσον αὐτοῖς τίς ἐστιν. —ὁρᾷς, ὦ Μέλητε, ὅτι σιγᾷς καὶ οὐκ ἔχεις εἰπεῖν;
καίτοι οὐκ αἰσχρόν σοι δοκεῖ εἶναι καὶ ἱκανὸν τεκμήριον οὗ δὴ ἐγὼ λέγω, ὅτι σοι οὐδὲν
μεμέληκεν; ἀλλ᾽ εἰπέ, ὠγαθέ, τίς αὐτοὺς ἀμείνους ποιεῖ; — οἱ νόμοι. [24ε]
ἀλλ᾽ οὐ τοῦτο ἐρωτῶ, ὦ βέλτιστε, ἀλλὰ τίς ἄνθρωπος, ὅστις πρῶτον καὶ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οἶδε,
τοὺς νόμους; — οὗτοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, οἱ δικασταί.
πῶς λέγεις, ὦ Μέλητε; οἵδε τοὺς νέους παιδεύειν οἷοί τέ εἰσι καὶ βελτίους ποιοῦσιν; —
μάλιστα.
πότερον ἅπαντες, ἢ οἱ μὲν αὐτῶν, οἱ δ᾽ οὔ; — ἅπαντες.
εὖ γε νὴ τὴν Ἥραν λέγεις καὶ πολλὴν ἀφθονίαν τῶν ὠφελούντων. τί δὲ δή; οἱ δὲ
ἀκροαταὶ βελτίους ποιοῦσιν [25α] ἢ οὔ; — καὶ οὗτοι.
τί δέ, οἱ βουλευταί; — καὶ οἱ βουλευταί.

131
Carawan 1983: 216.

71

ἀλλ᾽ ἄρα, ὦ Μέλητε, μὴ οἱ ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, οἱ ἐκκλησιασταί, διαφθείρουσι τοὺς
νεωτέρους; ἢ κἀκεῖνοι βελτίους ποιοῦσιν ἅπαντες; — κἀκεῖνοι.
πάντες ἄρα, ὡς ἔοικεν, Ἀθηναῖοι καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ποιοῦσι πλὴν ἐμοῦ, ἐγὼ δὲ μόνος
διαφθείρω. οὕτω λέγεις; — πάνυ σφόδρα ταῦτα λέγω.

So come now, Meletus, tell me: do you do your utmost so that the youth will be as good
as possible? — I do.
Now why don’t you tell these men here, who makes them better? It is obvious that you
know, it being such a concern to you. Since you have discovered that the one who corrupts them,
as you say, is me, do you bring me here and accuse me to these men? Go say who makes them
better and inform them of who it is. —….
Do you see, Meletus, how you are reticent and have nothing to say? Doesn’t it seem
shameful to you and proof of what I am saying, that you do not really care about any of this? So
tell me, sir, who makes them better? — The laws.
Oh, that’s not what I’m asking, my good man, but what person who knows about the laws
to begin with? — These men here, Socrates, the jurors.
What do you mean, Meletus? These men are able to educate the youth and make them
better? — Yes indeed.
All of these men, or some of them but not others? — All of them.
By Hera, you mention a great bounty of benefactors. So who else then? Does the
audience make them better or not? — Yes they do.
How about the councilors? — The councilors too.
Oh, but might not those in the Assembly, the Assemblymen, corrupt the youth? Or do
even they make them better? — Even they.
So everyone, it seems, all the Athenians make them good and noble, except for me; I
alone corrupt the youth. Is that what you’re saying? — That is exactly what I’m saying.

72

Socrates’ interrogation makes patent the absurdity of Meletus’ claim that out of everyone in Athens, he
alone corrupts the youth. Consistent with his characterization in the Euthyphro, Meletus is unable to even
answer the first question and fails to show any kind of wisdom (as opposed to Euthyphro, who, despite
his lack of knowledge, can at least make educated guesses). In other words, as a product of Athenian civic
education, Meletus has proven that he knows nothing about political education or proper citizenship. The
Athenians’ attempt at diffusing the authority to educate among the oikos, polis, and politeia has, in Plato’s
mind, produce a citizen body that lacks true knowledge.
132
Consequently, Plato reveals the illusory nature
of the democratic politeia in that it promises such ideals as equality before the law, free speech, and
freedom to do as one wishes yet engages in quasi-tyrannical behavior when frightened by the specter of
threats to its integrity.
A passive reliance on the behavior of other citizens and active participation in civic life thus does
not produce good citizens because the education they receive from it either fails to impart true knowledge
or teaches the wrong things entirely. Plato tries to show that this the failure of the Athenian system of
civic education with respect to punishment as well. Socrates’ elenchus of Meletus moves on to prove that
Meletus never actually cared about the youth in the first place. Meletus shows that he knows nothing of
the nature of wickedness and injustice because if he did, he would know that Socrates, if he does corrupt
the youth, does so unwillingly, and that this is no matter for the courts. Rather it is an opportunity to
educate. He who does wrong must be instructed privately in order to correct him, not punished publicly,
to deter others from the same action (26a). As scholars have shown, Plato believed punishment should
reform the wrongdoer and teach them what the “good” thing to do is.
133
Punishment as a simple deterrent
only teaches the wrongness of actions or behaviors on a case-by-case basis. And with such a large body of
potential educators—the laws, the jurors, the councilmembers, the Assemblymen, even the audience—

132
Ober 2001 shows that one of the central issues with Athenian civic education that Plato identifies is the lack of a
unitary vision of the good and a formal, systematic way of educating the citizenry in this idea of the good.
133
Allen 2000: 247; see also MacKenzie 1981 and Saunders 1991. On the unitary vision of the good in
philosophical education see Nightingale 2001.

73

agreement, cooperation, or reliability seem out of the realm of possibility.
134
The imprecise nature of the
democratic civic education causes its citizens not to teach explicitly what is right, but only to punish,
leaving the lesson of the punishment up to the interpretation of the spectators.
Plato’s criticism of the politeia and its educative mirage is further illustrated by Socrates’ own
political involvement in Athens. Andrea Nightingale has shown that a central feature of the Platonic
philosopher is their position “outside of the transactions of Athenian democracy” and that this is why
Plato admired Socrates as a philosopher.
135
Indeed, Socrates tells us he is entering court for the first time
(17d), a common topos of forensic oratory of this time, and admits that his discussion of his political role
in the city is typical of the lawcourts (32a). We can count on one hand the number of times Socrates
directly engaged in some kind of political activity, and he concedes that “it might seem absurd that I go
around and privately give advice and meddle, but I do not dare go into your assembly and advise the city”
(31c). This is because, he says, his daimon prevents him from taking part in public affairs because if
anyone who disagrees with the Athenian masses wishes to survive, he must keep his life private. And
herein lies the problem. Socrates’ daimon, which some in the city view as a new god not worshiped by the
Athenians, keeps him from engaging in democratic deliberation and indeed hinders others from
participating in democratic political activity because of Socrates’ advice and meddling in private affairs.
Moreover, he considers his occupation as a philosopher to be ordained by the god (23a). Evidently what
Socrates sees as legitimate authority is interpreted as anti-democratic political behavior by the rest of the
Athenians.
But more than a survival tactic, Socrates’ disinvolvement in politics also seems to stem from the
implicit and problematic educative role he would have to assume in doing so. He does this through a
summary of what seems to be the only substantive political action he ever took in his life. The first was
after the Battle of Arginusai in 406 BCE, when the Athenian fleet defeated the Spartans, but a storm

134
It should be noted, however, that the Athenians did in fact figure out a way to cooperate and agree on proper and
improper civic behaviors, as shown in Chapter 2.
135
Nightingale 1995: 42-43.

74

hindered efforts to recover the surviving Athenian sailors. Blame for who was responsible for this tragedy
was thrown around at Athens for quite some time until finally the Assembly voted to put all the generals
to death without trial. It just so happened that Socrates was the epistates for that Assembly and refused to
put the issue to vote, though his decision was overridden and the six generals who returned to Athens
were condemned to death without a legitimate trial. Later, when the Thirty were in power, Socrates was
tasked with arresting Leon of Salamis in order to execute him. Socrates, not fearing death, simply refused
and went home, unwilling to knowingly do wrong. He claims that had the regime not fallen shortly
thereafter he would have been executed as well. These anecdotes are mobilized as proof of the fact that
politics only spelled danger for him and for this reason he did not participate in them, though they
certainly do not help to dispel the charge that he was the teacher of oligarchs, despite his protests to the
contrary (33a-b). Nevertheless he scrutinizes the occasional viciousness of the democratic politeia and its
uncomfortable similarity to oligarchy. After his conviction, Socrates goes on to characterize his accusers
and the Athenian politeia in such oligarchic terms. He claims he was convicted because of his lack of the
characteristic boldness (τολμή) and shamelessness (ἀναισχυντία) of court speeches, qualities that typify
oligarchic characters, as we saw in Chapter 2 (38d). His accusers on the other hand, though they will
continue to live freely, are in the grips of their wickedness (39b: πονηρία, κακία, μοχθηρία). So if the
democratic education of the citizens of Athens leads them to act as unjustly as they did after Arginusai or
as they are acting in this trial, what prevents them from acting like the Thirty and descending into stasis
once more?
Such penetrating criticism of the Athenians and their informal civic education, the reopening of
the still-healing wounds of a newly restored democracy, unsurprisingly secured an indictment and a
punishment of the death penalty. Socrates does not seem to have been trying for acquittal anyways, but
rather But Socrates prophecies that the Athenians will soon feel the consequences of their misguided
attempts at education through capital punishment (39c-d): though the Athenians may have gotten rid of
him, they will still be subject to his way of education because his followers will be greater in number and
intensity. The Athenians, in their attempt at eliminating a threat to their political welfare, seem only to

75

have exacerbated the problem through their own system of civic education. Socrates will become a
paradeigma as his accusers wished, but not a deterrent one. Rather he will become a martyr and more and
more young men will follow his example, forcing the Athenians to submit to elenchos and become better
citizens whether they like it or not.

Crito
Following his trial, Socrates was held in a prison until the day of his execution. The annual ritual
voyage of a sea vessel to Delos caused a delay of about a month, but the ship was set to arrive at Sounion
soon so Socrates’ loyal friend Crito decided to make one last attempt to convince Socrates to flee from
Athens instead of facing his execution. Socrates awakes from a prophetic dream to find Crito waiting to
help him break out of prison. But Socrates is committed to following the judgment of the city and die at
the hands of the state. The issue of democratic authority becomes strikingly immediate in this dialogue as
Plato seeks to locate in law a source of legitimate epistemic authority.
Many scholars have remarked upon the inconsistency in thought and ethical commitments
between the Apology and the Crito.
136
Where in the Apology Socrates was highly critical and at times
hostile to his accusers, the jurors, and the nature of Athenian legal procedure itself, in the Crito he feels
obligated to honor the decision that resulted from the trial. Peter Euben has rightly shown that the
inconsistencies reveal how Socratic philosophy is grounded in popular Athenian political discourse and
leadership and that “it is only among his fellow citizens and within the laws they share that philosophy
has any prospect of having a voice in the world.”
137
Socrates’ presence (physical or otherwise) as a

136
A. D. Woozley, "Socrates on Disobeying the Law," in The Philosophy of Socrates, edited by Gregory Vlastos
(Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1971), 299-318; Gregory Vlastos, "Socrates on Political Obedience," in The
Yale Review, Summer, 1974, pp. 517-534.; Gary Young, "Socrates and Obedience," Phronesis, pp. 1-29. See Euben
1978 and Stephens 1985 for critiques of these. Euben argues that the inconsistency between the two works should
not be resolved because the questions that arise from it reveal the close relationship of philosophy and politics
(though in the process he seems nevertheless to tend toward resolving the inconsistency himself). Stephens argues
that there is simply not enough evidence from the Apology and Crito to resolve the inconsistencies present in the
two.
137
Euben 1978: 164. See also Euben 1997, though his depiction of Socrates’ relationship to democracy at times
seems to present a somewhat idealized image of democratic discourse and make assumptions and arguments that
would not necessarily apply to the 4th century Athenian context.

76

philosopher in the city of Athens is a sufficient and necessary condition, as it were, for the functioning of
Socratic philosophy. But I do not think that resolving these inconsistencies is out of the question. Josiah
Ober rightly argues that, in terms of his ethical commitments, Socrates was in fact able to resolve the
apparent inconsistency between these two dialogues in that he chose to obey an unjust verdict because
doing so upheld the ancestral, procedural laws which led to the making of the decision.
138
Viewed in
terms of Plato’s project of reforming civic education and his interest in achieving political stability, the
Crito is consistent with both the Apology and the Euthyphro in their attempt to consolidate the authority
to educate in Athens. So far I have argued that in the Euthyphro, Plato criticizes the authority of the oikos
as a fundamental element of civic life because of its inherent instability and therefore the instability it
causes in the city. Likewise, in the Apology he displays the contradictions and weaknesses of the Athenian
democratic civic education through the courts because it endows the citizenry with power without
teaching them how to use it. In the Crito we are left with one final element: the polis, the only element
which Plato might see fit to appropriate for the political education of the citizenry. This dialogue can thus
be read as Plato’s attempt at salvaging what he can from democracy to offer a solution to the problem of
educating its citizens. The Crito attempts to present law as a legitimate source of authority, but if the
Athenians are not educated, they cannot use it justly.
But why and how do the laws possess such authority? Plato does not say explicitly. But if we
look to Socrates’ imaginary elenchus with the Laws we can see that Plato grounds their authority in
recognizable hierarchies. There seems to be an aprioristic assumption that the laws of Athens are
separable from the rest of political life and thus not prone to the vices and imperfections of the family unit
and constitution.

138
Ober 2005, chp. 7 (“Socrates in Athens”). Weiss 1997 attempts to resolve the issue of obedience to the laws by
arguing that the speech of the Laws in the Crito is not meant to persuade the reader but Crito himself in language
that he, as a member of the masses, would understand, as he is unable to understand Socrates’ values. For more
arguments along this line and against it see Hatzistavrou 2013. In my view, Crito’s arguments against Socrates’
commitment to honoring his punishment is not indicative of an inability to understand Socratic values but an
unwillingness to go against his own and adopt Socrates’.

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If we look to the historical circumstances of the early 4th century we might get a sense of why
Plato chose to personify law as a philosophical interlocutor in the Crito. At the same time as Socrates’
trial, a significant, ten-year-long revision of the laws of Athens—interrupted by the destruction of some of
these laws by the Thirty—had just come to an end. The codification of the laws was at times contentious,
and there were fears that those in charge of the codification would use their position of power to their
advantage and overthrow the democracy once more.
139
In any case, the codification of the laws fashioned
the demos into a group of legislators itself.
140
The law code revision involved the formation of a process
for introducing laws (νόμοι) whereby an ad hoc board of nomothetai (somewhere between 501 and 1501
citizens chosen from those who have sworn the Heliastic oath) received a proposed νόμος, submitted it to
scrutiny by trial, and then voted to ratify it or not. The proposed law was posted on the Monument of the
Eponymous Heroes in the Agora, opening the process up to any citizen who wished to be involved before
it was scrutinized. The Assembly did not have a function in the ratification process, but it was responsible
for voting to revise the law code in the first place, debating the law, and arranging the board of
nomothetai. The Assembly did have some legislative power, however, in that it could propose and vote on
ψηφίσματα (decrees) which had the force of law in most cases but were created more quickly than νόμοι
and could also be challenged or nullified more easily. This is all to say that by the time Plato was writing
the Crito, the law (both νόμοι and ψηφίσματα) had been radically democratized.
141

No Athenian would disagree with Plato that the laws of the city are authoritative.
142
But Plato I
suggest that the inconsistency that scholars have identified in these dialogues is grounded not just in
Socrates’ stance toward obeying the decision of the court and the laws, but Plato’s conceptualization of

139
Lysias 30 is a prosecution from the late 400s of the anagrapheus Nicomachus, who managed the codification
project, accusing him of tampering with the sacred calendar and overstepping his bounds with respect to which laws
he was allowed to revise. The argument that he was exhibiting oligarchic behavior seems not to have been very
effective, as he was allowed to carry on with his work until it was done in 399.
140
For the legislative process and law code revision see Hansen 1991: 161-177, Todd 1993: 77-147, Canevaro 2015,
2016.
141
Orators would occasionally call on the jury to act like legislators in cases where the law was either unclear or ran
contrary to what the speaker thought the law should be. Cf. Lys 10 (with Wohl 2010:301-308), Lyc. 1.9.
142
For the authority of law in archaic Greece see Gagarin 2003b, 2008; some scholars (e.g. Ostwald 1986, Harris
199?, 2013) believe that Athens operated under the “rule of law”, but it is clear from the legislative process that the
law was subordinate to the demos in certain situations. See Lanni 2006: 2 for criticisms of this position.

78

the authority of the state itself as separate from the constitution. The personified Laws in the Crito
subordinate whatever authority the oikos or polteia might have.
143
The laws that underwent revision
during the codification process—especially those which punish for punishment’s sake—are part and
parcel of the politeia and are reflective of the demos’ tendency to “inflict things haphazardly” (44d). But
the Laws of the Crito, which are put in equal standing with the πόλις and the πατρίς (e.g., 50d, 51a) and
superior to their citizens, instruct rather than punish and are concerned with the ethical and moral
education of the citizenry. Thus Plato posits the law as an authoritative institution of civic education and
means for political stability, while individual autonomy is suppressed for the greater good.
The elenchoi between Crito and Socrates, on one hand, and Socrates and the Laws, on the other,
develops the tension between authoritarian education and individual autonomy. As with the other
dialogues I have analyzed so far, Socrates’ interlocutor represents the cultural and political ideas of the
masses.
144
Crito thus forwards several conventional arguments in favor of Socrates’ escape from prison:
that Socrates’ death will harm Socrates’ friends and their reputations (44b-c, 45e-46a); that there is
sufficient money to help him escape (45a-b); that it is unjust to allow his enemies to win (45c); and that
Socrates is betraying his sons by refusing to raise and educate them (45d). Through a short elenchos
Socrates and Crito arrive at the conclusion that the opinions of the many should be disregarded and that
the threat of death should not deter them because what matters only is living the good life (48b-d). We
must admit that Crito’s arguments make sense
As for the rest of Crito’s claims, Socrates dismisses them as mere opinions of the many as well
(48c). Of these, however, the raising and education (trophe kai paideia) of children is a stickier issue than
Socrates lets on at first. This phrase appears several times throughout this dialogue in its substantive or

143
It is probably not coincidental that the specific genre of laws that appears most prominently in the Crito are those
concerning marriage and family. Lape 2002 argues convincingly that Solon’s family legislation was an early step
toward a democratic polis, which shows further that Plato was working within the democratic system and not
entirely against it. He will, of course, go on to revise this attitude toward the family structure of the ideal polis in the
Republic but restore it in the less-than-perfect city of the Laws.
144
Beversluis 2000 argues that interlocutors do not exist simply to profess wrong ideas but offer legitimate criticism
of Socrates’ arguments: “Socrates' arguments are not only criticized by his interlocutors; they often warrant criticism
and are criticized for exactly the right reasons” (6).

79

verbal forms.
145
But despite the perplexing rejection of Socrates own family, the Laws echo this verbiage
of Crito and the masses. The speech of the Laws in fact highlights the importance of a parental structure
in raising and educating good, law-abiding citizens:
φέρε γάρ, τί ἐγκαλῶν ἡμῖν καὶ τῇ πόλει ἐπιχειρεῖς ἡμᾶς ἀπολλύναι; οὐ πρῶτον μέν σε
ἐγεννήσαμεν ἡμεῖς, καὶ δι᾽ ἡμῶν ἔλαβε τὴν μητέρα σου ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ἐφύτευσέν σε;
φράσον οὖν, τούτοις ἡμῶν, τοῖς νόμοις τοῖς περὶ τοὺς γάμους, μέμφῃ τι ὡς οὐ καλῶς
ἔχουσιν;’ ‘οὐ μέμφομαι,’ φαίην ἄν. ‘ἀλλὰ τοῖς περὶ τὴν τοῦ γενομένου τροφήν τε καὶ
παιδείαν ἐν ᾗ καὶ σὺ ἐπαιδεύθης; ἢ οὐ καλῶς προσέταττον ἡμῶν οἱ ἐπὶ τούτῳ τεταγμένοι
νόμοι, παραγγέλλοντες τῷ πατρὶ τῷ σῷ σε ἐν μουσικῇ καὶ γυμναστικῇ παιδεύειν;’
‘καλῶς,’ φαίην ἄν. ‘εἶεν. ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἐγένου τε καὶ ἐξετράφης καὶ ἐπαιδεύθης, ἔχοις ἂν
εἰπεῖν πρῶτον μὲν ὡς οὐχὶ ἡμέτερος ἦσθα καὶ ἔκγονος καὶ δοῦλος, αὐτός τε καὶ οἱ σοὶ
πρόγονοι; (50d-e)

‘So come on, what complaint do you have against us and the city such that you try to
destroy us? Did we not first birth you, and through us did your father not marry your
mother and beget you? Tell us then, do you blame those of us who are concerned with
marriage for doing something wrong?’ ‘I do not,’ I would say.” ‘What about those of us
concerned with the raising of babies and their education, by which you yourself were
educated? Or were those of us laws assigned to that task not in our right place when we
ordered your father to educate you in music and physical education?’ ‘You were right,’ I
would say.” ‘So be it. And when you were born and raised and educated, would you be
able to say first that you were not our offspring and slave, both you and your ancestors?’”

145
In the Crito, the pairing appears 9 times: 45d (ἐκθρέψαι καὶ ἐκπαιδεῦσαι; τρέφοντα καὶ παιδεύοντα), 48c (παίδων
τροφῆς), 50d (τροφήν τε καὶ παιδείαν), 50e (ἐξετράφης καὶ ἐπαιδεύθης), 51c (ἐκθρέψαντες, παιδεύσαντες), 54a
(ἐκθρέψῃς καὶ παιδεύσῃς; θρέψεις τε καὶ παιδεύσεις; θρέψονται καὶ παιδεύσονται).

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The Laws identification of Socrates’ disobedience with the destruction of the city speaks to the
construction of authority that they assert in the passage. Roslyn Weiss observes that the Laws model the
city-citizen relationship on the inherently unequal relationships of households in order to have grounds for
their orders.
146
In other words, the Laws exert authoritarian control over the citizenry. They make it clear
that it is not the parents themselves who do the real work of trophe kai paideia. They are just vehicles for
what the Laws command. All parents and all children had to be educated by the same ancestral laws by
obeying commands, thus assimilating the relationship of law/citizen to that of god/human, parent/child,
and master/slave, just as it appears in the Euthyphro. The conflict that characterizes the family unit cannot
be allowed between the Laws and their children, so it is incumbent on Socrates to obey them. When
Meletus accused Socrates to the city as if tattling on him to their mother, he upset this family dynamic,
but when the city-mother rendered her judgment, it was up to Socrates not to do wrong to her by obeying
the Laws.
Thus it is the Laws that provide the stabilizing force in the city and an authority that demands
obedience based on natural hierarchies of the household that parallel artificial political ones. The Laws
are not necessarily tyrannical, however. They say that anyone who does not like them can leave when
they achieve voting age, but anyone who stays has implicitly consented to carrying out their orders. The
blame for wrongdoing falls on the citizen rather than the Laws if something causes the citizen not to abide
by their agreement because, if the Laws do something wrong, the citizen can try to “persuade them to do
better” (51e-52a). But since the Laws have subordinated the citizen to the polis as if a slave to their
master (50e), it is difficult to see how that is possible.
147
Indeed, the Laws claim that, at least in Socrates’

146
Weiss 1998: 101. Cf. Humphreys 1993: 1-21. Kraut 1984: 105-108 sees the master-slave analogy in terms of
violence, i.e. a master can inflict violence on a slave and suffer nothing in return; so can a city inflict violence on a
citizen and suffer nothing in return.
147
Weiss (1998: 104) interprets “persuasion” here as “entreat the fatherland by way of flattery and fawning
in the hope of prevailing upon it either not to reach an unwelcome decision or to reverse that decision before it is too
late.” Garver 2012 sees the Crito as a text of failed persuasions. For the “persuade or obey” issue here and in the
Apology, see Kraut 1984, ch. 3; Penner 1997.

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case, they have done everything right: “desire to know another city or laws has never taken you; we and
our city have satisfied you” (52b-c).
Socrates’ imaginary Laws present an Athens ruled by a body of laws that can turn its citizens
toward virtue and thus toward a politically stable polis. If Socrates were to escape from prison, this
fantasy could never become reality because Socratic philosophy depends on its Athenian context; it
simply would not be the same, or may not be able to exist, outside of this environment, leaving Socrates
no choice but to die in the city he loved so much. The Laws tell him that if he were to take his children to
Thessaly, they would receive a trophe kai paideia substantially different from that of Athens, but if he
stays, his friends will see to it that they are raised just as Socrates was (54a). To an outsider, such as Crito,
Socrates’ commitment to the Laws and his philosophy seems like madness, and indeed Socrates frames it
in such terms: “My dear friend Crito, you should know well that these are the words I seem to hear, like
Corybants seem to hear the sound of flutes” (54d). All he hears are the Laws and the call to the
philosophical life. Nothing can change Socrates’ mind as he has given himself to the authority of the
Laws.

Conclusion
In this chapter I demonstrated how Plato’s early dialogues worked within and challenged the
popular Athenian system of civic education based on the dynamic system of oikos, politeia, and polis.
The dramatic dates of these dialogues place them at the early stages of the negotiation of civic values that
I show in Chapter 2. Though many scholars have seen Plato as an anti-democratic, apolitical dissident, I
hope to have shown clearly just how enmeshed he was in democratic culture and how it shaped his
thought. His criticism of the oikos in the Euthyphro ties into a long tradition of the mythologizing and
discussion around conflict in the home and its parallel relationship to political unrest.
148
At the same time,

148
Strauss 1995.

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it is not exactly representative of the reality of Athenian democracy, as the oikos was, despite Plato’s
objections, a valued and productive part of Athenian political life.
149

The Socratic defiance of traditional Athenian values did not fall on deaf ears as seen in the
Apology. Socrates brought to light real issues about the nature of democracy and its inchoate form that, in
some cases, still resembled oligarchy. The narrow margin by which he was condemned attests to the fact
that the Athenians were not all single-minded about such issues. The problems Socrates and Plato
perceived in the Athenian system of civic education were likely recognized by other non-philosophers in
the city as well. That Plato develops a political and educational philosophy around the events of 399 BCE
shows the extent to which he was embedded in the historical moment to which our other sources from this
period also respond in their own way. They each brought certain challenges to the prevailing structures of
Athenian civic life toward the same end of achieving political stability. And it would seem that such
challenges to the status quo did have some effect on the later development of the Athenian democracy.
150

Finally, the Crito offered a tentative solution to the criticisms Plato posed. The preeminence of
the laws in the city would, in theory, create a citizenry well-educated in the virtues necessary for political
stability through its authoritarian control over the inhabitants of Athens. But this would require the
collapsing of the oikos and the polis supported by the consent of the people to a single, authoritative
source for education. The Laws would take precedence and instruct the citizens in good citizen behavior
as parents would instruct their children. Plato appropriates the family model and applies it to the state to
suggest that offspring of the citizens of Athens are in essence offspring of the Laws and under its
authority. Thus he is able to argue for the priority of the law in matters of civic education because it
provides a centralized educational authority that Athens is lacking.
As we will see in Chapter 4, Plato was part of a philosophical trend in trying to establish a
centralized authority for civic education in Athens. The criticisms presented in these dialogues would, by
the end of his career, evolve into an argument for a positively authoritarian approach to civic education.

149
Patterson 1998, chp. 3.
150
See Ober 2001 and the developments traced in Chapter 4 and 6 of this dissertation.

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As the democracy’s relationship to authority changed as a response to shifting hegemonies in the 380s
and 370s, Plato refined his approach to the issue of educational authority. In both the Republic and the
Laws, he turns the criticisms of the authority of the oikos, politeia, and polis in these early dialogues into
complex thought experiments about the ideal political organization and political character type that would
lead to the greatest happiness for all citizens.

84

Chapter 4: The Authoritarian Turn
In this chapter I discuss what I am calling the “authoritarian turn” in theories and practices of
civic education in 4th century Athens. The first couple of decades of the 4th century in Athens saw a
revival of the imperialist attitudes of the 5th century, as well as new ways of expressing authority in the
domestic, political domain. Yet the general attitudes toward civic education remained more or less the
same. Athenian democratic ideology precluded the existence of professional teachers as the authority to
educate was diffused among the city, the family, and the democratic politeia. So instead of individuals
being vested with knowledge and intellectual authority over others, it was the demos, or one’s parents, or
the very act of performing citizenship that educated the citizens of Athens in political matters.
Though this was the prevailing stance toward educators at this time, there was strong opposition
from some corners of the citizenry. Most famously Plato and the Socratics criticized the Athenians for
their rejection of proper education and their senseless execution of Socrates. As we saw in Chapter 3,
even in his early dialogues, Plato took the issue of civic education as one of his primary motivations for
his entire philosophical project. He argued vigorously that investing power over knowledge in the family,
city, and constitution would only lead to the perdition of the citizenry and societal collapse. Athens
needed wise teachers to inculcate true civic values that would lead to political harmony.
But Plato was not the first, or only, philosopher to take up this issue in their work. Isocrates, who
had spent his early career as a logographer, began developing a philosophy of his own that emerged from
his concern for the political education of the Athenian citizenry. As we will see, Isocrates and Plato had
similar aims despite their different styles of philosophy. Chief among their objectives was to find a way to
centralize the authority to educate and remove it from what they perceived to be the ignorant masses and
their suboptimal political regime. Rather than radical democracy, they both (along with Xenophon and
Aristotle) envisioned the ideal polity as being led by an enlightened authoritarian source of power—be
that a dynastic monarch advised by a philosopher, a philosopher-king, or an authoritative law code.
Using Isocrates and Plato as case studies, this chapter argues that the philosophers were primarily
concerned with the question of authority and that this concern arose because of the historical environment

85

of the first half of the 4th century. As Athens tried to rebuild her empire, questions of political power,
tyranny, monarchy, and civic education all came to the fore.

Athens and Other Authoritarian Regimes
It was in international affairs that the authoritarian characteristics of Athenian democracy became
especially evident. Though the Athenians implemented several measures to prevent their constitution
from falling into tyranny,
151
as a ruling body the demos did have a certain affinity for autocratic regimes
and a seemingly irrepressible desire for empire.
152
With their defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the
ensuing stasis brought on by the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, Athens was brought to an unprecedented low
in their influence among the Greek poleis. Sparta, on the other hand, was achieving hegemony in Greece
for the first time in their history. The Athenians renewed their conflict with Sparta in the Corinthian War
(395/4-387/6), which was settled with a peace brokered by Persia in 387. The Persians had initially sided
with Athens in this conflict after seeing Sparta’s power grow too great, but after the Athenian general
Thrasybulus began capturing the cities on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, switched their support to
Sparta. This peace agreement, known as the “Peace of Antalcidas” or (more commonly) the “King’s
Peace”, was largely unpopular among many Greek city-states, as it placed the cities that had been
captured by Thrasybulus back under Persian control. Most of the islands were granted autonomy, except
for Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which remained under Athenian control. The joint political body of
Argos and Corinth was ended and the Theban-led Boeotian League was dissolved. Sparta maintained
their helots and Peloponnesian League and further strengthened their hegemony over the Aegean now that
they were backed by Persian military and financial power.

151
The Demophantus decree (410/09 BCE) and Law of Eukrates (337/6 BCE) were two laws that allowed any
citizen to kill someone attempting to overthrow the democracy with impunity. For anti-tyranny measures in Athens
and elsewhere see Teegarden 2014.
152
Funke 1980 has argued that the Second Athenian League emerged from a community-wide agreement (as he
interprets homonoia) about the need for a naval empire, though there is no reason to expect everyone in Athens to
have agreed with imperialist policies, and at least two, Isocrates and Xenophon, were outspoken against it.

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Never the sort to sit still for long, the Athenians once again began to contest Spartan hegemony.
The Athenians were afforded ample time and freedom to recover from the setbacks of the King’s Peace
thanks to the political turbulence in the rest of Greece in the decades following the Corinthian War. In
central Greece, the Spartans were interfering in Theban politics and had established there an oligarchic
government supported by a garrison on the Theban Cadmeia after the Spartan general Phoebidas had
captured it and put their leaders to death. In the north, the Chalcidian League of northern Greece, led by
Olynthus, was broken up as being in violation of the King’s Peace. The Macedonian king Amyntas III,
who had cultivated alliances with the Chalcidian League, the Athenians, Jason of Pherae, and the
Thracians, was also allied with Sparta, and the two destroyed Olynthus in 379, conclusively eliminating
the Chalcidian League’s threat to Sparta and Macedonia. In the Peloponnese, Sparta disbanded the
growing city of Mantinea into its constituent villages. In short, the King’s Peace brought about all but
peace; Sparta pursued an exceedingly aggressive policy toward anyone who stood against them, while the
Athenians gathered resources and allies as the dust settled.
In the 380s the Athenians formed a number of alliances in order to counter Spartan power, which
betray a shift in attitude toward authority. These alliances would grow into the Second Athenian League,
formally established in 378 BCE. The foundation of the Second Athenian League instantiated the moment
when the Athenians began more fully to realize the authoritarian qualities of their democracy and how
this differed from the empire that was “in reality a tyranny”, by Pericles’ (or Thucydides’) estimation.
153

Importantly, they reworked the ideological and practical representation of the Second Athenian League so
that the demos would not appear tyrannical like in the Delian League. Rather it was, on the one hand, the
leader of a free alliance of poleis in the Aegean and, on the other, an authoritarian leader of equal standing
with the kings, tyrants, and despots of the Mediterranean (Persia excluded). The charter of the Second
Athenian League was developed in the 380s, authorized in 378 BCE, and set in stone a year later. The
League was formed ostensibly as a defense against Spartan hegemony and Persian meddling: in the first

153
Thuc. 2. 63.2; cf. 3.37.2 and 6.85.1, Ar. Eq. 1111-1114; Gomme HCT p. 175

87

few lines of the decree it is stated that the league is formed “so that the Spartans allow the Greeks to live
in peace free and autonomous” (lines 9-11). Beneath this phrase was probably a reference to the Peace of
Antalcidas which had been erased.
154
The stele was inscribed on all sides, with the names of member
states added as they joined the alliance, and it erected in the Agora near the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, by
the statues of Conon and Evagoras. Harmodius and Aristogeiton stood nearby as well. The totality of
these elements reveals how much the Athenians were investing the authority of their democratic regime.
This league was dedicated to the freedom of the Greeks, from Spartan hegemony, yet the majority of the
member states were islands who were unlikely to face a serious threat from the Spartans at this point
(though we cannot discount fear of the Persians in addition). Moreover, members of the league were
added through ad hoc treaties, not coercion, and the alliance forbade Athenians from farming or settling
any land in allied territories, thus hindering the advance of any kind of tyrannical policies that plagued the
Delian League.
The attitudes in Athens towards authority were evidently changing. In moving away from their
use of coercion and violence in maintaining their military alliance, the Athenian demos began to rely on a
legitimacy akin to that of authoritarian rulers around the Mediterranean. Literary and epigraphic evidence
shows that the Athenians had an increased interest in these rulers from the 390s to the 360s and devoted
much effort to currying favor with them. Dionysius I of Syracuse and his sons,
155
Evagoras of Cyprus,
156

Seuthes II and Hebryzelmis of Odrysian Thrace,
157
Strato of Sidon,
158
Amyntas III and Alexander II of
Macedon,
159
and Jason of Pherae
160
all came into alliances with Athens at some point in this period
(though not all lasted very long). These negotiations were headed by many of those who reestablished the

154
Cawkwell 1973 and Cargill 1981 were both skeptical of this restoration, but see commentary in RO 22 for recent
work that proves the restored readings.
155
IG II
2
18 (GHI II 10 with commentary), 103, and 105; Plato, Ep. 7; Isoc. 5, Ep. 1
156
IG II
2
20 (GHI II 11 with commentary); Isoc. 2, 3, 9.
157
IG II 21 and 31, respectively.
158
RO 21 (IG II
2
141, GHI II 21 with commentary).
159
IG II
2
102.
160
Isoc. Ep. 6, Xen. Hell. 6.1.1-19.

88

democracy after the fall of the Thirty, such as Thrasybulus.
161
Alfonso Moreno has suggested that the
alliances with Evagoras, Dionysius and his sons, and the Thracian kings may have been motivated
primarily by the need to secure the grain supply.
162
But these alliances were usually formed by a
combination of formal treaties and honorific decrees that had deeper ideological underpinnings. Rather
than treat these autocratic leaders as inherently different and unwelcome to the democratic way of life in
Athens, they absorb them into the democratic framework both with the grant of Athenian citizenship and
the involvement in the reciprocal relationship between benefactor and city, which ultimately subordinates
the benefactor to the power of the collective demos (see Chapter 5).
The variability in nomenclature for the autocratic rulers in Athenian inscriptions attests to an
openness on the part of the Athenians toward non-democratic rulers. It is conventionally thought that the
Athenians could not stand the thought of a king (basileus) in their midst, much less honor one; and though
this may be true of those they considered tyrants (tyrannoi), the epigraphic and literary evidence suggests
that, at least in the early 4th century, does not show any shyness about treating with kings. In an honorific
inscription from 393 (IG I
3
113), Evagoras of Salamis is referred to basileus, apparently as a way to
appease him.
163
Hebryzelmis of Odrisian Thrace is also called basileus (IG II
2
31), as is Strato of Sidon
(RO 21 ll. 3, 23, 27). Other autocratic rulers, such as Amyntas III and Alexander II of Macedon; the
Thracian rulers Cetriporis,
164
Cersobleptes, Berisades, and Amadocus;
165
Grabus of Illyria and Lyppeus of
Paeonia;
166
and the Spartokid dynasts of the Cimmerian Bosporus
167
are not referred to by any titles at all
in inscriptions.
168

161
For Thrasybulus’ contribution to the Athenian imperial ambitions see Xen. 4.8.25 and Lys. 28 with Strauss 1986:
92-93 and Cawkwell 1976 “The Imperialism of Thrasybulus”.
162
Moreno 2007: 303.
163
Moreno 2007: 303-304 on the Bosporan kings; Evagoras: Lewis and Stroud 1979: 188, Domingo Gygax 2016:
196, RO 11.
164
RO 53.
165
RO 47.
166
RO 53.
167
RO 64.
168
Most of these inscriptions also bore reliefs, a few of which are still reasonably intact. More often than not, Athens
is represented by Athena, who is normally depicted slightly larger than the honorand or people with whom the
alliance is made. An unusual departure from this custom occurs in the relief for Spartokos and Paerisades (IG II
2

212/RO 64, see Lawton 35 for relief) which depicts only the honorands in relief without any representative of

89

It is likely that the inconsistency in these documents is due in part to the preference of the ruler
and how he wished to be named, as scholars have suggested. The Spartokids, Thracians, Illyrians, and
Paenonians from the 350s and later may have wanted to avoid being called king so as not to be associated
with the basileus Philip II, who was systematically conquering their territories and encroaching on
Athenian ones. Dionysius I of Syracuse and his dynasty present an especially interesting case, not in the
least because of his relationship with Athens. Lewis and Stroud (1971: 188) remark Dionysius “certainly
never bore that title [of king].” A tyrant by most accounts, he is called an archon at least twice in
inscribed documents (IG II
2
103.19-20; IG II
2
105.8), but he is referred to as both a king and tyrant in the
Lysianic corpus. At [Lys.] 6.6 Dionysius is counted among the kings (βασιλέας) whom Andocides visited
in exile, though Dionysius was unaffected by his flattery. This speech was likely delivered in 399 on the
occasion of Andocides’ On the Mysteries (see Chapter 2), at a time when Sicily had yet to form any solid
alliances with anyone in mainland Greece. In Lysias’ Olympic Speech (33.5) Dionysius I is called ὁ
τύραννος τῆς Σικελίας, with some note of contempt, being grouped in with the Great King of Persia as
powerful naval allies of Sparta at the time of the delivery of this speech in 388. Despite such apparent
disdain for the Syracusan ruler the Athenians would eventually succeed in pulling Dionysius’ support
away from Sparta. Whatever the case may be for their nomenclature of tyrants, kings, and other autocratic
rulers, the Athenians clearly saw their democracy as being on par with authoritarian regimes and the
demos itself as having equal or even superior standing to authoritarian rulers.
169

Philosophy as a Response to a Crisis of Education
After the execution of Socrates, the first schools of philosophy began to emerge in Athens. The
earliest we know of was opened around 394 BCE by Antisthenes, a Socratic about whom we know little

Athens. It is plausible that some Athenian element could have been painted into the background but as since
disappeared. As Lawton (1995: 98) observes, this relief bears more resemblance to that of a funerary stele than to
other state-issued documents.
169
Later in the 4th century, those who would have been considered kings were not called basileis, perhaps because
of Philip II’s incursions into Athenian territory as king of Macedon.

90

besides fragments and testimonia from other philosophers.
170
Not long afterward, around 391/0, Isocrates
opened his school which aimed to train his students in philosophy, a course of study which would
produce citizens and leaders who can make the best decisions for their cities. A few years later Plato
founded his Academy, which was decidedly less oriented toward addressing immediate political troubles
and more concerned with headier metaphysical topics. Each of these schools, disparate as they were in
their methods and aims, developed out of a need for a higher epistemic authority than the Athenian demos
allowed. In the aftermath of the civil war against the Thirty and in the face of the newly restored
democracy’s backsliding into their old imperial ways, these philosophers responded to the need for more
effective civic education to keep the city from collapsing into stasis once more. The demos exercised an
authority over education that was exclusionary toward political outsiders (Sophists, philosophers, etc.)
171

and broadly inclusive of the totality of civic life (e.g., the family, the laws, the behaviors of other citizens,
public discourse, etc.). The philosophers’ solution was to centralize the diffuse authority of the democracy
into a single (or at least limited and well educated) body that would effectively prescribe proper civic
values and behaviors in a way that the demos had not done so far.
Isocrates’ use of the term philosophia has historically been overshadowed by Plato’s own
appropriation of the term. Scholars have defined Isocratean philosophy variously as referring to
rhetoric,
172
culture,
173
education in general,
174
politics,
175
or philosophy as qualitatively distinct from the
Platonic conception.
176
The difficulty in defining Isocratean philosophy stems in part from its
entanglement in the philosophy/rhetoric dichotomy developed in Plato’s Gorgias, which has forced
Isocrates into an artificial dichotomy of Plato’s making.
177
But above all, Isocrates’ idea of philosophy is

170
These are collected in Decleva Caizzi 1966. See further Moore 2019: 197-203.
171
For the ways the Plato and Isocrates presented this issue see Morgan 2004 and 2007, who argues that the “polis-
education” taught its citizens to reject the philosophers.
172
Too 1995, 1998, 2010; Jarratt 1969, 105; Benoit 1990, 251; Guthrie 1975: 309; Clarke 1971; de Romilly 1975:
56; Poulakos 1993: 36; Morrison 1958: 217
173
Jaeger 1943, Forster 1979; Nash, Kazamias, and Perkinson 1965: 62; Freeman 1907
174
Moore 2019,; Marrou 1948
175
Kennedy 1994: 43-44; Jebb 1962
176
Nightingale 1995, Timmerman 1998; Muir 2015, 2018;
177
Cf. Balla (2004: 53): “the distinction between philosophy and oratory seems to be the product rather than the
cause of the opposition.”

91

both elusive and expansive. It is not limited to any one of the above definitions, but encompasses all of
them.
178
David Timmerman has provided a more capacious definition to this effect: “ Isocrates'
philosophia includes cultivation of the mind, use of logos, education, practical wisdom, and morality.” To
these features of Isocrates’ philosophy, I will add one that has not received much attention as a core
tenant: the development of “character”. The morality and character driven aspect of Isocratean philosophy
is seen as a “byproduct” (so Timmerman 1998: 157) of his educational program. But I will argue that the
development of character (tropoi/ethos) is of central importance because it determines the success of his
program of civic education. Only through the enduring qualities of virtue, moderation, goodwill, justice,
fair-mindedness, and gentleness can a citizen live a good life and possess the authority to educate others
in good citizenship.
Isocrates’ ideas have received some scholarly attention, though much remains to be done in the
way of Isocrates’ program of civic education, its philosophical trappings, and how it might be
practiced.
179
My aim in this chapter is to begin a more systematic analysis of Isocratean civic education
and philosophy through a study of its basic principles and how he globalizes those principles to civic
activity and government through (and in spite of) rhetoric. Isocrates aimed to cultivate cooperative, pro-
social character traits (tropoi) among citizens that would lead to political stability and, ultimately,
happiness. This was to be done through a centralized education system that adapted virtues taken from
authoritarian models of civic virtue onto the paradigmatic model of democratic civic education.
Consequently, each citizen educated in the virtues that Isocrates thought best for a citizen could act as
teachers of others simply by virtue of being active in public life, all of whom base their authority to
educate in a central, authoritative teacher, i.e., Isocrates and/or an authoritarian ruler (or analog, such as

178
Livingstone 2017 identifies three (ultimately four) different kinds of philosophia in Isocrates works, though his
classifications, he admits, are “overly schematic” (pg. 26). Nevertheless his article demonstrates the need for
179
A volume called Isocrates on Civic Education (2004, Depew and T. Poulakos, eds.) assembled valuable
contributions by some leading scholars of 4th century Athens. But it falls short on a number of important aspects of
Isocratean civic education, especially with respect to its participation in his broader philosophical project. Robert
Sullivan’s (2006) review of the book captures the major issues succinctly. Among other areas for improvement, he
highlights that “all of these contributions are very good at outlining Isocrates’ civic education project at a high level
of generality. However, most are less clear in specifying how this could be accomplished at the local pedagogical
level.”

92

the Areopagus). This “authoritarian-distributive” model of civic education, as I will call it, is the hallmark
of Isocratean civic education. Under this model, the enlightened ruler (or ruling body), advised by a
philosopher such as Isocrates, inculcates good civic values and characteristics (tropoi) in their subjects.
The ruler must have a nature (physis) conducive to good leadership, high intellect, and rhetorical talent,
upon which tropoi build a virtuous moral character that acts as a model for the ruled. In a democratic
setting, the philosopher takes the place of the ruler, and these civic virtues are distributed by himself and
his students through the use of highly refined rhetoric. In both cases, the model relies on a source of
political power and epistemic authority in order to educate others. In what follows I will more fully
develop Isocrates’ philosophy of human nature and how it pertains to politics and education.

Some First Principles of Isocrates’ philosophia

In order to get a full picture of Isocrates’ theory of civic education, we must first investigate some
fundamental principles of his moral philosophy and theories of education and rhetoric. Isocrates’
philosophical doctrine is never fully expressed in a single work and must be pieced together by drawing
from his entire corpus. Furthermore, it is often bound up in his disputes with other intellectuals in Athens
as well as his own theories about individual facets of his philosophy, especially education and politics,
which are themselves intimately related. Nevertheless, it is possible to deduce some basic tenets of his
doctrine. I will focus here on three foundational principles of his system of civic education: nature
(physis) and character (tropoi/ethos). By distilling from the vast constellation of his corpus the
fundamental elements of his philosophia, it will become clear that he does not identify it as “rhetoric”, as
most scholars assume. Rather rhetoric is a pedagogical tool, like dialectic, and what Isocrates believed to
be the most effective means of promulgating his philosophy.

Physis

93

In Against the Sophists, which was probably published around the time he opened his school in
the late 390s, Isocrates attempts to set himself apart from his rivals in the field of education whom he calls
“Sophists”, which presumably includes both the itinerant teachers we know as Sophists and intellectuals
from the “eristic” schools, such as the Socratic Antisthenes and the Megarian Eucleides.
180
He complains
that they have bad reputations because they make promises about education that they cannot keep, and
that they act like boastful characters in comic plays (ἀλαζονεύεσθαι, 13.1). They are hypocritical,
untrustworthy, tell lies, and are essentially ineffectual as teachers because they ignore what Isocrates
believes to be a fundamental element of educational theory: physis.
181

The first premise of his theory of education is that each person is born with a fixed nature (physis)
and that this determines whether someone is capable of being properly educated:
ἡγοῦμαι πάντας ἄν μοι τοὺς εὖ φρονοῦντας συνειπεῖν ὅτι πολλοὶ μὲν τῶν φιλοσοφησάντων
ἰδιῶται διετέλεσαν ὄντες, ἄλλοι δέ τινες οὐδενὶ πώποτε συγγενόμενοι τῶν σοφιστῶν καὶ λέγειν
καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι δεινοὶ γεγόνασιν. αἱ μὲν γὰρ δυνάμεις καὶ τῶν λόγων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔργων
ἁπάντων ἐν τοῖς εὐφυέσιν ἐγγίγνονται καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὰς ἐμπειρίας γεγυμνασμένοις: ἡ δὲ παίδευσις
τοὺς μὲν τοιούτους τεχνικωτέρους καὶ πρὸς τὸ ζητεῖν εὐπορωτέρους ἐποίησεν, οἷς γὰρ νῦν
ἐντυγχάνουσι πλανώμενοι, ταῦτ᾽ ἐξ ἑτοιμοτέρου λαμβάνειν αὐτοὺς ἐδίδαξεν, τοὺς δὲ
καταδεεστέραν τὴν φύσιν ἔχοντας ἀγωνιστὰς μὲν ἀγαθοὺς ἢ λόγων ποιητὰς οὐκ ἂν ἀποτελέσειεν,
αὐτοὺς δ᾽ ἂν αὑτῶν προαγάγοι καὶ πρὸς πολλὰ φρονιμωτέρως διακεῖσθαι ποιήσειεν. (13.14-15)

I think that anyone in their right mind would agree with me that many of those who practice
philosophy end up being private individuals [i.e., uninvolved in politics], while some others who
have never been in the company of the sophists have become skilful in speaking and in politics.

180
In the Helen (10), Isocrates attacks these two men, along with the Sophists Gorgias, Protagoras, Zeno, and
Melissus directly.
181
Isocrates makes reference to physis about 145 times and warrants a fuller study elsewhere. Unlike Plato, he is
remarkably consistent in its usage as referring to physical constitution and what we would call “personality”, i.e.
one’s basic, enduring, largely psychological traits that make them more inclined to certain habits, lifestyles, values,
beliefs, drives, talents, or activities.

94

For the power of logoi and other actions are all present in those endowed with good natures (ἐν
τοῖς εὐφυέσιν) and trained through experience. The process of education (paideusis) makes such
men more artful and more resourceful in discovery, for it teaches them to take from a readier
source the things which they now would happen to stumble upon. It would not make those who
have a rather insufficient nature good debaters or composers of speeches, but it would lead them
to self-improvement and render them disposed to being more thoughtful in many respects.
For Isocrates, education is a process of improvement, of building upon one’s predetermined nature.
Apparently, he views physis as something unchangeable and unequal among individuals: even those who
have never studied with the philosophers or the Sophists can be more talented than those who have spent
their whole lives under their tutelage simply by virtue of having a nature suited to the exigencies of
philosophy (which, at this point in Isocrates life, he aligns more with oratory than his later work will). I
do not think it can be the case that Isocrates’ conception of human nature was, as James Muir has argued,
“essentially political,” (though he is right to identify its political dimensions)
182
because it does not
explain the apparently proscriptive function of physis for human intellectual development. By Isocrates’
account, people with deficient natures simply cannot attain skill in discovery and arrangement of ideas
that are necessary for a good orator, and this does not seem to have anything to do with the kind of
political regime they grew up in.
Scholars tend to define physis in this context as “natural talent”, which is certainly true in the
context of rhetorical training. As Takis Poulakos has noted, Isocrates argues that one’s talent for
rhetorical skill and performance combined with experience (empeiria) outweighs the process of training
(paideusis) in the creation of a good orator.
183
As a philosophical concept, physis is not just natural talent
in a skill but also physical disposition and personality, on which one’s potential for education and
leadership may depend. But he also admits that a lacking nature can be made up for through training of
one’s character. Still, the ideal leader will have both a good nature and a good character.

182
Muir 2018: 37-40.
183
Isoc. Antid. 15.189-94; Poulakos 1997: 86-87, 94-95.

95

Isocrates is reticent about what, if anything, determines these natures and who might possess
them. It is tempting to assume that he means that good natures are found among the elite and not the
masses. But if this were the case, he would have said so, as he does about environmental causes for
morality.
184
Rather, already we can see that his model of education does not exclude non-elite members
simply because of their social standing and is adaptable to practically any regime type. It thus prefigures
the grander scheme of the authoritarian-distributive model that he will develop over the span of his
corpus.
More importantly, perhaps, those with deficient natures cannot achieve the status of a truly
virtuous citizen, as Isocrates explains later in the text:
καίτοι τοὺς βουλομένους πειθαρχεῖν τοῖς ὑπὸ τῆς φιλοσοφίας ταύτης προσταττομένοις πολὺ ἂν
θᾶττον πρὸς ἐπιείκειαν ἢ πρὸς ῥητορείαν ὠφελήσειεν. καὶ μηδεὶς οἰέσθω με λέγειν ὡς ἔστι
δικαιοσύνη διδακτόν: ὅλως μὲν γὰρ οὐδεμίαν ἡγοῦμαι τοιαύτην εἶναι τέχνην, ἥτις τοῖς κακῶς
πεφυκόσι πρὸς ἀρετὴν σωφροσύνην ἂν καὶ δικαιοσύνην ἐμποιήσειεν: οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ
συμπαρακελεύσασθαί γε καὶ συνασκῆσαι μάλιστ᾽ ἃ οἶμαι τὴν τῶν λόγων τῶν πολιτικῶν
ἐπιμέλειαν. (13.21)

Indeed, it would aid those who wish to obey the precepts of this (i.e., Isocrates’) philosophy much
more quickly to fair-mindedness (epieikeia) than to oratory (rhetoreia). And let no one think that
I claim that justice is something that can be taught: for in general I do not think any kind of art
(techne) exists which can instill moderation (sophrosyne) and justice (dikaiosyne) in those who
have a bad nature with respect to virtue. No indeed; but I do think the study (epimeleia) of
political discourse (politikoi logoi) can do much to foster and exercise them.
This passage contains an important statement as to the nature of Isocratic philosophy, namely that it is
concerned with character development and not merely rhetorical skill (see further below). Fair-

184
Cf. 7.44-45, where he explains that the poor are more prone to wickedness because of their poverty (and
presumably not their natures).

96

mindedness (epieikeia) is far more important to Isocrates than rhetoric because without a good character
rhetoric can be used for any number of harmful purposes. Furthermore, bad natures cannot be altered such
that they are fundamentally just or moderate like good natures and therefore disposed to virtue or success
in politics. But at the same time they are not irredeemable: the badness can be mitigated through study of
the way others behave in public arenas so that they achieve a semblance of true moderation, justice, fair-
mindedness, and the like.
185

Now, it would seem that Isocrates has entered into a slight contradiction here. He claims that his
educational program will improve the characters of those who have suitable natures, but then denies that
good character traits such as justice can be taught. However this is actually consistent with his philosophy
of education, because, Isocrates argues, there are things that are taught by explicit instruction and things
that can only be shown:
ταῦτα δὲ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας δεῖσθαι καὶ ψυχῆς ἀνδρικῆς καὶ δοξαστικῆς ἔργον εἶναι, καὶ δεῖν τὸν
μὲν μαθητὴν πρὸς τῷ τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν οἵαν χρὴ τὰ μὲν εἴδη τὰ τῶν λόγων μαθεῖν, περὶ δὲ τὰς
χρήσεις αὐτῶν γυμνασθῆναι, τὸν δὲ διδάσκαλον τὰ μὲν οὕτως ἀκριβῶς οἷόν τ᾽ εἶναι διελθεῖν
ὥστε μηδὲν τῶν διδακτῶν παραλιπεῖν, περὶ δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν τοιοῦτον αὑτὸν παράδειγμα
παρασχεῖν, [18] ὥστε τοὺς ἐκτυπωθέντας καὶ μιμήσασθαι δυναμένους εὐθὺς ἀνθηρότερον καὶ
χαριέστερον τῶν ἄλλων φαίνεσθαι λέγοντας. (13.17-18)

[Rhetorical skills] require much study (epimeleia) and are the activity of a courageous and
imaginative soul (psyches andrikes kai doxastikes); the student must, in accordance with what his
nature affords, learn the types of logoi and be trained in their uses. The teacher, on the other hand,
must be able to explain things so accurately that he leaves out nothing that can be taught, and
provide himself as a model (paradeigma) for everything else, such that the students appear to be

185
Plato expresses a similar stance at Rep. 3.409c-410a, where Socrates recommends that the Kallipolis select for
good natured people and let bad natured people die by either suicide or execution.

97

imprinted [with the model], able to imitate and immediately speak more floridly and gracefully
than others.
Thus there are teachable things belonging in the domain of rhetoric, such as arrangement, timing, and
diction, and then there is “everything else” (ta loipa). In this context it would appear that the “everything
else” that can only be taught through paradeigmata (and not explicit instruction) refers to other rhetorical
stylings. But I suggest that Isocrates’ idea of education by paradigm applies to the whole of philosophy. It
is embedded in the prevailing Athenian system of civic education achieved through paradeigmata and the
things they teach: civic virtues, such as justice and moderation, and the proper expression of these virtues.
These abstract concepts are relational and dependent on context, much like the ever-changing realm of
political discourse. Thus they can only be inculcated through imitation of examples, which are
“imprinted” on the students.
186
This kind of learning, as Robert Hariman has argued, is a creative
enterprise that navigates the variability of culture and politics.
187
This contrasts with the instruction
offered by Sophists, who employ paradeigmata incorrectly by applying rigid rhetorical outlines as
models to the composition of speeches, as if they were teaching their students letters.
188
A set outline for
speechwriting does not allow the student to develop skills in improvising or dealing with the unexpected,
but a teacher who exemplifies this ability does. In other words, both explicit instruction and inductive
mimesis through examples are crucial to Isocrates’ idea of education, but they are not interchangeable.
Isocrates illustrates how his own physis affected his career path in his discourse for Philip II about
unifying Greece for an expedition against the Persians, written in 346 BCE:
καὶ μὴ θαυμάσῃς, ἅ περ ἐπέστειλα καὶ πρὸς Διονύσιον τὴν τυραννίδα κτησάμενον, εἰ μήτε
στρατηγὸς ὢν μήτε ῥήτωρ μήτ᾽ ἄλλως δυνάστης θρασύτερόν σοι διείλεγμαι τῶν ἄλλων. ἐγὼ γὰρ
πρὸς μὲν τὸ πολιτεύεσθαι πάντων ἀφυέστατος ἐγενόμην τῶν πολιτῶν （οὔτε γὰρ φωνὴν ἔσχον
ἱκανὴν οὔτε τόλμαν δυναμένην ὄχλῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ μολύνεσθαι καὶ λοιδορεῖσθαι τοῖς ἐπὶ τοῦ

186
For a similar theory of learning through models, see Plato, Theaetetus 191d.
187
Hariman 2004.
188
13.12. Cahn 1989 argues that Isocrates believes that rhetoric is an “impossible discipline” (124).

98

βήματος κυλινδουμένοις ）, [82] τοῦ δὲ φρονεῖν εὖ καὶ πεπαιδεῦσθαι καλῶς, εἰ καί τις
ἀγροικότερον εἶναι φήσει τὸ ῥηθέν, ἀμφισβητῶ, καὶ θείην ἂν ἐμαυτὸν οὐκ ἐν τοῖς
ἀπολελειμμένοις ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τοῖς προέχουσι τῶν ἄλλων. διό περ ἐπιχειρῶ συμβουλεύειν τὸν τρόπον
τοῦτον, ὃν ἐγὼ πέφυκα καὶ δύναμαι, καὶ τῇ πόλει καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τοῖς
ἐνδοξοτάτοις. (5.81-82)

And do not be shocked, as I also wrote to Dionysius (II) after he took on the tyranny, if I, who am
neither general nor orator nor other kind of authority figure, have expressed myself more boldly
to you than the others. I of all citizens was born the most lacking in the physis needed for politics
(πρὸς μὲν τὸ πολιτεύεσθαι πάντων ἀφυέστατος), for I had neither the voice nor the confidence
that can deal with the masses and be abused and mudsling against those who lurk about the
speaking platform. But, though someone might say it is rather uncouth of me to say, I do lay
claim to good judgment and a high level of education, and in comparison to other I would place
myself not among the losers but with those at the forefront, for which reason I undertake to advise
in this manner that my physis and power afford, the polis, the Greeks, and the most notable men.
Isocrates’ physis is responsible for his lack of voice and daring that would make him an effective leader,
but at the same time it is responsible for his high intellect and ability to advise his own city, the leaders of
other cities, and all the Greeks.
189
Being “of the most lacking physis for politics” proved to be an
advantage because he could devote his energy to more useful things, like offering the best advice to kings
for the benefit of their kingdoms and all of Greece. This particular potentiality of his physis is actuated by
his power (dynamis) of intelligence and education, even though his physical constitution is lacking for an
active public life. Isocrates claims that Philip II’s physis has the advantages of both physical strength and
sharp intellect, making him the ideal candidate to take on the project of unifying Greece through a united
front against the Persians.
190

189
Isocrates repeats this point in the Panathenaicus (12.8-10).
190
Isoc. 5.41.

99

Indeed, Isocrates suggests that the psychological or intellectual dimensions of physis are far more
important than the physical. In the Antidosis, he holds up his star student Timotheus as an example of this.
He claims that the reason Timotheus was able to accomplish so much as a general despite being smaller
and weaker than other generals was his intellect and training under Isocrates.
191
But Timotheus’ physis
proved to be his undoing because he simply did not have the right talents for navigating the political scene
in Athens (15.131).
Isocrates’ stance on physis attempts to answer questions that popular civic education does not
really resolve: why are some people good citizens and others bad? What can be done about mitigating
badness in citizens? Who has the authority to determine good and bad behavior? As we saw in Chapter 2,
in the aftermath of the reign of the Thirty, the Athenians attempted to use punishment to turn their citizens
away from bad behavior rather than implement formal, more prescriptive education that would point them
toward a clearly defined conception of civic virtue.
192
By contrast, Isocrates wants to implement a system
of protreptic philosophy that induces his students to virtue through positive examples, rather than simply
turn them away from bad citizen behavior by recounting past mistakes.
193
Those who are born with a
good physis are naturally endowed with the authority to teach others how to be virtuous citizens. It is
foundational to the broader development of good character, thus fostering good leadership, citizen
behavior, and the authority to educate other citizens. The informal system of Athenian civic education
makes no such provision for proactively deciding which citizens should be setting examples for others
and for weeding out wrongdoers; this is only discovered after the fact. It also does not provide them with
principles or measures against which they can evaluate and emulate the examples of others. To deal with
this problem, The study of philosophy under Isocrates’ direction discovers those whose physeis are
suitable for public life in the first place. It is then up to the teacher to mold the student’s character

191
15.115-126.
192
This would eventually change as a number of institutional forces in Athens generated a more cohesive, defined
set of civic values. See Chps 5 and 6 of this dissertation.
193
Antid. 15.62: πολὺ μέντοι χρησιμωτέρους εἶναι τῶν λόγων καὶ κρείττους τοὺς ἐπιπλήττοντας τοῖς νῦν
ἁμαρτανομένοις ἢ τοὺς τὰ πεπραγμένα πρότερον ἐπαινοῦντας, καὶ τοὺς ὑπὲρ ὧν δεῖ πράττειν συμβουλεύοντας ἢ
τοὺς τὰ παλαιὰ τῶν ἔργων διεξιόντας; Collins 2015, chp. 6.

100

(tropoi/ethos) and teach him to “conjecture reasonably” to be an effective member of the political
community and model for others.

Tropoi
Before committing to philosophy full-time, Isocrates was a logographer, a profession he would
try his best to repress later in life.
194
But even in his forensic speeches we can see the beginnings of his
philosophical doctrine in the way he discusses the tropoi of his clients or their opponents. In Against
Lochites, he portrays Lochites, who is being prosecuted for assault, as having the same violent tropoi as
the Thirty Tyrants, who, unsurprisingly, had evil natures (physeis) that led them to commit such horrific
acts (20.11), while the speaker claims he did not retaliate against Lochites because of his own good
character (20.8: διὰ τὸν τρόπον τὸν ἐμόν).
195
In the Aegineticus, the speaker claims he grieved the death
of his adoptive father’s brother like a family member even though he is not related by blood “because of
my character” (19.41: διὰ τὸν τρόπον τὸν ἐμαυτοῦ), asserting that “such people as myself ought to be
honored, not stripped of gifts” (19.48). In the context of forensic oratory these are rhetorical points aimed
at garnering favor of jurors. But as Isocrates goes on to develop his philosophy more fully it becomes
clear that tropoi are in fact one of his primary concerns because, though physis is immutable, tropoi are
plastic and capable of being improved by the instruction of someone who exhibits the right tropoi.
There are two kinds of people Isocrates envisions as capable of inculcating these tropoi. The first
are those who just so happen to be good people despite having no training. Isocrates has no pretense about
the possibility of chance providing all the tools needed to form the best citizen. In the Antidosis (15.190-
192) he supposes that a person with great natural talent and little training, or a person with a deficient
nature but much practice, could be excellent speakers; a person with all of these things could be the
greatest citizen ever seen. In any case, education alone is not sufficient, as the speaker still needs the
gumption to speak for his city.

194
Antid. 15.2-3
195
Isoc. 20.11. See Chapter 2 for further discussion of this speech.

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And then there are those who commit themselves to the study of philosophy, i.e., Isocrates
himself, as well as those of his students who have adequately completed their study with him. He leaves
the condition of his physis somewhat ambiguous, as we saw above: it was certainly adequate for
intellectual activity, but not so for the performance of his discourses because he lacked a strong voice and
the bravery needed for public speaking, but ideal for intellectual life and advising powerful rulers.
196
But
his tropoi are most certainly to be emulated. In a letter he sent to the oligarchic rulers of Mytilene about
the restoration of his grandchildren’s music teacher to Mytilene from exile, he expresses more clearly
than anywhere else in his corpus his desire to be emulated:
μὴ θαυμάζετε δ᾽ εἰ προθυμότερον καὶ διὰ μακροτέρων γέγραφα τὴν ἐπιστολήν: βούλομαι γὰρ
ἀμφότερα, τοῖς τε παισὶν ἡμῶν χαρίσασθαι καὶ ποιῆσαι φανερὸν αὐτοῖς ὅτι, κἂν μὴ δημηγορῶσι
μηδὲ στρατηγῶσιν ἀλλὰ μόνον μιμῶνται τὸν τρόπον τὸν ἐμόν, οὐκ ἠμελημένως διάξουσιν ἐν τοῖς
Ἕλλησιν. ἓν ἔτι λοιπόν: ἂν ἄρα δόξῃ τι τούτων ὑμῖν πράττειν, Ἀγήνορί τε δηλώσατε καὶ τοῖς
ἀδελφοῖς ὅτι μέρος τι καὶ δι᾽ ἐμὲ τυγχάνουσιν ὧν ἐπεθύμουν.

Do not be surprised if I have written this letter rather zealously and at some length. I want two
things: both to ingratiate my grandchildren and make it clear to them that, should they not speak
in the Assembly or become generals but only imitate my character (mimontai ton tropon ton
emon)
197
, they would not act carelessly among the Greeks. One more thing: should you decide to
make this a reality [sc. Agenor’s recall], make it known to Agenor and his brothers that the thing
they desired came about in part because of me.
The closing to this letter is especially interesting because it is one of the few times Isocrates mentions his
family. Unlike Plato, he does not have a problem incorporating the traditional family-based educational
structures of Athens into his own specialized program of civic education. Even if his grandchildren do not
participate in local Athenian politics, if they imitate Isocrates’ character they will still do well on the

196
Panath. 12.9-11.
197
Cf. the wording of 19.41 and 20.11 quoted above.

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international stage. (Humility is apparently not a character trait that Isocrates advocates for). As we saw
above, he claims that the study of philosophy will “lead more quickly to epieikeia than rhetoreia” (13.21).
Clearly his concern is not to produce the best orators, as most scholars have assumed, but to produce good
citizens with values oriented towards the welfare of the political community, which naturally includes
orators and how they use their rhetoric.
As we learned from Against the Sophists above, anyone can have a decent—if not exemplary—
character with the right training and models to imitate. In short, the tropoi he views as the most important
in an exemplary figure are epieikeia (fair-mindedness), sophrosyne (moderation and prudence), praotes
(gentleness), dikaiosyne (justice), arete (virtue), and eunoia (goodwill). He advocates for other
characteristics such as moderation (metriotes), piety (eusebeia), orderliness (kosmiotes and eutaxia), and
obedience to the laws, though to a lesser extent. Many of these are used in honorific inscriptions of the
4th century and some even become the key civic values inculcated by the youth training program started
in the 330s.
198

Perhaps the most important of these character traits is self-control, expressed by the terms
epieikeia, sophrosyne, and metriotes. Epieikeia has been the subject of study by scholars because of its
legal use as the word for “equity”,
199
but Isocrates seems to view it as a moral and intellectual
characteristic of a good citizen. Someone who is epieikes is not impulsive or self-interested; rather they
are capable of making critical judgments that take into account a number of factors based in probability
(eikos) before arriving at a conclusion or course of action. Isocrates describes himself as being epieikes
(15.35) and considers it central to good citizenship because those who are epieikeis do not hold onto
judgments made in error but are willing to revise them in light of new information (15.170). He suggests
that even the demos of Athens (7.68) showed epieikeia when it agreed to pay back a loan the Thirty had

198
See further Henderson 2020 and Friend 2018, as well as Chapter 6 of this dissertation.
199
E.g. Harris 2013, Saunders 1998, Saunders 1991; De Romilly 1979: 53-63 gives a history of epieikeia in Greek
literature. None of these studies examine Isocrates’ particular use of the concept.

103

taken out from the Spartans during the civil war in 403.
200
Most significantly, it is epieikeia that defines
his intellectual project. In the proemium to his Helen, Isocrates levels criticisms against his intellectual
rivals, the Sophists and eristics, taking up in more detail points he makes in Against the Sophists.
201
He
argues that the Sophists must abandon the paradoxical logoi, hair-splitting, and set speeches in favor of
practical instruction:
οὓς ἐχρῆν… τὴν ἀλήθειαν διώκειν, καὶ περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐν αἷς πολιτευόμεθα, τοὺς συνόντας
παιδεύειν, καὶ περὶ τὴν ἐμπειρίαν τὴν τούτων γυμνάζειν, ἐνθυμουμένους ὅτι πολὺ κρεῖττόν ἐστι
περὶ τῶν χρησίμων ἐπιεικῶς δοξάζειν ἢ περὶ τῶν ἀχρήστων ἀκριβῶς ἐπίστασθαι, καὶ μικρὸν
προέχειν ἐν τοῖς μεγάλοις μᾶλλον ἢ πολὺ διαφέρειν ἐν τοῖς μικροῖς καὶ τοῖς μηδὲν πρὸς τὸν βίον
ὠφελοῦσιν. (10.4-5)

They must…pursue the truth and educate their students in matters in which we are involved as
citizens, and train them in experience of these things, keeping in mind that it is much better to
conjecture reasonably (epieikos doxazein) about useful things than to know about useless things
with exactitude, and to stand out slightly in great matters than to be outstanding in trivial ones
that are of no use in life.
The moral, intellectual, and political aspects of epieikeia are thus intimately linked. In order to live a good
life, one must be amenable to the spontaneity and diversity of existence. There is no one-size-fits-all way
to deal with every situation, so fair-mindedness is needed to address issues as they arise taking into
account both personal and contextual factors. On the political and philosophical plain, this means being
able to make judgments and decisions that are useful and not solely self-interested, making the best use of

200
This same incident is cited by Demosthenes as an indicator of Athens’ good character (ethos, in this case) in his
speech against Leptines (20.11-12; 64) delivered around the same time as the Areopagiticus was published. Could it
be that Demosthenes is intentionally drawing on Isocrates?
201
It had long been thought (since Aristotle, Rhet. 14.1) that the proemium of the Helen was irrelevant to the rest of
the work (Jebb 1876: 10, Howland 1932: 151, Van Hook 1968: 58, Jaeger 1969: 305n.84, Norlin 1980: xxxi, 1982:
418n.a; Eucken 1983: 44; Zajonz 2002), but it is now more widely accepted that the speech is whole unified
thematically (Kennedy 1958, who sees it as a panhellenic document; Blank 2013: 12-13) and rhetorically (Kennedy
1963: 187, J. Poulakos 1986).

104

what information one does have instead of searching in vain for exactness of knowledge.
202
The phrase
epieikos doxazein is perhaps the most succinct summary of Isocrates’ philosophies in its moral, social,
political, and cognitive domains.
On this basis Isocrates calls into question the epieikeia of the Polycrates, the addressee of the Busiris. As
Niall Livingston has observed, “Isocrates has ‘heard reports of’ Polycrates’ good character (ἐπιείκεια);
this puts Polycrates’ character in some sense on trial and raises the question of morality in rhetoric which
is central to the whole work”.
203
Consequently Polycrates’ morality both prescribes and proscribes
qualities of his so-called encomium. If the encomium can show his epieikeia, he passes the test; but
ultimately it does not.
Closely related to this is the virtue of sophrosyne, moderation and prudence, which he extols as a
mark of a good ruler and citizen. In his discourse To Nicocles, he advises Nicocles, the new tyrant of
Salamis, to make himself “a paradigm of sophrosyne, understanding that the character (ethos) of the
whole polis resembles that of its rulers” (2.31).
204
Likewise, “moderation (metriotetes) lies in lacking
rather than extremes” (2.33).
205
In the discourse Nicocles, which is spoken by Nicocles himself, he
suggests that monarchy is “more pleasant, gentler, and more just” than other regimes (3.17), and further
expresses the need for a person to have sophrosyne when in power (3.44). Likewise, the Areopagus at
Athens was composed of citizens who possessed great virtue and sophrosyne (7.37), and a state that
valued self-control and moderation was a healthy one (7.4; 13; 20). Helen North has suggested that
Isocrates’ “chief originality lies in his attempt to apply sophrosyne, as political moderation and restraint,
to international affairs, but he does so with a superficiality and naivete that contrast unfavorably with the

202
For Isocrates’ theory of exact knowledge (episteme) and opinion (doxa), as well its relationship to Plato’s own
epistemology, see T. Poulakos 2004, Timmerman and Schiappa 2010: 43-67.
203
Livingstone 2001: 91-92.
204
2.31: μὴ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀξίου κοσμίως ζῆν τοὺς δὲ βασιλεῖς ἀτάκτως, ἀλλὰ τὴν σαυτοῦ σωφροσύνην
παράδειγμα τοῖς ἄλλοις καθίστη, γιγνώσκων ὅτι τὸ τῆς πόλεως ὅλης ἦθος ὁμοιοῦται τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. σημεῖον ἔστω
σοι τοῦ καλῶς βασιλεύειν, ἂν τοὺς ἀρχομένους ὁρᾷς εὐπορωτέρους καὶ σωφρονεστέρους γιγνομένους διὰ τὴν σὴν
ἐπιμέλειαν.
205
2.33: κράτιστον μὲν τῆς ἀκμῆς τῶν καιρῶν τυγχάνειν, ἐπειδὴ δὲ δυσκαταμαθήτως ἔχουσιν, ἐλλείπειν αἱροῦ καὶ
μὴ πλεονάζειν: αἱ γὰρ μετριότητες μᾶλλον ἐν ταῖς ἐνδείαις ἢ ταῖς ὑπερβολαῖς ἔνεισιν.

105

realism of Thucydides in treating these same topics.”
206
What North sees as “naivete” I think we can
better appreciate as Isocrates’ attempt to avert Thucydidean fatalism in favor of positive change.
The value of gentleness (praotes) is likewise a necessary quality for a good ruler and a crucial
outcome of philosophy in Isocrates’ eyes.
207
In the Panegyricus, he links the cultivation of philosophy
with praotes in Athens (4.47). In the Philip, he tells Philip II, “do not be surprised if throughout my
discourse I try to turn you (protrepein) toward benefactions for the Greeks and gentleness (praoteta) and
love of mankind (philanthropia); for I see that harshness is harmful to those who exercise it and those
who receive it, while gentleness is a blessing not only for human beings but for all kinds of living
creatures” (5.116).
208
Likewise, he advises Timotheus, tyrant of Heraclea (not the Athenian general), that
good monarchs rule “so gently and so lawfully that no one would dare plot against them” (Ep. 7.5)
209
.
These character traits in their capacity as civic virtues follow a basic principle of placing
boundaries around the way one behaves in political life. They operate on a basis of reciprocity: one’s
goodwill or gentleness or fair-mindedness inspires the same in others. Indeed, several of Isocrates’
discourses are couched in the terms of gift-exchange and euergesia.
210
They thus attempt to point the
individual toward virtue and away from rapacious self-interest (pleonexia) and disturbance (tarache) of
the soul and, by analogy, of civic life. Kathryn Morgan is suspicious of Isocrates and his ability to rid the
soul and city of tarache through rhetoric, claiming that Isocrates is just a product of Athenian rhetorical
education and that “the various orations do not agree with each other either in what they recommend, or
in their attitudes to, for example, the Peace of Antalcidas.”
211
The inconsistencies she identifies are easily

206
North 1966: 143.
207
Isocrates uses this rare noun more than any other Classical Greek author with a total of 10 uses. Plato uses it only
6 times across his corpus.
208
καὶ μὴ θαυμάσῃς, εἰ διὰ παντός σε τοῦ λόγου πειρῶμαι προτρέπειν ἐπί τε τὰς εὐεργεσίας τὰς τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ
πραότητα καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν: ὁρῶ γὰρ τὰς μὲν χαλεπότητας λυπηρὰς οὔσας καὶ τοῖς ἔχουσι καὶ τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι,
τὰς δὲ πραότητας οὐ μόνον ἐπὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζώων ἁπάντων εὐδοκιμούσας. For Isocrates’
protreptic philosophy see Collins 2017?
209
μηδὲ πικρῶς μὲν καὶ χαλεπῶς διακεῖσθαι πρὸς ἅπαντας, ἀμελεῖν δὲ τῆς αὑτῶν σωτηρίας, ἀλλ᾽ οὕτω μὲν πράως
καὶ νομίμως ἐπιστατεῖν τῶν πραγμάτων ὥστε μηδένα τολμᾶν αὐτοῖς ἐπιβουλεύειν
210
1, 2, 7, 11. Atack 2019: 79 highlights the role of kings as benefactors to the polis in Isocrates’ thinking; cf. Helen
10.25, 27, 35.
211
Morgan 2004: 147. Baynes (1955) argued that Isocrates was a “bundle of inconsistencies” because he was little
more than a Sophist. Harding (1973) likewise claims that based on inconsistencies in Isocrates’ stance toward war

106

resolved when we realize two things: one, that philosophia was his solution to these problems, not
rhetoric; and two, that Isocrates, in his 98 years of life, was responding to different historical moments
and changed his mind about certain things, such as the Peace of Antalcidas or his attitude toward
Sparta.
212
But in terms of his stance toward philosophy, education, and the betterment of the city,
Isocrates was very consistent across his corpus, as he himself argues in the Antidosis (15.195). At no
point does he renege on any of the character traits that he asks his audience to develop. Rhetoric in and of
itself is not sufficient for creating a cohesive, well-ruled polity for the reasons that Morgan identifies. But
that does not really matter because the lessons learned from Isocratean philosophy are what lead to the
expurgation of tarache; rhetoric is merely the vehicle for delivery of these lessons. And the successful
student of Isocrates will be able to see through the harmful rhetorical tricks of others once he learns good
judgment (eu phronein) and how to conjecture reasonably (epieikos doxazein).

Isocrates and Authoritarian Education
It is perhaps apparent enough from the passages cited above that Isocrates developed his moral
and educational philosophy with an eye toward authoritarian regimes. Isocrates’ interest in authoritarian
rulers has been long recognized by scholars but not satisfactorily understood in the development of his
philosophy. From his works alone we know he had an interest in, or some kind of contact with, at least 13
autocratic rulers around the Mediterranean.
213
It is probably not a coincidence that many of these rulers

and imperialism in the Archidamus and On the Peace, the two speeches are antilogies and the Archidamus should be
dated to 356 BCE instead of 366. Wallace (1985: 159) rightly rejects these approaches on the grounds that Isocrates
likely revised his stance in the years between 380 and 357, and 366 and 356.
212
Usher 1990: 19-21 has suggested, about the Panegyricus, that the long time that Isocrates spent composing his
speech accounts for discrepancies in his advice to his audience (about Athenian hegemony or joint Athenian-Spartan
hegemony in Greece). Papillon (2004: 27) does not buy it, suggesting rather that Isocrates is offering multiple
options to his audience about potential outcomes of his plan to unite Greece, following Too’s (1995: 75-81)
argument that Isocrates is manipulating information about the composition process to allow for this. It seems
unlikely that Isocrates would accidentally contradict himself in this way given that he revisited this speech when
composing the Antidosis about 30 years later.
213
Satyrus, Evagoras and Nicocles of Salamis, Dionysius I and II of Syracuse, Philip II, Alexander III, Antipater, the
oligarchs in Mytilene, the children of Jason of Pherae, Clearchus and Timotheus of Heraclea, Archidamus of Sparta;
in addition to these are the mythical kings Theseus, Agamemnon, Minos, and Erechtheus mentioned and praised
throughout his corpus. For the use of myth see Papillon 2000.

107

had relationships with the Athenian demos as well (see above). Because of his communication with kings,
tyrants, and other potentates around the Mediterranean, he has been characterized variously as a crypto-
oligarch or at least much more interested in an autocratic rhetoric than democratic.
214
Conversely, he has
also been read as essentially democratic-leaning in the face of authoritarian governments.
215
I suggest that
he is both and neither, in the sense that he has no allegiance to any politeia except the rule by the “best”
(loosely defined) and was fundamentally committed to the improvement of all political regimes: both the
one he lived in, which happened to be democratic Athens, and those of other poleis. Both monarchy and
democracy have advantageous and deficient parts of their natures and must be improved upon by a
philosophical education. By Isocrates’ reckoning, the ideal ruler and model for good citizenship will have
a combination of a good nature, exemplary character traits, and the ability to conjecture reasonably even
when accurate or complete knowledge is not available. Over the course of his career he advised or had
contact with a number of authoritarian rulers in an attempt to keep them from abusing their power. As
time passed and he perceived Athens’ own democracy tending more towards authoritarianism. His
attention shifted to helping curb the power of the demos over itself and others by arguing for an
authoritative educational system run by the Areopagus that would teach the moral and political virtues he
previously ascribed to monarchical rule. In this section I will show how Isocrates adapts his education of
rulers to democratic Athens to form what I have called an “authoritarian-distributive” model of civic
education.
Two key passages will be instructive in how Isocrates envisioned education for monarchical
rulers. The first comes from the Evagoras, a eulogy for the recently assassinated king (or tyrant) of
Salamis, Evagoras. The discourse was written sometime around 370 and is addressed to Evagoras’ son,
Nicocles, to whom Isocrates will write two more discourses about kingship.
216
In it Isocrates praises
Evagoras’ character, judgment, and accomplishments as a ruler of Salamis, including his goodwill and

214
Eg. Too 2010, Sullivan 2006.
215
Poulakos 1997, Ober 1998, Konstan 2004, Hariman 2004.
216
Isocrates had a habit of opportunistically advising new kings and tyrants in the wake of their fathers’ deaths.

108

friendship with Athens during the Corinthian War and his successes in fighting the Persians. He tells us
that because of his able nature (physeos) Evagoras “directed the whole area around the island [of Cyprus]
toward gentleness (praoteta) and moderation (metrioteta)” (9.49). Evagoras, having emulated the best
examples of his own ancestors, has thus become a paradigm for good rulership and character. It is
expected that Nicocles will follow suit as king and educator of Salamis.
Isocrates closes the eulogy with two programmatic statements to this effect. The first is that the
purpose of the discourse that Isocrates has written is so Nicocles can emulate Evagoras’ character: “one
could not give his body the same nature (physin) as a sculpture or painting, but it is easier for those who
want to be good people to imitate (mimeisthai) each other’s character (tous tropous) and thoughts that are
put into words” (9.75).
217
Isocrates applies his theory of physis and tropos not just to the rhetorical
dimension of written discourse but to Nicocles’ own moral and civic education. In other words, he is not
training Nicocles to be an orator, but a good ruler and member of his community who can use rhetoric to
fashion good character in his subjects and in other rulers. Nicocles and his descendants will have the
physical copy of Isocrates’ speech as a guide in this mission (9.76).
Isocrates goes on to express more explicitly the philosophical tenor of his eulogy of Evagoras and
its educative underpinnings for Nicocles:
τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλους προτρέπομεν ἐπὶ τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἑτέρους ἐπαινοῦντες, ἵνα ζηλοῦντες τοὺς
εὐλογουμένους τῶν αὐτῶν ἐκείνοις ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἐπιθυμῶσιν, ἐγὼ δὲ σὲ καὶ τοὺς σοὺς οὐκ
ἀλλοτρίοις παραδείγμασι χρώμενος ἀλλ᾽ οἰκείοις παρακαλῶ, καὶ συμβουλεύω προσέχειν τὸν
νοῦν, ὅπως καὶ λέγειν καὶ πράττειν μηδενὸς ἧττον δυνήσει τῶν Ἑλλήνων. (9.77)

We turn others toward philosophy in praising different people, so that, by emulating those we
praise, they take to heart the same behaviors as them. For my part, making use not of the

217
9.75: πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὅτι τοῖς μὲν πεπλασμένοις καὶ τοῖς γεγραμμένοις οὐδεὶς ἂν τὴν τοῦ σώματος φύσιν
ὁμοιώσειε, τοὺς δὲ τρόπους τοὺς ἀλλήλων καὶ τὰς διανοίας τὰς ἐν τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐνούσας ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι μιμεῖσθαι
τοῖς μὴ ῥᾳθυμεῖν αἱρουμένοις, ἀλλὰ χρηστοῖς εἶναι βουλομένοις.

109

examples set by others but those of your own family, I call upon you and your family, and I
advise you to pay attention so that you will be no less able in speaking and doing than any of the
Greeks.
Isocrates’ protreptic is entangled in the broader Athenian cultural habit of honoring people as exemplary
in some respect. As Evangelos Alexiou observes, Isocrates links his educational program to traditional
Greek education and intends to surpass it.
218
He believes that people are incited to study philosophy
through the observation of paradigmatic figures such as honorees and one’s own ancestors. But where
Isocrates differs is that, while the Athenians more often than not used negative, apotreptic paradigms, he
preferred to employ models of good behavior to show his students the right thing to do, rather than what
to avoid doing. The praise of ancestors resonates especially deeply with Isocrates because it provides an
immediate and pliable referent,
219
and that praise and those memories are preserved through speech:
storytelling, epideictic speeches, parainetic logoi, or all of these at once. Thus rhetoric becomes the
vehicle for philosophy, not its sole expression. More significant than the way things are said are the
lessons learned from them, the examples followed, and the character that is cultivated.
Once an adherent to Isocratean philosophy, the autocratic ruler is himself imbued with the
authority to educate. For Isocrates, a centralized, educative body in a polis ensures that the knowledge
that is generated and distributed comes from a reliable, authoritative source that concerns itself with the
common good. In his discourse, To Nicocles, Isocrates describes what a ruler needs to do and learn in
order to govern well. Civic education is an imperative in this respect. Isocrates tells Nicocles that
there are many things that educate private individuals: not living in luxury but needing to plan for
one’s day-to-day life, then the laws under which they are citizens, freedom of speech (parrhesia),
and open allowance for friends to chastise and for enemies to attack each other’s faults; in
addition some of the past poets have left behind precepts for how to live a good life: thus from all
these things it is likely that will become better (2.2-3).

218
Alexiou 2010: 183.
219
Konstan 2004.

110

τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἰδιώτας ἐστὶ πολλὰ τὰ παιδεύοντα, μάλιστα μὲν τὸ μὴ τρυφᾶν ἀλλ᾽ ἀναγκάζεσθαι
περὶ τοῦ βίου καθ᾽ ἑκάστην τὴν ἡμέραν βουλεύεσθαι, [3] ἔπειθ᾽ οἱ νόμοι καθ᾽ οὓς ἕκαστοι
πολιτευόμενοι τυγχάνουσιν, ἔτι δ᾽ ἡ παρρησία καὶ τὸ φανερῶς ἐξεῖναι τοῖς τε φίλοις ἐπιπλῆξαι
καὶ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἐπιθέσθαι ταῖς ἀλλήλων ἁμαρτίαις: πρὸς δὲ τούτοις καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν τινες τῶν
προγεγενημένων ὑποθήκας ὡς χρὴ ζῆν καταλελοίπασιν: ὥστ᾽ ἐξ ἁπάντων τούτων εἰκὸς αὐτοὺς
βελτίους γίγνεσθαι.

In such terms Isocrates describes the dynamic system of oikos, polis, and politeia that sustained civic
education in Athens. The day-to-day life of the household, the laws that govern citizens in the polis, and
the politeia’s admission of parrhesia are all integral parts of popular education. On top of these things,
education comes from constant course correction from one’s friends or enemies, the precepts of the poets.
This mention of parrhesia betrays a certain liberality to Isocrates’ idea of good kingship, which affords
advice and correction.
This idea of consistent, substantive correction to stay the right course is central to Isocrates’
program of civic education. When it comes to educating a king in this way, however, a distinct problem
arises, namely that there is no one with the authority to correct an autocratic ruler who possesses ultimate
power. Either people are too afraid to correct a king or, as is more often the case, only wish to flatter him
(2.4). Isocrates is well aware that his advice is often unsolicited and perhaps unwanted.
220
Protreptic
philosophy that teaches a king to develop a gentle, open-minded character evades this complication. It
opens the ruler up to the educative authority of Isocrates himself, who then endows the ruler with his own
kind of paradigmatic, educative power over his subjects. He advises Nicocles that “the more earnestly you
disdain the ignorance (anoian) of others, the more you should exercise your own intellect (dianoian)”

220
This is the pose he strikes in the Busiris (11.3) as well as his speeches addressed to the Athenian assembly
(Areopagiticus and On the Peace).

111

(2.14).
221
The play on words and balance of the sentence structure underscore the need for continued
intellectual cultivation through philosophy, as simply denouncing the stupidity of others does no good for
anyone.
The rest of the speech is devoted to the behaviors and policies Nicocles needs to internalize to
become a good ruler. Much of it comes down to maintaining a good reputation, practicing moderation
(sophrosyne, metriotes), being wary of sycophants, punishing wrongdoers firmly but fairly, and, above
all, setting a good example of the philosophical character for his subjects to follow. In short, “make sure
the best people have honors, and the rest are not done injustice: these are the fundamental and most
important features of a good politeia” (2.16).
222
Nicocles should be a paradigm of sophrosyne to
encourage the same in his subjects and relatives, ensuring political stability and the happiest possible life
for everyone (2.31). Repeating his advice at the end of the Evagoras, Isocrates commands Nicocles to
“desire to leave behind images (eikonas) of virtue (arete) as a reminder rather than of the body” (2.36).
223

Isocrates political philosophy sees civic education as necessary for the stability of a polis. The monarch is
thus a necessary component of civic education because, as an analog to the philosopher, he has the
authority, ability, and responsibility to turn citizens toward virtue while also correcting the things they do
wrong.

Authoritarian Education and Democracy
As I have shown thus far, Isocrates’ goal in emphasizing tropoi in addition to physis in his
philosophy of education was to place limits on the power of the individual that did not have the weakness
of artificial restraints such as law. Seeing that the autocratic, authoritarian ruler needed to be restrained by
a philosophical education just as much as the worst private citizen, Isocrates developed a set of character

221
2.14: ὅσῳ γὰρ ἂν ἐρρωμενεστέρως τὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἄνοιαν ἀτιμάσῃς, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον τὴν αὑτοῦ διάνοιαν
ἀσκήσεις.
222
2.16: οἱ βέλτιστοι μὲν τὰς τιμὰς ἕξουσιν, οἱ δ᾽ ἄλλοι μηδὲν ἀδικήσονται: ταῦτα γὰρ στοιχεῖα πρῶτα καὶ μέγιστα
χρηστῆς πολιτείας ἐστίν.
223
2.36: βούλου τὰς εἰκόνας τῆς ἀρετῆς ὑπόμνημα μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ σώματος καταλιπεῖν. Cf. 9.73-77 discussed in this
chapter and Chapter 5.

112

traits and civic values that would lead to stability of the soul and state. But his attention began to shift
from molding the ideal ruler to more immediate, but equally expansive, political concerns. It was around
the time that Athens became involved in the Social War (357-355 BCE) that Isocrates’ approach to
authoritarian education began to change. It seemed he devoted even more energy to proscription rather
than prescription as he saw the demos and its Second Athenian League sliding back into the tyrannical
habits of the 5th century Delian League. That is not to say that Isocrates was uninterested in improving
the democracy before this. He is purported to have taught a number of prominent Athenian public figures
including Timotheus, Lycurgus, and Demosthenes.
And his use of rhetoric as a means of broadcasting his philosophy clearly evolved out of Athenian
rhetorical practice. As mentioned above, even his early forensic speeches speak to the beginnings of an
ameliorative political philosophy that sought to improve its listeners with models of good citizenship. I
think it is for this reason that almost all of his more “epideictic” speeches came about before the Social
War. He exhibits indomitable confidence in the supremacy of the Athenians over the Greeks and Persians
in the Panegyricus, written sometime around 380 BCE, including an encomium of philosophia, which he
credits as having “educated us in our practices and made us gentler toward each other” (4.47). In the 370
and 360s he was looking outward, circulating his parainetic discourses to Nicocles about the best way to
be a monarch and addressing issues such as the Theban sack of Plataea in the Plataicus. These issues
were relevant to the Athenians as the city was attempting to regain hegemony over the Spartans and
Thebans in these decades. But Isocrates does not seem to have paid particular attention to correcting the
Athenians or actively guiding their policy decisions in this earlier period.
A dark cloud looms over the speeches written in the time of the Social War, however. It was then
that he wrote the Areopagiticus (c. 357), On the Peace (c. 355), Antidosis (c. 354), and Panathenaicus
(342-338), all of which aimed to censure the Athenians for their political, moral, ethical, and educational
failings. In these speeches he consciously mixes epideictic, deliberative, and forensic styles in order to

113

reach the widest audience and make the strongest arguments for educational reform in Athens.
224
The
Areopagiticus deals with domestic reforms, On the Peace foreign policy, and the Antidosis addresses the
political power of the courts. The Panathenaicus, by contrast, reads as a last-ditch effort of a man who
lived longer than he ever expected to thrust onto Athens the project of a united Greek attack on the
Persians. Though this dream of his began to take form in the Panegyricus, it did not reappear until he
wrote his discourse To Philip in 346 BCE (along with two letters, Ep. 2 and 3), when, it seems, he felt a
more urgent need for unity among the Greeks. As he proclaims in the Panthenaicus, “I became the leader
(hegemona) of these discourses, which urged the Greeks toward unity (homonoia) among themselves and
the expedition against the barbarians” (12.13). Isocrates’ interest in rhetoric was born not just from a need
for good democratic deliberation, but for broadcasting his putative solutions to the political chaos of the
fourth century. His praise of Athens and her democracy gave way to more and more censure, and his
focus turned to developing a centralized educative authority in the Athenian democracy that would rescue
the city from further political crisis. But this did not mean he wanted to throw out the democracy entirely.
Rather, as Josiah Ober has suggested, “unlike Plato, Isocrates did not abandon hope for democratic
amelioration; the question, Isocrates suggests, is how to improve demokratia, not how to replace it with
oligarchia”, or monarchia or tyrannis, for that matter.
225
But where could he locate such an authority in a
city so hostile to professional educators?
Around 357 BCE Isocrates answered that question in the Areopagiticus, in which he argued that
the authority to educate should be placed in the hands of the Areopagus Council. Isocrates viewed the
“constitution of the ancestors” as the best form of government Athens ever had. It was characterized by
moderation, order, and justice because it was under the control of the Areopagus. He consciously avoids
the phrase patrios politeia and any oligarchical associations his plan might have.
226
He is well aware that
what he is proposing is an extremely conservative form of democracy (7.57), but argues that imitating the

224
See 15.1-5
225
Ober 1998: 249.
226
For the patrios politeia in the 4th century, see Shear 2010:19-69; for Isocrates and the patrios politeia see
Wallace 1985: 145-173.

114

ancestral customs will ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone. The demos would collectively
be endowed with the same authority as a king and the powers of its individual members kept in check by
the Areopagus; such accountability measures would produce a dynamically stable entity. Oligarchy does
not have this regulatory factor and they become slaves to themselves and their enemies, while
democracies rule over other cities but share their power equally among themselves. Even then, a
democracy ruling over others can go astray without proper checks on its power. In On the Peace,
Isocrates blames the creation of the Second Athenian League for throwing the whole city into tarache,
and the only thing that can save it is to give up the empire and focus on rehabilitation the Athenian civic
character (8.64).
Though he argues that the authority to educate should be centralized and given to the Areopagus,
he describes the mechanisms of civic education as hardly any different than they already were. In the
good old days, “young men did not spend their time in gambling dens or with flute girls or in the
company in which they now spend their days; rather they stuck to the tasks they were assigned, marveling
at (thaumazontes) and emulating (zelountes) those who were best at them” (7.48).
227
Watching, learning,
and emulating exemplary citizen behaviors and civic values continued to be, for Isocrates, fundamental
elements of proper Athenian civic education. But in the context of democracy, his philosophy needed to
reach a much wider audience than in a monarchy, because the Areopagus itself was composed of an ever-
changing group of citizen elders.
228
Speechcraft was thus the ideal tool for promulgating his political
philosophy in a society as addicted to public speech as Athens.

227
Here there is some resemblance to Plato, Republic 500c: “but if they look at things that are ordered and eternally
consistent, and seeing that they neither do wrong nor are wronged by each other, but all being orderly in accordance
with reason, he will imitate them and assimilate himself as much as possible. Or do you think there is some
possibility that one would not imitate that which he encounters with wonder?” (ἀλλ᾽ εἰς τεταγμένα ἄττα καὶ κατὰ
ταὐτὰ ἀεὶ ἔχοντα ὁρῶντας καὶ θεωμένους οὔτ᾽ ἀδικοῦντα οὔτ᾽ ἀδικούμενα ὑπ᾽ ἀλλήλων, κόσμῳ δὲ πάντα καὶ κατὰ
λόγον ἔχοντα, ταῦτα μιμεῖσθαί τε καὶ ὅτι μάλιστα ἀφομοιοῦσθαι. ἢ οἴει τινὰ μηχανὴν εἶναι, ὅτῳ τις ὁμιλεῖ ἀγάμενος,
μὴ μιμεῖσθαι ἐκεῖνο;). See Nightingale 2004: 253-268 on wonder (thauma) in Aristotle and Plato. For thaumata as
a cultural phenomenon in ancient Greece see Lightfoot 2021, who likewise does not take Isocrates into
consideration. Isocrates’ own prolific use of the idea of thauma still needs specialized treatment. In this passage of
the Areopagiticus he seems to agree with Plato that the marvellous inspires imitation, though most of the time in
Isocrates the verb θαυμάζω implies a negative reaction of surprise to something morally or ethically wrong.
228
For the membership of the Areopagus, see Wallace 1985: 94-97.

115

The only top-down authority he wishes to impose is the supervision and guidance of the
Areopagus, because without some kind of guiding authority, he argues, even good people turn bad (7.47).
Perhaps the most apparent adaptation of authoritarian rule onto the democracy, and the hallmark of the
authoritarian-distributive model of civic education, is the implementation of a kind of surveillance that
would correct and guide citizens toward good citizenship. In his discourses to Nicocles he advocates for
this kind of surveillance state three times, once in each speech. In the Evagoras (9.42), he praises
Evagoras for cultivating his knowledge to such an extent that he knew every political affair and citizen so
well that no one could plot against him in secret.
229
In To Nicocles, Isocrates advises Nicocles to “appear
to be fearsome by letting nothing escape your notice, but be gentle (praos) by making the punishments
less than the crimes” (2.23), and in the Nicocles (3.52-53), Isocrates places into the mouth of the king of
Salamis advice—or a warning—to his subjects not to attempt to hide their possessions, thoughts, actions,
or intentions so as to avoid becoming bad citizens. Isocrates recognized the same kind of activity in the
old Areopagus as well:

καὶ ταῦτα νομοθετήσαντες οὐδὲ τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον ὠλιγώρουν, ἀλλὰ διελόμενοι τὴν μὲν πόλιν
κατὰ κώμας τὴν δὲ χώραν κατὰ δήμους ἐθεώρουν τὸν βίον τὸν ἑκάστου, καὶ τοὺς ἀκοσμοῦντας
ἀνῆγον εἰς τὴν βουλήν. ἡ δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἐνουθέτει, τοῖς δ᾽ ἠπείλει, τοὺς δ᾽ ὡς προσῆκεν ἐκόλαζεν.
ἠπίσταντο γὰρ ὅτι δύο τρόποι τυγχάνουσιν ὄντες οἱ καὶ προτρέποντες ἐπὶ τὰς ἀδικίας καὶ
παύοντες τῶν πονηριῶν: παρ᾽ οἷς μὲν γὰρ μήτε φυλακὴ μηδεμία τῶν τοιούτων καθέστηκε μήθ᾽ αἱ
κρίσεις ἀκριβεῖς εἰσι, παρὰ τούτοις μὲν διαφθείρεσθαι καὶ τὰς ἐπιεικεῖς τῶν φύσεων, ὅπου δὲ
μήτε λαθεῖν τοῖς ἀδικοῦσι ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι μήτε φανεροῖς γενομένοις συγγνώμης τυχεῖν, ἐνταῦθα δ᾽
ἐξιτήλους γίγνεσθαι τὰς κακοηθείας. ἅπερ ἐκεῖνοι γιγνώσκοντες ἀμφοτέροις κατεῖχον τοὺς

229
Alexiou (2010: 132) interprets this passage as Isocrates presenting Evagoras as embodying law and justice itself,
but does not seem to notice the practical implications of this description of Evagoras and does not link it to the
Areopagiticus.

116

πολίτας, καὶ ταῖς τιμωρίαις καὶ ταῖς ἐπιμελείαις: τοσούτου γὰρ ἔδεον αὐτοὺς λανθάνειν οἱ κακόν
τι δεδρακότες, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς ἐπιδόξους ἁμαρτήσεσθαί τι προῃσθάνοντο. (7.46-47)

And having laid down these rules [i.e., assigning tasks to youths] they did not neglect their
remaining time, but dividing up the city into districts and the countryside into demes they
watched over the life of each citizen (etheoroun ton bion hekastou), and hauled the disorderly
before the Areopagus Council. Some it chastised, others it threatened [with punishment], and still
others it punished as was fitting. For they knew that there happened to be two ways which turn
people (protrepontes) to wrongdoing and which hinder them from badness: for where no guard
against such things has been put in place nor are the judgments strict, even people of reasonable
natures (tas epieikeis ton physeon) are corrupted; but where is it impossible for wrongdoers to
easily escape notice or receive pardon when they are found out, there bad character fades away.
Realizing this, the Areopagites restrained the citizens from both ways [of wrongdoing], by both
punishments and attentiveness (epimeleiais). For those who did some bad thing were so far from
escaping their notice that the Areopagites even predicted those who were likely to commit a
crime.

By Isocrates’ account, the Areopagus was an authoritarian ruling body that always sought the common
good, much like the way he advises kings to be. According to him, they realized that a good-natured
person could still turn bad in the absence of supervision by other good (or better) natured people. Stricter
moral and educational authority would thus be necessary for the city to thrive. But it was this very kind of
invasive, authoritarian regulation of the citizen body that the demos voted to remove from the Areopagus’
scope of powers when Ephialtes instituted sweeping reforms in the 460s BCE. Isocrates bemoans this
(7.50-51), claiming that it was that generation of politicians who caused the present youth to become
disordered (tarachodes) and deprived the city of peace. Only restoring the authoritarian model of
education would bring Athens back to its formerly stable state.

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Of course, Isocrates’ idea of tradition and account of events of the early fifth century is steeped in
idealism. Whether he truly believed that the Areopagus was a benevolent dictator of sorts is hard to tell,
but it is clear that he believed that it was possible to enact such a state of affairs in Athens. All it would
take is a dose of Isocratean philosophical education. For Isocrates saw the failure of the democracy to
properly educate itself as a failure of its soul:
ἔστι γὰρ ψυχὴ πόλεως οὐδὲν ἔτερον ἢ πολιτεία, τοσαύτην ἔχουσα δύναμιν ὅσην περ ἐν σώματι
φρόνησις. αὕτη γάρ ἐστιν ἡ βουλευομένη περὶ ἁπάντων, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἀγαθὰ διαφυλάττουσα, τὰς δὲ
συμφορὰς διαφεύγουσα. ταύτῃ καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τοὺς ῥήτορας καὶ τοὺς ἰδιώτας ἀναγκαῖόν
ἐστιν ὁμοιοῦσθαι, καὶ πράττειν οὕτως ἑκάστους οἵαν περ ἂν ταύτην ἔχωσιν. (7.14)

“The soul of the city is nothing other than its politeia, having as much power as the mind has over
the body. For it is this that deliberates about everything, keeps guard over good things, and avoids
disasters. Necessarily laws, orators, and private citizens are assimilated to it, and the welfare of
each depends on what kind of politeia they have.”
If the politeia assimilates laws and people to itself and determines their welfare, as if it were the mind
controlling the body, then, by analogy, it could be subject to the same improvements of character that an
individual would receive from a philosophical education. This is the motivation behind Isocrates’ attempt
at distributive character reform. If the body of citizens, its laws, and its political practices can be turned
toward philosophy, then the whole politeia is improved. The moral and ethical constraints of the soul, he
suggests, are far stronger than any law; indeed, he believed a complex law code was the sign of moral and
ethical degeneracy because it meant that the citizens of a polis did not respect their city by their own
choice (7.39-40). Treating the demos like an authoritarian ruler allowed him to hold them collectively to
the same standard as an individual king or tyrant learning his philosophy. The inculcation of tropoi like
fair-mindedness, moderation, gentleness, and justice (theoretically) prevent the ruler from ever abusing

118

their power; the same would thus apply to the demos in Athens. Thus, as Kathryn Morgan suggests, “self-
interest becomes civic interest”;
230
the self and the civic must be assimilated through common education.
Isocrates’ grand plan for Athenian civic education suffered some significant setbacks in terms of
its public image and his school’s longevity. His most accomplished student, Timotheus, was widely
disliked for his perceived arrogance and for an accusation brought against him by his fellow general
Chares for insubordination during the Social War. In the Antidosis, Isocrates is at pains to reconcile
Timotheus’ excellence in military matters with his apparent inability to engage with the public. We also
find out that one of his students, Clearchus, tyrant of Pontic Heraclea, apparently did not internalize the
lessons Isocrates taught about proper character traits for rulers and was corrupted by absolute power (Ep.
7). Furthermore, Isocrates’ model of philosophical education, being structured in such a way that anyone
who learned from him would go on to have an active political career instead of creating a circle of
philosophers like the Socratics, left his school without an inheritor, and so his school died with him in 338
BCE. Nevertheless, through his writing and his students his influence was felt in the way the democracy
organized educational authority and expressed civic values, especially in Lycurgus’ educational reforms
and policies in the 330s BCE (Chapter 6). He also enjoyed a highly influential legacy in the fields of
rhetoric, education, and (authoritarian) political philosophy through the Hellenistic period, the
Renaissance, and the modern period.
231

Plato, Authority, and the Laws
Isocrates was not the only philosopher to rethink the way authority was involved in civic
education in Athens. As we saw in Chapter 3, in his earliest dialogues, Plato sought to correct the wrongs
committed by the Athenian demos against his teacher Socrates by isolating the weaknesses and failures of
the oikos, polis, and politeia to properly educate the citizens of Athens. Like Isocrates, he found fault
especially in the way the authority to educate was spread out among different areas of civic life, relying

230
Morgan 2004: 140.
231
For Isocrates’ legacy see Muir 2018, Haskins 2004, Jaeger 1936, Wareh 2012.

119

on the family, fellow citizens, democratic political practice, and the laws and customs of the city to teach
citizens proper behavior and civic values. In the rest of this chapter, I will give a brief summary of the
main arguments of the Republic and then examine passages from the Laws, his final dialogue, to show
how Plato eventually began to yield to the urgency of improving the present situation rather than residing
in the purely theoretical autocratic regime of the Callipolis. Both Plato and Isocrates concluded that
Athens needed a centralized educational authority to push it closer to their ideal cities. But where
Isocrates relied on democratic institutions and radical reform of the character of both the collective demos
and individual citizens, Plato turned to the laws and the higher power of the gods in order to persuade
citizens to submit to an authoritarian style of civic education.

Authoritarian Education in the Second-Best City
To understand Plato’s views on education, politics, and authority in the Laws we must first take a
short detour through his Republic. As Eric Havelock argued, the Republic was not just a treatise on
political philosophy, but a critique of popular modes of education.
232
His Callipolis proposed a radical
new model of the relationship between politics and education where “political power and philosophy
coincide completely” (Rep. 5.473c-d). Nuclear families would be abolished, citizens selected at birth for
the best traits, the laws rewritten, the poets expelled, stringent hierarchies imposed, and the gods
consulted for every major policy decision. The city would be composed of a producer class and a
guardian class; from this latter group a select cohort of the most capable children would be chosen, and
eventually a philosopher-king would emerge from a decades-long education in mousike and gymnastike,
war, dialectic, and political experience, culminating in the ability to see the ideal Form of the good and
have knowledge of the Truth. He would also educate others of the guardian class. This philosopher-king
would act in the best interest of the city’s people and beholden to the laws of the Callipolis and the will of

232
Havelock 1963.

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the gods.
233
The Callipolis is, in essence, Athens turned upside down: the oikos is assimilated to the state,
the requirements for political participation are fundamentally changed (especially regarding women’s
participation), and democratic civic education has been replaced with an epistocracy of sorts with an
extremely rigid educational program. Like Isocrates, Plato envisioned that the best form of civic
education would occur under an authoritarian scheme led by an enlightened ruler.
But such a ruler was nearly impossible to find (or create) because philosophers do not meddle in
politics (Rep. 5.496b) and there had not yet been a politeia capable of nurturing a philosophic nature (Rep.
6.497a-c) fit to rule. In addition, Socrates suggests, there is a difference between theory and practice (Rep.
5.472e-473a). This remark, and others about the possibility of such a city in the Republic, has elicited a
number of interpretative responses. On one reading, scholars see Plato wavering as to whether the
Callipolis could be achieved and find him, by the time of the composition of the Laws, expressing “a
mood of tiredness and resignation.”
234
Other scholars see the Laws as entirely complementary to the
Republic, not developmental or revisionist.
235
A third approach to the issue takes a middle ground,
arguing that the Laws does fill in gaps left open in the Republic, but also expresses a change of mind on
Plato’s part about issues such as the effects of absolute power on human nature or the possibility of non-
philosophers achieving virtue.
236

When it comes to Plato’s thoughts on civic education this last shift, argued most fully by
Christopher Bobonich (2002), is the most significant.
237
If Plato’s philosophy in the Laws affords the
possibility of virtue to non-philosophers, it is conceivable that such a philosophy, like that of Isocrates,
has practical applications for Athenian democracy. Some scholars have argued that the Laws was, in a
sense, Plato’s attempt at moving from idealism to a more realistic model for a city, but the things

233
This is, of course, a reductive description of only some of the salient features of the Callipolis as developed in
books 3-7. For Platonic education: Havelock 1963, Barrow 2010, Klosko 2006: 124
234
E.g. Annas 1981, Klosko 2006: 217 (quote). Saunders 1970 Plato, The "Laws", p. 28. See also R. F. Stalley 1983,
An Introduction to Plato's "Laws" (Indianapolis, 1983), pp. 9-10. Gould 1955: 182.
235
E.g. Laks 1990.
236
Schofield 1999, Bobonich 2002, Rowe 1998, Vlastos 1973: 215–16, Kraut 2010
237
See also Kraut 2010 on “ordinary virtue” in Plato’s utopias.

121

envisioned for Magnesia do not seem to be much more practical than the Kallipolis.
238
But Plato
recognizes that the theoretical city he proposes can be implemented in parts: Kleinias, at the end of Book
3 (702d), expresses in the optative (ἐγὼ τάχ᾽ ἂν χρησαίμην) that he might be able to use something from
the theoretical discussion to found his real-world city. It is indeed even possible that Isocrates’ own
application of philosophy to the education of the Athenian demos encouraged Plato to revise or expand
some of his positions on the philosophical and civic education of the masses. It is hard to resist this
conclusion when we see how Plato’s Laws take on features similar to Isocratean philosophy, such as the
authoritative written text,
239
the turn toward mirroring Athenian institutions in the formulation of the
“second best city” (e.g., the Areopagus and the nomophylakes and Nocturnal Council of the Laws),
240
and
the expansion of access to education to a larger portion of the citizen population.
That being said, Plato’s Laws and the ideas proposed by Isocrates in texts such as the
Areopagiticus still differ significantly on several crucial points. The education of children is perhaps the
greatest point of divergence. Plato’s authoritarian scheme of education places emphasis on the education
of a citizen for their entire life, while Isocrates seems to have only been interested in educating fully
fledged citizens and young men who are about to become citizens, when the soul is most confused and
most prone to impulsiveness.
241
Plato viewed childhood education as a necessary foundation to the
formation of the adult citizen. For this reason, Socrates suggests in the Republic that the Kallipolis would
only be possible if the founders of such a city (who have themselves run the philosophical gauntlet and
seen the good) will take the city’s children under ten years old into the countryside and raise them under
the new customs and laws of the Kallipolis and away from the corrupting influence of their parents (Rep.
7.540e-541a). Children born in the Kallipolis are taken from their parents, selected eugenically for

238
Aristotle, Pol. 2.6, 1256a10-b18; Brunt 1993: 260-266; Schofield 2000: 293-298.
239
cf.Isoc. 9.76. and Laws 7.811d-e. Nightingale 1993 and 1999, along with Adomenas 2001 address the status of
the Laws as “a written text whose language is sacrosanct”. Schofield 2003 challenges this position; see also Bertrand
1999 who argues that Plato develops and oral legal culture in the Laws, and Jouet-Pastre 2006 who emphasizes the
role of play in Plato’s structuring of the Laws and approach to legislation.
240
See further Morrow 1960, Bartels 2017
241
The confused state (ταραχώδης) of the teenage soul is expounded at 7.42-47. If order is not imposed on their
souls they risk throwing the entire polity (soul of the city) into turmoil.

122

desirable traits, and raised by the state. As they grow up both boys and girls must learn geometry,
mathematics, and other skills necessary for dialectic, which they learn once they are mature enough not to
abuse it. This instruction is not done by compulsion, because that is how slaves learn (Rep. 7.536d-e). In
the Laws, Plato keeps the family unit intact but institutes an even more intensely regulated upbringing and
education so that they are so disposed as to obey the gods and the laws uncritically.
242
The magistrate
elected to oversee the education of children was to be a father of legitimate children (preferably both sons
and daughters), over the age of 50, and elected from the guardians of the laws. This office was “the most
important by far” (6.765d) and its holder also had a permanent place on the Nocturnal Council, which was
charged with upholding the laws in secret.
243

Another significant difference between the two is their conceptions of authority. Isocrates
continues to vest the power to educate in individuals, even when a single ruler is not viable, as he believes
in the existence of people who possess the qualities he wishes to see in democratic citizens. As we saw
above, though he believes in the educative value of laws, an overly complicated law code implies the lack
of proper citizen education rather than its presence. Thus an authoritative ruling body of superior moral
standing should be able to educate a democracy through public performance of good citizen behaviors
and character traits. Plato, by contrast, has ultimately lost faith in the autocratic ruler in the Laws, and
instead finds authority in an extremely detailed law code and belief in the gods. But achieving this still
requires a brief, but powerful, authoritarian element. In Book 4 of the Laws, he argues that the regime
type easiest to change would be a tyranny under the rule of a young, intelligent, tyrant with some self-
control;
244
the second easiest would be another kind of monarchy; the third, democracy; and the most

242
For a detailed account of the structure of education in the Laws see Cleary 2003. It is worth noting that children
are not allowed to think critically about the framing of the laws but adults are; cf. Schofield 2003: 5.
243
For an account of these magistracies, see Morrow 1960: 324-327.
244
Schofield 1999: 45-50 argues that this reference to the tyrannical soul refers to the same phrase in Rep. 9. 577e
and that it is meant to highlight the impossibility of such a tyrant existing. Christopher Rowe (2010: 37n.31) argues
instead that this transitional tyranny is possible because once the laws are in place the young tyrant’s soul has not
had enough time to solidify as purely tyrannical and cannot resist the authority of the laws.

123

difficult, oligarchy, because it has the largest number of powerful individuals.
245
“The change comes
about,” the Athenian continues, “when nature throws up a true lawgiver, and when he joins forces with
the people who have most power in the city” (710e). Ultimately the hope is to bring about a regime that
values above all else self-control and justice, however that power is organized. The authority of the law is
not negotiable.
Despite the differences between Isocrates and Plato, they share the same conviction that their
philosophies can improve the Athenian condition by removing the authority to education from the demos,
the family, and the preexisting informal educational structures. Isocrates attempts (unsuccessfully) to do
this by adapting a king’s education to the individual in democracy. Plato attempts (also unsuccessfully) to
do this by reforming the relationship of citizens to law. The law code of Magnesia reestablishes authority
in the city as if it were new and divine, even though it appeared through human intervention. As Andrea
Nightingale has argued, “By memorising the law code and ‘internalising’ its ideology, the citizens fall
into a certain kind of oblivion – they forget to think for themselves.”
246
The authority of law is
transcendent of the political power of both individual and collective because it is based in the power of
the gods. Indeed it is written, theorized, and practiced in religious terms.
247
Thus unlike Isocrates, Plato’s
program of education in the Laws becomes a matter of indoctrination and persuasion of an entire
population rather than the more “protreptic” style of intellectual and moral cultivation of, primarily, those
who are or will be politically active.
248
I argue that Plato’s reorganization of educational authority in
Magnesia aims to solve the problem of political division and instability in the Athenian democracy of the
360s and 350s. As he states in Book 9, “laws exist, it would appear, in some cases for the benefit of
people who are good, as a means, of teaching the forms of association which will allow them to live in
amity; in other cases they are for those who have dodged an education and who, unyielding by nature,

245
Plato does not explain outright why democracy comes before oligarchy but the implication seems to be that it has
fewer powerful individuals than an oligarchy and bears resemblance to autocratic regimes. Presumably the demos is
treated as a corporate person in terms of its political power.
246
Nightingale 2013: 245.
247
Nightingale 1993, 1999; Adomenas 2001, though see Schofield 2003 For criticism of this position.
248
Isocrates is almost entirely silent about women and their role in society.

124

have had no softening process to stop them turning to evil of every kind.”
249
In practical terms, this theory
of law address the “tyranny of the demos” and the concomitant “lack” of education caused by the
diffusion of authority among the oikos, polis, and politeia in Athens.

The Mixed Constitution and “Stupidity of the Highest Order”
In Book 3 of the Laws, right before the initial foundation of Magnesia in Book 4, the Athenian
turns the discussion to the reason why powerful kingdoms of the past fell to ruin. He first suggests that
personal desires are to blame (3.687c-e): each person naturally wants things to happen according to their
will, and so each prays for that thing. Thus conflict arises because, for example, a son prays to fulfill his
desire and his father prays against the son’s desires; in addition these things may occur out of impulse or
lack of knowledge of goodness and justice. Instead, as Megillus continues the thought, people both
collectively and individually should be praying for one thing, namely the acquisition of reason (3.687e).
The Athenian agrees and reminds us that the lawgiver must aim for the entirety of goodness; wisdom,
ranking first among the virtues (followed by moderation, justice, and courage), thus is the highest aim. He
concludes that the fall of kingdoms came about because of ignorance of the elements of human behavior
(688c-d). It was thus “stupidity of the highest order”
250
which caused such ruin and which the city of
Magnesia must avoid at all costs. The Athenian then explains what this stupidity is:

Ἀθ: τίς οὖν ἡ μεγίστη δικαίως ἂν λέγοιτο ἀμαθία; σκοπεῖτε εἰ συνδόξει καὶ σφῷν λεγόμενον: ἐγὼ
μὲν δὴ τὴν τοιάνδε τίθεμαι.

Κλ: ποίαν;

249
Laws 9.880d-e, trans Griffith. This is part of the preamble to the law on parricide, but applies broadly to Plato’s
entire formulation of law.
250
Griffith’s translation of μεγίστη ἀμαθία.

125

Ἀθ: τὴν ὅταν τῴ τι δόξαν καλὸν ἢ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι μὴ φιλῇ τοῦτο ἀλλὰ μισῇ, τὸ δὲ πονηρὸν καὶ
ἄδικον δοκοῦν εἶναι φιλῇ τε καὶ ἀσπάζηται. ταύτην τὴν διαφωνίαν λύπης τε καὶ ἡδονῆς πρὸς τὴν
κατὰ λόγον δόξαν ἀμαθίαν φημὶ εἶναι τὴν ἐσχάτην, μεγίστην δέ, ὅτι τοῦ πλήθους ἐστὶ τῆς ψυχῆς:
[689β] τὸ γὰρ λυπούμενον καὶ ἡδόμενον αὐτῆς ὅπερ δῆμός τε καὶ πλῆθος πόλεώς ἐστιν. ὅταν οὖν
ἐπιστήμαις ἢ δόξαις ἢ λόγῳ ἐναντιῶται, τοῖς φύσει ἀρχικοῖς, ἡ ψυχή, τοῦτο ἄνοιαν προσαγορεύω,
πόλεώς τε, ὅταν ἄρχουσιν καὶ νόμοις μὴ πείθηται τὸ πλῆθος, ταὐτόν, καὶ δὴ καὶ ἑνὸς ἀνδρός,
ὁπόταν καλοὶ ἐν ψυχῇ λόγοι ἐνόντες μηδὲν ποιῶσιν πλέον ἀλλὰ δὴ τούτοις πᾶν τοὐναντίον,
ταύτας πάσας ἀμαθίας τὰς πλημμελεστάτας [689ξ] ἔγωγ᾽ ἂν θείην πόλεώς τε καὶ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου
τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ τὰς τῶν δημιουργῶν, εἰ ἄρα μου καταμανθάνετε, ὦ ξένοι, ὃ λέγω. (3.689a-
c)

ATH: And what might justifiably be described as stupidity of the highest order? See if you
both agree with what I say. Stupidity of this kind, in my view—
KL: Is what?
ATH: Is when someone does not love what he has decided is fine and good, but instead hates
it, loving and favouring what he thinks is evil and unjust instead. This discord, I maintain,
between pain and pleasure on one side and rational opinion on the other is the ultimate— and also
the greatest — stupidity, because it affects the most populated part of the soul — the part which
feels pain and pleasure being to the soul what the common people and population at large are to
the city. When the soul opposes knowledge, opinion, rational argument — the things which
should direct it — this I call folly. It’s the same in a city, when the population at large does not
obey the rulers and the laws — and equally in an individual man, when the fine arguments
present in the soul count for nothing, but instead produce their exact opposite. All these are the
forms of stupidity which I personally would class as the most discordant both for a city and for

126

each individual one of its citizens — not the stupidity of the uneducated,
251
if you see what I
mean, my friends. (trans. Griffith)
The Athenian’s diagnosis of extreme ignorance as the greatest ill of the state, along with his definition of
stupidity, underscores two critical points of Plato’s program of civic education (as opposed to education
in general). First, this extreme stupidity is, in essence, a form of cognitive dissonance: it is the willful
contradiction of one’s own true beliefs about what is good and bad and mixes up pleasure and pain. At the
civic level this cognitive dissonance translates to disobedience of rulers and laws. A successful state needs
to be composed of citizens whose souls align with knowledge, correct opinion, and rational thought and
therefore obey the laws of their city, which have been set for the good of society, even if they run counter
to their desires. Thus the civic education of the Laws aims to coordinate the pleasures and pains of the
individual and those of the states.
The second important point that the Athenian makes is that one does not need formal education to
be considered “wise”—that is, to have aligned one’s soul with the education of the laws. Thus the
“stupidity of the educated” (amathia taken literally as “no learning”) is not the same as the stupidity of
those whose souls arrive at “the exact opposite” conclusion of what rational argument should lead them
to. The Athenian goes on the clarify this point: these latter stupid people should not have any power
whatsoever, even if they are intellectual or sophisticated; but even the uneducated should be called “wise”
if they exhibit the desired harmony between the souls of the individual and collective state and should be
the ones in power (3.689c-d). Like Isocrates, Plato opens up the possibility of people who are not fully
fledged philosophers to rule, provided that they possess a kind of ignorance that is not harmful to the
state. In the context of Athenian democracy, this would mean removing from power the well-educated,
rhetorically sophisticated, but ultimately “stupid” politicians who foster tyrannical traits in the demos and
allowing those with virtuous souls to take power and rule in accordance with the law.

251
Griffith’s translation of δημιουργῶν as “uneducated” presumably refers to the lack of education that Plato(?)
thinks is typical of workers or craftsmen. Saunders interprets this as “the mere professional ignorance of a
workman”.

127

The conversation turns to types of claim to rulership
252
—selection by lot being the “fairest” and
“blessed by the gods and fortune” (3.690c)—and then the Athenian moves on to types of constitutions, of
which he says there are basically two: monarchy and democracy, Persian being a model for the former
and Athens the latter.
253
The Athenian, through the example of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, argues that the
disharmony (diaphonia) between desire and reason along with a lack of education aimed at avoiding that
disharmony caused them to give in to excess. Thus a lawgiver must observe the principle of moderation
(to metrion) to create a good, stable polity. This leads the Athenian to propose a new aim for education,
namely the cultivation of self-control and moderation (sophrosyne) above all other virtues (696b). Even
though wisdom (phronesis) is the greatest of the divine goods,
254
neither it, nor justice or courage, can
exist as goods without sophrosyne to temper them. Thus the Persian model is deficient because it swings
to one extreme by removing freedoms, effectively destroying friendship and cooperation (3.697c) and
making them “stupid” (amatheis, 3.698a).
As with the discourse of stupidity, emphasis on sophrosyne over knowledge does not aim to
simply curb the appetites of the citizens but to assimilate them into an obedient collective. This is made
especially apparent in the apportioning of public honors based on virtue, which is a necessity for a
prosperous city (3.697a). In and of itself, sophrosyne is neutral and warrants neither honors nor blame
because in the absence of something to control it has little importance. Rather, the Athenian says, the
virtues of the soul (i.e., wisdom, justice, and courage) must be honored above all other things, but only if
they are accompanied by sophrosyne. After this, the “good and fine things of the body” (presumably
athletics) should be honored, and finally goods related to property and money. The Athenian concludes:

252
In order of their validity: (1) the rule of parents over children; (2) high born over low born; (3) the older over the
younger; (4) slaveowners over slaves; (5) the stronger over the weaker; (6) the person with knowledge (φρόνησις)
over the unknowing (ἀνεπιστήμονες); (7) those who are selected by lot to office.
253
Plato previously identifies 5 kinds of constitution in the Republic (from best to worst: aristocracy, timocracy,
oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), and six in the Statesman (good and bad monarchy, good and bad democracy, good
and bad oligarchy). The reduction to two extreme forms of government serves to reinforce the point about the
necessity of moderation in statecraft and legislation.
254
The virtues are ranked in Book 1 of the Laws (1.631c), with phronesis in first place, followed by sophrosyne,
then dikaiosyne, and finally andreia. Calvo 1998 discusses the placement of andreia in last place. See, more
generally, Kraut 2010, Bobonich 2002: 288-292

128

“If any lawgiver or city ever strays from this principle, either by giving public recognition to money, or
by using public recognition to promote one of the lower goods to a higher level, then this would be an
unholy and unstatesmanlike action” (3.697b-c, trans. Griffith).
This is an indictment of contemporary Athenian honorific culture. When Plato was writing the
Laws around the 360s and 350s, the Athenians were issuing honorific decrees in unprecedented numbers
for both foreign benefactors and their own citizens.
255
The honorees were awarded for exhibiting such
values as andragathia (‘nobility’ or ‘being a good person’), philotimia (‘love of honor’), arete
(‘excellence, virtue’), and eunoia (‘goodwill’), all of which were typically expressed through donations of
money or other resources. Indeed, as I discussed above, honorific decrees were a favorite tool of the
Athenians for diplomacy with authoritarian regimes around the Mediterranean. The honoring of Athenian
citizens further introduced potential conflict, as envy and greed tore at the social fabric and caused the
disastrous end of both of Athens’ naval empires. Plato even suggests that this excessive ambition
(philotimia) and prioritization of wealth leads to murder and cycles of violence (9.870c). In ordering the
apportions of honors in this way, Plato both criticizes and offers a remedy for the Athenian demos’
backsliding into ignorance and tyranny: show restraint to curb the greed and excessive ambition that runs
rampant in Athens and only honor those who are genuinely virtuous (i.e., wise, just, and courageous).
256

In this way, public honors can be used for educational purposes without risk of political instability. The
only thing that can achieve this, however, is a law code that observes moderation and holds its citizens
accountable. Other binding contracts such as oaths simply do not have the power to accomplish this
(3.692b).
So Persia exercises too much authority, while Athenian democracy, at the other end of the
spectrum, affords too much freedom. The Athenian expresses this through the degeneracy of musical
styles (nomoi), which represent order, balance, and moderation par excellence. In the old days, the

255
This is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5 of this dissertation.
256
Bobonich (2002: 288-292) argues that Plato requires the presence of all four virtues in a person in order for them
to be truly virtuous. Presumably, that would mean that the virtuous person who is honored for one virtue should or
could be honored for all of them.

129

Athenian constitution was such that its people were “willing slaves” to the laws and lived with shame
before them, fostering friendship among the citizens.
257
But things quickly devolved into an extreme lack
of rule, beginning with tolerance of new and unusual musical styles, which opened up the gates to further
degradation of the Athenian way of life. Finally they ended up in a state where everyone thought
themselves the expert on everything, when this was in fact not true at all.
For Athens to become a virtuous city it needs to reign in its freedoms with self-control while
fostering friendship, wisdom, with some degree of freedom (3.701d). The mixed constitution of
Magnesia, itself representing moderation of both autocracy and democracy, provides the model for how
Athens can be improved. It creates a stable educative authority by taking that authority out of the hands of
its citizens entirely. Since law in Magnesia aims for the common good, not the interests of any specific
group or political faction (4.714b-715b), it can provide a form of civic education that inspires unity and
virtue instead of discord. Instrumental in this goal are the Preambles to the laws.

The Preambles
Plato introduces the idea that citizens must be persuaded to obey the laws in Book 4 of the Laws.
The Athenian tells his interlocutors that the laws will explain the duties of citizens toward family, friends,
and fellow citizens and how to behave in order to live a fulfilling life (4.718a). And this must be done not
just by the “tyrannical directive” of law (i.e. “do this, or that will happen to you”) and chastisement, but
through persuasion, because, as free citizens, they should not receive the coercive treatment used on
slaves.
258
Since the lawgiver has to deal with more issues than can be reasonably included in the text of a
law, the preambles also serve as “an example (deigma) to himself and those he is legislating for” of the
things that do not fit into law. Rather the law is to be, in a sense, a cooperative project between lawgiver
and citizens at first, which then induces cooperation between citizens and the law itself.

257
Cf. Isocrates’ description of the habits of the people of Athens in the early days of democracy at 7.46-49.
258
Laws 4.718b; cf. Rep. 7.536d-e.

130

Plato provides us with 18 examples of preambles attached to a wide array of laws about marriage,
piety, temple robbery, homicide, wounding, hunting, violence against parents and the elderly, fraud, retail
commerce, orphans, honoring one’s parents, court speeches, theft, military service, and funerals.
259
They
have no set form
260
and employ various methods of persuasion: some more overtly educative (in that they
give philosophical accounts which persuade through reason
261
), some more focused on instructive myth,
others also including a deterrent element. The preamble to the law on intentional homicide (9.870a-e), for
example, begins with a brief explanation of why someone might wish to commit a premeditated murder :
when the soul is consumed by desires due to weakness of character or lack of education, it prioritizes
wealth over the other goods (as discussed above) because money breeds an insatiable desire for
acquisition that the uneducated soul cannot overcome.
262
The reason for the lack of education is the undue
praise given by Greeks and non-Greeks to wealth. But the happy person should aim for wealth only when
accompanied by self-control and justice. The second cause of murder is ambition (φιλοτίμου ψυχῆς ἕξις)
and jealousy; the third is “cowardly and unjust fear” of being caught doing something they should not.
This psychological reasoning is supplemented by a deterrent myth: “there is retribution for such crimes in
Hades, and he who returns here must inevitably, in the course of nature, pay the penalty, which is to have
done to him what he himself did, and end his life by a similar fate, at the hands of another” (9.870e, trans
Griffith). This, the Athenian believes, should be enough to keep people from committing homicide, but
the law exists for those who do so anyways.
Plato seems to believe that what he is doing has never been done before (4.722e) and that the
preambles bridge the divide between rulers and ruled so that the city is entirely cooperative. The
preambles are effectively the authoritarian instantiation of the informal processes of Athenian public
discourse which often involved some amount of educating the audience (often jurors in court) in both

259
The preambles and their respective laws are conveniently organized into a table in Laks 2005: 129.
260
Laks 2005 suggests a general thematic structure for preambles, consisting in (1) “Relations de l’individu aux
autres et à lui-même (homilèmata) : dieux, parents, soi-même (âme, corps, biens), amis, cité et citoyens, étrangers”
and (2) “Mode d’être et de conduite : vertus et caractère personnel.”
261
Bobonich 1990: 373.
262
Cf. 8.831c-832b.

131

what the law is for and why they should abide by it (or throw it out, as it sometimes happens). Plato has
removed the variability and (as he sees it) unreliability of the masses to properly educate each other
inherent to the process. The preamble to the law on forensic trials reveals that Plato still recognizes the
value of courts for educating citizens, but only if they impart justice: “Take justice among mankind: it is
obviously a fine thing, having been a civilizing influence on all human affairs. And if it is a fine thing,
how can pleading cases in court not also be a fine thing?”
263
But should a speaker in court that does not
align with this communal justice for “love of argument” or greed, he will, in the first case, be banned
from speaking in court for a set amount of time or, in the latter, be put to death.
264

The problem lies in the common convention that holds that law should serve the interests of those
who are in power and that justice is merely the interests of the stronger over the weaker, as the Athenian
explains at 4.714c.
265
Neither the inherent authority of laws nor the simple threat of punishment would be
enough to ensure compliance, belief, or trust in them. Those subject to the law needed to understand why
the law exists, what good it does for them to follow it, and what to do instead of breaking the law.
Persuasion was crucial to this process, which Bobonich (1990) has shown convincingly to have been
primarily through reason and not just appeals to emotion or simply lies.
266
They must be short
267
and
intelligible so even the uneducated can make sense of them. Likewise the citizens of Magnesia must be
made “gentle” so that their emotional responses do not impede their rational understanding of the
preambles and laws.
268
Unlike Isocrates, Plato does not see gentleness as a virtue in and of itself: citizens
must be gentle in order for the laws and the civic education they provide to be fully effective.
269

Nevertheless, they agree that political stability depends on a kind of civic education that will suppress

263
11.937d-e.
264
As Schofield’s note to this passage (11.938c) in the Griffith translation suggests, Plato criticizes here the
Athenian’s failure to hold sycophants or other abusers of litigation accountable.
265
This recapitulates Thrasymachus’ argument in Book 1 of the Republic.
266
Other commentators suggest the use of lies and propaganda (Popper 1971 Open SOciety and Its enemies) or non-
rational persuasion through emotions or morality (Morrow 1953: 'Plato's Conception of Persuasion', PhR 62 (1953),
234-50 and Stalley 1983: 43).
267
Despite this, the Athenian suggests that the entirety of the Laws up to 4.721b is a preamble!
268
Bobonich 1990: 375-376.
269
Cf. Laws 5.731b: θυμοειδῆ μὲν δὴ χρὴ πάντα ἄνδρα εἶναι, πρᾷον δὲ ὡς ὅτι μάλιστα.

132

violence, aggression, and hostility— indeed the entire notion of the advantage of the stronger— among
the citizenry.
Plato further elaborates on the need to prioritize the collective over the individual in the preamble
to the law on wounding (9.874e-876e).
270
Human nature is, “by nature”, either unable to discern what is
best for people in social and political terms, or unable to act on what is best. It is difficult for people to
realize that the interests of the individual are best served if the interests of society as a whole are
prioritized. An autocratic ruler who knows this and theoretically needs no laws to govern him and his city
could not, by his nature, adhere to such a principle in the long term without law. Thus the lawgiver must
necessarily legislate in the interests of the city itself. Trying to address every individual case would be out
of the question. Again, Plato addresses an issue inherent to the Athenian law code and the courts of
Athens. Since law cannot address individual circumstances, motivations, or other variables in litigation it
is up to the jurors in court to make the majority of decisions regarding punishment. But that requires
jurors who act according to self-control and justice, acting with neither excessive secrecy or disturbance
(thorybos) nor succumbing to self-interest or akratic ignorance. Trials, like all other political affairs in the
city, must prioritize the collective over the individual. The education a citizen will receive throughout
their lifetime will constantly reinforce this through the ubiquity of laws and their preambles.
So far I have argued that Plato employs an authoritarian model of civic education through laws to
encourage cooperation and unity by imposing self-control and moderation on the inhabitants of Magnesia.
Yet the preambles and laws themselves cannot always, in and of themselves, teach these things, and some
citizens slip through the cracks. The preamble and the law on temple robbery, with which Plato opens
Book 9 of the Laws, is instructive on this point. Temple robbery is presented as the worst crime one could
commit.
271
In setting up this preamble, the Athenian explains that the law will be especially harsh since

270
This discussion comes attached to this law because, Plato argues, wounding can happen intentionally,
unintentionally, or out of anger, which is a combination of both, and the citizens on the jury needed to be able to
discern among these reasons for wounding based on examples provided by the laws. As Schofield notes, this was an
innovative conception of the motivation for wounding.
271
This was apparently popular Athenian sentiment as well: cf. Lys. 5, Xen. Hell. 1.7.22; Dem. 23.26; Todd 1993:
107, 110; MacDowell 1978: 149, 176.

133

the only citizen of Magnesia who would actually commit this crime would have no respect for any law
whatsoever (9.853b-c) and is therefore incurable.
272
It is rather expected that such a crime would be
committed by “household slaves, foreigners, or foreigners’ slaves” because any citizen raised in Magnesia
will (theoretically) have been educated and conditioned not to commit crimes such as temple robbery or
homicide (9.853b-c). But human nature is weak and not everyone can be “softened” by the law (9.853d-
854a).
This preamble is unusual because it must deal with a crime that is wholly irrational and
apparently outside of the control of the potential criminal, being caused by an evil desire that is “neither
human nor divine” and “planted in you, born from crimes committed by men long ago and never
expiated.”
273
In such a case, where one’s self-control seems to be teetering on the edge of the abyss, what
is one to do? The preamble prescribes the following:
When you feel a resolve of this nature coming over you, go straight to the exorcists and their
rites; go straight to the shrines of the gods who avert evil, as their suppliant; go straight to the
company of those who have the reputation among you of being good men. Hear what they say,
and try repeating to yourself, that it is the duty of every man to respect what is fine and what is
just. As for the company of the wicked, leave it, without a backward glance. If you do these
things, if your illness becomes less acute— or rather, if you don’t do them, then regard death as a
finer choice, and say your farewell to life.

Rather than appealing to reason to dissuade the would-be temple robber, the preamble prescribes a
regimen to deal with his “illness”. Such evil impulses can be dealt with by community involvement in the
preemptive rehabilitation of the person who might commit temple robbery. It is not guaranteed that the
exorcists and good people can actually change that desire, but at the very least their presence could

272
Cf. the law on frivolous prosecution, which views any who argue contrary to justice because they have prioritized
greed over other goods as incurable and deserving the death penalty. 11.937d-938c.
273
9.854b: οὐκ ἀνθρώπινόν σε κακὸν οὐδὲ θεῖον κινεῖ τὸ νῦν ἐπὶ τὴν ἱεροσυλίαν προτρέπον ἰέναι, οἶστρος δέ σέ τις
ἐμφυόμενος ἐκ παλαιῶν καὶ ἀκαθάρτων τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἀδικημάτων.

134

discourage or restrain the person who might act on his evil desire. But whoever cannot cure himself
through the actions prescribed in the preamble shall be asked to commit suicide or submit to the death
penalty. The law itself stipulates that a citizen who commits this crime will be seen as incurable and must
be put to death: “the least of evils, and of some benefit to others by way of example.”
274
Thus authority is
still taken to a quasi-tyrannical extreme, as long as it can be justified as being in the interest of society as
a whole. The preamble teaches the citizens of Magnesia not only that death a preferable choice to
becoming a temple robber, but that it is incumbent upon the community as subjects of the authority of the
law to guard against it.

Conclusion
In this chapter I have shown how the philosophies of Isocrates and Plato developed from a
concern over the troubled nexus of politics, power, and education in democratic Athens. Historical
evidence from the 380s and 370s reveals an attempt on the part of the Athenians to depart from their
foreign policy of the 5th century in favor of more diplomatic relations with other cities and kingdoms
around the Mediterranean. There was an especially strong interest in treating with autocratic regimes from
Sicily all the way to Odrysian Thrace ostensibly for military and economic alliances, but also, I
suggested, as a way to grant the Athenian demos the diplomatic status of authoritarian ruler as a corporate
person. But once the Second Athenian League was solidified the desire for empire and the struggle for
hegemony ultimately caused them to slide back into their old ways: member states of the Second
Athenian League were abused and defected, igniting the disastrous Social War in the 350s. On the
international stage, the alliance was weakened beyond repair; domestically, Athens began to experience
further political and cultural disturbance.

274
9.854e-855a, trans. Griffith. The law against temple-robbery first stipulates that, if the perpetrator is a slave or
foreigner, he shall be branded, whipped, stripped naked, and expelled from the city. “Perhaps after this punishment
he will become a better person, having learnt self-control.” (9.854d, trans. Griffith). Only in that case can the
punishment be reformative. See Saunders 1991, Allen 2000a.

135

Seeing these things happening, the philosophers argued for a centralized educational authority
that would teach citizens a unitarily good form of citizenship. Isocrates had already spent many years
developing a philosophical program that, among other things, aimed to reform the character of autocrats
to mold them into his ideal ruler, who was not only morally upright, but capable of imparting his moral
rectitude unto his subjects. In the face of what he saw as a return of the ‘tyranny’ of the demos, he tried to
adapt his philosophy of political character onto the Athenian democracy. In the belief that the democracy
needed an authoritarian style of education that would impose pro-social character traits such as fair-
mindedness (epieikeia), gentleness (praotes) and moderation (sophrosyne), he recommended restoring the
Areopagus as an educational authority. In addition, Isocrates himself would contribute to the welfare of
the city by teaching his students philosophy, who would then inculcate his lessons in other citizens
through rhetorical performance.
As we saw in Chapter 3, Plato had similar concerns about the demos’ ability to properly educate
itself through its informal practices of civic education. Looking to the Laws, I argued in this chapter that
his approach to the problem of good governance relies not on the singular authority of an enlightened
ruler but a complex of epistemic, moral, and political authority that exists outside individuals. As Glenn
Morrow put it, “the rule of philosophy, the rule of law, and the mixed constitution…are the three
principles to which Plato has successively committed himself”.
275
Plato’s arguments against the
possibility of a good monarch among humans pushes back against Isocrates’ continued courting of young
kings and tyrants in the 360s and 350s. Whether Plato knew of Isocrates’ early letters is impossible to tell,
but surely he must have known about Isocrates’ interest in autocratic rulers around the Mediterranean and
failure to rehabilitate the former tyrant of Pontic Heraklea, Clearchus. From this it was clear that civic
education ultimately could not be guaranteed. Isocrates attempts to avoid the problem of free riders or
political and social malefactors through a quasi-surveillance state run by the king or the Areopagus. Plato
addresses this in a much more direct way: the “incurable” souls of Magnesia shall simply be killed.

275
Morrow 1960: 156; Kraut 2010: 63-64.

136

In Chapter 5, we will see how the Athenians’ evolving relationship with authority expressed itself
in the epigraphic record. It will become apparent that over time the paradigmatic status of the citizen
became increasingly important as the city came to rely on individual benefactions. Though the demos at
first only gave public honors to foreign benefactors, eventually Athenian citizens received honors that
codified a limited set of ideal civic virtues. Little by little, the authority to educate was arrogated by
individuals, causing the demos to once again find new ways of prioritizing the collective.

137

Chapter 5: Civic Education and Athenian Epigraphy
This chapter surveys the evolution of epigraphic and monumental practice in Athens from the 5
th

to the 4
th
centuries BCE and highlights the effects of the Social War (357-355 BCE) on developments in
civic education in Athens. Consequently, the people of Athens began employing new mechanisms for
inculcating democratic values on its populace. This manifested itself primarily in the form of inscriptions
and monuments. Already over the course of the 4th century the Athenians were setting up inscriptions
throughout the city more actively than in the 5th century, in the form of laws, statues, and honors for
foreign benefactors. But after the Social War, there was a sharp increase especially in the number of
honorific inscriptions published by the Council and Assembly honoring not just foreign benefactors, but
individual Athenian citizens and even the demos of Athens itself. These honorific inscriptions highlighted
the virtues of the honorand while also encouraging the readers of the inscriptions to follow their example
and exhibit these character traits themselves. The reflexive nature of the honors in the second half of the
4th century betrays the underlying need to validate the pro-social values presented in them for the
inhabitants of Athens. The Athenians recognized that they could use the mechanism for incentivizing
foreign benefactions to incentivize their own citizens toward behaviors that would maintain the stability
of their regime. But this does not mean the democracy stayed the same; rather as the demos became more
concerned with formally prescribing behaviors for its citizens, the democracy became progressively more
conservative.
I will first discuss the “epigraphic habit” of the Athenians in the 4th century and the form,
content, and contexts of several inscriptions. Already by this point the Athenians had been honoring
foreign benefactors for their contributions of money or grain to the city. But it was around this time that
the Athenians began honoring their own citizens and governing bodies for things such as “saying and
advising the best things with a love of honor and without being bribed”.
276
In addition, certain civic values
such as ἀρετή, δικαιοσύνη, and (especially) φιλοτιμία gain importance as foundational elements of good

276
IG II
2
223

138

citizen behavior, as evidenced by the inscriptions from this period. The long list of specific qualities a
good citizen should have at the beginning of the 4th century became generalized and driven by the city’s
need for resources. The honorific culture of the second half of the 4th century not only changed the nature
of civic education but also contributed to the shrinking of the democracy and increased influence of the
wealthy.
After a discussion of the inscriptions, I will illustrate their social impact in the post-war period to
show that civic education was becoming more focused on inculcating not just good democratic behaviors,
but also obedience and devotion to the democracy. This will be done through close examination of the
epigraphic evidence and a reading of Demosthenes’ speech Against Leptines. This speech reveals not only
Demosthenes’ ability to make a political issue out of just about anything and anyone, but also the real-
world importance for civic education that these inscriptions and monuments had. His arguments rest on
the premise that these physical monuments stand as irrefutable evidence of the citizen’s disposition
toward the state and the state’s disposition toward the citizen; in other words, they are truth written in
stone. Though the prosecution is nominally a graphe paranomon suit, it takes on the form of an attack
against Leptines himself. Demosthenes wants to make an example of Leptines himself, despite only the
law being on trial. In this and other speeches Demosthenes constructs the “character of the city” (τὸ τῆς
πόλεως ἦθος) as a function of the epigraphical culture of Athens and argues that Leptines is pushing the
city toward oligarchy because his proposals and actions do not accord with this democratic character. This
speech taps into renewed fears about oligarchy and stasis in the years after the Social War, showing how
intimately related the changes in the practice of civic education were to the political climate of Athens.

The Athenian “Epigraphic Habit” in the 4th Century
In Chapter 2, I argued that the Athenians used public spaces and institutions such as the Council
and Assembly to negotiate and settle on a policy of civic education that would keep the democracy going
and help identify potential threats to it. Inscriptions were thus a necessary part of this process because all
state decrees (psephismata) were official enactments of the Council and/or Assembly. Likewise, many of

139

Athens’ laws were inscribed and set up in the Stoa Basileos in the Agora after the law code reform from
410-399 BCE. As Yun Lee Too has shown, the laws, both in abstract and physical form, were considered
educators of the Athenians in proper citizen behavior.
277
Over time, the Athenians began to rely more and
more on inscriptions as tools for civic education, as evidenced by the changes their epigraphic habits
underwent over the course of the 4th century. What the Athenians inscribed and how they did were
greatly influenced by the exigencies of the historical moment; perhaps the most significant changes
occurred around the time of the Social War in the 350s BCE. They were also subject to the same
complications of power relations between the collective and the individual that other areas of civic
education were. An overview of certain developments in Athenian epigraphy from the end of the 5th
century down to the 330s reveals that the Athenian epigraphic habit was far from static and responded to
changes in the cultural attitudes around exemplarity and the dynamic system of polis, politeia, and oikos.

Restoring Democracy in Inscriptions
When the democracy was restored in 403/2, the Athenians had to undo the damage done by The
Thirty. During their time in power the oligarchs destroyed any inscriptions they felt promoted democracy
or were a threat to their oligarchic form of government. This included proxeny decrees and alliances with
other poleis such as Samos, Clazomenae, and Thasos, who were members of the former Athenian empire,
as well as a number of inscribed laws. Many, if not all, of these were reinscribed and displayed in their
original contexts. Some of the extant proxeny decrees inscribed in the years after the restoration explicitly
state that they were copies of old inscriptions that were reinscribed “because the stele in which the
proxeny was inscribed was destroyed under the Thirty”.
278
This was not only a conscious rejection of the
activity of the oligarchy by the newly recovered democracy but a testament to the weight the physical
inscriptions carried as functional documents and transmitters of democratic ideology.

277
Too 2001b.
278
E.g. IG II
2
6; IG I
3
229; IG II
2
52 informs us that this process was still going on long after the Thirty were
deposed since it was inscribed in 387/6 and still mentions the Thirty’s destruction of the old proxeny decree.

140

Another important class of inscriptions from this period were those issued by the boards of
poletai, who were responsible for selling off the confiscated property, contracting stonemasons for state
inscriptions, leasing land and mines, and contracting tax collections. In the reconstruction period of the
democracy they were especially responsible for the sale of property of the Thirty, Eleven, the first board
of Ten, the Piraeus Ten, and any others convicted of crimes not forgiven by the Amnesty of 403/2.
279
One
inscription from 402/1 (SEG 32.161) details such as sale: the inscription is very fragmentary but the
surviving text lists the names of some of the Thirty and a heading for “Property of the Eleven”.
280
This
inscription did not merely document the sale of their property, but informed all who saw it the kind of
punishment enjoined upon those who might attempt to overthrow the democracy.
281
At the same time,
funerary practices in Athens were changing and the inscriptions and reliefs on tombstones were becoming
monumental, more overtly political, and more individualized.
282
The changing attitudes toward funerary
practice reflect the solidification of the oikos as a foundational pillar of Athens: the state relied on its
constituent families to provide soldiers for their wars and so had to cede some ideological ground to the
individual as a member of the collective.
Though these inscriptions differ significantly in their content and practical function, from an
ideological standpoint they all express the power of the demos and democracy over oligarchy, as Julia
Shear has thoroughly argued.
283
Thus public inscriptions began to play a part in civic education and the
negotiation of good civic behavior when the democracy was restored. They emphasized the power of the
democratic politeia in the face of oligarchy and became physical features of the very topography of the

279
For a complete collection of the poletai inscriptions with commentary see Langdon 1991, who builds on
Walbank’s (1982) extensive discussion of these inscriptions. Since the Thirty themselves confiscated much property
from those they murdered or exiled, there were complications around the recovery of stolen property by its original
owners or the owners’ families. Lysias Frag. 8 (Ag. Hippotherses) is a case about this very issue, for which see
Carawan 2013: 84-5. See also Meyer 2013: 483-484, Miles 1998.
280
See Walbank 1982 for a historical commentary on this inscription.
281
Shear 2007: 252: the stelai showed “the demos…perpetually punishing its opponents.”
282
Arrington 2011 and 2014. The most notable example is the Dexileos funerary monument, a young man who died
serving in the cavalry during the Corinthian war. The inscription unusually states the year he was born and the year
he died, presumably to show that he was too young to be part of the cavalry under the Thirty. Inside the burial a vase
depicting the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton was also found. For interpretations of this artistic features of
this tomb see Ober 2003, Hurwit 2007.
283
Shear 2011: 236–37, 247-252, 258–59 and passim.

141

polis. Over the next few decades inscriptions (especially honorific inscriptions) would take on a much
more significant and explicit role in regulating the behavior of the citizens.
The negotiation of the status of the paradigmatic citizen can be seen through subtle but significant
changes in the Athenian state decrees that were inscribed even before the Social War. One such change
was the role of the secretary. In the 5th century and early 4th century, the secretary, who transcribed
decisions of the Council and Assembly and commissioned inscriptions on behalf of the state, was an
elected office that allowed for a certain level of prestige. This is evident from the prominence of the
secretary in decrees such as IG II
2
1 (=IG I
3
127), which is a reinstatement of the alliance between Athens
and Samos. It is a large stone with a finely sculpted relief under which the name of the secretary
Cephisophon
284
is displayed in letters three times as large as those in the rest of the inscription right
beneath the relief.
285
His name was the most readable and established him as the paradigm for good
secretary duty (for doing his job and producing an important inscription that is also a work of art) and for
good democratic behavior (by producing an important inscription that marks the reestablishment of
democracy). The original decree from 405/4 comprises the main body of text with the archon of that
year, and the archon of 403/2 is listed with the honorific decrees below the original treaty. Though
typically the dating of inscriptions is done by archon-year, the secretary’s name could also be used for this
purpose. But it is more likely to have something to do with the extravagant relief and the two decrees that
Cephisophon proposed and amended to the original treaty with the Samians (a third decree was proposed
and amended in honor of Poses of Samos, but the proposer’s name does not survive). As the secretary, it
was Cephisophon’s job to set the official text and commission the relief and inscription, and in placing his

284
This Cephisophon was apparently part of an important family in Athens. He remained in the city when the Thirty
took over and, as Isaeus 5 informs us, he was related by marriage to the descendants of Harmodius. He himself does
not seem to have been much involved in the inheritance dispute in that speech since his wife had already died by the
time the suit came to court.
285
Normally the secretary comes second or third in the list of officials in the preamble of a state document. It is
difficult to determine why one official’s name would appear and not another’s, and it may have something to do
with the private expense of the individual or his level of political influence. Cf. IG II
2
112 and 116, two treaties
which list the names of the archons Molon and Nicophemus alone (without the secretary) at the top of the
inscriptions in large letters, with the secretaries’ names in the body of the texts.

142

name right below the relief he makes it clear that he claims some ownership over the decree. In effect the
layout of this inscription marks Cephisophon as the primary actor in the momentous renewal and
reinscription of this treaty and honors for the Samians, at the same time making him a principal restorer of
democracy in this turbulent period. This would be especially significant if this Cephisophon is in fact, as
Davies suggests, the one that was sent to Sparta in 403 on behalf of the city party for peace negotiations
after the civil war (Xen. Hell. 2.4.36).
286
Clearly Cephisophon went to great lengths to make this decree
monumental and to associate himself with its creation; his name in large letters can be easily read by a
passer-by in conjunction with the relief on the stele, making Cephisophon—or any secretary who did
this—a permanently paradigmatic figure. This practice is attested frequently both before and after 403/2,
often when the inscription bears a relief,
287
and given that the secretary was not used to date decrees, it
suggests a more political motive in line with the ideal of exemplarity as a part of good citizenship in
Athens.
288

The office of secretary, though not often discussed in ancient literary texts, was nevertheless one
which could be exploited by those seeking to improve their status in the city and take credit for important
policy decisions or honors that were inscribed and set up in a prominent place in the city. The author of
the Athenaion Politeia bemoans that fact that in the good old days, secretaries were elected because they
were thought to be of the highest esteem and most trustworthy men in the Council.
289
The Athenians seem
to have taken notice of this over time. In the 360s the Athenians changed the office of secretary from an

286
Davies, APF 3773 (D), p. 148.
287
There are too many instances of the secretary inscribing his name at the top of a decree to list here. Ferguson
1898: 14-18 provides a list of secretaries up to 363 BCE. For those secretaries attached to reliefs see e.g. IG I
3
79
(=I.Eleusis 41, Rheitos bridge decree, 422/1 BCE), IG I
3
99 (Repayments to Athena, 410/9), IG I
3
124 (Treaty with
Chios, 406/5), IG II
2
127 (Alliance with Thrace, Paionia, and Illyria, 356/5).
288
This has been ascribed to private sponsorship of a relief on an inscription. Ferguson (1898: 29-30) first argued
from this and other such instances that reliefs were funded by the secretary himself and not from the money assigned
for the erection of the inscription, and Meyer 1989 followed his idea of private sponsorship for reliefs, also
suggesting that the phyle in prytany sponsored the relief for a decree concerning a sacrifice to Apollo. Lawton
(1991: 24-25) is not convinced that these instances are sufficient evidence for the private sponsorship of reliefs on
state decrees. While it seems unlikely that reliefs on state documents were always funded by individuals and not the
state, there is yet some truth to Ferguson’s argument that in the case of the reliefs that bear secretaries’ names “the
presence of the secretary's name in the title is due entirely to motives of ostentation” (Ferguson 1898: 30).
289
Ath. Pol. 54.3: ἐνδοξοτάτους καὶ πιστοτάτους

143

elected position in the Council to one chosen by lot.
290
This meant not only that it was assumed that
anyone who was eligible to be a councilmember possessed the skills to be secretary, but that the duty
carried less prestige since it no longer required highly skilled candidates. The chief secretary’s job was
also split between several different secretaries (grammateus tes boules, grammateus kata prytaneian,
grammateus epi ta psephismata, grammateus epi tous nomous, etc.) and undersecretaries
(hypogrammateis), who were often public slaves.
291
Consequently, the influence of the secretaries was
diminished, and they were no longer featured prominently on inscriptions; sometimes they were left out
of the prescripts entirely.
These changes are likely due in part to the increased epigraphic production in the mid- and late-
4th century. It is probable that a larger workforce was needed to accommodate the increasing number of
decrees and laws inscribed on stone, so citizens were tasked with managerial duties and slaves with the
menial labor of producing the physical inscription. But the Athenians also recognized that the secretary’s
power needed to be democratized; though he was elected from the sitting councilmembers and thus
limited to two terms in the 5th century, it was too easy to use that office to achieve further prominence for
oneself and one’s family in the political life of the city. It is perhaps no surprise that Cephisophon’s son
Kallibios also went on to be grammateus tes boules in 378/7 and displayed his own name prominently on
the decree authorizing the creation of the Second Athenian League.
292
Since secretaries had to garner
favor to get elected and, once in office, had control over the texts of inscriptions, there was a risk that they
could abuse that power to the harm of the democracy and the state.

290
Ferguson 1898: 32-38; For the secretary’s duties in the fifth century see Sickinger 1999a: 73-76.
291
For a complete account of secretarial personnel in 4th century Athens see Sickinger 1999a: 140-147. Henry 2002
argues that the grammateus tes boules and the grammateus kata prytaneian are the same official and reflect the shift
from secretaries for terms of single prytanies to terms of the entire year of the Council. The hypogrammateis are
attested as far back as the 5th century. The role of slaves as secretarial and archival personnel was weaponized in
Lysias 30 against Nicomachus, who was the chief reviser of the law code from 410-399, to claim that he was born to
slaves and was, de facto, a slave himself.
292
Attested as secretary in IG II
2
43, where his name is also displayed prominently at the top under that of the
archon, and as a trierarch in IG II
2
1604, line 87; Davies APF 3773, p. 148.

144

Early Honorific Practices
The practice of inscribing honorific decrees was an important part of Athenian foreign policy
since the mid-5th century. After the restoration of the democracy in 403, the Athenians began issuing
honorific decrees for foreign benefactors with seemingly greater frequency. As I noted in Chapter 4,
many of these honors were for authoritarian leaders of other states around the Aegean and other strategic
places such as Sicily and Thrace (though notably not with Persia), but were also issued for private citizens
of other cities or even a city’s entire population.
293
As the Athenians became involved in yet another war
with the Spartans in 395/4, it was in their best interest to establish secure alliances with these foreign
powers and others who aided the Athenians financially, economically, or militarily.
294
Any help they
received from these benefactors was rewarded, usually quite handsomely, with one or more of the
following: citizenship, proxeny, sitesis, enktesis, ateleia (which could include exemption from both taxes
and/or tariffs on grain exports), a gold crown, or a statue. Because of the outstanding status conferred
upon honorands, the Athenians did not honor their own citizens in the first half of the 4th century, as their
democratic ideology did not allow for (living) exemplary individuals.
295

The specifics of the benefactions were not always made explicit on these honorific decrees, but
the “motivation clause” almost always contained a description of the character of the honorand that
motivated the Athenians to praise him. In the fifth and early 4th centuries, the benefactors are usually
credited simply with having been an andres agathoi (good men), eunous (well-disposed), and/or

293
E.g. IG II
2
1, in which Athens honors loyal Samians and IG II
2
28 (RO 18), in which the Athenians honor the
demos of Clazomenai in order to retain their support as a subject state to Athens, after their capture by Thrasybulus
during his Aegean campaign c. 390.
294
For the role of honorific inscriptions in Athenian trade policy and interstate relations see Mitchell 1997, Engen
2010.
295
See Domingo Gygax (2016: 181-192). The only citizens who were honored by Athens were generals who
achieved success in battle (especially in the Peloponnesian War). Cleon and other generals received sitesis and
Alcibiades was awarded a gold crown. Those who fought the Thirty were also collectively honored in a decree
proposed by Archinus in 403/2 (SEG 28.45). Conon is perhaps the most notable Athenian citizen to have received
honors for military success, for which he was awarded a statue--the first ever awarded to a living Athenian citizen.
There is no epigraphic evidence for the military honors before 403, which could suggest that they were not
inscribed. In any case, honors for financial contributions or trade-related services were not inscribed for Athenians
citizens until the mid-4th century, and it was only in the 340s that Athens began regularly inscribing honors for its
outgoing magistrates (Lambert 2004).

145

prothumoi [poiein ho ti dunatai agathon] (eager [to do any possible good]) toward the city. These terms
were generalizable to a considerable extent. Take for example, IG I
3
101, Honors for the people of
Neapolis, inscribed in 410/9, after the oligarchy of the Four Hundred fell. At lines 7-9 the Athenians
“praise them because they fight the war together with the Athenians and did not want to defect from the
Athenians though they (the Neapolitans) were being besieged by the Thasians and the Peloponnesians,
and they were good men (ἄνδ[ρες δ] ἀ̣γ̣α̣θ̣ο̣ὶ̣ ἐγένο[ντο) toward the army and demos of the Athenians and
their allies”. The Neapolitans are later praised for being πρόθυμοί εἰσ[ι ποιε͂ν ὅ τι δύν | ανται ἀγ]αθὸν
(“eager to do whatever good is possible”, ll. 33-34) for paying a tribute to the Hellenotamiai in Athens.
Their qualities as being good men and doing whatever good they can for Athens essentially amount to
their military loyalty to the Athenian Empire and their financial contribution. Compare IG I
3
102, Honors
for Thrasybulus of Calydon and his associates, also decreed in 410/9:
ἐπαινέσα]ι Θρασύβολον ὁς ὄντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸ-
[ν περὶ τὸν δε͂μ]ον τὸν Ἀθεναίον καὶ πρόθυμον π-
[οιε͂ν ℎό τι δύνα]ται ἀγαθόν·

Praise Thrasybulus for being a good man
Toward the demos of the Athenians and eager to
Do whatever good is possible. (ll. 6-8)
Both the Neapolitans and Thrasybulus were praised for the same qualities of being good men and eager to
do good for the city. But whereas the Neapolitans are honored for remaining under the control of Athens,
Thrasybulus is honored for the assassination of Phrynicus,
296
the leader of the Four Hundred. The honors
for Thrasybulus noticeably leave out these specifics of his service to the city, unlike the honors for the
Neapolitans. Both inscriptions also emphasize the reciprocal nature of the relationship between honorand

296
Whether Thrasybulus himself assassinated Phrynicus, or that he just organized the assassination, is unclear.
Thucydides claims it was a border guard who did it aided by a man from Argos (Thuc. 8.90-92). Lysias 13 claims
that Agoratus, who appears in the second decree inscribed on this stone, was not actually part of the assassination
plot and quote a (different?) decree that gives Thrasybulus and Apollodorus citizenship but not Agoratus.

146

and city,
297
indicating implicitly that the Athenians wish to encourage behaviors that benefit the city, the
demos, and the democracy.
298

But the conferral of honors to benefactors and friends of the city was not without its problems.
The amount of prestige that an honorific decree could bring not only kept the Athenians from honoring
their own citizens (until the 350s), but also invited corruption. The stele on which the honors for
Thrasybulus of Calydon are inscribed contains three decrees in total: Decree 1 honors Thrasybulus with a
gold crown; Decree 2, a supplementary decree of the Assembly, awards Thrasybulus with citizenship and
awards his associates with rights to own property and live in Athens and with protection (against
retaliation?); Decree 3, another supplementary decree of the Assembly, resolves that the next Council will
to hold a meeting about those who gave bribes for the proposal of honors for Apollodorus (presumably
the Apollodorus of Megara, Thrasybulus’ collaborator, mentioned at Lys. 13.71) in an earlier decree.
299

This third decree is worth quoting in full (IG I
3
102.38-47):

Εὔδικος εἶπε· τὰ μὲν
[ἄλλα καθάπερ Διοκλε͂ς· περὶ] δὲ το͂ν δοροδοκεσ-
[άντον ἐπὶ το͂ι φσεφίσματι], ὃ ἐφσεφ[ί]σθε Ἀπολλ-
[οδόροι, τὲν βολὲν βολεῦσ]αι ἐν τε͂ι πρότει ℎέδ-
[ραι ἐν το͂ι βολευτερί]οι, καὶ κολάζεν, το͂ν [δ]ορο-
[δοκεσάντον καταφσ]εφιζομένεν καὶ ἐς δικασ-
[τέριον παραδιδο͂σα]ν, καθότι ἂν δοκε͂ι αὐτε͂[ι]· τ-

297
IG II
2
101.35-36: ἀντὶ τῆς εὐεργε[σίας ταύτης τὸ νῦ|ν εἶν]αι καὶ ἐν το͂ι λοιπο͂ι χρόνο[ι] παρ Ἀθηνα[ίον χάριτας
εἶναι
IG II
2
102.8-10: ἀντὶ ὁ ͂ ν εὖ πεπο|[ίεκεν τέν τε πόλιν] καὶ τὸν δε͂μ̣[ο]ν τὸν Ἀθεναίο|ν στεφανο͂σαι αὐτὸν χρυσο͂ι
στε]φάνοι
298
The “hortatory intention” clause, which explicitly encourages benefactions and frames the honors of an
individual as a paradigm for other would-be benefactors, does not appear until the 350s at the earliest. See below for
this important addition to honorific decrees.
299
Bribery was a rampant problem in Athens, as shown by Taylor 2001a and 2001b, Conover 2010, but none of
these studies include this inscription in their accounts of bribery scandals in Athens.

147

[ὸς δὲ βολευτὰς τὸς] παρόντας ἀποφαίνεν ℎά[ττ’]
[ἂν εἰδο͂σιν, καὶ ἐάν] τις ἄλλο εἰδε͂ι περὶ τ[ού]-
[τον· ἐχσε͂ναι δὲ καὶ] ἰδιότει, ἐάν τις βόλετα[ι v]

Eudikos proposed: the other things stand
As Diokles proposed them. As for those who gave
Bribes for the decree which was decreed for Apoll-
odorus, the Council is to deliberate in the next
Session in the Bouleuterion and issue punishment and
Condemn the bribers and bring them
To court as the Council sees fit;
And the Councilors are to reveal whatever
They know and if anyone else knows something about him;
And a private person may also [give information], if he wishes.

Decree 3 stipulates that those who are convicted of bribery will be punished and brought to court; the
Councilmembers are to reveal what they know about the case and any private citizen who has information
can bring it to the Council.
300
Though honorific decrees of the latter half of the 4th century often praise an
official for doing something without being bribed (ἀδωροδοκήτως), as far as I can tell this is the only
instance of an honorific decree questioning the validity of another honorific decree based on allegations

300
The term for punishment κολάζειν/κόλασις is very rarely attested in Attic decrees of the Classical period
(κολάζειν: only here and IG II
2
463; κόλασις: IG II
2
216) and is still quite rare in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Typically, inscribed laws and decrees that prescribe punishments use τιμωρία/τιμωρᾶν or ζημία/ζημιοῦν (the latter
especially for the death penalty). If we follow Danielle Allen’s (who seems to have been unaware of this inscription)
argument that κόλασις implied reformative punishment (2000a: 70-71), we could infer that the punishment the
Council would inflict would in some way improve the bribers. But it is hard to see what reformative value this
punishment could have given that the most punishment a Council could inflict is a 500 drachma fine or, at worst,
short-term imprisonment (Rhodes 1985 [1972]: 179-180). Rather those who would learn from this punishment are
the very same people who learn from the honorific decrees: the general public, potential benefactors, and potential
malefactors.

148

of bribery. When the matter is settled and the criminals are brought to justice, what will happen to
Apollodorus and his honors? There is no clear answer, though if Lysias 7 was written after this decree it
would seem that Apollodorus kept his honors, since he was awarded land by the demos and farmed it for
a few years.
301
In any case, the negative effect of Decree 3 is the same as the positive effect of Decrees 1
and 2: they symbolize and express both the proper way to conduct oneself toward the city and its people
and the consequences for wrongdoing. Even those granted the highest honors are not immune to the
mechanisms of accountability embedded in Athenian democracy.
302
It is also a reminder of Athens’
primacy in her reciprocal relationship with the honorand: the city giveth and the city taketh away.
The increased emphasis on honors as a way to fulfill Athens’ need to accumulate economic and
military power after the Peloponnesian War led them to award statues to living people, a surprising
development, since the only statues the demos ever awarded were for the tyrannicides Harmodius and
Aristogeiton long after their deaths. In 393 BCE, the Athenians rewarded Conon, an Athenian citizen,
with a gold crown, ateleia, and a bronze statue in the Agora, in front of the Stoa of Zeus, next to the
honorific inscription and near the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
303
In 394 BCE he took
command of a Persian fleet and defeated the Spartans at the Battle of Cnidus. This was the pretext for his
extraordinary honors, since he “liberated” Greece from the “tyranny” of the Spartan empire, and thus
could be seen as a kind of tyrannicide himself.
304
But, as Domingo Gygax has suggested, it is more likely
that his dedication of a temple to Aphrodite Euploia in the Piraeus, the hecatomb and feast for the
Athenians that he funded, and rebuilding of the Long Walls played a larger part.
305
But aside from these
benefactions, his connection to the Persians also seem to have influenced the Athenians’ decision. Since

301
Lys. 7.4. The speaker of this speech is defending himself against an accusation of impiety caused by violating a
sekos (either a sacred olive tree stump or a wooden fence). The land that the sekos was on was at one point owned
by Apollodorus of Megara as part of his award for his involvement in the assassination of Phrynicus; see Todd 2008:
515-516.
302
Demosthenes ( 20.117-119) claims that the Athenians never rescinded honors, but as this inscription shows, it
was still a possibility.
303
Dem. 20.70, 21.62, 22.72, 24.180; Isoc. 9.57. On the location of the decree and statue see Shear 2007: 99, 107,
111; Shear 2011: 276-277.
304
So Dem. 20.70 and Dein. 1.14.
305
Domingo Gygax 2016: 193. Demosthenes (20.72) lays special emphasis on the reconstruction of the Long Walls.

149

he won the battle with a Persian fleet, it would have been in the city’s best interest to do whatever they
can to keep him as their general, especially considering that he fled to Evagoras of Salamis after the
defeat at Aigospotami in 405 for fear of the Athenians’ reaction to the defeat.
This would also explain why they awarded Evagoras of Salamis a bronze statue in the Agora
around the same time as Conon. Evagoras had already been awarded citizenship in 407
306
but his statue
was not awarded until after the battle at Cnidus. The honorific inscription for Evagoras survives in a very
fragmented state, but we can glean from it important details such as Evagoras being called basileus—a
very unusual title for someone who has putative Athenian citizenship and is a benefactor to all of Greece.
The nature of the statues and the wording of the inscription has been interpreted as a way to assimilate
Conon and Evagoras as liberators and benefactors of Greece to Athens’ own image as liberator and
benefactor of Greece, and also a way to appease Evagoras by granting him his preferred title.
307
But, as
John Ma once put it, “crises produce statues”
308
and part of Athens’ crisis was her policy toward Persia
during the Corinthian War. The satrap Pharnabazus, who supplied the fleets to Conon and Evagoras, was
not awarded anything. Anti-Persian sentiment still ran strong among the Athenians even when they enter
into temporary alliances, as Persia was Athens’ greatest obstacle to hegemony in the Aegean. If Conon
and Evagoras had decided to forsake the Athenians in favor of the Persians or Spartans, there would have
been no hope for future Athenian hegemony. Unsurprisingly, the statues that were subsequently awarded
were to the Athenian generals Iphicrates (390 BCE), Chabrias (376 BCE), and Conon’s son Timotheus
(375 BCE), all of whom secured territories and critical victories against Sparta that allowed for the
creation and (short-term) maintenance of the Second Athenian League in 378. Perhaps the rapid
succession of statues being awarded was an attempt to dilute the paradigmatic statues of the other
honorands. Perhaps they were set up at the behest of the honorands themselves, as a fragment of a speech
attributed to Lysias suggests,
309
and Athens was doing all it could to please the people who held the most

306
Isoc. 9.54.
307
Domingo Gygax 2016: 195-196; Lewis and Stroud 1979: 188. (Hesp 48 180-93)
308
Ma 2013: 7.
309
Lys. frag. 49; Ar. Rhet 1397b. 27-30; Domingo Gygax 2016: 197.

150

power and benefitted the city the most. The statues theoretically stood as testaments to Athens’ power as a
city and an empire and not to the power of the individual. Rather it was the collective action of the demos
that granted these honors and could take them away. But they also expose the Athenians’ flexibility—or
inconsistency—about their ideological commitments in times of crisis.

The Social War: A Watershed Moment in Athenian Epigraphy
The greatest crisis of all would come in the year 357, when the Social War broke out.
310
The
Athenians had officially established the Second Athenian League in 378, which was made up of the
(allegedly) voluntary addition of many of the members of its former Delian League of the 5th century.
But once part of the confederacy, the member states were subject to Athens’ characteristic imperialist
rule. In 358, the Athenian general Chabrias was sent to Thrace to secure a peace with Charidemus, the
general of the Thracian king Cersobleptes. Chabrias failed and a delegation of ten Athenian ambassadors
was sent to Thrace. At the same time, another Athenian general, Chares, had been sent to Euboea to
handle an ongoing conflict with Thebes, but he was soon dispatched to Thrace to aid the embassy, since
the ambassadors were unable to accomplish much in the way of diplomacy. With the Athenians occupied
in Thrace, their subject states Byzantium, Cos, Chios, and Rhodes—their most powerful members—
defected from the Second Athenian League and oligarchic factions overthrew their respective
democracies.
The Athenians elected both Chares and Chabrias as strategoi for this war. Chabrias was killed in
the first major battle of the war near Chios, leaving Chares with the monumental task of subduing these
four powerful poleis more or less alone. Another dispatch led by Iphicrates, Menestheus, and Timotheus
was sent to join Chares, who did not see eye to eye with his colleagues. The three generals failed to aid
Chares at Embata and upon their return to Athens were prosecuted for treason: Iphicrates and Menestheus

310
The Social War is usually dated to 357-355/4, though Peake 1997 dates it instead to the end of 358 to 355/4.

151

were acquitted but left public life thereafter; Timotheus was very heavily fined
311
and went into exile,
where he died a few years later.
312
So, lacking funds and unwilling to ask the Athenians for money,
Chares formed an alliance with the Persian satrap Artabazus, who was at that time in revolt against the
king of Persia, Artaxerxes III. The Assembly approved this alliance with Artabazus until King Artaxerxes
demanded that they end it. The Athenians complied, fearing that Artaxerxes would support Byzantium,
Rhodes, Cos, and Chios if they refused. The end of this alliance spelled the end of Athens’ ability to fund
a war and so it ended. Athens lost four members of the Second Athenian League, ruined their reputation
as a major power in the Aegean once again, and were left with a severely crippled economy and military.
The war, though short, was very expensive and the loss of control of the sea and Byzantium, a major port
of access to the Black Sea grain supply, caused the Athenian grain supply to become insecure.
313
These
woes were compounded by Philip II’s advance across northern Greece, where in 357 he captured
Amphipolis, one of Athens’ most coveted possessions, and was threatening the peoples of Thrace and the
Bosporus ever more.
It was at this time that Athens saw considerable evolution in their epigraphic customs, especially
in their honorific decrees. Already in the 360s Athens had begun reestablishing their trade routes and
diplomatic ties to the Black Sea, and in 368, Athens started a war with the Chalcidian League over
Amphipolis, which they failed to capture, and struggled against Cotys, king of Thrace, over the
Chersonese. By 357, both the imminent threat from Philip II and the tightening supply of grain due to
Byzantium’s defection from the Second Athenian League further induced the Athenians to forge alliances

311
Apparently 100 talents, which was reduced to 10 after his death for his son Conon to pay. Isocrates expresses
shock that Iphicrates and Menestheus were allowed to go free, while Timotheus was fined “for more money than
anyone who lived before ever has been” (15.129).
312
The prosecution of generals for failure to fulfill their duty, though harsh and sometimes prone to scapegoatism,
was one of Athens’ most important accountability measures against the potential arrogation of military power by
individuals; see Roberts 1982: 25-29 on the impeachment of generals.
313
For the effect on Athens’ grain supply see Engen: 59-65. Engen does not find any evidence that the defection of
Byzantium had any real effect on the grain supply since there were still grain cleruchies on Lemnos, Imbros, and
Skyros.

152

with the kings of Thrace (after Cotys’ death), the Illyrians, and Paeonians.
314
And while treaties and
alliances go a long way to securing political power, the Athenians used honorific decrees to attract the
goodwill of foreigners for economic benefactors. Thus they honored the kings Satyrus and Leucon of the
Cimmerian Bosporus and Leucon’s sons Spartocus and Paerisades for allowing the Athenians to import
grain from them
315
and the city of Elaeus
316
on the southern tip of the Chersonese for being loyal to
Athens, and thus further securing the trade route to the Black Sea.
Honors for Athenian citizens happened more frequently in the decades after the Social War as
well. We can detect similar motives to those for honoring wealthy foreigners. The state was in dire need
for funds, and honors were an efficient way to convince the wealthy elite to spend their money for the
good of the city beyond their normal liturgies by appealing to their desire for prestige and the agonistic
nature of Athenian political life.
317
Competition between citizens was what kept the Athenian democracy
free and staved off oligarchy, according to Demosthenes.
318
The evolving language of civic praise reflects
this shift in mindset: it is not until this time that philotimia (“love of honor”) becomes used in state
decrees, though it was prevalent in public discourse since the early 4th century (see below). As David
Whitehead has argued, philotimia was closely tied to competitive outlay and encouraged officials and
private citizens to show their devotion to the city through gifts such as money, ships, or extra liturgies.
319

Such changes appear at the institutional level as well. As Stephen Lambert has noted, 357/6 was a
landmark year for Athenian honorific practice because it was then that the demos began to honor the

314
IG II
2
126, RO 47 (Treaty between Athens and Thracians kings), IG II
2
127, RO 53 (Treaty between Athens and
Illyrian, Paeonian, and Thracian kings). The latter treaty went nowhere because Athens was preoccupied with the
Social War. Philip II was accumulating power as he conquered city after city and entered into an alliance with the
Chalicidians (RO 49 and 50). He then took Amphipolis, Potidaea, and defeated the Illyrians, Thracians, and
Paeonians.
315
IG II
2
212 (RO64).
316
IG II
2
228 (RO 71).
317
See further Domingo Gygax 2016:199-218.
318
Dem. 20.108: τὰς μὲν διὰ τῶν ὀλίγων πολιτείας τὸ πάντας ἔχειν ἴσον ἀλλήλοις τοὺς τῶν κοινῶν κυρίους
ὁμονοεῖν ποιεῖ, τὴν δὲ τῶν δήμων ἐλευθερίαν ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἅμιλλα, ἣν ἐπὶ ταῖς παρὰ τοῦ δήμου δωρειαῖς
πρὸς αὑτοὺς ποιοῦνται, φυλάττει. Cf. Isocrates’ comment at 4.44 that competition (in this case, of athletes) inspires
philotimia in onlookers.
319
Whitehead 1983.

153

Council with crowns.
320
Dedications to gods in temples and sanctuaries by prytanies and Councilors attest
to awards prior to 357/6 for winners of “best prytany” without mention of crowns, but those after this date
make regular reference to being crowned by the Council and demos. The same trend appears in
dedications by military generals as well. Individual magistrates also began receiving increasingly more
extravagant honors upon leaving office beginning in the 340s. At this time, the so-called “hortatory
intention” clause also began appearing as a way to foster competition among the citizens of Athens and to
assert the power of the collective over the individual (see below).
321
The language used to describe the
assassin of the leader of the Four Hundred or monarchs of entire nations was now being employed to
reward an archon or councilor for a job well done.

So much for an overview of the development of public writing up to the early 330s (the final
major development will be the ephebic inscriptions, which will be addressed in the next chapter). In the
end we are left with an image of an Athens that seemed at times to prioritize the individual over the
collective in spite of itself. On the one hand, the honors for officials promoted proper behavior in office
and encouraged other citizens to behave in the same way; on the other, it held the individual up as a
paradigmatic figure in a way that was typically reserved for the dead or mythical. It is important to note
that these officials were honored for personal contributions to the city and not just for doing their jobs
well, such as Pytheas the water supply manager who (probably) privately funded the construction of new
water fountains at the sanctuary of Ammon and in the Amphiaraion.
322
The more it honored foreign
benefactors and its own citizens, the less standing the poorer citizens had in the competitions that

320
Lambert 2018.
321
Henry 1996; Lambert 2011 argues that these events coincide because the Athenians felt an increasing sense of
decline in their city and developed the hortatory intention clause as a way to mitigate the decline of the polis. I think
Lambert has touched upon an important feature of the period from 350-330, but decline is not the right lens to think
of it. Rather the Athenians were concerned with maintaining their ‘Athenianness’ in the face of threats to their way
of life.
322
IG II
2
338. The decree does not state where the funds for the water works came from, but the reference to his
philotimia suggests they came from Pytheas’ own resources (Lambert 2011: 178n.8).

154

sustained the democracy. But the mechanisms of democratic civic education adapted to this challenge by
placing ideological limits on the prestige of the paradigmatic citizens in public inscriptions.

Inscriptions as Tools of Civic Education
The nature of these inscriptions made them ideal for educative purposes in a system that relies on
observation and imitation with no formal instruction. Inscriptions acted as physical and (semi-)permanent
manifestations of one’s performance of the good behaviors and values the Athenians informally agreed
upon in the early 4th century, making them easy to emulate. They also documented the punishments the
state could inflict upon those who did not follow the rules of democratic citizen behaviors, providing
examples of what not to do as well. Learning by repetition was facilitated by their formulaic nature and
frequent publication in well-known and conspicuous locations. Finally, the majority of inscriptions are
written, though condensed, copies of public discourse, so it follows that similar principles of civic
education would apply to epigraphy as to oratory. But as the inscribed values and behaviors were mutable
and open to interpretation, over time public inscriptions began to encode a more rigid, but still capacious,
set of ideal civic virtues. They became physical parts of the polis and directed civic behaviors toward the
maintenance of the democratic politeia. These inscribed values also reflected the interests of the oikos,
which was both the source of private economic contributions and constitutive of the lower levels of
organization (especially demes) from which civic values emerged.
As public documents, inscriptions issued by the state had the following effects:
(1) Aggregate and democratize knowledge and align it with civic values
323

(2) Codify and validate a set of desirable character traits for both citizens and foreigners
(3) Provide incentive for those character traits through the reciprocal bestowal of honors
(4) Signal approval of both honorand and proposer of the decree by the state

323
For a detailed examination of the aggregation and dissemination of knowledge in the Athenian democracy see
Ober 2008 ch. 4.

155

(5) Publicize the political activity of all individuals (archons, epistatai, secretaries, proposers, etc.)
who appear in the text on the stone
(6) Symbolize the power of the polis and its politeia through monumentalization and interaction with
their place of publication (usually the Agora, Acropolis, or Areopagus)
324

(7) Reproduce the above effects through frequent repetition
Inscriptions, monuments, and dedications set up by private individuals share many of these characteristics
as well, but with emphasis on the place of the individual in relation to the collective, be that above it,
below it, or within it. Given the above characteristics of Athenian public documents, it will become clear
that the way the Athenians chose to publish decisions of the Council and demos indicate a real interest in
using them as tools for civic education and the regulation of citizen behavior.

Democratizing knowledge
The Athenian democracy’s emphasis on accountability provided an environment in which the
dissemination of information through written means became prevalent, reliable, and customary. There
was little limit on what could and could not be published on stone, bronze, or wood in public settings.
325

These documents largely concerned the affairs of government institutions (e.g. archon lists, accountings,
poletai inscriptions), legal matters (e.g. laws, lists of traitors or other criminals, declarations of the
nomothetai), religious matters (e.g. sacrificial calendars, temple treasury accounts, cult regulations,
dedications), military affairs (e.g. treaties and alliances, declarations of war, lists of war dead,
conscriptions), economic issues (e.g. trade agreements, import and tariff regulations, horoi demarcating
land ownership), and inscriptions related to private individuals (e.g. mortgage inscriptions, epitaphs).
Honorific decrees and dedications fall under several of these categories and thus form a category of their
own.

324
Liddel 2003 provides the relevant data for places of publication in Athens.
325
Meyer 2013 highlights the seeming randomness of what was inscribed, but our extant documents do not provide
an accurate picture of the totality of the content of inscriptions, especially those on perishable materials. See further
Faraguna 2017 for the kinds of documents published on various media and

156

Whether democracy itself is a cause for public writing has been the subject of some debate. In an
essay on lettering in his Epigraphica Attica, Benjamin Meritt suggested that there was a direct link
between public inscription and democracy: “The principal reason for the abundance of such documents
was the democratic form of government of the Athenian people. The business of government was
everyone’s business, and the publication of many details of all sorts of transactions shows a general desire
to let everybody know the acts of government.”
326
Some scholars have followed this line of thinking,
arguing or presuming that public writing is indicative of a democratic city
327
while others, most notably
Charles Hedrick, have argued instead that the extraordinary epigraphic production of Athens was a
distinctly Athenian characteristic and much more complex.
328
Hedrick is right to question the ascription of
the Athenian epigraphic habit merely to a single kind political regime; the Athenian epigraphical habit
was just that—Athenian. Democracy writ large is certainly not in itself responsible for public writing;
public writing is attested in every regime type. But in the case of classical Athens the combination of
democracy with other cultural features such as imperialism, litigiousness, and their informal system of
civic education was one of the primary determining factors for the ways these things evolved. The
towering tribute stelai on the Acropolis not only publicly displayed the accounting of the treasurers but
also stood as a testament to the power of the Athenian empire; the inscription of laws imbued them with
authority; lists of war dead exalted those who died for their city and emphasized the collectivity of the
people of Athens; sacrificial calendars both provide information about the correct sacrificial procedure
but also stand as proof of the Athenians’ piety.
329

Though the diverse nature of Athenian inscriptions affords a variety of approaches to the issue of
their use for civic education, I will focus on honorific inscriptions, as their rate of survival allows for a

326
Meritt 1940: 89.
327
E.g. Finley 1977; Musti 1986; Detienne 1988; Hansen 1991: 311-312; Thomas 1989: 38-83, 1992: 132..
328
Hedrick 1999. Meyer 2013 more fully summarizes the arguments for and against this view, and offers further
suggestions that complicate the idea that democracy is the reason why the Athenians inscribed and preserved so
many documents, especially regarding information that we might expect to be inscribed in the name of transparency
but seems never to have been.
329
Blok 2017 has argued that piety and proper religious activity were critical to the Athenian concept of citizenship.

157

usable sample size and they represent most clearly the evolution of civic values and their use in civic
education in Athens. Honorific inscriptions appear at nearly every organizational level of the Athenian
government (demes, tribes, phratries, Council, Assembly) and in private organizations (e.g., religious and
cult organizations, soldier groups). Chryssoula Veligianni-Terzi has organized all known extant honorific
inscriptions from the 5th and 4th centuries (up to 322/1, except a few after this date) into seven
categories: (A) decrees of the Assembly for non-Athenians, (B) decrees of the Council and/or Assembly
for Athenians, (C) decrees of the tribes, (D) decrees of the demes, (E) decrees of the Prytanies and small
organizations, (F) Ehreninschriften (i.e. honors that are not decrees), (G) and dedications.
330
The earliest
honorific decree of the Council or Assembly we have is from around 450, but the bulk of those extant
were inscribed in the 4th century. Tribe-level honorific inscriptions appear as early as 403/2 BCE. The
extant honorific inscriptions from demes and smaller organizations can be first dated to the 360s.
331
The
decrees for ephebes can only be securely dated to the 330s at the earliest, when the ephebeia was likely
founded. The ubiquity of honorific decrees thus made them useful tools for the inculcation of democratic
values in the citizenry at every level of Athenian society.
The educational value of inscriptions, however, has been challenged. Charles Hedrick has argued
that in the inscriptions themselves, “seldom is there any noticeable concern for the education of the
citizens or the dissemination of public information.”
332
While it is true that there is rarely an explicit
statement of educational intent in honorific decrees, the explicit acknowledgment of their educational
value simply was not necessary. The model of civic education that I have drawn so far posits that the

330
Veligianni-Terzi 1997. The letters A-G correspond to her system of classification.
331
Whitehead 1992
332
Hedrick 1999: 408. Hedrick 1999 and 2000 take the rarity of the phrase σκοπεῖν τω βουλομένω as an indication
that the demos was rarely interested in using inscriptions to convey information, but rather relied on their symbolism
as monuments (following Thomas 1989 and 1992). The symbolic nature of the inscriptions was very important, but I
would argue that the words on the stone themselves are indication enough that they are there to be read. Hedrick and
Thomas suggest that the verb σκοπεῖν means to see generally, but this poses the question of why σκοπεῖν is used
and not ὁρᾶν or βλέπειν (especially considering ὁρᾶν’s proximity to another common word in inscriptions, εἰδέναι).
Rather σκοπεῖν means “to look at something up close” (so Lasagni 2018) or “to examine”, as one would do to a
financial document in which this phrase is usually found. Its absence from other kinds of inscriptions is not proof
that other kinds of inscriptions were not read closely as well.

158

Athenians were educated in an informal, dynamic way that used the family, the cityscape, and the
democratic form of government as sites for the inculcation of civic values and behaviors. There is
therefore no reason that inscriptions should expressly indicate that they are educative because they belong
to the broader system of civic education. Many of them, especially honorific inscriptions, promote
prosocial civic values such as eunoia (“goodwill”), arete (“excellence”), and philotimia (“love of honor”);
stelai with the names of benefactors, criminals, and traitors were set up and constantly referred to by the
orators as paradigms of good and bad citizenship;
333
and inscribed laws were thought to be the ultimate
teachers of the people of Athens as prescriptions and proscriptions of behaviors.
334
Any decree that was
issued and inscribed was a decision of the demos and in effect a physical and authoritative (if not exact)
copy of the spoken word of the proposer. They published on stone not to limit access to this information
through writing but to make this information abundantly clear to all those who might question it or want
to know more about it, both through the physical stone monument and its written contents. The reason
why there is hardly any explicit reference to an inscription’s role in the education of the citizenry is
because there was no need to make it explicit. It was simply understood that it would have this effect.

Interlude: The question of literacy
The issue that seems to underlie the claim that inscriptions were not concerned with the education
of the citizenry is the degree to which the Athenians were literate.
335
The level of literacy achieved by
ancient Athenians is a hotly debated topic and one that, in lack of any kind of definitive evidence one way
or another, will probably never be settled. Several scholars have argued against widespread literacy in
ancient Athens.
336
Many of their arguments tend to focus on the political environment rather than the

333
For these stelai see Thomas 1989: 64-66.
334
Too 2001b. The Preambles in Book 9 of Plato’s Laws were invented for the very purpose of guiding the
education that the citizens of his imaginary city would otherwise receive from the inscribed laws.
335
This is the subject of an earlier article (Hedrick 1994) in which he offers a much fuller argument against
widespread literacy.
336
Or perhaps the need for widespread literacy. Hedrick 1994, 1999, 2000; Harris 1989. Thomas 1989 and 1992
offer a middle ground between orality and literacy by bringing into focus the transition from orality to literacy in the
4th century (though she still sees little explicit evidence for the active use of literacy). More recently there has been

159

functionality of literacy: since democracy does not require literacy there is no reason Athenians should be
literate, nor is there much explicit evidence of Athenians going up to inscriptions and reading them. But
there is likewise no explicit evidence that affirms that many Athenians could not read, at least at a basic
level, besides a few anecdotes about illiterate people.
337
On the other hand, there is an enormous amount
of ancient written material that would have been read by somebody.
338
Of course, the average Athenian
was probably not reading Thucydides on a daily basis, but the sheer quantity of monumental inscriptions
with red-tinted letters placed in conspicuous areas like the Acropolis and Agora point toward a certain
degree of literacy expected of the average citizen. There is also something to be said for the attention to
practical concerns for an inscription’s readability, such as the size of the stele and its letters, the
arrangement of the text (stoichedon, non-stoichedon, boustrophedon, etc.), the addition of a relief, the
physical placement of the inscription, the language(s) written on it, and its maintenance.
339
Plenty of
evidence of lower level literacy also comes from “small epigraphy” used in daily life: rupestral

emphasis on different kinds of literacy (Thomas 2009 a and b, Taylor 2011). There is no doubt that orality and
reading inscriptions out loud for oneself and others was integral to Athenian society as Svenbro (1988) and
Gottesman (2014: 149-154) have argued. The general lack of spacing between words in inscriptions may even
suggest that ancient people, just as modern epigraphers, would have had to separate the words by sounding out each
word vocally.
337
The story about Aristeides at his ostracism writing his own name on an ostrakon for an illiterate person stands
out (Plutarch, Life of Aristeides 7.5-6).
338
Harvey 1966 presents a convincing, though perhaps overly optimistic, case for widespread literacy in Athens.
Most recently Missiou 2011 has put forward a sustained defense of literacy in Athens. Meyer 2013 is largely
ambivalent about literacy. Faraguna highlights the importance of writing and literacy in the 5
th
century BCE in the
keeping of records, publication of documents, and composition of literary texts.
339
I am not suggesting that all inscriptions were meant to be read by everyone or, in some cases, at all. An example
from a private association shows the multivalence of inscriptions: IG II
2
1256 (329/8 BCE) is an honorific
inscription set up by the orgeones of Bendis, a Thracian cult in the Piraeus, for two epimeletai who were non-
citizens. Their names, Euphyes and Dexios (no demotic or tribal affiliation), suggest that they were enslaved at some
point and were probably foreigners who had been born into slavery or abducted by Greeks and their names changed.
The inscription takes the form of a condensed, but standard, honorific decree: the 12 lines of stoichedon text take up
hardly any space on the stone and the letters are quite small. Beneath the text of the inscription are two large
coronae which contain the names of the honorands, who were awarded gold crowns. The stele is adorned with a
highly detailed relief (Lawton #47) depicting the honorands, the Thracian goddess Bendis, and the Thracian hero
Deloptes; behind them, a window-like cave containing Pan and the Nymphs. The figures of Euphyes and Dexios are
about half the size of Bendis and Deloptes and are individualized to an unusual extent each with his own distinct
features. What we can understand from the presentation of this inscription is that the text was probably not meant to
be read. Rather, all the information the viewer needed was contained in the details of the relief and coronae on the
stone, to the point that the honorands could be identified not by their names but by their resemblance to the figures
on the relief. It is likely that such an inscription appears in this context because many of the members of the cult
were non-Greek and possibly not literate (at least in Greek).

160

inscriptions in the Attic countryside ranging from names and abecedaria to insults and poetry;
340

inventory lists found in the Agora; identification cards for jurors and soldiers; votive offerings; lead curse
tablets; ostraka; and dipinti on ceramics. And this is only what survives. Wooden boards, bronze, papyrus,
and other perishable materials would offer an entirely new body of evidence for the importance of literacy
in public and private life in Athens.
341
Moreover, a certain level of literacy was needed to carry out one’s
duties as a magistrate, and as far as I can tell there was no literacy test implemented in the process of
being selected by lot or vote for an office (though the issue could theoretically be raised at a dokimasia).
It would seem then that it was just assumed that (at least) adult male citizens would be basically literate.
Likewise household management also required some basic competence in literacy. Such assumptions
about literacy bear themselves out in literature as well: Plato’s Protagoras makes reference to children
learning the letters in school (325e, 326d) as does Isocrates in his treatise Against the Sophists (13.10).
342

Though not every child was sent to school or could afford private instruction, the family still played an
important role in their early education, which likely included at least some kind of functional, basic
literacy.
In any case, literacy was not strictly necessary for public inscriptions to have educative value
when there was plenty of opportunity to hear the inscriptions read out loud, nor is there any reason to
suppose that Athenians were spending large amounts of time reading inscriptions. The formulaic nature of
their texts certainly facilitated the reading process. But there were still variable elements of these
inscriptions which were necessary for understanding the importance of a given inscription. These are,
chiefly, names (of the archon, secretary, presider, proposer, and honorand) and the “motivation clause”,
i.e., what the honorand did to deserve their honors and what civic values they expressed. Not all of these
show up in every inscription and there is not always a clear reason why some take precedence over others.

340
Langdon 1999, 2004, 2015, 2017. Professor Langdon has kindly shown me a large number of unpublished
inscriptions (words and pictures) in the hills near modern-day Vouliagmeni and Vari which attest to a high level of
literacy (and letter cutting skill) among herdsmen and others wandering about the countryside. See Taylor 2011 for
the relationship of other kinds of graffiti to widespread literacy.
341
For the wooden boards (sanides) see Sickinger 1999a and 1999b, and J. Fisher 2004.
342
This was true of boys and girls. See Beck 1964: 85ff, Lacey 1968: 163-167.

161

Basic literacy, while not necessary for knowing what information a stone contained, was still useful for
functions like reading names, which were arguably the most important pieces of information in an
inscription for some Athenians (see below), as the inscription was a written testament to the individual’s
paradigmatic citizen status and his loyalty to the democracy.

“Cardinal Virtue”-Signaling in Honorific Inscriptions
In a classic article on the terms of praise found in honorific inscriptions, David Whitehead argued
that we could determine from these inscriptions a set of “cardinal virtues” of the Athenian democracy,
which evolved grammatically from adjectives applied to persons, borrowed from the ideological
inventory of the elite, to abstractions that were more democratic.
343
He suggests that ten virtues emerged
by the end of the 4th century: andragathia, arete, dikaiosyne, epimeleia, eunoia, eusebeia, eutaxia,
philotimia, prothymia
344
, and sophrosyne.
345
Other qualities such as chresimos and philos are attested
occasionally as well but seem to not have enjoyed frequent usage and have narrower contexts for
appropriate use.
346

Whitehead’s study is useful for the broader understanding of the values that the demos chose to
emphasize in their public decrees in the 4th century, but it has its limitations.
347
Though recognizing an
element of evolution involved in epigraphic language, Whitehead presents these values as largely
synchronic “4th century” phenomena, when in actuality they all developed over time and in response to
different issues. A survey of the appearances of these terms reveals that two events dictated the major
changes in the terms of praise in decrees at the city level: the Social War in 357-355 and the creation of

343
Whitehead 1993.
344
Whitehead admits that this one seems to have remained in its adjectival or adverbial form and never saw frequent
usage as an abstract quality in the classical period. This could be due to its frequent grammatical pairing with a
complementary infinitive in inscriptions, such as in IG I2 102 (above). The noun προθυμία typically takes an
objective genitive noun or is paired with a preposition such as εἰς or περί; only infrequently does it take a
complementary infinitive in literary texts.
345
Whitehead 1993: 65.
346
An Athenian citizen, for example, would probably never have been referred to as a philos of the city.
347
Engen 2010 chp 6 gives a thorough criticism of Whitehead’s arguments about honorific language.

162

the ephebeia in 335.
348
Before the Social War, the most frequent values were andragathia, eunoia, and
prothymia, but after the war philotimia, arete, and dikaiosyne became much more frequently used. It was
not until the establishment of the ephebeia that sophrosyne, eutaxia (or the related term kosmotes),
eusebeia, and epimeleia (as an abstract quality) became used frequently or at all.
349
We can see a
transition in these terms from praise for benefactions on the individual’s own initiative and relationship to
the state (‘goodness’, ‘goodwill’, ‘eagerness’), to praise for one’s inner character expressed through
benefactions (‘uprightness’, ‘excellence’, ‘love of honor’, ‘loyalty’
350
), to praise for one’s self-control and
obeisance to authority (‘prudence/moderation’, ‘orderliness’, ‘piety’, ‘thoughtfulness’). Thus a detailed,
diachronic analysis of these terms is needed to show the relatively rapid development of the Athenian
attitude toward civic education, which becomes increasingly focused on obedience and devotion to the
democracy.
Whitehead also assumes that epigraphic language was a top-down process: that the decrees of the
city influenced those of the demes and tribes and not the other way around. Both Whitehead and
Rhodes/Osborne express surprise that these civic values often appear in the honorific inscriptions of
demes before they do in the city inscriptions.
351
But it should be no surprise given that Athens’
participatory democracy was such that the people who were proposing decrees at the city level were either
present to witness, or were the very same people as, those who proposed decrees at deme and tribal

348
There is debate as to when exactly the ephebeia was established. For a long time scholars had assumed the
ephebeia predated the 330s (Lofberg 1925, 330–35; Pélékidis 1962, 71–9; Reinmuth 1952, 34–50; Gauthier 1976,
190–5; Vidal-Naquet 1986a; id. 1986b, 126–44; Winkler 1990, 20–62; Chankowski 2010, 140–2; Kennell 2013, 16–
19) from the scant literary sources we have about it. Reinmuth 1971 dated it to the 360s based on a heavily restored
honorific decree published in 1967, but more recently scholars have rejected this view and date it to 335 since the
earliest decree we have that can be dated accurately is from 334/3 (IG II
2
1156). For this date see Friend 2018, ch. 3
and Henderson 2020, ch. 2. The broader trends in the language of civic praise that I present here support the later
date in the 330s, and I am inclined to follow Friend and Henderson.
349
Eusebeia, eutaxia, and sophrosyne never appear in a state decree until the 330s, though they have rare
appearances in earlier deme decrees. Sophrosyne is almost exclusively used in relation to the sophronistai, the
teachers of the ephebes, who were elected from a group of fathers of the ephebes themselves. Eutaxia is almost
always applied to ephebes; eusebeia typically refers to proper conduct or procedure related to a religious festival or
cult practice (cf. Isocrates’ [7.30] definition of eusebeia as “not extravagant expenditure but disturbing none of the
rites passed down by our ancestors”). These values and the ephebic inscriptions will be discussed in Chapter 6.
350
This is the translation for eunoia that Whitehead suggests in the context of honors for Athenian citizens.
351
Whitehead 1983: 72n.25; 1986 244n.99; 1993: 72-73; RO 46 commentary, p. 233. Robin Osborne (1990) has
challenged Whitehead’s position as having no justification from the extant evidence.

163

assemblies. Moreover, subgroups of the polis like demes were more likely to rely on benefactions from
their own citizens rather than foreign benefactors, though even demes honored foreigners. The deme of
Eleusis, for example, rewarded two Theban metics, Damasias and Phryniskos, for their contribution of the
training of two choruses for the Dionysia with proedria and ateleia sometime in the mid-4th century.
Damasias is described as acting “philanthropically” (l. 4: φιλανθρώπως), with philotimia (l. 8:
ἐφιλοτιμήθη) and is honored because of his eusebeia and sophrosyne (ll. 16 and 24: σωφροσύνης ἕνεκα
καὶ εὐσεβείας πρὸς τὼ θεώ). Incidentally this is the first time these two values are attested in an Athenian
honorific decree, long before they appear in state decrees some 30 years later.
352

Instead we should view this language as part of the dynamic system of civic life, of the
interactions between polis, politeia, and oikos. The language of civic values entered the deme and tribal
honorific inscriptions from popular discourse, as evidenced by the prevalence of this language in
historiographical, oratorical, and philosophical texts. Since demes were essentially collections of various
oikoi, their interactions with each other within the environment of the democratic politeia generates
approbatory language that further sustains them through private benefaction and the education of fellow
citizens in good behavior and values. The deme or tribal settings may have thus acted as a kind of
laboratory for experimenting with this kind of language, dangerous as it was to extol one’s paradigmatic
citizen status through institutional means. When it proved to be relatively safe and useful, the city decrees
then borrowed that language and profited from it; this lent greater authority to this type of language and
the smaller political entities continued to experiment with it. The inscriptions then became part of and
stood for the democratic polis itself, feeding back into popular discourse, deme deliberation, and city level
discourse in a recursive cycle.
I have already noted that it was the Social War which drew philotimia into the language of the
state decrees because of its potential to attract gifts from the wealthy to the polis. Philotimia was already

352
As far as I can tell this is the only attestation of the adverb φιλανθρώπως in 4th century honorific inscriptions.
The concept of philanthropia and its various derivatives become frequently used in the oratory of the mid to late 4th
century (especially Isocrates and Demosthenes; see de Romilly 1979, Christ 2013), suggesting that it is a civic value
that was also generated in popular discourse but for some reason never caught on in honorific inscriptions.

164

being used as a generally positive term for ambition in the 390s and used in reference to the donation of
money for the greater good in speeches as early as the 380s.
353
The first time it appears in a city-level
honorific inscription occurs no earlier than the 350s.
354
But its earliest epigraphic attestation is in an
honorific decree from 360 of the deme Halai Aixonides for one of their priests and those chosen by him to
carry out the necessary rites. It is inscribed on a sacrificial table in the Temple of Apollo Zoster, where it
remains in situ today. The first nine lines of the text read as follows:

ἔδοξεν Ἁλαιεῦσιν, Ἁγνόθεος Ἐκφαντίδου εἶπεν· ἐπειδὴ Πολύστρ[ατος]
ἱερεὺς γενόμενος τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος τοῦ Ζωστῆρος καλῶς καὶ ε[ὐ]σεβῶς
καὶ ἀξίως τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξάγει τὴν ἱερεωσύνην, καὶ [λί]αν φιλοτίμ[ω]ς [ἐπ]ε-
σκεύακεν τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ τὰ ἀγάλματα κεκόσμηκεν μετὰ τῶν αἱρεθέντων
ἐκ τῶν δημοτῶν, ἐπεμελήθη δὲ καὶ τῆς θυσίας τῶν Ζωστηρίων κατὰ τὰ
πάτρια, καὶ λόγους τῆς ἐπιμελείας ἔδωκεν τοῖς δημόταις, ὑπὲρ τούτων
οὖν ἁπάντων ἐπαινέσαι τὸν ἱερέα τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος Πολύστρατον
Χαρμαντίδου Ἁλαιέα, καὶ στεφανῶσαι δάφνης στεφάνῳ εὐσεβείας ἕνεκα
καὶ δικαιοσύνης·

The demesmen of Halai resolved: Hagnotheos, son of Ekphantides proposed: since Polystratus, as
priest of Apollo Zoster, performed his priesthood well and piously and worthily of the god, and
with extreme love of honor fitted out
355
the temple, and has adorned the statues with those elected
from the demesmen, and also managed the sacrifices of the Zosteria in accordance with the
ancestral customs, and rendered accounts of his management to the demesmen; for all these

353
Positive ambition: Isoc. 18.61; gifts of money (and positive ambition): Lys. 16.14-18.
354
IG II
2
257+300? (c.350-340?), IG II
2
223a (343/2)
355
It is unclear what is meant by this. Ἐπισκεύαζω can also mean ‘to repair’, in which case he may have used
personal funds to repair the temple from some damage it suffered. The temple sits very close to the shoreline and so
could have been damaged by a flood or storm.

165

things we praise the priest of Apollo Polystratus of Halai, son of Charmantides, and crown him
with a crown of laurel for his piety and uprightness.

The rest of the inscription honors the demesmen elected to the care of the temple (οἱ αἱρεθέντες). This
inscription contains several peculiarities. First, it is inscribed on a sacrificial table and not set up on a
stele. It may be that Polystratus somehow fixed or replaced the cult table and for that reason they
inscribed his decree on it. The letters are shallow but very neat and still to this day readable in good light
(see photos).
356
This table is directly in the middle of the temple in a very conspicuous position, with the
inscription facing the entrance to the chamber. Thus it would stand out to any worshiper who entered the
sanctuary as a meaningful testament to good demesman behavior. Second, the phrase [λί]αν φιλοτίμ[ω]ς
(line 3) is unique to this inscription. Generally honorific decrees tend to do without intensifiers or other
embellishments, showing a level of personalization in this inscription that other, more banal inscriptions
do not provide. But if Polystratus performed with such extreme love of honor, why did the demesmen not
say what exactly he did? It is probably to avoid the very problem of exemplarity that I have addressed
throughout this chapter. Too much detail can be a bad thing; it would have distracted from the inculcation
of the civic values of philotimia, eusebeia, and dikaiosyne. It could have also fomented jealousy among
the other demesmen leading to internal strife. So instead of specifics about what Polystratus did to earn
this honor, the decree emphasizes his display of ideal citizen and demesman behavior, along with the
cooperative aspects of his displayed values that are shared with the elected caretakers of the temple, who
receive their honorable mention as well. In addition, the inscriptions from small communities offer a kind
of local history from which future generations—ourselves included—could learn.
The same principles can be applied to the honorific decrees issued by the Assembly and Council.
Citizens are expected to emulate the values contained in these inscriptions without growing jealous of

356
Rhodes and Osborne not that the lettering on this inscription is unusually shallow (and, we can infer, hard to
read), but my own autopsy of this inscription was conducted under winter morning sunlight which obscured much of
the text, but low light from an angle, such as firelight inside a dark temple, would make this inscription relatively
visible.

166

those who receive rewards. For this reason, not only was the language of civic praise somewhat vague,
but each of the terms had their own appropriate contexts, especially later in the 4th century as these terms
became applied to Athenian citizens.
357
Philotimia, we have already seen, often implied personal
expenditure for the good of the state. Arete was mostly given to foreigners, and only appears seven times
for Athenian citizens. In every case, they were for conducting their duty of office.
358
Dikaiosyne, when
applied to citizens at the state level, was almost always connected to ethical conduct in office that had
some kind of religious association.
359
At the tribe level, where it first appears, it was often attributed to
judges of the chorus competitions at religious festivals or in the “best prytany” contest in the Council.
360

Unsurprisingly it was the winning tribe which honored the judge for his “honesty” or “uprightness”—that
the judge did his job according to ethical standards. It is unclear whether this was a custom imposed to
enforce honest judging or just a state-sanctioned form of bribery. In any case, it shows that the Athenians
were interested in inculcating cooperative values that reinforced the strength of their democratic practices
and displaying those values to prove themselves to be good democratic citizens. Honoring citizens for
going above and beyond in their duties was a way to make sure future magistrates would do the same,
display to the citizenry that this was the proper way to run the democracy, teach citizens to be active
members of the political community, and leave a record of good democratic governance for the future.
These values, democratic and cooperative as they were, also played into the reciprocal relationship of
citizen and state. As Whitehead has pointed out, the good character of the honorands is necessarily in

357
Often these words appeared in pairs or sometimes triplets. For this phenomenon and a catalog of their
appearances, see Veligianni-Terzi 1997.
358
Engen 2010: 127n.15, p. 339
359
Its earliest attestation in the epigraphic record is from a grave stele from mid 5th century IG I
3
1349bis. After the
mid 4th c: IG II
2
143 - decree about symbolaia and catalog of names?, Pythodotus decree in 342 IG II
2
223
(Phanodemus), 330 (Phyleus), 338 (Pytheas) - these are for outgoing magistrates (councilor, archon, water supply
manager) except for 347 (331 BCE) for Aphnis of Andros, who is made proxenos to Athens for some benefaction.
Andros was historically a reluctant supporter of Athens (see RO 52) so bestowing proxeny was a good way to keep
them on Athens’ side in this period of uncertainty. Often appears with arete (e.g. 338 and 347) and especially in tribe
inscriptions (choregia, judging festival contests, etc). See below for the significance of its religious context.
360
E.g. IG II
2
1140, 1142.

167

reference to the demos or city of Athens.
361
Even non-citizens contributed to the education of Athenian
citizens by displaying good behavior toward the city.

Publicity and the Paradigmatic Citizen
Honorific decrees did not just fall from the sky, and the Athenians made this clear by listing the
names of the archon, secretary, epistates (for decrees of the Council), proposer, honorand, and any others
associated with the decree. We can tell that this was more than a matter of procedure from Plato’s
Phaedrus, when Socrates wryly explains to Phaedrus why decrees follow this formula (257e-258a):

ΣΩ. οἱ μέγιστον φρονοῦντες τῶν πολιτικῶν μάλιστα ἐρῶσι λογογραφίας τε καὶ καταλείψεως
συγγραμμάτων, οἵ γε καὶ ἐπειδάν τινα γράφωσι λόγον, οὕτως ἀγαπῶσι τοὺς ἐπαινέτας, ὥστε
προσπαραγράφουσι πρώτους οἳ ἂν ἑκασταχοῦ ἐπαινῶσιν αὐτούς.
ΦΑΙ. πῶς λέγεις τοῦτο; οὐ γὰρ μανθάνω. [258α]
ΣΩ. οὐ μανθάνεις ὅτι ἐν ἀρχῇ ἀνδρὸς πολιτικοῦ συγγράμματι πρῶτος ὁ ἐπαινέτης γέγραπται.
ΦΑΙ. Πῶς;
ΣΩ. ‘ἔδοξέ’ πού φησιν ‘τῇ βουλῇ’ ἢ ‘τῷ δήμῳ’ ἢ ἀμφοτέροις, καὶ ‘ὃς καὶ ὃς εἶπεν’ —τὸν αὑτὸν
δὴ λέγων μάλα σεμνῶς καὶ ἐγκωμιάζων ὁ συγγραφεύς—ἔπειτα λέγει δὴ μετὰ τοῦτο,
ἐπιδεικνύμενος τοῖς ἐπαινέταις τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σοφίαν, ἐνίοτε πάνυ μακρὸν ποιησάμενος σύγγραμμα.

Soc.: The proudest of the politicians are extremely fond of speechwriting and leaving behind
writings, and they appreciate their approvers so much that when they write some speech they
write at the beginning the names of whoever praises them for each thing.
Ph.: What do you mean? I don’t get it.
Soc. You don’t get that the approver is written at the beginning of the writing of a statesman?

361
Whitehead 1993: 47.

168

Ph. How so?
Soc.: “The Council resolved”, it would say, or “the People resolved” or both, and “so and so
proposed”—speaking about himself quite venerably and praising himself as the author—then
after this he speaks, displaying his own wisdom to his approvers, sometimes composing a very
long text.

Phaedrus’ naïveté in this exchange may represent the “average” Athenian’s attention to such details, but
that fact that it did not escape Plato’s cynicism reflects the reality that politicians were using this feature
of state decrees to their advantage. As we saw above, this caused some problems as the silent jockeying
for power in these inscriptions led secretaries such as Cephisophon of Paiania to overemphasize their own
contribution to the production of an inscription.
362
And though the Athenians remedied the problem of the
secretaries by changing the office to a year-long position selected by lot, there still seems to have been a
pattern of politicians of the second half of the fourth century trying to gain influence by proposing
decrees, perhaps superfluously at times. Honorific decrees were a relatively easy way to have one’s name
set in stone in a public place and to garner a reputation for civic-mindedness. Presumably a more popular
speaker in the Council or Assembly would be able to ensure the passage of a decree more easily than an
unknown one, which explains why so many of our known proposers of decrees do so several times over
many years and appear to have addressed the Assembly frequently. Many of these are the same people
who appear in our literary sources as well, such as Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Demades,
Hyperides, Androtion, Aristophon, Aristogeiton, Iphicrates, Cephisodotus, Phanodemus, and Eubulus.
363

Moreover, the number of wealthy elites involved in government seems to have decreased over the course
of the 4th century, meaning prestige was not necessarily a given and was up for grabs by non-elite

362
Tracy 2000 notes that the politicians of 307 to 302 deliberately used spacing and letter size to emphasize their
own names in inscribed decrees.
363
See Hansen 1983a, b, c, and 1984 for data concerning the number of rhetores, the decrees they proposed, and
other political activity, with updates in Hansen 1989, esp. pp. 34-72.

169

citizens in Athens.
364
Though the democracy relied heavily on paradigmatic citizens, it still needed
safeguards against accumulation of political power by individuals.
One way, it would seem, that the state tried to subsume the paradigmatic quality of the individual
was the “hortatory intention” clause. Beginning around the 350s, the Athenians started to include a phrase
toward the end of honorific decrees that makes the intent behind the inscription known. Alan Henry has
classified them into three groups:
“Category A: in which future potential benefactors are encouraged by their knowledge that the
Athenian People knows how to express its gratitude for services performed;
Category B: in which stress is laid on publicising the evident fact of the Athenian People's
gratitude;
Category C: in which the intention is to provide a reminder either of the service which led to the
honour or privilege bestowed or of the People's gratitude.” (Henry 1996: 106)

The corresponding phrases for each of these categories are various, and Henry has cataloged them in his
1996 article. For now I will focus on Category A because Categories B and C only apply to inscriptions
of the 3rd century BCE and later. The phrasing of the hortatory intention emphasizes the aggregation and
display of knowledge introduced by a phrase such as ὅπως ἂν εἰδῶσιν πάντες… (“so that everyone
knows…”). Following this might be an expression of gratitude such as in IG II
2
222, lines 14-16:
365

ὅπω]-
[ς ἂ]ν εἰδῶσιν ἅπαντ[ε]ς ὅτι ὁ δῆμος [ὁ]
[Ἀθ]ηναίων ἀποδίδωσιν χάριτας μ[ε]-
[γ]άλας τοῖς εὐεργετοῦσιν εἱαυτὸ-
[ν καὶ] διαμένουσιν ἐπὶ τῆς εὐνοία-
[ς το]ῦ δήμου

364
Taylor 2007, esp. 88-89.
365
Osborne, Naturalization D22.

170

So that all know that the demos of the Athenians reciprocates with much gratitude to those to
perform benefactions for it and stay in the goodwill of the demos.

Another kind of hortatory intention encourages philotimia explicitly, such as SEG 40.70 (IG II
3
1, 400),
lines 7-10:
ὅπως [ἂν κα]-
[ὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἅπαντ]ες φιλοτιμῶνται εἰδό[τ]-
[ες ὅ]τι ὁ δῆμος χάριτας ἀποδ[ί]δωσιν τοῖς ε-
ἰς ἑαυτὸν φιλοτι[μο]υμένοις.

So that in the future all who show philotimia know that the demos shows gratitude to those who
show philotimia to it.

As we have already seen, the reciprocal relationship between demos and honorand keeps the individual
from surpassing the demos. But at the same time, the demos—not the proposer or the archon or anyone
else—expresses its gratitude explicitly. In addition, the demos itself shows the civic virtues that
honorands do: eunoia is explicitly mentioned in IG II
2
222 and philotimia can be inferred from the
expenditure of the state for these honors. Thus both the honorand and all others involved in the creation of
an honorific decree are subsumed into the demos. Though the decree gives individual citizens a platform,
theoretically it still subordinates them to the collective by referring to collective intent and encouraging a
plurality of benefactors that does not allow any single one to stand out.
The awarding of honorific statues was a slightly different affair, but even this seems not to have
been much of a problem. As I mentioned above, only a few people had been honored with statues and
among them were, not coincidentally I think, some of the most powerful citizens in Athens because they
commanded much of the military and had Persian support. But apparently there was little concern about

171

these people overreaching their bounds, and they were highly favored by many people (except for
Timotheus, in the end). And their statues acted as symbols of transition for the democracy itself rather
than purely symbols of the individual’s prestige. And as a reminder of honor, statues may have been
considered deficient. In his eulogy for the recently deceased Evagoras, Isocrates (9.73-76) criticizes
statuary as a lesser form of honor to encomium because statues are static and commemorate the body of a
noble man instead of his character and virtue, whereas speeches can be disseminated and read out to
wider audiences.
366
Moreover, they are harder to learn from:
πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὅτι τοῖς μὲν πεπλασμένοις καὶ τοῖς γεγραμμένοις οὐδεὶς ἂν τὴν τοῦ σώματος
φύσιν ὁμοιώσειε, τοὺς δὲ τρόπους τοὺς ἀλλήλων καὶ τὰς διανοίας τὰς ἐν τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐνούσας
ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι μιμεῖσθαι τοῖς μὴ ῥᾳθυμεῖν αἱρουμένοις, ἀλλὰ χρηστοῖς εἶναι βουλομένοις.

In addition, no one could make the natural state of their body resemble sculptures or paintings,
but it is easier for those who choose not to be lazy but want to be productive members of society
(χρηστοῖς) to imitate the character of others and the thought behind what is said. (9.75)
Presumably a similar principle applied to honorific statues and inscriptions. Others can look up to a statue
but not imitate it because it does not have a specific message, whereas an inscription can be imitated
because of its ability to be read and its relative specificity in the values it wishes to inculcate.
367
Of
course, statues were almost always accompanied by an inscription either on the statue base and/or a
separate honorific decree placed near it, as was the case with Evagoras and Conon. Still, Isocrates’
comment is further testament to the power of a name: a bronze statue will usually not stand the test of
time, but a name set in stone could very well last forever (or at least a few thousand years).

366
Cf. Isocrates’ advice to Evagoras’ son Nicocles (2.36): “desire to leave behind images of your virtue rather than
your body”.
367
Aeschines on Solon’s statue, Demosthenes mocks him.

172

Athens without Honors? Demosthenes against Leptines
A counterfactual test case in the form of Demosthenes’ speech Against Leptines demonstrates the
embeddedness of honors in Athenian culture and politics and its importance for their practices of civic
education. In the wake of the Social War, the Athenians seemed to have had a reckoning with the risks
and problems associated with maintaining an empire. In his discourse On the Peace, Isocrates urged the
Athenians to give up their hopes for an empire and instead prioritize the reconstruction of their economy,
the health of their democracy, and the unification of the Greeks.
368
Likewise, Xenophon’s Poroi expresses
an anti-imperialist stance and offers practical solutions to the city’s economic struggles.
369
Above all,
certain economic adjustments needed to be made. In 355, Eubulus was elected o epi tei dioikesei (a kind
of treasurer) and proposed a decree which moved money from the stratiotikon to the theorikon, cutting
military spending down significantly and promoting civic religious festivals. The result was a much more
peaceful foreign policy and somewhat improved relationship with the other members of the now-waning
Second Athenian League.
370
Around the same time or slightly earlier, about 356-355, a handful of
prominent statesmen in Athens took measures which have come to be known as the klägliche
Auskünfte.
371
Aristophon, who had made a name for himself fighting for the democrats in 404/3 and
prosecuting the general Leosthenes in 362, passed a decree to recover money that belonged to the city but
was being illegally withheld; Androtion, another very active politician,
372
passed a decree which
empowered him to collect arrears of eisphorai; and Leptines sponsored a law that would remove ateleia

368
The great unification of Hellas was one of Isocrates’ life projects that never came to fruition. He wanted to do
this by targeting Persia as a common enemy and uniting around a common leader (Athens, or eventually Philip II),
no doubt a reflection of his admiration and nostalgia for Persian War-era Greece. Interestingly Isocrates never
seemed to see, or perhaps simply refused to see, Philip II as a credible threat to Athens.
369
Some scholars find his solutions to be wishful thinking, while others take them more seriously. For recent
discussions of this text see Whitehead 2019 with bibliography.
370
For the status of the Second Athenian League after the Social War and its foreign policy under Eubulus, see
Sealey 1955, Cawkwell 1981, Cargill 1981.
371
The phrase comes from Arnold Schaefer’s landmark study of 4th century Athens Demosthenes und seine Zeit
(1885); see further Sealey 1955.
372
His name appears on several extant decrees and he was prosecuted by Demosthenes and others (Dem. 22 is a
supplementary speech to the main prosecution) for proposing honors for the Council (on which Androtion was
serving) even though they had not completed their ship-building requirement. See RO 51 for a full account of
Androtion’s political activity.

173

(exemption from liturgies) from all honorands except the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. A
young upstart named Demosthenes, fairly new to the political scene at this time, took it upon himself to
combat what he perceived to be the detrimental effects of these measures.
In 355/4, Demosthenes initiated a graphe paranomon suit against Leptines’ decree removing
ateleia (Dem. 20).
373
It provides an interesting theory of the Athenian custom of inscribing honors for
benefactors as an inextricable part of the national character. Leptines had sponsored a law removing
ateleia (exemption from public liturgies) from all but the descendents of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
According to Leptines this would help the state recoup some financial losses. Demosthenes wrote and
delivered this speech on behalf of the general Chabrias’ son Ctessipus, who had inherited ateleia from his
father and was a minor at this time. Though technically a graphe paranomon suit against Leptines’
decree, Demosthenes’ argumentation attacked Leptines directly by leaning heavily upon the moral
consequences of removing ateleia from past honorands and the very character of Athens. Demosthenes
argues that these honors are crucial to the welfare of the democratic politeia because they encourage
competition.
374
The stelai themselves were physical entities that stood as “monuments of the character of
the polis” (20.64: τοῦ τῆς πόλεως ἤθους μνημεῖον). And since the honors were often hereditary, he was
stripping the honorand’s oikos of its honor as well.
375
Leptines’ paradigmatic citizen status was effectively
on trial as his law violated the integrity of the politeia, polis, and oikos.
Demosthenes levies a number of arguments against Leptines’ law: that it removes the power of
the demos to confer honors (20.3); that it is unfair because it punishes everyone for the wrongdoing of a
few (20.7); that benefactions benefit the city more than the liturgies of honorands would and removing
them would discourage philotimia (20.5-6) ; that the law is generally undemocratic and un-Athenian
(20.11-12, 107ff); that Leptines did not follow proper procedure for proposing a new law (20.96); etc. But

373
For a detailed account of the background and issues of this speech, see the introductions to Kremmydas 2012 and
Canevaro 2016.
374
Dem. 20.107-109
375
Dem. 20.75.

174

underlying these arguments was Demosthenes’ greater concern for the education of the demos and the
character of the city itself.
Demosthenes frames his speech as an exercise in good decision making. He opens with the
typical complaint that the demos is too hasty to make decisions and needs to learn how not to be tricked
by its citizens (20.3-4):
ἀλλὰ νὴ Δι᾽ ἐκεῖν᾽ ἂν ἴσως εἴποι πρὸς ταῦτα, ὅτι διὰ τὸ ῥᾳδίως ἐξαπατᾶσθαι τὸν δῆμον, διὰ
τοῦθ᾽ οὕτως ἔθηκε τὸν νόμον. τί οὖν κωλύει πάντ᾽ ἀφῃρῆσθαι καὶ ὅλως τὴν πολιτείαν ὑμᾶς κατὰ
τοῦτον τὸν λόγον; οὐ γὰρ ἔστ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὅτου τοῦτ᾽ οὐ πεπόνθατε τῶν πάντων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ψηφίσματα
πολλὰ πολλάκις ἐξαπατηθέντες κεχειροτονήκατε, καὶ συμμάχους ἤδη τινὰς ἥττους ἀντὶ
κρειττόνων ἐπείσθηθ᾽ ἑλέσθαι, καὶ ὅλως ἐν οἶμαι πολλοῖς οἷς πράττετε καὶ τοιοῦτόν τι
συμβαίνειν ἀνάγκη. ἆρ᾽ οὖν θησόμεθα νόμον διὰ ταῦτα ‘μηδὲ τὸ λοιπὸν ἐξεῖναι τῇ βουλῇ μηδὲ
τῷ δήμῳ μήτε προβουλεύειν μήτε χειροτονεῖν μηδέν;’ ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ οἶμαι: οὐ γάρ ἐσμεν
ἀφαιρεθῆναι δίκαιοι περὶ ὧν ἂν ἐξαπατηθῶμεν, ἀλλὰ διδαχθῆναι πῶς τοῦτο μὴ πεισόμεθα, καὶ
θέσθαι νόμον οὐχ ὃς ἀφαιρήσεται τὸ κυρίους ἡμᾶς εἶναι, ἀλλὰ δι᾽ οὗ τὸν ἐξαπατῶντα
τιμωρησόμεθα.

But by Zeus maybe he will say that because the demos is so easily deceived, he created his law
this way [i.e. to remove ateleia and forbid granting it in the future]. By that reasoning, what is
stopping you all from having your politeia removed entirely? For there is not an instance where
you have not suffered this, but you have been tricked into voting for many decrees many times,
and you were convinced to choose weaker allies instead of stronger ones, and in general, I think,
the same thing must happen in many things you do. So then shall we establish a law because of
that saying “it shall not be allowed for the Council or the demos neither to deliberate nor to vote
on anything”? I think not. For we do not deserve to be deprived of what we have been tricked
about, but rather taught how not to fall for this deceit, and to legislate a law that will not nullify
our authority but through which we will punish the deceiver.

175

Demosthenes thus assumes the role of an educator of the demos for the duration of the speech in an
attempt to correct the demos’ very capacity to legislate properly. Specifically, the demos needs to learn
how to resist persuasion by tricky politicians and instead punish them.
376
It would happen then that this
punishment would set a negative example for others who attempt to deceive the demos. As we saw in
Chapter 2, it was democratic process that implanted an oligarchy in Athens in 411 and there was a
broader concern for the return of oligarchy after 403 through the same, technically legal, means.
Demosthenes reflects renewed fears of oligarchy with this hypothetical law against deliberation or voting
that could be passed by once again deceiving the people.
Though he makes frequent reference to oligarchy and the character of Leptines, he never accuses
Leptines of having an oligarchic character such as we find in speeches of the first half of the 4th century.
In Demosthenes’ presentation of Leptines and his character, it becomes clear that the threat to the
education of the citizenry and the democracy itself is Leptines’ own ignorance and that of his colleagues
who were to speak in favor of the law, along with the evils that ignorance brings. Several times
Demosthenes first calls into question Leptines’ understanding of what exactly he is doing in the
legislation process: “Leptines seems to me, men of Athens—do not get mad at me, Leptines, I am not
going to say anything disparaging about you—he seems to me to have never read Solon’s laws or to not
understand them.”
377
. If he did have knowledge of Solon’s laws, Demosthenes continues, he would realize
that keeping ateleia would in fact encourage competition and benefactions, analogous to the Solonian
legislation about bequeathing property to whomever one wishes in the absence of an heir. Shortly after
this Demosthenes urges the jurors to consider Leptines and any who try to cite past examples of the
recension of honors by the ancestors as “wicked and uneducated (πονηροὺς καὶ ἀπαιδεύτους); wicked
(πονηροὺς), because they tell lies about your ancestors being ungrateful, and just plain stupid (ἀμαθεῖς)

376
For the role of deceit in this speech see Hesk 2001: 40-51.
377
20.102: ἐμοὶ δ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, δοκεῖ Λεπτίνης --καί μοι μηδὲν ὀργισθῇς: οὐδὲν γὰρ φλαῦρον ἐρῶ σε-- ἢ
οὐκ ἀνεγνωκέναι τοὺς Σόλωνος νόμους ἢ οὐ συνιέναι.

176

because they are ignorant (ἀγνοοῦσιν) of the fact that if these things really were this way, they would be
better off denying it rather than speaking about it.”
378
As Mirko Canevaro notes, “Demostene rileva come
far notare le vergogne degli antenati sia sintomo di stupidità, perché è meglio nascondere ciò che è
ragione di vergogna.”
379
“Uneducated” (ἀπαιδεύτους) thus becomes “stupid” (ἀμαθεῖς) in Demosthenes’
explanation because it does not take education to realize that bringing up the shameful acts of the
ancestors was a bad idea in an Athenian court. Leptines’ stupidity in this matter could be contagious to
the demos. Finally, Demosthenes suggests Leptines and his colleagues might argue that in the past
citizens claiming to be Megarians or Messenians have gained ateleia, since only foreigners were honored
for a long time, in their disorganized way of speaking (20.131: ἐπισύροντες ἐροῦσιν, lit. “dragging along,
they will say”). None of these attacks are really about Leptines’ intelligence, but rather his carelessness
with the laws and his argumentation. Thus if his law should go into effect, the demos will take him as an
example and slip further into ignorance and the attendant baseness, possibly leading to oligarchy once
again.
As a consequence of the ignorance of Leptines and the demos, the character of the city (τὸ τῆς
πόλεως ἦθος) is at also risk. In Athens’ weakened state after the Social War, fears of oligarchic revolution
were starting to emerge once more, and Demosthenes’ prosecution aimed to combat that threat. He tells
the story of how the demos offered to pay back the money the Thirty borrowed from Sparta to fight the
civil war and argues that Leptines’ law is contrary to the character of Athens and its citizens.
380
The
generosity that the democrats showed at that time should not be repaid with the removal of its ability to
show generosity at present. Leptines’ law will cause the Athenians to acquire “the three worst reproaches:
that they should seem envious, untrustworthy, and ungrateful.”
381
But the character of Athens is the exact
opposite (20.13):

378
Dem. 20.119: πονηροὺς καὶ ἀπαιδεύτους ἡγεῖσθ᾽ εἶναι, πονηροὺς μὲν διότι καταψεύδονται τῶν προγόνων ὑμῶν
ὡς ἀχαρίστων, ἀμαθεῖς δὲ διότι ἐκεῖν᾽ ἀγνοοῦσιν, ὅτι εἰ τὰ μάλιστα ταῦθ᾽ οὕτως εἶχεν, ἀρνεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ λέγειν
αὐτοῖς προσῆκεν.
379
Canevaro 2016:382, ad 119 [6].
380
20.11-12.
381
20.10: τρία γὰρ τὰ μέγιστ᾽ ὀνείδη κτᾶται, φθονεροὺς ἀπίστους ἀχαρίστους εἶναι δοκεῖν.

177

τὸ μὲν τοίνυν τῆς πόλεως ἦθος, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, καὶ ἐπ᾽ ἄλλων πολλῶν καὶ ἐφ᾽ ὧν εἶπον ἴδοι
τις ἂν τοιοῦτον, ἀψευδὲς καὶ χρηστόν, οὐ τὸ λυσιτελέστατον πρὸς ἀργύριον σκοποῦν, ἀλλὰ τί καὶ
καλὸν πρᾶξαι. τὸ δὲ τοῦ θέντος τὸν νόμον, τὰ μὲν ἄλλ᾽ ἔγωγ᾽ οὐκ οἶδα, οὐδὲ λέγω φλαῦρον
οὐδὲν οὐδὲ σύνοιδα, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ νόμου σκοπῶν εὑρίσκω πολὺ τούτου κεχωρισμένον.

The character of the city, men of Athens, in both many other circumstances and in the ones I have
spoken about, one would know to be thus: truthful and useful, not looking to what is most
profitable when it comes to money but what is the noble thing to do. As for the character of the
creator of the law, I do not know anything further about him, nor do I have anything disparaging
to say nor am I aware of anything bad, but judging from the law I find him very far removed from
the character of the city.

That Demosthenes claims Leptines’ character does not match the city’s is unsurprising and a rather run of
the mill accusation. But that he can only tell from the law he proposed does warrant some comment. It
implies that Leptines is unable to express his interior character in a way that aligns with the civic values
of the Athenians. It was incumbent upon the citizens of Athens to demonstrate that they were good
citizens through their behavior, and it was expected that one’s exterior behavior matched their interior
character. Athens is a trustworthy city and the law must be struck down lest Athens cease to be so. It has
monuments to prove it (20.64):
προσήκει τοίνυν τὰς στήλας ταύτας κυρίας ἐᾶν τὸν πάντα χρόνον, ἵν᾽, ἕως μὲν ἄν τινες ζῶσι,
μηδὲν ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν ἀδικῶνται, ἐπειδὰν δὲ τελευτήσωσιν, ἐκεῖναι τοῦ τῆς πόλεως ἤθους μνημεῖον
ὦσι, καὶ παραδείγμαθ᾽ ἑστῶσι τοῖς βουλομένοις τι ποιεῖν ὑμᾶς ἀγαθόν, ὅσους εὖ ποιήσαντας ἡ
πόλις ἀντ᾽ εὖ πεποίηκεν.

It is fitting to allow these stelai (i.e. honorific inscriptions) to be valid forever so that, as long as
they (the honorands) live, they will not be wronged by you, and when they die, the stelai become

178

a reminder of the character of the city and stand as examples (παραδείγματα) for those who wish
to render some good to us of how many benefactors the city has benefitted in return.

Leptines has an untrustworthy character who presents a risk to the city both because of his ignorance and
his inability to display good behaviors. Moreover, his law to remove ateleia means altering the
inscriptions scattered about Athens and elsewhere, which Demosthenes hyperbolically suggests to mean
removing all the stones entirely, and Athens is left without the very things which mark the good character
of the polis.
Demosthenes’ prosecution against Leptines’ law was apparently successful, since the Athenians
continued to grant ateleia to benefactors after 355/4. It would seem that his ideological and moral
arguments about the advantages and necessity of bestowing honors and respecting them once they have
been given proved effective. Above all, his ability to tap into the very Athenianness of their honorific
culture seems to have resonated with the jurors in a way that no argument from data about potential
revenue from liturgies could have. In addition, this speech illustrates the way practices around civic
education were evolving to become more specific and more leader-oriented. Leptines’ lack of expertise in
legislation makes him a bad person to speak to the demos, whereas Demosthenes himself aims to teach
the demos how to resist deception and bad decision making.

The Cult of Democracy
It should strike us that many of the honorific inscriptions we have seen in this chapter occur
within, or have some relation to, religious practice. There is no doubt that the democracy was, since its
inception, steeped in religious tradition and ritual that required sacrifices, oaths, purifications, and prayer
as a matter of course for political activities of the city.
382
The relationship of the democracy and its

382
See Parker 1996, Cole 1996 on oaths rituals as “glue” for the democracy, Blok 2017 on the religious foundation
of Athenian citizenship. Connor 1996 suggests that Dionysiac festivals laid the conceptual groundwork for
democratic practices such as collective deliberation; see further Winkler 1990 who argues that the City Dionysia
represented and reinforced the democratic structure of Athens.

179

citizens has been explored fairly extensively by scholars who show that both Athenian citizenship and
their epigraphic habit have strong ties to the gods and the practice of religion.
383
Most inscriptions began
with the heading ΘΕΟΙ (‘gods’),
384
often inscribed all the way across the fascia or taenia at the top of a
stele, and included a brief reference to agathe tyche (‘good luck’) as a condensed form of prayer for the
wellbeing of the city. The most common place of publication of state decrees was the Acropolis, the most
important religious site in the city, and those placed in the Agora were often set up near the stoa and
statue of Zeus Eleutherios.
385
Tribal decrees would even be placed in the precinct designated for their
tribe even when the decree was what might be called “secular”.
386
Demes overwhelmingly inscribed
matters relating to cult and religious practice.
387
And as we have seen, many of the terms of civic praise
emerged in the inscriptions related to cult practice or religious festivals at the deme and tribe levels. The
first extant instance of philotimia is seen in the Temple of Apollo Zoster in southern Attica, sophrosyne
and eusebeia are first attested in Eleusis as qualities of two Thebans who funded choregiai for the
Dionysia, and dikaiosyne appears first in tribe decrees for the judges of choruses at religious festivals.
This latter term may be the most telling of all the values. Dikaiosyne is not in itself a “religious”
term. Yet it is almost always used for Athenian citizens in the role of officials who perform religious
duties well, such as priests, hieropoioi of the Council and Assembly, and the judges of chorus
competitions by the winning tribes.
388
Even Pytheas, a manager of the water supply, is awarded for
dikaiosyne (along with arete and philotimia) because he commissioned the construction of fountains at

383
Blok 2011 and 2017 (citizenship); Meyer 2013 argues that the Athenian epigraphic habit emerged from the
practice of inscribing votive offerings in the Archaic period and that the continued practice of inscribing honors
came from attentive care and honor for the gods. Her argument stops short of suggesting that this intense attention to
the gods had a practical effect on the way the city itself was governed by the demos.
384
For interpretations of this heading see Pounder 1984. Bresson 2005 suggests that stelai with θεοί as a heading
were formally dedicated to a god, but this conclusion is hard to reconcile with the seemingly random use of this
heading.
385
Liddel 2003; Shear 2011: 215
386
E.g. IG II
2
1148, a decree honoring a thesmothetes, which was placed [ἐν ἀκροπόλει] ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι τοῦ
Π|[ανδίονος]. The very idea of secularity in ancient Athens is, of course, fraught because the civic and the religious
were so tightly intertwined. For a discussion of this distinction, see Blok
387
Whitehead (1986) 39–46
388
Hieropoioi: IG II
2
330, IG II
2
410 (=IG II
3
416, Lambert 2004). Priests: IG II
2
1140. Judges: IG II
2
1145 The
only non-citizen we know of who received this honor in the 4th century is Aphnis of Andros (IG II
2
347), who
received proxeny for unknown benefactions.

180

the temples of Ammon and of Amphiaraus for those seeking healing and oracles. A prosopographical
analysis further reveals that those who were not technically religious officials but were honored with
dikaosyne show exemplary dedication to the city’s religious life. A particularly striking example comes in
342 on a dedicatory statue base, which contains 5 decrees: two honorific decrees for the Council, two for
Eudoxus the administrator (epimeletes) of the Council, and one for a prominent politician named
Phanodemus of Thymaitadai, all of whom are praised for their “excellence and uprightness” (ἀρετῆς
ἕνεκα καὶ δικαιοσύνης, lines 4, 7, 12, and 45).
389
The Council was first rewarded for maintaining order
(εὐκοσμία) in the theater “well and rightly” (καλῶς καὶ δικαίως) in Decree 1, proposed by Kephisophon,
son of Kallibius (and grandson of the Cephisophon of Paiania discussed above). Phanodemus then
proposed a commemoration (Decree 2) of the decree honoring the Council and its members, which was a
statue dedicated to Hephaestus and Athena Hephaestia, which stood upon the base these decrees are
inscribed on. Phanodemus was then honored by the Council (Decree 3) for “speaking and advising the
best things on behalf of the Council and the Demos without taking bribes” (line 5: ἄριστα λέγων καὶ
πράττων καὶ ἀδωροδοκήτως ὑπὲρ τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ δήμου), and then again by the demos. This all
happened in the year 343/2. Sometime after this, presumably near the end of this archon year, Eudoxus
was also honored for his good administration of the Council and keeping order during proceedings
(εὐκοσμία).
About Eudoxus we know little, but Phanodemus has left a considerable mark on the epigraphic
and literary record of the 4th century.
390
He was an Atthidographer and active proposer of decrees.
Besides the one above, he also proposed a decree honoring the hero Amphiaraus (IG VII 4252.9-10) in
332/1 and a law (nomos) about the Amphiareion sometime before 332/1. This activity led Jacoby to refer
to Phanodemus as the “minister of public worship and education”; Harding thinks this is reading too
much into the evidence, though he does consider Phanodemus to be “more interested in cult than politics

389
IG II
3
1 306 (=IG II
2
223 + Add. p. 659)
390
Kirchner PA 14033; Jacoby FGrHist 325; Harding 2007: 8.

181

and, at the same time, excessively Atheno-centric in his interpretation of the past.”
391
Harding is right
about Jacoby’s evaluation of Phanodemus’ official status in the city, but I do not think Phanodemus’s
activity was spurred on by a preference for cult over politics. Rather, at this point, cult and politics went
hand-in-hand and his proposals concerning the cult of Amphiaraus were just as political (and democracy-
oriented) as his proposal to honor the Council. Phanodemus’ Athenocentrism can also be explained by the
emphasis on Athenian identity against the encroachment of the Macedonians in the late 340s. His
dikaiosyne, and that of the Council and Eudoxus too, attest to his veneration for democracy. The rules,
regulations, and procedures of cults that required cooperative values of cult members mapped onto the
democracy’s needs for collective action as well.
By the end of the 4th century, certainly around the time Phanodemus was active, there was in fact
a cult of Demokratia in Athens. The earliest hint of its iconography is the relief on the anti-tyranny law
known as the law of Eukrates of 336 BCE, which shows a personified Demokratia crowning the
personified Demos. Alistair Blanshard has interpreted this relief as a display of the power of the demos to
subsume the individual viewer through its indistinct representation of and identification with the male
citizen and their reciprocal relationship with Demokratia.
392
The decisive victory of the Macedonians at
Chaeronea two years earlier would have reinforced the Athenians’ desire to identify themselves within the
relationship of the Demos and Demokratia as protection against the Macedonian threat. Such a relief on
an anti-tyranny law portrays the law as given by the divine personification of Demokratia: anyone who
should act on it would not only protecting the democracy but would be carrying out the will of the god.
393

There are signs of worship related to democracy even as early as 403, when the Athenians began
their annual sacrifice commemorating the return from exile at Phyle.
394
Finally in 333 a statue of
Demokratia was set up by the Council after it was crowned by the demos for its dikaiosyne and arete

391
Harding 2007: 8.
392
Blanshard 2004.
393
For an extended discussion of this law, see Teegarden 2013: 85-112, Wallace 1989: 180-183, Schwenk 1985: 33-
41, Sealey 1958, RO 79.
394
Parker 1996: 229; Shear 2011: 233, 290. Hansen 2008 suggests that a cult of Demokratia may have existed as
early as the 420s based on evidence from Antiphon (6.45) and Aristophanes Acharnians and Birds.

182

(SEG 21.679). Robert Parker has interpreted this as a cult statue.
395
He also notes that by 332/1 the
records for the sale of the skins of sacrifices appears an entry for a sacrifice “to Demokratia”, and that in
the third century there exists a priest of Demokratia.
396
At the very end of the 4th century there is
evidence for a cult for Agathe Tyche as well.
397
The establishment of such cults illustrates the dynamic
interactions of the polis, oikos, and politeia and how they can lead to stability. Religion, inextricable as it
was from political, was involved in all of these domains in different ways. The oikos maintained religious
traditions, as certain clans were responsible for the maintenance of various cults and provided the body of
worshipers themselves; the physical polis contained the temples, monuments, and statues that constituted
parts of the worship of a deity; the politeia itself required ritual practice in the workings of government,
such as sacrifices before Assembly meetings or dedications to the gods on state decrees.
The epigraphic record thus shows that throughout the fourth century, the practice of democracy
was being assimilated into ritual practice. Josine Blok has shown how Athenian citizenship had its
foundations in the bond between the human community and the gods.
398
Loyalty to the democracy was no
longer a matter of running the government properly but was more akin to the worship of a god.
Philotimia, for example, mirrored ritual sacrifice or votive offerings to a god. Indeed, it was expected that
a gold crown awarded to an honorand be dedicated to a god. As noted above, the first signs of the Council
being awarded gold crowns by the demos appeared in dedicatory inscriptions. Even the putative cult
statue of Demokratia was a dedication by the Council that would serve as an important landmark in the
Agora for several centuries to come.
399
There was not just a cult of Demokratia in Athens, but Athens
became a cult of democracy itself. Political allegiance came to be assimilated to the practice of worship,
each with its own rules, rituals, and reverence of supernatural power. Consequently the goals of Athenian

395
Palagia 1982 had interpreted the torso of a large statue found in the Agora as possibly belonging to this statue of
Demokratia but withdrew this suggestion in ‘No Demokratia’ in W. D. E. Coulson et al. (eds.), The Archaeology of
Athens and Attica under the Democracy (Oxbow, 1994), 113–22.
396
Parker 1996 228-232
397
Tracy 1994, Parker 1996: 230-232; Smith 2011: 119ff.
398
Blok 2017.
399
Raubitschek 1962.

183

civic education developed from keeping democracy afloat through adherence to a broad set of acceptable
behaviors and civic values, to the literal setting in stone of a code of civic qualities that emphasized not
mere support, but devotion, to the democracy.

Conclusion
Public inscriptions were a crucial element in the Athenian system of civic education, since they
broadcasted certain civic values and were endowed with the authority to inculcate them into their viewers.
The Athenians made liberal use of this feature of inscriptions to further regulate, promote, and forbid
certain civic behaviors. This applied to many different kinds of inscriptions, from honorific to funerary to
public records of sale, though the honorific inscriptions were utilized the most in this way. These
inscriptions rested on the idea of the paradigmatic individual who embodies either good or bad civic
behaviors, which entailed the threat of individuals becoming too powerful. The Athenians thus always
made sure to subordinate the individual to the collective by emphasizing the superiority of the city and
demos over an honorand, or even by reducing the importance of the role of officials such as secretaries.
Over the course of the 4
th
century, the nature of Athenian inscriptions changed according to the
needs of the moment. The Social War of 357-355 was a watershed moment in the Athenian epigraphic
habit, as it caused a shift in attitudes toward the authority of the individual to educate the citizenry.
Athenians began honoring their own citizens and institutions regularly at the state level at this time, and a
new vocabulary of ideal civic values and behaviors began to emerge. We see around this time the regular
use of words such as arete, dikaiosyne, and philotimia that join the 5
th
century values of andragathia and
eunoia. By the end of the 4
th
century, sophrosyne, eusebeia, eutaxia, and epimeleia see more frequent
usage after the institution of the ephebeia. As we have seen in previous chapters, this terminology was
already a part of forensic and political discourse in the early 4
th
century. Eventually it made its way into
the language of deme and tribe decree and finally into the decrees of the Council and Assembly. This
shows how honorific inscriptions became an integral feature of Athenian culture, politics, and civic

184

education, evidenced also by Demosthenes’ frequent prosecutions of those who tried to violate their
sanctity, such as Leptines and Androtion.
It is perhaps the clearest sign that inscriptions were endowed with educative value that with the
institution of the ephebeia in the 330s came new genres of dedicatory and honorific inscriptions: those
that honored the ephebes and those that honored their teachers. In these inscriptions there appeared for the
first time at the state level the civic values of sophrosyne and eutaxia—prudence and orderliness.
400
By
the end of the 4th century, the civic values that were being inoculated had undergone yet another stage of
development. They were, on the one hand, being condensed into the vague but politically and socially
significant terminology of the inscriptions from this period. On the other hand, the changing relationship
of the individual to the state allowed for the relaxing of attitudes toward experts and “authoritarian
education” in Athens. By the late 350s, politicians and magistrates were able to take on their role as
educators of the people more consciously, and by the end of the 330s, political reform took civic
education as one of its core issues under the influence of Lycurgus. This occurred in the context of an
increasingly religious Athens that used the model of cult practice for their civic practice. The result of
such admission of authority-based, institutional education was that teachers themselves were being
honored in inscriptions for the first time, as their education of the ephebes constituted service to the state.
As we will see in Chapter 6, the paradigmatic status of the citizen, the trend of professionalization, the
cultic reverence for democracy, and the more deliberate use of honors for the purposes of civic education
will come to a head in the 330s, when Aeschines and Lycurgus launch landmark prosecutions that bring
into sharp focus the political education of the citizen for the salvation of the democracy.

400
The “virtue” of epimeleia (care) also appears around this time (the first secure attestation is in 336, IG II
2
373)
and is also closely linked (but not exclusively) to the management of the ephebes.

185

Chapter 6: Civic Education in Lycurgan Athens
In the previous chapters I have shown the many ways in which the Athenians employed an
informal system of civic education in order to deal with political crises and threats to their democracy,
starting with a loose set of shared civic values that over time became honed into more coherent, limited
guidelines for expressing one’s loyalty to the democracy. I have also shown how the intellectual projects
of the philosophers emerged from and interacted with popular Athenian political activity and ideologies
resulting in a distinct focus on ideal forms of government or, lacking that, ideals forms of educating
Athenian citizens to save them from themselves. In this final chapter I will show how 70 years of
development in practices of civic education came together to form Athens’ first state-run institution of
civic education: the ephebeia. I will then discuss Lycurgus’ influence on the educational aspect of the
ephebeia and how his prosecution speech Against Leocrates expresses his attempt at establishing his own
authority as educator of the demos.

The Ephebeia: Sources and Controversies
The ephebeia has proven to be one of the most enigmatic institutions of Athenian democracy and
a source of great controversy among historians. Scholars can generally agree on a few basic points about
the ephebeia: (1) that there did in fact exist an institution in Athens called the ephebeia sometime after
335 BCE, which (2) trained young Athenian men in a military setting (3) under the supervision of older
Athenian men who were democratically elected to the supervisory position, and (4) which was ended by
the Macedonian regent of Athens, Antipater, after 322 BCE (and subsequently resurrected in the
Hellenistic period). This basic information is largely derived from a passage in the Aristotelian Athenaion
Politeia (Ath. Pol. 42), a reference to a certain “Law of Epikrates” in Harpocration (Harp. s.v. Ἐπικράτης
= Lyc. Fr. 5.3. Conomis), and a handful of inscriptions dated to the 330s. The continued discovery of
epigraphic evidence for the Lycurgan ephebeia has provided the unusual opportunity to expand on

186

previous studies with new material.
401
However, this new material has also served to further complicate
the debates around the origin, structure, and purposes of the ephebeia as it invites new interpretations of
old evidence.
The date of the creation of the ephebeia is a case in point: Wilamowitz-Moellendorf’s conclusion
that the ephebeia was created in the 330s was challenged by scholars who claimed that a reference by
Aeschines to his days as a peripolos (border guard) with his συνέφηβοι meant it had been around since
the 370s or 360s;
402
Reinmuth subsequently adduced an inscription that he believed corroborated this
date.
403
But it was later argued that the inscription was incorrectly dated by its original publisher to 361/0;
the date accepted by most scholars for that inscription is now 334/3.
404
Both of the most recent studies of
the ephebeia by Friend and Henderson argue convincingly that the institutionalized version of the
ephebeia was created by 334/3, though the matter has yet to be settled conclusively.
405
My own study of
civic education in Athens over the course of the 4th century has not revealed any further evidence to
support an earlier date for the institutionalization of the ephebeia. That does not mean that the concept of
a training program for young Athenian citizens was brand new, and it is likely that the ephebeia
developed out of informal practices of training ephebes. The ephebeia as an institutionalized form of civic
education, however, certainly was new.
The description of the ephebeia in the Ath. Pol. 43.1-5 tells us that, once enrolled at the age of 18,
the cohort of ephebes was placed under the care of several officials, chosen by election: ten sophronistai,
one kosmetes, two paidotribai, and an unspecified number of didaskaloi. The first two offices primarily

401
Friend 2019 provides the most recently updated collection of the ephebic inscriptions; images of many of them
can be found in Reinmuth 1971.
402
Aes. 2.167. The full debate about the dating of the ephebeia can be traced through Wilamowitz-Moellendorf
(1893: 193-194); Forbes (1929: 109–124); Marrou (1948: 152); Reinmuth (1952: 34–35); Nilsson (1955); Pelekidis
(1962: 8); Reinmuth (1966) and (1971: 123-124); Burckhardt (1996: 26–33); Raaflaub (1996: 172n. 149); Kellogg
(2008: 357); Chankowski (2010: 21n. 12); Friend (2019: 8-33); Henderson (2020: xiv, 36-55).
403
Reinmuth 1971: 1-4; 123-124.
404
Mitsos (Ἀρχ. Ἐφη. 1965 (1967), 131-132. EM13354, 13354 a.) dated it to 361/0; Mitchel (1975) revised the date
to 334/3.
405
Sekunda (2020) maintains an earlier dating of the ephebeia in his review of Friend 2019. The possibility of a
program for ephebes similar to, but not the same as, the ephebeia perhaps needs to be revisited. Christ 2001: 412-
416 has shown the use of conscription groups by age in the period 386-366; cf. Friend 2019:17.

187

managed the upkeep and discipline of the ephebes. The sophronistai were elected by tribe: the fathers of
the ephebes of each tribe who would, under oath, select three men
406
over the age of 40 to be considered
for the position; the demos would then elect one out of each group of three. When they took office, they
were given money by the state to feed and clothe their respective tribes’ ephebes. The kosmetes was
elected from the entire citizen body and was charged with ensuring order (kosmos) among the officials
and ephebes of his enrollment year. His role seems to have been that of a general supervisor whose duty it
was to ensure compliance with laws and regulations governing their duties. The paidotribai and
didaskaloi were responsible for the military training of the ephebes: the paidotribai seem to have been
charged with gymnastic education, while the didaskaloi trained them in the specific skills of javelin-
throwing, archery, sword fighting, and catapults.
407
Two other kinds of officers, a taxiarchos and several
lochagoi, were apparently chosen from the ephebes themselves and filled some other organizational or
leadership role.
408
All of these officials appear in the extant inscriptions either as proposers of honors for
the ephebes or as recipients of honors themselves.
409

On 1 Boedromion of their first enrollment year, the ephebes from each tribe would assemble in
the city of Athens (either in the Agora, the Lyceum, or the Academy) to complete their registration and
join the other members of their class. The officers would then lead them on a tour of the temples of Attica
before setting up camp in the Piraeus where they would spend their first year guarding the hills of
Mounychia and Akte. The sophronistai were given a drachma per head for provisions for the ephebes of
their respective tribes, and the ephebes were given four obols a day. In their second year, an assembly of
the people would be held “in the theater”
410
during which the ephebes would display the drills they have
been taught. Upon successful completion of their performance, they were granted a spear and shield from

406
Whether these men were also fathers of the ephebes has been a point of debate. Sekunda believes they were but
the Ath. Pol. does not directly state this.
407
For a more detailed account of the duties of these four offices see Friend 2019: 58-87, Henderson 2020: 81-97.
408
Pelekidis 1962: 110 conjectures that these officers commanded the ephebic peripoloi and that they were chosen
by the sophronistai. Sekunda 1992: 327-330 argues that these officers were not ephebes, but this is not widely
accepted by scholars. The role may have been ceremonial; see Friend 2019: 119.
409
Mitchel 1961: 349.
410
Dillery 2002 argues that this was actually the theater end of the Panthenaic Stadium.

188

the city and taken to the countryside to patrol as border guards (peripoloi). They were provided a uniform
composed of a simple chlamys (a short tunic) and petasos (a broad-brimmed hat) and other supplies such
as tents, bedding, food, and tools.
411
While in the field they were under the direction of three annually
elected strategoi, one designated for protection of the countryside (strategos epi ten choran) and two for
the Piraeus (strategoi epi ton Peiraia).
412
For the duration of their service they were not allowed to engage
in litigation so as not to interrupt their training, unless the lawsuit involved inheritance of an estate, an
heiress (epikleros), or the inheritance of a family priesthood.
The ephebic program imitated civic life on a microcosmic scale and conditioned the ephebes for
the kind of civic education they would receive as fully fledged, politically active citizens. This was
especially apparent in the apportioning of honors and motivational structures built into ephebic service.
Ephebes were eligible for honors both during and after their two years of service, which shared the
characteristics of standard Athenian honorific decrees. There were essentially three kinds of ephebic
inscriptions: monuments for victorious tribes in the torch race; dedications by ephebes, which sometimes
contained honorific decrees; and stelai containing honors conferred by the ephebes, their sophronistai,
their tribe, and/or the Council and Assembly. The recipients of these honors could be the ephebes, the
sophronistai, the kosmetai, the paidotribai, the didaskaloi, or the strategoi in the Piraeus and countryside.
There were limitations, however, in the civic values that they promote, especially for ephebes.
According to our extant inscriptions, the ephebes are honored for displaying seven closely related values
and behaviors: sophrosyne, eutaxia, kosmiotes, peitharchia, epimeleia, arete, and philotimia. The
sophronistai, kosmetai, and other adults are honored for their philotimia, epimeleia, and arete. Of these,
only philotimia and arete are attested with regularity in honorific decrees before 335/4. As I suggested in
chapter 5, the epigraphic record shows a trend in these terms of praise that moves from outward
allegiance or service to the city (eunoia, andragathia, philia) to terms related to moral uprightness (arete,
dikaiosyne, philotimia) and finally, in the 330s, to terms of obedience and order (peitharchia, sophrosyne,

411
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 42.4-5; Poll. 8.164
412
Ath. Pol. 61.1.

189

eutaxia). Of course, the introduction of new terms does not invalidate old ones but builds upon them.
These values have target audiences: adults are never honored for sophrosyne or eutaxia; likewise, youths
are never honored for dikaiosyne or andragathia. The lessons learned in the ephebeia and described on
their honorific inscriptions lay the foundation for the pursuit of further honors and further benefactions to
the city. I suggest that this is because the Athenians believed self-control, order, and obedience kept
individuals from overreaching in their pursuit of expressing other honorable virtues.
413
The honorific
inscriptions listing the names of ephebes upon the end of their service acted as a kind of diploma that
turned the ephebes into paradigmatic citizens alongside their leaders.

Ephebic Learning Objectives
Though none of our sources for the ephebeia explicitly describe any kind of education beyond
their training in skills needed for warfare, we can deduce from them at least some features of their civic
education. There is little evidence to suggest that the ephebes were educated in the actual workings of
democracy.
414
The education seems to have been focused instead on their disposition toward the city and
the democracy. As many scholars have noted, sophrosyne was perhaps the most important lesson ephebes
learned, as evidenced by the very existence of the sophronistai and kosmetai. In addition, sophrosyne only
begins to appear regularly in Athenian honorific inscriptions after the establishment of the ephebeia,
alongside other virtues that emphasize discipline, orderliness, and obedience (eutaxia, kosmiotes,
peitharchia). These honorific decrees also demonstrate the importance of philotimia in their educational

413
Cf. Plato, Laws 3.697a, discussed in Chapter 4. Plato would probably have found it ridiculous that the Athenians
honored their ephebes for sophrosyne alone, since for him it was simply the precondition for other virtues to be
properly honored.
414
It is theoretically possible that they had some kind of organization that mimicked the Assembly of the demos that
would produce ephebic dedications and honors for their leaders. I.Orop. 353 (=Friend T15), for example, contains
lists of officials honored by the ephebes of Leontis with the heading ‘τούσδε ἐστεφάνωσαν οἱ ἔφηβοι’ (Left side line
1, right side line 1). This seems to imply that the ephebes had some kind of role in the process of issuing these
honors.

190

program,
415
while their tour of religious sites in Attica, frequent dedications in temples, and participation
in religious festivals attest to the inculcation of pious behavior.
416

The question of why these values were chosen over all others both attested and unattested in
inscriptions and public discourse demands a closer look into the utility and context for these values
outside of the ephebate. One significant reason is that teaching such order and obedience to young men
curbed their impetuousness and encouraged them to be useful members of the democracy while
maintaining the family unit.
417
Creating an institution that focused on moral education through the
sophronistai resolved some problems the Athenians had with private educators because they did not
attempt to remove the family from the process of education. The Sophists and philosophers were often
blamed for drawing young men away from their families and teaching them ideas that were dangerous to
the state. By creating a state-run program for ephebes that was under the close direction of sophronistai,
chosen by the fathers of the ephebes themselves, the Athenians were able to avoid negating the authority
of the oikos in the education of their children and maintain its balance with the polis and politeia. The
age-old trope of rebellious sons and vindictive fathers as metaphors for civil war could be passed over in
favor of a more harmonious image of civic and private life. The ephebes would then go on to become
fathers themselves and pass on the lessons they learned to their own sons, before sending them off to the
ephebeia for their own training.
Another reason for encouraging self-control and discipline was the very nature of the military
setting itself. I suggested above that embedding formal education in a military training program was
necessary to circumvent competing ideologies of the authority of the demos versus the authority of
educators. Military leaders were the few people in Athens who were willingly bestowed with much
greater power than any other citizens; the military model—along with family and pederastic models—

415
Both the ephebes and their officers are frequently honored for their philotimia (e.g. IG II
2
1156, Friend 2019:
118-135.
416
Interestingly, eusebeia does not begin to appear in the ephebic inscriptions until the end of the 3rd century BCE.
Humphreys (2004: 120) argues on this basis that the ephebeia was focused on education through ritual. Steinbock
2011 also emphasizes the religious education of the ephebes.
417
For the common trope of young men who rebel against their fathers, see Strauss 1993: 61-99, Henderson 2020

191

therefore maps onto education quite well for the Athenians. However, this power, both of violence and
education, needs significant checks in order to have a secure place in civic life. As we saw in Chapter 5,
the granting of honors for Athenian military leaders before other citizens seems to have evolved in part
from a need to keep them on Athens’ side. A rogue general in the middle of a campaign could cause
significant problems for the city. Young men who are receiving training in combat likewise need to be
restrained not only externally by their superiors, but by something more interior to themselves. Thus self-
control, obedience, and orderliness are particularly salient values for armed youth—or anyone with a
weapon for that matter—to learn.
418
In other words, it is one thing to know how to use a weapon and
another to know when and why to use it. The didaskaloi, even those who were not citizens,
419
were given
the same honors as the sophronistai and kosmetai, testifying to the equal importance of skill and savoir
faire.

Models for Ephebic Education
Because of its overt military structure, the ephebeia has been seen primarily as a hoplite training
program.
420
Its appearance in the years after the Athenian loss to the Macedonians at Chaeronea in 338
BCE has led many to believe that it was a reaction to the Macedonian military threat and preparation for
future military conflict. Against this view, John Friend has argued that the ephebeia was first formally
created by the law of Epikrates in 335/4 and therefore was not a direct reaction to the Athenian defeat at
Chaeronea three years earlier, given the frenzy of political activity going on in Athens at that time.
Rather, he suggests, it was created primarily as a way to secure Athens’ border with Boiotia after the
destruction of Thebes by the Macedonians in 335. The ephebes would supplement garrisons on Attica’s
borders to keep Boiotian bandits and brigands out of Athenian territory and aid the small rural

418
Cf. Socrates’ challenge to Cephalus about whether it is just or not to give a weapon to its owner with the
knowledge that the owner will do harm to someone with it in Plato Rep. 1.331c
419
There is at least one didaskalos who was not an Athenian citizen: Agathanor of Syracuse, who trained the
ephebes of Cecropis, honored in IG II
3
4 337. See Friend 2019 T6, Clinton 2005, 1a: 94-95.
420
Pelekidis 1962, Reinmuth 1971, Rhodes 1981: 503; Ober 1985: 90-94; Friend 2019: 41-53.

192

communities that were affected by their intrusion. Both positions are hard to prove beyond circumstance,
but, in my view, these are not mutually exclusive motivations for creating the ephebeia. The three-year
gap between the Battle of Chaeronea and the law of Epikrates could easily be explained by considerable
inertia caused by decades of resistance to formal education in Athens. The destruction of Thebes and the
incursion of Boiotian bandits along the border with Attica could well have been a wake-up call for the
Athenians that put earlier deliberations about creating a youth military corps into action. We should also
keep in mind that Lycurgus was not appointed ho epi tei dioikesei until 336. It is conceivable then that, if
he did indeed have a role in the creation of the ephebeia, his power to do so would have been greater after
assuming his office as financial minister.
Whatever the reason for its military functions, the motivation for the educational aspects of the
ephebeia is more difficult to pin down beyond practical skills for war and vague gesturing toward
“teaching normative civic values to young men”.
421
The explanations for and theories about ephebic
education are various. Scholars of the ephebeia have highlighted the moral and religious training that the
ephebes received in their Lycurgan and Hellenistic iterations.
422
Fordyce Mitchel, for instance, suggests
that the ephebes were educated in “patriotism”.
423
Other scholars lay emphasis on a kind of moral
education that attends the military.
424
Thomas Henderson has recently gone so far as to suggest that the
ephebeia’s purpose was first and foremost educational, arguing that the military explanations offered by
Pelekidis, Reinmuth, Friend, and others do not adequately explain its existence. Henderson argues instead
that “the Athenians addressed what was perennially regarded as the problem with out-of-control young
men and thereby improved the overall quality of their citizenship,” by teaching self-mastery (sophrosyne),
obedience (peitharchia), and order (eutaxia, kosmiotes).
425

421
Friend 2019: 136.
422
Girard 1891: 273; Forbes 1929: 146; Pélékidis 1962: 257; Marrou 1964: 166; Humphreys 2004: 89
423
Mitchel 1970: 32.
424
Faraguna 1992: 278; Ober 2001: 203: Friend 2019: 136-171.
425
Henderson 2020: 56-62, quote from 139.

193

It seems that both the military aspect and cultural and civic education were equally important to
the ephebeia as an institution. There were intimate links between military activity and education in
Athens, especially in relation to the authority needed to enact both. Implanting an institution of education
in a military training program was necessary because it circumvented popular anxieties about
authoritative educators who might deceive the demos. Ober rightly remarks that “the new educational
focus of the ephebeia augmented, without replacing, the Athenian conviction that public institutions
should bear the primary burden of civic education.”
426
It aimed to prepare young citizens for their
involvement in those public institutions as paradigmatic citizens. But this came at the cost of the ephebes’
political autonomy. The structure and organization of the program suggests that at least some Athenians
were willing to restrict the freedoms of their citizens in the interest of the state through civic education.
427

The role of public institutions then became geared toward the enforcement of a narrower range of civic
values than before the 330s; more than anything, the ephebeia conditioned young citizen men to comply
with those values in their adult lives.
The compatibility of military training and moral/civic education bears out elsewhere in our
sources. The philosophers (especially Xenophon and Plato) espoused the idea that physical training and
military experience is crucial for self-mastery and an ordered being or soul.
428
The epigraphic record also
shows that tribal soldier groups were involved in the same honorific practices as other groups and
government institutions, suggesting an interest in inculcating civic values in citizens as soldiers and the
role of military leaders in educating others. A decree from 339/8 preserves honors for Boularchos son of
Aristoboulos of Phlya, the taxiarch of the tribe Kekropis.
429
He is praised first by his soldiers and then by
the tribe itself for his andragathia and philotimia towards his soldiers and the tribe.
430
A later inscription

426
Ober 2001: 204.
427
This is argued from epigraphic evidence in Chapter 5.
428
E.g. Xen. Oec. 11.11-18, Mem. 3.12.5; Plato Rep.376e-377a; 403c-412b referring to the education of the
Guardians. Isocrates advocates for physical training of elite youth in activities such as hunting, horseback riding, and
athletics, but does not place special emphasis on military training.
429
IG II
2
1155, Malouchou 2018.
430
These honors are thought to have been issued after a victory in a battle shortly before the Battle of Chaeronea; cf.
Dem. 18.216-217; Rzepka 2018 GRBS 58

194

from Eleusis for Derkylos of Hagnous
431
more explicitly relates military offices to education. Eleusis
honors him for his role in educating boys of the deme as a strategos.
432
The first part of the inscription
states:
Φίλιππος εἶπεν· ἐπειδὴ Δερκύλ-
ος ὁ στρατηγὸς φιλοτιμεῖται π-
ερ<⁶¹ὶ>⁶¹ τὸν δῆμον τὸν Ἐλευσινίων τ-
ά τε ἄλλα καὶ ὅπως ἂν οἱ παῖδες π-
αιδεύωνται οἱ ἐν τῶι δήμωι, δεδ-
όχθαι Ἐλευσινίοις ἐπαινέσαι
Δερκ<⁶¹ύλ>⁶¹ον Αὐτοκλέους Ἁγνούσ-
ιον κ̣αὶ στεφανῶσαι χρυσῶι στε-
φάνωι ἀπὸ δραχμῶν καὶ ἀνειπε-
ῖν τὸν στέφανον Ἐλευσῖνι ἐν τῶ-
ι θεάτρωι τραγωιδῶν τῶι ἀγῶνι

Philippos spoke: Since Derkylos the strategos displayed love of honor toward the deme
of the Eleusinians in both other respects and so that the boys of the deme are educated,
the Eleusinians resolved to honor Derkylos son of Autokles of Hagnous and crown him
with a golden crown of 500 drachmas and announce the crown at Eleusis in the theater
during the tragic competition…

431
Incidentally, this Derkylos was part of the embassy sent to Philip II in 346 along with Demosthenes and
Aeschines (Aes. 2.47). He also took part in two other later embassies (Dem. 19.175, Aeschin. 2.140). See further
Mitchel 1964.
432
IG II
2
1187 = I.Eleusis 99. The dating of the inscription is, regrettably, not secure, so its relationship to the
founding of the ephebeia cannot be ascertained with any accuracy. Kirchner dates it to the mid-4th century, but
Mitchel (1964, Hesp. 33: 337-351) argued for a later date of 319/8 based on its content, but Lawton (1995: 137)
suggests middle to third quarter of the 4th century based on artistic features of the relief. Tracy (1995: 132-135)
assigns the letter forms to a letter cutter working from 327/6-315/4, which seems to corroborate Mitchel’s dating,
adopted by Clinton.

195

This inscription is remarkable for its use of the verb παιδεύειν, which only appears in one other extant
inscription from Attica (SEG 41: 51.1). The inscription unfortunately does not describe what kind of
service Derkylos provided. The philotimia he displayed may imply that he simply supplied the funds for
educating the paides without teaching them himself. The reference to his holding the office of strategos
suggests something related to military education, but the mention of paides (i.e., young, prepubescent
boys) means it was probably not typical training in weapons or strategy. Presumably it would have been
something more akin to the moral and civic education of ephebes, such as learning obedience and order.
In addition to the military model, I suggest that we look to other forms of educating young men
and boys that would have lent an inherent authority to the institution that did not infringe too much on
that of the oikos, polis, and politeia. The relationship between the sophronistai and ephebes also
resembled the pederastic relationships between erastai and eromenoi. In these pederastic relationships, a
citizen man (the erastes) was responsible for introducing a younger boy (eromenos) to public life and for
inculcating certain moral values in exchange for companionship and sexual gratification. There were strict
rules around these relationships because of the risks involved in such a relationship: the eromenos, for
example, was not to take pleasure in any of the sexual acts because he would risk being accused of
prostituting himself or exhibiting the shamelessness and excessive desire associated with women.
433

Likewise the erastes could not abuse the eromenos or himself be the recipient of an eromenos’ sexual
advances. Furthermore, when the eromenos came of age, the relationship had to come to an end.
Presumably some of the ephebes had been eromenoi at some point, so being under the close care
of an older man who was not his father, and with whom he spent almost all of his time for those two
years, would not have been entirely foreign. The model of an older man caring for a younger one’s moral
development was apparently a successful one. I am not, however, suggesting that the ephebeia had a
sexual component to it.
434
The sophronistai were probably more like father figures, since they were older

433
See, e.g. Xen. Symp. 8.21. For pederastic relationships more generally see Dover 1974: 213-216; Halperin 1990,
Winkler 1990.
434
Attitudes toward pederasty seem to have become ambivalent by this point; see Lanni 2016: 98-105.

196

than typical erastai, and their election by the ephebes’ fathers and the demos itself shows that they had to
be trusted not to put their sons’ citizen rights at risk.
435
Amid his aggressive denigration of Timarchus’
sexual activity, Aeschines waxes poetic about his time as an eromenos and how pederasty can be good for
a citizen if done in the right way.
436
In addition, the Athenians recognized that a military contingent of
soldiers who care for each other would be more cohesive.
437
The Sacred Band of Thebes was legendary
for their military prowess because they were composed of pairs of lovers who would do anything to
protect and show arete for their partners.
438
The Spartans likewise were known for fostering such
relationships among their soldiers. There were thus cultural precedents both within and outside of Athens
that might have influenced this organization of the ephebeia.
439

Ephebes: Periphery and Center
A striking aspect of ephebic education was that it occurred not before the ephebes became
citizens, but as soon as they were enrolled in their deme registers. In designing the program of ephebic
education, the Athenians combined old models of civic education (especially the appeal to honors like
philotimia and arete)
440
with something unconventional and, we might even say, undemocratic: they
removed the ephebes from the city almost entirely. This means that, if recent demographic estimates
441

are correct, a few hundred to 1000 new citizens were taken out of civic life each year.

435
Sekunda 1992 argues that the sophronistai were not just elected by fathers of the ephebes but were actually
fathers of some of the ephebes of their enrollment year. This view is not widely accepted by scholars, and there is no
substantial evidence to suggest the sophronistai had to be related to the ephebes in any way.
436
Aes. 1.131
437
Friend 2019:
438
The Sacred Band of Thebes is praised by Phaedrus in Plato, Symp. 178d-179b.
439
Pelekidis 1962: 255, citing Paus. 1.30.1, also states that the ephebes lit their torches at the altar of Eros in the
Kerameikos before the Panathenaic procession. If this is true, it would appear to be a symbolic gesture toward the
erotic structures of their training. But the passage of Pausanias he cites only mentions an altar of Eros (and Anteros)
outside of the Academy and says nothing about the Panathenaia or ephebes. It is possible he has confused this with
Pausanias’ next comment at 1.30.2, where he describes torch races beginning from the altar of Prometheus.
440
Friend 2019: 112-135.
441
Friend 2019: 95-100; Friend suggests Sekunda (1992)’s estimates are unreliable, but Sekunda (2020) has argued
that Friend’s methodology is also flawed in places.

197

Though scholars acknowledge the absence of ephebes from public life, the effect it had on the
education of both ephebes and the rest of the Athenian citizen body remains to be assessed. Vidal-Naquet
famously tried to make something of the marginalization of the ephebes. As he points out in his study that
“il reste dans la situation du jeune homme par rapport à la cité une marge d'ambiguïté : il est et il n'est pas
dans la cité.”
442
He argues from this that the ephebeia was a kind of rite of passage, and that the ephebes
represented a liminal stage in the life of the citizen, an “anti-hoplite” who stood in opposition to the ideal
hoplite citizen.
443
Scholars have criticized this structuralist argument for its failure to account for certain
significant aspects of the ephebeia, such as (to take but one obvious example) the fact that ephebes were
already enrolled as citizens.
444
But there is still some value in Vidal-Naquet’s insistence on both the
transitional and transformative nature of the ephebeia. As citizens they were enfranchised, but as ephebes
they were, functionally, not. They received a kind of civic education that no one else did, yet they were
temporarily excluded from traditional modes of education.
The Ath. Pol. tells us that the ephebes were largely extricated from civic life in order to focus on
their military service and education:
φρουροῦσι δὲ τὰ δύο ἔτη χλαμύδας ἔχοντες, καὶ ἀτελεῖς εἰσι πάντων: καὶ δίκην οὔτε διδόασιν
οὔτε λαμβάνουσιν, ἵνα μὴ πρόφασις ᾖ τοῦ ἀπιέναι, πλὴν περὶ κλήρου καὶ ἐπικλήρου, κἄν τινι
κατὰ τὸ γένος ἱερωσύνη γένηται. διεξελθόντων δὲ τῶν δυεῖν ἐτῶν, ἤδη μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων εἰσίν.
(42.5)

They serve for two years wearing a chlamys, and they are exempt (ateleis) from all taxes:
they can neither be sued nor bring lawsuits, so that there is no excuse for them not to leave,
except in cases about inheritance and female heiresses (epiklerou), or if their clan’s religious duty
falls to them. When the two years have passed, they are then part of the rest [of the citizens].

442
Vidal-Naquet 1968: 948.
443
Farenga 2006: 353-354 follows this interpretation; Friend (2019: 33, 164-171) rejects it.
444
Rawlings 2000 238-241; Friend 2019, Henderson 2020; Ma 1994 criticizes Vidal-Naquet’s structuralist approach
to scholarship more broadly. Whether the ephebes were functionally citizens is debated as well.

198

For two whole years, the ephebes were forced to leave civic life in Athens behind. But the Ath. Pol.
highlights only two aspects of this rupture between ephebe and city. They are exempt from taxes (ateleis)
and cannot engage in litigation except in specific cases related to specific family matters, so that the
ephebes would have no excuse for not leaving the city. There were otherwise few opportunities to claim
exemption from service.
445
The Ath. Pol. is frustratingly silent about whether ephebes could attend
Assemblies at the city or deme level. It would have been impractical to march the ephebes to the Pnyx
and back at least once a month to participate in them, especially being stationed as far away as Oropos. It
seems that their involvement in public life was limited to their participation in civic festivals. Whether or
not they could engage in political life, they would have had significantly limited exposure to what issues
were up for deliberation and the discourse around them. Furthermore, being barred from litigation meant
they were not exposed to one of the most important vehicles for informal civic education in Athens.
446

They would have had no opportunity to take part in the negotiation of civic values, the production of
collective memory and cultural attitudes,
447
nor experience with what the law instructs. The ephebes thus
received a particularly regulated version of the average citizen’s civic education.
Separating the ephebes from the rest of civic life in this way would have served to produce a
cohort of citizens that was united as a collective, loyal to the democracy, and prepared to engage in the
informal structure of civic education for adult citizens. The Athenian male youth posed a perennial
problem for the Athenian politics: as young citizens they had a responsibility to be politically active, yet
they were unreliable for democratic deliberation due to their impulsive, disordered nature or their general
disinterest (especially among the elite).
448
It makes sense, then, to train them in values conducive to good
citizenship outside of the immediate environment of political life as a form of damage control.
449
In other

445
Exemptions: Friend 2019: 100-104
446
It may be the case that young men were not interested in what was going on in the courts anyway, so putting
them in a formal educational setting would overcome that challenge to an educated citizenry.
447
See Steinbock 2010 for cultural memory in Athenian public discourse.
448
Lanni 2016:110; Pellizer 1990
449
We need only look to the debate between Nicias and Alcibiades in Book 6 of Thucydides to see what potential
dangers the Athenians saw in letting the youth take part in Assembly votes. Alcibiades appealed to the rashness of
youth (“eros fell upon them”) to convince a majority to send an expedition to Sicily, which ended in the untimely
death of a large portion of Athens’ military force.

199

words, the ephebeia was a way to ensure loyalty to democracy even in a young man’s most rebellious
state. The program stressed civic participation, but on a small scale: the ephebes built strong ties with
members of their own tribes as well as others, and they enjoyed public honors and participated in
religious festivals that incentivized good ephebic service and good citizenship. The family unit was also
temporarily dissolved, and only serious litigation about inheritance or familial religious duty could bring
them back to the traditional structure. The removal of the ephebe from the family, authorized by their own
fathers, ensured an education in civic values and behaviors that was otherwise left to the ability of parents
to teach them. The sophronistai, acting in the place of fathers as representatives for the oikos, could
guarantee such an education. Thus removed from the vicissitudes of the polis and oikos, the ephebes
could focus their energies on learning to serve the politeia, obeying the laws, and doing “what the Council
and demos order”.

Philosophy and the Ephebeia
Some of the structures and objectives of ephebic education that I have identified above resemble
or coincide with ideas and questions circulating among the philosophical schools of the 4th century. The
ephebeia’s focus on fathers and sons, for example, seems to respond to a question brought up in Plato’s
Protagoras about the teachability of virtue and its tendency to skip generations.
450
The close relationship
between sophronistai and ephebes likewise appears similar to Plato’s ideal teacher-student relationship of
the Symposium, based on intellectual desire, self-control, and the rejection of sexual gratification. Even
the removal of ephebes from the city of Athens for two years can be seen to reflect Socrates’ comment in
Book 7 of the Republic that the only way the Kallipolis can be founded is if children under the age of 10
are taken from the city and educated by the philosopher king.
451

450
Plato, Prot. 319e-320b. Socrates complains that even people like Pericles and Cleinias, who gave their sons the
best education possible, could not inculcate virtue in them. Pericles’ son (also named Pericles) was tried and
executed for his failure as a strategos to rescue drowning soldiers after the battle of Arginusai, and Cleinias’ son
Alcibiades committed more offenses and crimes against Athens than can be reasonably summarized in a footnote.
451
Rep. 7.540e-541a.

200

How do we know whether these parallels are coincidence or the product of real intellectual
influence? Scholars have attempted to locate the influence of Athenian intellectuals on the ephebic
curriculum to varying degrees, especially in relation to the focus on sophrosyne. As shown in Chapter 4,
this was one of the problems that Isocrates and Plato aimed to solve by imposing an authoritarian scheme
of civic education on the Athenian democracy. De Marcellus has even suggested that the ephebic
curriculum built up to a “Socratic” education, though this may be going a bit too far.
Some of the potential philosophical influences are easier to believe than others. Thomas
Henderson has made a strong argument for Xenophon’s influence based on, for example, Xenophon’s
description of training for ephebes in the Cyropaedia, his discussions of important qualities for armies
such as eutaxia, and (more or less conventional) Socratic positions on the benefits of physical training for
the soul and cultivating enkrateia.
452
These ideas are not unique to Xenophon, but he may have had a
hand in making them more popular. Plato is trickier to locate in the development of the ephebeia because
of his idiosyncratic yet somehow universal approaches to moral, ethical, and political philosophy.
Scholars are especially divided on the influence of the Laws. Some believe it was composed too late to
have made an impact.
453
But that does not mean that Plato kept his ideas to himself for the many years he
spent working on it. If we are to believe the ancient biographical traditions, both he and Isocrates had a
number of students who went on to be influential politicians. I would wager that philosophical thought
did have some kind of effect on the development of educational theory in the late 4th century, even if it
came mostly in the form of reactions against it.
On the other hand, we must be wary of the fact that the philosophers were products of their
environment and not divorced from popular Athenian cultural values and ways of thinking. As scholars
have shown, Athenian philosophers were not antidemocratic and showed engagement in a critical
dialogue with the democracy, rather than abject hostility or disillusionment.
454
Now, did the end of Book

452
For Xenophon’s Socratic thought see Dorion 2005.
453
Jaeger (1944: 213) claims that the Laws was not widely read at the time of its composition.
454
E.g. Ober 1998, Euben 1991, Saxonhouse 1994, Monoson 2000, Allen 2010

201

7 of the Republic really influence the Athenians to pull their youth from much of civic life? Not likely.
But, as I argued above, the motivation was the same: ephebes were taken out of the city in order to
educate them as effectively as possible. Ideas were circulating among the many people who belonged to
many different groups in the city: demes, tribes, phratries, cults, philosophical schools, organs of
government. The foundation of the ephebeia was very likely informed by this discursive exchange
between all of these groups in the 4th century.
The surest connection between philosophical thought and popular Athenian attitudes toward
education is the very implementation of an authoritarian style of education, even if it does not exactly
match Isocrates’ or Plato’s visions. Both the ephebeia and the style of civic education employed by
orators in Lycurgan Athens (see below) attest to a fundamental shift in the way Athens perceived
educators. The criticisms that Plato levels against democracy as being too free, too prone to randomness,
and too reliant on wanton mimesis do seem indeed to have taken root by the end of the 4th century. In the
case of the ephebes, we can see that the Athenians placed significant restraints on what kind of citizens
the ephebes could become through their education.
There are particularly striking similarities in Isocrates’ description of the Areopagus Council as
educators and the role of the sophronistai, which seem to have gone unnoticed by scholars. Isocrates
claims that in the old days, the Areopagites knew that it was more important to regulate the behavior of
youths and adults through education than children. The ancestors were so concerned with sophrosyne that
they established the Areopagus Council to take care of the eukosmia of the city. Only those citizens who
were good (kalos) and showed sophrosyne could become part of the Council (7.37). The Areopagites put
fear into criminals and left a monument (mnemeion) of their arete and sophrosyne (7.38). They were
charged with overseeing discipline (τῆς εὐταξίας ἐπιμελεῖσθαι) in the city and took especial care of the
youth because they recognized that men of that age were the most unruly and full of desires
(ταραχωδέστατα διακειμένους καὶ πλείστων γέμοντας ἐπιθυμιῶν, 7.39). The Areopagites thus saw to it
that the souls of the youth be tamed by cultivating good habits and behaviors. (7.43: τὰς ψυχὰς αὐτῶν
μάλιστα δαμασθῆναι δεομένας ἐπιμελείαις καλῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων). Our sources for the ephebeia do not

202

describe internal motivations, but the functional description of the Areopagites in the Areopagiticus,
which predates the ephebeia by more than 20 years, matches that of the sophronistai to a remarkable
extent, even to the point of using the same language used in the honorific inscriptions for ephebes. The
reason why this duty was entrusted to the sophronistai and not the Areopagus is probably because of the
poor reputation they had among the demos at this point. In the 330s the Areopagus was an object of
distrust and suspicion for many Athenians, especially after politicians such as Demosthenes were
proposing to increase the power of the Areopagus (Dein. 1.62). Lycurgus’ prosecution of the former
Areopagite Autolycus and the anti-tyranny law known as the Eukrates decree attest to anxieties and
proactive restrictions on their power. In Isocrates’ ideal Athens, the Areopagus would do for all citizens
what the sophronistai do for the ephebes, but this perhaps bore too many risks for the Athenians.
Nevertheless, though it did not turn out the exact way Isocrates wanted it, he still had a hand in effecting
change.

Civics for Adults in the 330s
Though the ephebeia as a formal institution of education marked a major development in
Athenian practices of civic education, the traditional, informal methods were still in use and evolving. In
the previous section, I argued that the ephebeia not only departed from the traditional Athenian civic
education in significant ways, but also embodied a turn toward a more conservative, authoritarian
democracy that I have described in the last three chapters. As I showed in Chapter 5, the epigraphic
record shows that honorific practice in Athens was being used to codify a small set of civic virtues that
changed over time and increasingly stressed loyalty and obedience to democracy. This culminated in the
literal worship of Demokratia in a cult that was established under Lycurgus. Thus the kind of civic

203

education practiced in the 330s stressed collective identity and selflessness, and any individuality
achieved through honors was illusory.
455

The creation of the ephebeia had significant implications for the informal practices of civic
education in Athens. First, a new standard was set for how citizens should behave: the more common
virtues of andragathia, dikaiosyne, eunoia, philotimia, etc. were supplemented by the ephebic virtues of
sophrosyne, kosmiotes, and eutaxia, along with more frequent reference to piety (eusebeia). As I argued
in Chapter 5, the evolution of the language of inscriptions points to an increased emphasis on loyalty to
the state and devotion to the democracy. The ephebeia seems to have filled a need for inculcating this
radical obedience in the youngest group of citizen men, whose turbulent nature necessitated more direct
guidance than more temperate older citizens. Presumably the virtues of order and obedience that they
learn as youths would translate into consistent political engagement as adults. On the other side of things,
the officers in charge of the ephebes consequently had to make a greater effort both to display their good
democratic behaviors and prove that they can teach them to others, especially unruly, possibly
disaffected, youth.
I will begin with a brief overview of Lycurgus’ policies during his tenure as financial minister in
the 330s to further develop this authoritarian trend in the Athenian democracy as background to
Lycurgus’ attempts to insert himself as an epistemic authority and educator of the demos.
456
Following
that, I will turn to Lycurgus’ only fully extant speech, Against Leocrates. I want to suggest that we read
Lycurgus’ prosecution of Leocrates less as a piece of forensic oratory and more as a work of political

455
Sally Humphreys argued that Lycurgus’ program “represented a reformulation of Pericles’ vision of Athens as
paideia tes Hellados (cf. Leokrates 12, paradeigma ton Hellenon), in which the notion of paideia was embodied in a
new educational institution, the ephebate, and was acted out in ritual.” She goes on to suggest that Lycurgus’ vision
of for the city decentered politics and marked “a shift from a conception of the ideal-typical citizen as active,
mature contributor to the defence of the city’s interests in war and to the formulation of policy in assembly debates
to a vision of the citizen as (pre-political) ephebe.” Humphreys rightly points out the ritualistic nature of civic
education in this period. But “the notion of paideia” found in the ephebeia specifically conditions the ephebes for
politics, not their removal from it. In the sense that politics was an expression of the politeia, all aspects of citizen
life became centered around politics. Lycurgus’ policies and ideological commitments attempted to integrate a
distinctly Athenian “democratic” identity in every facet of life as a way to prevent the acquiescence of the Athenians
to the Macedonians and to show the rest of Greece that Athens had not given up.
456
The authoritarian nature of the democracy in the Lycurgan period has been noticed by Faraguna 2011, but he
does not develop the idea.

204

philosophy. The argumentation of the speech often has little to do with what Leocrates did wrong in a
technical sense, but much to do with what he did wrong in a moral and civic sense. Lycurgus leaned into
the dynamic relationship of oikos, polis, and politeia and utilized the idea of the paradigmatic citizen (in
this case a negative paradigm) to educate the rest of the citizenry through a kind of protreptic discourse on
good citizenship, fashioning himself as an epistemic authority and educator of the demos. As I will
demonstrate below, the bulk of the speech is dedicated to historical and mythological paradeigmata
against which Leocrates and the rest of the Athenian citizen body is measured. Lycurgus thus develops an
idea of the “true” citizen, who is to feel extreme devotion to the gods, the family, and the state.

Lycurgan Reforms: Building Program, Religious Life, and the Theater
The hallmarks of “Lycurgan” Athens
457
were the establishment of the ephebeia, an ambitious
building program, revitalization of religious institutions, and public sponsorship of the performance of the
tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. These large, city-wide projects were possible in part
because Lycurgus, in his role as ho epi tei dioikesei, managed the city’s finances and established himself
as a leading citizen in the years after the battle of Chaeronea. He apparently increased Athens’ yearly
revenue from 60 to 1200 talents through financial policies such as the regular sale of the skins of
sacrificed animals and regulating mining activity.
458
His achievements were more numerous than can
reasonably be summarized here.
459
He was very active in the Assembly, proposing a large number of
decrees and laws, and he was known for aggressive prosecution of people whom he thought were causing
harm to the city and its democracy.

457
There is sometimes a tendency to ascribe to Lycurgus alone policies, reforms, and innovations which were surely
the product of the efforts of several individuals or groups. When I use the term “Lycurgan Athens” I mean the period
roughly from the battle of Chaeronea to Lycurgus’ death (338-325 BCE). See Brun 2005, who rejects the idea of a
“Lycurgan Athens”; Rhodes 2010 stresses the need to qualify the term; Faraguna 2011 argues in favor of it
458
Burke 2010 argues that this economic prosperity came at the cost of acquiescing to peace with the Macedonians,
but that Lycurgus and other leaders in Athens used the funds to hide this fact behind an illusion of Athenian
excellence.
459
Humphreys 2004: 77-129 and Mitchel 1970 offer a very detailed account of Lycurgan Athens. See also the
essays collected in Ismard and Azoulay 2011 for specific facets of Lycurgus and his policies.

205

Athens also underwent religious and cultural revitalization in this period. Several new cults were
introduced, such as those of Demokratia, Agathe Tyche, and Peace, and old ones were revitalized.
460
The
acquisition of Oropos in the 340s meant that the Athenians could invest in the cult of Amphiaraus there; a
number of inscriptions from the 330s attest to significant amounts of activity at the Amphiareion. The
ephebes were enlisted to march in processions for large religious festivals that drew people from all over
Greece, not just Athens, and new regulations were established for foreigners coming and going to certain
of these festivals. It has been argued that under Lycurgus, public spaces outside of the Acropolis became
more frequently used as sites for public and private religious offerings. Foreigners were also granted land
through enktesis grants to build temples.
461
The revitalization of religious life in Athens at this time has
been seen as a way for Lycurgus to establish continuity with the glory days of 5th century Athens.
462

Lycurgus also invested in a cultural program centered on theatrical performances. A significant
renovation of the Theater of Dionysus was completed, statues set up in honor of Euripides, Sophocles,
and Aeschylus, and authoritative texts of their plays produced. The construction of the Lycurgan
Panathenaic Stadium was also done around 330 BCE, and it is possible that the meeting place of the
Assembly on the Pnyx was renovated in this period as well.
463

Of course, not all of these projects were Lycurgus’ doing alone. The groundwork for many of
Lycurgus’ policies, and especially the dramatic program was laid by Eubulus, Lycurgus’ predecessor for
the office of financial manager of the city.
464
Eubulus directed funds from the stratiotikon, which funded
the military, into the theorikon, which subsidized theater attendance for the inhabitants of Athens.
Michele Faraguna has argued from prosopographical data that a small group of interconnected, wealthy
elite were reorganizing the democracy “from the top”.
465
The establishment of the ephebeia is ascribed to

460
See Parker 1996: 242-253; Mikalson 1998: 11-45.
461
Lycurgus was one of the proposers for a decree allowing a group of Kitians to build a temple of Aphrodite (IG II
2

337, line 31-32).
462
Blok 2011.
463
Thompson 1982; Hintzen-Bohlen 1998 for the building project generally
464
Hintzen-Bohlen 1998; Oliver 2011; for Eubulus generally see Cawkwell 1963
465
Faraguna 1992; 2011 (quote from 2011: 86).

206

a law proposed by a wealthy Athenian named Epikrates, but Lycurgus was clearly a part of its creation;
Phanodemus, whom we met in Chapter 5, was a friend of Lycurgus who was instrumental in religious
reforms; Pytheas,
466
a manager of the water supply, donated his own funds to building a fountain at the
Amphiareion. Several others donated private funds toward building projects, including a Plataean named
Eudemos, who was honored for donating 1000 oxen for the construction of the Panathenaic Stadium.
467

The frequent praise of wealthy benefactors likely created a hierarchy between the honored and not
honored, which was fueled by competitive individualism. I believe Lycurgus perceived the inherent
danger in this: the more the Athenians relied on individual contributions and invest in public honors, the
greater was the risk of cracks forming in the foundation of their politeia. This is partly why, as we shall
see, Lycurgus’ policies focused on the collective over the individual.

Lycurgan Civic Education
Commentators since the 2nd century CE have expressed frustration, bewilderment, and
fascination for Lycurgus’ only extant speech because it does not follow typical norms of forensic oratory
or rhetorical style.
468
He digresses too much, his prosody is clumsy, he is too aggressive. He makes almost
excessive use of explicit, instructive paradeigmata from history and mythology, buttressed by the
language of honorific inscriptions, that undergird an incredibly fierce patriotism. As we will see,
Lycurgus’ unorthodox litigation and interactions with the philosophers were not so strange after all; in
fact, they are a logical progression in the development of civic education in the Athenian democracy of
the late 4th century, combining a long rhetorical tradition with the more recent intellectual trends found in
the work of the philosophers and socio-political developments expressed in inscriptions.
The case itself is famously unusual. Lycurgus has brought a blacksmith named Leocrates to court
before the Areopagus on a charge of treason (eisangelia, Lyc. 1.5). Lycurgus claims that Leocrates fled

466
IG II
2
338
467
IG II
2
351
468
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes, Dio Chrysostome

207

Athens after the defeat at Chaeronea and that this constitutes treason because of a decree that was passed
not long after that forbade anyone from leaving the territory of Attica. It is apparent, however, that
Leocrates left before this decree was passed and therefore did not break the law. Yet Lycurgus persisted.
Perhaps his successful prosecution of the Areopagite Autolycus some months before for the same crime
emboldened him to pursue a case with hardly any legal foundation eight years after the fact. It is more
likely that Lycurgus thought going after a craftsman who was not active in politics would be
advantageous because the stakes were low (for Lycurgus) but the payoff high. An eisangelia was a highly
visible form of public prosecution held before the Areopagues and involving a jury of anywhere from 500
up to 2000 citizens.
469
The gossip alone both building up to the case and in its aftermath would have
spread Lycurgus’ message widely. Since Leocrates was absent from the city for so long it was easy to
scapegoat him as a perfectly bad citizen who violates every tradition, law, and custom of Athenian
democracy. Indeed, by the end of the speech, Lycurgus has accused Leocrates not only of treason, but of
manipulating the grain market, overthrowing the democracy, impiety, abuse of parents, and desertion.
Win or lose, Lycurgus could promulgate his political philosophy and vision of ideal citizenship in the
most efficient way possible.
Lycurgus’ project of civic education is embedded in the larger discourse of civic education going
on in public venues and smaller intellectual circles. Some scholars have attempted to show that the
influence of Plato on Lycurgus is cause for his “heterodox” style.
470
Later biographical sources list
Lycurgus as a student of both Plato and Isocrates, so it is likely that Lycurgus was, to some degree, under
philosophical influence. Isocrates’ influence has been underappreciated (though occasionally
acknowledged). Robert Renehan pointed out the theoretical nature of Lycurgus’ speech and tentatively
suggested Platonic influence. More recently Danielle Allen has advocated for reading Platonic influence
in Lycurgus’ speech with much more confidence than Renehan. She successfully shows that Lycurgus’

469
Humphreys (2004: 106) notes that “Lycurgus’ use of eisangelia brings out particularly clearly the combination of
democratic form and authoritarian content which characterizes his political style.”
470
Renehan 1970, Allen 2000, 2010 (esp. Chp. 8 and 9), contra Zeller 1919, who argues that there is nothing
Platonic about the speech.

208

idiosyncrasies can be ascribed to philosophical thinking about authority, but her methodology is flawed in
two important ways. First, she places undue weight on word frequency in Lycurgus’ speech. She claims
that his use of the superlative adjective κάλλιστον, the word ψυχή, and a “preference” for the verb
κολάζειν
471
indicate Platonic influence. Allen argues that Lycurgus was dedicated to the idea of
reformative punishment as developed by Plato, who “turned his back on the communal habit of treating
punishment as a process of honor assessment (τιμωρία).”
472
But how do we reconcile the 25 or so
appearances of κολάζειν and its cognates with the astounding 57 occurrences of τιμωρία in the speech
(not to mention his use of the phrase δίκην λαμβάνειν, which Plato eschews)? Lycurgus seems committed
less to reforming putative wrongdoers and more to using them as things against which he could
conceptualize good citizenship. As we will see, punishment of wrongdoers (ἥ τε τῶν ἀδικούντων τιμωρία,
not κόλασις), forms the crux of his establishment of educational authority. Second, her detection of
Platonism in Lycurgus is based on an arbitrary distinction between “philosopher” and “orator” and she
thus discounts Isocrates and other intellectual influences (such as political theories developed in oratory)
on issues that could not reasonably belong to Plato alone.
473
There are just as many echoes of Lysias and
Demosthenes in Lycurgus’ speech as there are of Plato.
474

All this being said, I do think that Allen and others are right that Lycurgus’ speech and program
for civic education engage with intellectual conversations going on in Athens at this time. But framing
this phenomenon in terms of influence assumes too much directionality and familiarity than we can

471
Cf. Allen 2010: 93.
472
Allen 2000:20-21.
473
Allen (2000: 8n.5) faults Renehan for the same thing, though Renehan openly admits that the similarities between
Plato and Lycurgus may very well be coincidence. In Why Plato Wrote (Allen 2010), Isocrates is dismissed to a
single footnote and the only text mentioned is the Antidosis. Renehan (1970: 221) acknowledges that Isocrates likely
had some influence at least on Lycurgus’ prose style.
474
E.g. Lys. 22, 31; Dem. 20. This distinction also led her to argue that a “culture war” was going on in Athens in
the 330s between orators with competing conceptions of philosophical or Platonic thought, with Lycurgus and
Aeschines on one side and Demosthenes on the other (Allen 2010: 125-137). In her 2000 article she originally
argues (more plausibly) that Lycurgus and Demosthenes were teaming up against Aeschines, following Burke 1977.
She does not explain why she changes her mind, but I suppose it must have something to do with Aeschines’ use of
Platonic vocabulary and what she sees as Demosthenes' rejection of it.Though I have not had the opportunity to
study Demosthenes’ and Aeschines’ rivalry at any length in this dissertation, it is hard to believe that Plato had such
an impact as to influence bitter political rivalries in this way.

209

reasonably prove. Lexical studies are severely limited in what they can accomplish and can be interpreted
in conflicting ways. The concept of influence must be qualified by coincidence: we should examine the
theories behind the argumentation of Against Leocrates and think of them as additions to the larger
philosophical conversation being held by thinkers like Isocrates and Plato. If we look at the three of them
from afar we can see that they were all speaking to the same issue of how to incorporate a centralized
authority into the informal system of civic education.
We can see echoes of Plato and Isocrates clearly in Lycurgus’ concern for different means of
educating the citizenry. He did not consider law to be a reliable source for education because they are too
short and “only tell people what to do”.
475
Here we might detect the influence of Plato’s Laws: to combat
this exact deficiency, Plato believes that preambles should be attached to the laws to educate those who
are subject to them. But Lycurgus argues that poets, on the other hand, are the best educators because they
imitate real life and persuade through argument and demonstration (meta logou kai apodeixeos). To this
end, Lycurgus quotes more poetry than any other orator. Though Plato often expresses distrust of the
poets, both he and Lycurgus could agree that poetry can be useful if it is controlled. Lycurgus’ production
of authoritative versions of the tragedies of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles attests to this
conviction.
476

Lycurgus’ lack of faith in the laws to educate the Athenians also reflects Isocrates’ position on the
law. In the Areopagiticus, Isocrates argues that a city with a complex law code cannot be a good one,
because it means that its citizens do not act with good faith toward their own city. In line with Isocrates,
Lycurgus believes that what really educates is observing and imitating the moral excellence and the
punishment of the moral failings of others. Lycurgus even seems to advocate for the kind of preventative
punishment Isocrates recommends in Against Lochites and the Areopagiticus. In reference to the
Demophantus Decree, which was passed after the oligarchic regime of the Four Hundred and allowed

475
Lyc. 1.102: οἱ μὲν γὰρ νόμοι διὰ τὴν συντομίαν οὐ διδάσκουσιν ἀλλ᾽ ἐπιτάττουσιν ἃ δεῖ ποιεῖν, οἱ δὲ ποιηταὶ
μιμούμενοι τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον, τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν ἔργων ἐκλεξάμενοι, μετὰ λόγου καὶ ἀποδείξεως τοὺς ἀνθρώπους
συμπείθουσιν. Cf. 1.4, where Lycurgus says laws tell citizens what not to do (ἃ μὴ δεῖ πράττειν).
476
See Hanink 2014, Chp. 2, Scodel 2007: 140

210

anyone to kill with impunity someone who they thought was planning to overthrow the democracy,
Lycurgus says that “in other cases the punishment must be applied after the crime, but in cases of treason
and overthrowing the democracy it must precede them.”
477
It is nevertheless difficult to say that Isocrates
was the one who inspired Lycurgus to say these things with any certainty. In any case, the fact that they,
along with Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, were thinking about authoritarian solutions to these problems
places them all within the same intellectual milieu.
478
And as we will see, Lycurgus took a page out of the
philosophers’ book by using protreptic arguments to turn the citizens of Athens toward “truth” and
“excellence”.

Lycurgus’ Protreptic: Fashioning the “True” Athenian Citizen
Despite the intellectual pose he strikes, Lycurgus’ prosecution is entirely lacking in the more
“philosophical” language of sophrosyne, praotes, epieikeia, sophia/phronesis or most other virtues
discussed in Chapter 4.
479
He overwhelmingly prefers the familiar language of honorific inscriptions, such
as arete, philotimia, eusebeia, eunoia, and andres agathoi.
480
He does not mention the values praised in
ephebic inscriptions (sophrosyne, peitharchia, eutaxia or kosmiotes). The only time his language
resembles that of the philosophers is where it overlaps with epigraphic language or otherwise commonly
held values (e.g., arete and andreia). We can see from this that not only does Lycurgus have a particular
kind of civic education in mind that is not focused on critical thinking or fairness, but he even selects his

477
τῶν μὲν γὰρ ἄλλων ἀδικημάτων ὑστέρας δεῖ τετάχθαι τὰς τιμωρίας, προδοσίας δὲ καὶ δήμου καταλύσεως
προτέρας.
478
Lycurgus’ use of forensic rhetoric as a vehicle for the imposition of civic education is perhaps its most
“Isocratean” feature. There are a number of similarities between it and, for example, Isocrates’ Panegyricus: both
mix rhetorical genres and spend considerable time elaborating on mythical and historical paradeigmata, for Athens’
superiority over the rest of Greece on Isocrates’ part, and for the exaltation of the city, the gods, and the fatherland
over the individual in Lycurgus’ case. A fuller study of Lycurgus’ relationship to Isocratean political philosophy and
rhetoric is needed.
479
Allen 2000a: 20 remarks on the lack of sophrosyne and its cognates in the speech.
480
Arete appears 14 times; (aner) agathos 12 times; eusebeia 7 times; philotimia 5 times; eunoia 5 times. Hanink
2014: 45-49 has noticed Lycurgus’ use of honorific language in relation to the practice of honoring victorious
playwrights. We know of several honorific decrees proposed by Lycurgus himself: IG II
3
329 = Schwenk 15; IG II
3

345 = Schwenk 36; IG II
3
352 = Schwenk 48 = RO 94; IG II
3
355; IG II
3
432. See also Lambert 2011.

211

language for a non-ephebic audience.
481
He thus draws lines around what the Athenians should “turn to”
in his protreptic program, what they should avoid, and what is otherwise extraneous. The ephebes were
receiving their own kind of training in obedience and loyalty out in the countryside; adult citizens
required a slightly different approach.
The reason for this peculiarity of Lycurgus’ speech, I suggest, stems from his recognition that
traditional modes of civic education were the most efficient way of inculcating his specific set of values,
with a view to bolstering Athenian democratic identity in the face of Macedonian domination.
482
The
frequent calls to violence and exhortations to outdo their ancestors in severity toward Leocrates
throughout the speech are concerning, to say the least. But they show that Lycurgus does not place any
stock in virtues like wisdom or gentleness because they are not conducive to producing a fiercely loyal,
patriotic citizenry that needed to be willing to do anything to maintain their way of life. The prosecution
of Leocrates was a litmus test for the Athenians’ capacity to come together against a common enemy,
artificial or real.
483
There is no gentleness to be shown toward the Macedonians, no fair-mindedness nor
sound judgment needed when the target is so clear. Lycurgus wants Athenian citizenship to be about
obedience, loyalty, and dedication to the cause of defending the democracy.
The heavy use of honorific language also served to curb desire for personal benefit and convert
individual honors into a collective good. Vincent Azoulay has shown convincingly that in Lycurgan
Athens there was a shift in the conception of the koinon from a loosely unified political community to
once that was more tightly bound by a sense of patriotism and a stricter hierarchy of community over
individual. As mentioned above, many of Lycurgus’ projects were funded by private donations, and those
benefactors were awarded with honorific decrees. Since the Social War, this was an important way of
funding the city, especially in times of crisis. But Lycurgus never mentions such benefactors in his

481
Pace Steinbock 2011, who argues that Lycurgus tries to tap into the jury members' memories of learning
“patriotic ideals” in the ephebate. At this point the ephebeia had only existed for 5 years, so statistically speaking
very few members of the jury could have even served in the ephebeia in its institutionalized form.
482
For Athenian democratic identity in the late 4th and 3rd centuries, see Lape 2004 and 2010: 274-283
483
Ober 2008: 183-184.

212

speech. The only people he calls “benefactors” (euergetai) are those who died in battle at Chaeronea
(1.51), those who won at Salamis and were thus benefactors to their allies (1.70), and those who show
proper respect to their parents, the dead, and the gods.
Lycurgus opens his speech by announcing the ideological grounds for his prosecution. He will
make a “just and pious” beginning to his prosecution on behalf of the jury and the gods. He prays to
Athena, the other gods, and the heroes that he be a worthy prosecutor of Leocrates, who had betrayed the
gods, temples, shrines, precincts, honors prescribed by law, and ancestral sacrifices. This case, Lycurgus
claims, affects the demos and the city, and he prays that the jury judge the case “on behalf of your fathers,
children, women, fatherland, and sacred objects” (1.1-2). From the very beginning Lycurgus constructs a
framework that binds every citizen in Athens to this case and its educative purpose. Religion, family, and
the fatherland (patris) bind the Athenian civic community together. Lycurgus will show that Leocrates,
who has violated all of these, is the ultimate model for bad citizenship. Indeed, Lycurgus claims that this
crime is so bad that no law exists that fully encompasses it, nor is any existing punishment fitting enough
(1.8).
484

Ultimately, Lycurgus wants the Athenians to judge the case “not from probability, but knowing
the truth.”
485
The “truth”, we can suppose, is that Leocrates really did intend to overthrow the democracy
by abandoning it. Unlikely as that is, it is a necessary step Lycurgus must take to present Leocrates as the
ultimate paradigm of the bad citizen, against which he can construct the good citizen. But there is little
evidence to support that position, so Lycurgus does everything he can to prove the negative argument,
i.e., there are specific ways a citizen should act and Leocrates does the exact opposite. He spends a
considerable amount of time addressing the issue of whether the content of his speech is relevant to the
case at hand. He says that he will neither lie nor speak off topic (1.11: οὔτε ψευδόμενος οὐδέν, οὔτ᾽ ἔξω
τοῦ πράγματος λέγων).
486
He then remarks that many speakers in court advise the city on public affairs or

484
Cf. Lys. 31.27-28, Whitehead 2006: 135, Roisman and Edwards 2019: 90-91.
485
1.28: οὐ γὰρ οἶμαι δεῖν ὑμᾶς ὑπὲρ τηλικούτων ἀδικημάτων εἰκάζοντας ἀλλὰ τὴν ἀλήθειαν εἰδότας ψηφίζεσθαι.
486
For relevance in court, see Rhodes 2004: 147-151; Lanni 2005: 113; 2009: 700; Sullivan 2002: 68-80;
Sommerstein 2013: 84.

213

make accusations about something else entirely. The Athenians themselves are apparently to blame for
this, because they do not follow the example of the Areopagus, whose decisions are so just that even the
convicted agree with them.
487
Following the example of the Areopagus keeps litigants on topic and
prevents sycophancy.
488
But Lycurgus knows that his own prosecution is frivolous, so he must reinvent
what “on topic” means. In this case, it means using litigation as a means to teach excellence and justice.
Thus Lycurgus presents his prosecution of Leocrates within a protreptic framework, which aims to turn
the Athenians toward a particular kind of “truth” and “virtue”, defined as loyalty and obedience to
democracy. One can only be a “true” citizen of Athens by following the lessons he will teach.
The question then for Lycurgus is what good citizenship looks like in contrast. To develop this,
Lycurgus lays out some basic premises for his political philosophy. First, democracy and its prosperity
(eudaimonia) are safeguarded by three things (1.4): the law code, which describes what not to do as a
citizen; the vote of jurors and the action of the accuser; and the trial which delivers control of the crimes
to the first two. Already Lycurgus has given pride of place to his own role as accuser and therefore
protector of the democracy. But the jurors have a hand in crafting the truth too. Lycurgus tells them they
must act not only as jurors but as lawmakers (nomothetai) because a case of this kind and a punishment of
this severity has never existed.
489
With the assent of the jurors as the democratic decision-making body,
Lycurgus can exercise his authority to educate the jury in how they should legislate. The end result would

487
1.12. It was not uncommon to berate one’s audience, but it was more common in deliberative oratory; see
Roisman and Edwards 2019: 95; for the power dynamic between audience and speaker more generally: Roisman
2005: 130-162, Ober 1989: 104-292.
488
1.12-13. Roisman (2019: 97) suggests that Lycurgus’s praise for the Areopagus here was meant to “combat the
prejudice against it and to encourage the jurors to follow its conviction record.” But it is hard to imagine Lycurgus
really wants to paint a sympathetic picture of the Areopagus given his remarks at 1.52-53, in which he mentions that
a former Areopagite was condemned by the demos (in a prosecution led by Lycurgus himself). I think Lycurgus
rather wants to place his own authority and that of the demos over that of the Areopagus, making this mention of the
Areopagus rather tongue-in-cheek.
489
1.9: παρεῖσθαι δὲ τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν τοιούτων τιμωρίαν συμβέβηκεν, ὦ ἄνδρες, οὐ διὰ ῥᾳθυμίαν τῶν τότε
νομοθετούντων, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ μήτ᾽14 ἐν τοῖς πρότερον χρόνοις γεγενῆσθαι τοιοῦτον μηδὲν μήτ᾽ ἐν τοῖς μέλλουσιν
ἐπίδοξον εἶναι γενήσεσθαι. διὸ καὶ μάλιστ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες, δεῖ ὑμᾶς γενέσθαι μὴ μόνον τοῦ νῦν ἀδικήματος δικαστάς,
ἀλλὰ καὶ νομοθέτας.

214

permanently validate Lycurgus’ authority as he assimilates himself to the polis, as if it were his own
body.
490

Next, Lycurgus explains that the jury “will turn all the youth toward excellence” (τοὺς νεωτέρους
ἅπαντας ἐπ᾽ ἀρετὴν προτρέψετε) by condemning Leocrates (1.10). This is because there are two things
that educate above all: the punishment of criminals and the awards given to good men (δύο γάρ ἐστι τὰ
παιδεύοντα τοὺς νέους, ἥ τε τῶν ἀδικούντων τιμωρία, καὶ ἡ τοῖς ἀνδράσι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς διδομένη δωρεά).
Lycurgus further implicates the jury (and by extension, all Athenians) in a “protreptic” project, much like
the philosophers. But rather than try to convince them to live a philosophical life outside of politics, he
further embeds them in the system of praise and punishment that has traditionally served to educate the
Athenian citizenry. Of course, in order to turn the youth toward excellence, the jury themselves must
know how to do that. So once again, Lycurgus has offered himself up as the best teacher for the city. Not
only was he responsible for the bestowal of honors to a number of benefactors before this case, but he is
now taking charge to punish someone for the sake of educating the Athenians. Therefore he himself fills
this protreptic role as the expert educator of the demos.
He then claims that Athens stands out among other poleis in three ways: piety toward the gods,
respect for their parents, and their philotimia toward the fatherland (1.15: τῷ πρός τε τοὺς θεοὺς εὐσεβῶς
καὶ πρὸς τοὺς γονέας ὁσίως καὶ πρὸς τὴν πατρίδα φιλοτίμως ἔχειν). This elegant rhetorical flourish serves
to highlight the connection between piety, family, and their native land in his conception of how the ideal
citizen acts. These three things, and the two premises listed above, are all inextricably linked. Taken
altogether, they show an intense focus on prioritizing the collective identity of the demos by strongly
emphasizing the things that all Athenians have in common. But that is not all: if the Athenians do not
punish Leocrates, they will have failed to show off their piety, family values, and philotimia. There is
some circular logic at play here: their inability to punish equals an inability to honor, but since they know

490
Contra Allen 2000, who argues that Lycurgus disappears from the speech, Lycurgus actually fashions himself
into the chief educative figure of the Athenians and “monumentalizes” his speech as something to be referenced by
future citizens.

215

best of all how to honor, they will punish. Athenian identity thus rests on the intersection of their political
activity (i.e., honoring and punishing) and their morality, as if these are inborn traits.
We should note at this point that Lycurgus was strongly opposed to expanding the citizenry
through artificial means. In reference to a decree proposed by Hyperides after the Battle of Chaeronea to
increase the Athenian fighting force, he laments that “after so many terrible things befell the city, after the
citizens suffered so many disasters, one would be in so much pain and weep at the misfortunes of the city
upon seeing that the demos voted to free the slaves, make metics Athenians, and restore citizen rights to
the disenfranchised; the demos, who used to pride themselves on their autochthony and freedom.”
491

Enslaved people were merely instruments to Lycurgus, and he insists that any democratic citizen would
think the same. In fact, he says, torturing slaves is the most democratic way of ascertaining the truth.
492

Lycurgus capitalizes on Leocrates’ refusal to submit his slaves to torture to further flesh out the image of
the anti-democratic traitor. The slaves, Lycurgus claims, are the only people immune to deceptive
discourse (deinotes) and thus are the only witnesses in the case truly capable of telling the truth. Lycurgus
instead anticipates that Leocrates will try to deceive the jury into believing his side of the story with
excuses, pretexts, and clever arguments. And this itself is an admission of guilt because “justice is simple,
the truth easy, and the examination brief.”
493
As we will see, Lycurgus will construct his truth through
paradeigmata along these interpretive lines.
Finally, Lycurgus structures democracy according to oath taking groups that bridge the
theoretical divide between public and private (1.79):
καὶ μήν, ὦ ἄνδρες, καὶ τοῦθ᾽ ὑμᾶς δεῖ μαθεῖν, ὅτι τὸ συνέχον τὴν δημοκρατίαν ὅρκος ἐστί. τρία
γάρ ἐστιν ἐξ ὧν ἡ πολιτεία συνέστηκεν, ὁ ἄρχων, ὁ δικαστής, ὁ ἰδιώτης. τούτων τοίνυν ἕκαστος

491
1.41: πολλῶν δὲ καὶ δεινῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν γιγνομένων, καὶ πάντων τῶν πολιτῶν τὰ μέγιστα ἠτυχηκότων,
μάλιστ᾽ ἄν τις ἤλγησε καὶ ἐδάκρυσεν ἐπὶ ταῖς τῆς πόλεως συμφοραῖς, ἡνίχ᾽ ὁρᾶν ἦν τὸν δῆμον ψηφισάμενον τοὺς
μὲν δούλους ἐλευθέρους, τοὺς δὲ ξένους Ἀθηναίους, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀτίμους ἐπιτίμους: ὃς πρότερον ἐπὶ τῷ αὐτόχθων εἶναι
καὶ ἐλεύθερος ἐσεμνύνετο.
492
1.29: τίς γὰρ ὑμῶν οὐκ οἶδεν ὅτι περὶ τῶν ἀμφισβητουμένων πολὺ δοκεῖ δικαιότατον καὶ δημοτικώτατον εἶναι,
ὅταν οἰκέται ἢ θεράπαιναι συνειδῶσιν ἃ δεῖ, τούτους ἐλέγχειν καὶ βασανίζειν, καὶ τοῖς ἔργοις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς λόγοις
πιστεύειν, ἄλλως τε καὶ περὶ πραγμάτων κοινῶν καὶ μεγάλων καὶ συμφερόντων τῇ πόλει;
See Mirhady 2000, DuBois 2003 for torture of slaves for testimony.
493
1.33-34: ἁπλοῦν τὸ δίκαιον, ῥᾴδιον τὸ ἀληθές, βραχὺς ὁ ἔλεγχος.

216

ταύτην πίστιν δίδωσιν, εἰκότως: τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους πολλοὶ ἤδη ἐξαπατήσαντες καὶ
διαλαθόντες οὐ μόνον τῶν παρόντων κινδύνων ἀπελύθησαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἀθῷοι
τῶν ἀδικημάτων τούτων εἰσί: τοὺς δὲ θεοὺς οὔτ᾽ ἂν ἐπιορκήσας τις λάθοι οὔτ᾽ ἂν ἐκφύγοι τὴν
ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν τιμωρίαν, ἀλλ᾽ εἰ μὴ αὐτός, οἱ παῖδές γε καὶ τὸ γένος ἅπαν τὸ τοῦ ἐπιορκήσαντος
μεγάλοις ἀτυχήμασι περιπίπτει.

Indeed, men, you must learn this too, that the oath holds democracy together. For there are three
things which make up the politeia: the magistrate, the juryman, and the private citizen. Each of
these gives his word, and naturally so: for many who have deceived people and gotten away with
it are not only released from present dangers, but also later found innocent of these crimes; but
those who have deceived the gods neither get away with swearing false oaths nor escape the
gods’ punishment. And if they are not punished, the children—indeed the entire family line— of
the perjurer fall to great misfortunes.
Lycurgus argues that democracy is held together by the common practice of swearing oaths by people
who run the government, people who wield the power to punish, and the everyday citizen. Magistrates
(archon) must swear an oath upon entering and leaving office; jury members (dikastai) swear the
Heliastic oath before hearing a case; private citizens swear oaths for many other things, but the one
Lycurgus is most interested in is the Ephebic oath, which he has read out to the jury shortly before these
statements. Scholars have argued, as Lycurgus does here, that oath taking, in conjunction with ritual, was
the “glue” for democracy.
494
Indeed, Lycurgus pieces together the ideal citizen out of the polis, oikos, and
politeia and binds them with oaths. For Lycurgus, they are formal expressions of truth, and the “true”
citizen must be held to it. But, as Emily Kearns points out, oaths in forensic contests complicated the idea
of truth-value, because inevitably one party was going to be seen as “lying”.
495
But according to

494
Kearns 1995, Cole 1996
495
Kearns 1995: 520.

217

Lycurgus, the gods will take responsibility for exposing the truth through some inevitable punishment,
even if mortals are still deceived.
496

Taken all together, we arrive at a complex portrait of the ideal citizen in Lycurgus’ vision. As
Peter Scholz has shown, the best citizen is patriotic and an educator of the city.
497
The citizen is no longer
responsible for the passive, inductive kind of civic education done through simply being paradigmatic.
They are responsible for actively “turning the youth toward excellence” by showing that they adhere to
Lycurgus’ teaching. They know when to honor and when to punish; they honor their oaths and show
allegiance to their families, gods, and fatherland. A successful conviction shows that the Athenians know
a bad citizen from a good one, but a failure to convict represents a failure of education.

Shifting Paradigms
Although Lycurgus lays emphasis on the paradigmatic status of the citizen, his approach to
education rests on an authority to educate based in paradeigmata that he presents in the speech. That is,
he recognizes that the citizenry as a whole is paradigmatic for general virtues, but they still need
particular lessons in good citizen behavior to balance out his deterrent strategy. Thus a continuous litany
of paradeigmata occupies about half of the speech, with others scattered throughout, which Azoulay has
called “une anthologie patriotique a l’usage des Athéniens.”
498
Azoulay argues that it operates generally
through decontextualization, simplification, and networking (“mise en reseau”). By this he means that the
paradeigmata are taken from their original contexts and assembled to form a “divisible literary corpus,”
their meanings simplified and ambiguities erased, and they are placed alongside each other to “redefine
Athenian identity” by “associating discourses and practices that were previously heterogeneous—in this
case, tragedy, the funeral oration, and lyric and Homeric poetry.”
499

496
Cf. Isoc. 18.3.
497
Scholz 2009.
498
Azoulay 2011: 211.
499
Azoulay 211-213.

218

Lycurgus cycles through “protreptic” paradeigmata—i.e., those that showcase good behavior to
be emulated—and “apotreptic” ones, which deter bad behavior. They fall into four general categories:
historical events, mythology, material objects, and praise for the collective citizenry. The historical events
tend to be protreptic when they have to do with the “distant” past (esp. The Persian Wars or Tyrtaeus), but
apotreptic when dealing with more recent events, such as the deaths of Phrynichus, leader of the
oligarchic regime of the Four Hundred (1.112-116), or Callistratus, a leading figure in the formation of
the Second Athenian League (1.93-94). The mythological paradeigmata are always protreptic, being
drawn from tragic, lyric, and Homeric poetry, as are those dealing with Athens itself and its institutions.
The material objects mentioned (decrees, traitor stelai, statues) are almost always apotreptic. As the table
at the end of the chapter shows, they usually appear in clusters of protreptic or apotreptic paradigms, and
he always makes sure the audience knows the point of the paradeigma.
The focus of scholarship has been mostly on the paradeigmata drawn from poetry, and for good
reason. Most remarkably, Lycurgus quotes at length a passage from Euripides’ Erechtheus which is
otherwise almost entirely lost to us (1.100).
500
It is spoken by Praxithea, Erechtheus’ wife, when she finds
out they must sacrifice their daughter to drive off the invading forces of Eumolpus. She proudly and
selflessly (as Lycurgus understands her) gives up her daughter because the salvation of the entire city is
worth more than one life. Lycurgus’ presentation of the paradeigma excludes interpretations that might
see Praxithea as a victim herself and assimilates her to the manly “excellence” he is seeking to
construct.
501
He also draws on the poetry of Tyrtaeus and Homer to present unquestionable paradigms of
good civic behavior. These quotations augment Lycurgus’ exercise of authority as he strips tragedy of its
interpretative ambiguity and breaks down the boundaries between theater and politics.
502

500
Another fragment of about 30 lines is preserved in Stobaeus.
501
Sebillotte-Cuchet (2004, 2011) has studied the role of gender in Against Leocrates, but I am not satisfied with her
interpretation of the patris as an oikos composed of two generations, the dead ancestors as parents and all living
people as children.
502
Scholars have argued that inserting tragedy into oratory causes poetry to lose its ambiguity (Fisher 2007: 331)
and weakens the boundary between politics and theater (Wilson 1996: 321). Scodel 2007 Using Aeschines as a case
study, who also frequently quotes poetry, Andrew Ford has argued that the skills needed for literary analysis are
transferable to deciding a court case (Ford 199?)

219

The paradigmatic material objects, however, present an even clearer window into the construction
of Lycurgus’ epistemic authority because the examples they set are harder to manipulate than other kinds
of paradeigmata. Inscriptions present a particular challenge for Lycurgus in that they are easily accessible
to the public since they are written on stone or bronze and thus open to more interpretation than, say, a
foundational figure like that of King Codrus. They can thus be both protreptic and apotreptic depending
on how they are framed rhetorically. Every decree he references in his excursus on paradeigmata is used
to show two things: first, the punishment that awaits traitors and other lawbreakers; and second, the
correct way for the citizens to punish traitors and other lawbreakers. Furthermore, decrees, in Lycurgus’
mind, parallel the verdict of a court because they are both instantiations of the vote of the demos. The
decision the jury makes in the case of Leocrates is thus tantamount to passing a decree, so Lycurgus
fashions his prosecution in the style of a proposal in the Assembly which he attempts to monumentalize
by assimilating it to the very landscape of the patris.
These paradigmatic inscriptions also serve to reinforce the theoretical basis of his protreptic
described above. He appeals to the triple life of the citizen as magistrate, juror, and private person by
referencing and reading out decrees that punish traitors and enemies of the democracy. The Demophantus
Decree (1.124-126), for example, stood as a reminder of how traitors ought to be treated by good citizens.
It allowed any citizen to kill with impunity anyone suspected of attempting to overthrow the democracy,
or, Lycurgus says, treason.
503
In such situations, the citizen is called upon and even bound by oath to
defend the democracy through killing the traitor no matter what role he fills at the time: the gods will
forgive him, the city will thank him, and the people will learn from him.

503
The Demophantus Decree is a very controversial document. It is first mentioned in Andocides’ On the Mysteries
(1.96-98) and has been dated to 410/9, passed as a reaction to the oligarchy of the Four Hundred, and scholars
generally accept this (e.g. Shear 2007, 2011: 96-98, 160-161; McGlew 2012; Teegarden 2013: 13-54; Gygax 2016:
190-191; MacDowell 1962: 134-136; Edwards 1995: 181; Hansen 2015: 898-901). Its authenticity and dating has
been challenged by Canevaro and Harris 2012, though not to wide acceptance by scholars. Sommerstein 2014
accepts that it is not original to Andocides’ speech but still regards it as an authentic decree from 410/9. In any case,
it is unclear whether the decree included both treason and overthrow of the democracy, or just the latter charge.

220

To further illustrate these points, I turn to an paradeigma that showcases Lycurgus’ talent for
producing a version of the “truth” that feeds into his lessons about democracy, honor, and punishment. It
concerns a statue of Hipparchus, son of Charmus. Hipparchus was a relative of the tyrant Peisistratus (but
is not the same Hipparchus who was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton). Besides bearing an ill-
omened name, he is also known for being the first person to be subjected to the ostracism law, supposedly
created under Cleisthenes in 508/7 but not put to use until 488/7 BCE, “because of distrust of the
Peisistratids,” Harpocration tells us.
504
Once ostracized, he was subsequently recalled in 481 under the
general amnesty that the Athenians put in place during the Persian Wars. At some point, then, Hipparchus
was prosecuted for treason, for reasons unknown, and apparently let his case go derelict, thus by default
earning the death penalty. Lycurgus tells us the rest of the story (117-119):
Ἵππαρχον γὰρ τὸν Χάρμου, οὐχ ὑπομείναντα τὴν περὶ τῆς προδοσίας ἐν τῷ δήμῳ κρίσιν ἀλλ᾽
ἔρημον τὸν ἀγῶνα ἐάσαντα, θανάτῳ τοῦτον ζημιώσαντες, ἐπειδὴ τῆς ἀδικίας οὐκ ἔλαβον τὸ
σῶμα ὅμηρον, τὴν εἰκόνα αὐτοῦ ἐξ ἀκροπόλεως καθελόντες καὶ συγχωνεύσαντες καὶ ποιήσαντες
στήλην, ἐψηφίσαντο εἰς ταύτην ἀναγράφειν τοὺς ἀλιτηρίους καὶ τοὺς προδότας: καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ
Ἵππαρχος ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ στήλῃ ἀναγέγραπται, καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι δὲ προδόται. καί μοι λαβὲ πρῶτον μὲν
τὸ ψήφισμα, καθ᾽ ὃ ἡ εἰκὼν τοῦ Ἱππάρχου τοῦ προδότου ἐξ ἀκροπόλεως καθῃρέθη, ἔπειτα τῆς
στήλης τὸ ὑπόγραμμα καὶ τοὺς ὕστερον προσαναγραφέντας προδότας εἰς ταύτην τὴν στήλην, καὶ
ἀναγίγνωσκε, γραμματεῦ.
[ΨΉΦΙΣΜΑ]
τί δοκοῦσιν ὑμῖν, ὦ ἄνδρες; ἆρά γ᾽ ὁμοίως ὑμῖν περὶ τῶν ἀδικούντων γιγνώσκειν, καὶ οὐκ, ἐπειδὴ
καὶ τὸ σῶμα οὐκ ἐδύναντο ὑποχείριον τοῦ προδότου λαβεῖν, τὸ μνημεῖον τοῦ προδότου
ἀνελόντες ταῖς ἐνδεχομέναις τιμωρίαις ἐκόλασαν; οὐχ ὅπως τὸν χαλκοῦν ἀνδριάντα

504
Harpocration, s.v. Ἵππαρχος: ἄλλος δέ ἐστιν Ἵππαρχος ὁ Χάρμου, ὥς φησι Λυκοῦργος ἐν τῷ κατὰ Λεωκράτους:
περὶ δὲ τούτου Ἀνδροτίων ἐν τῇ β φησὶν ὅτι συγγενὴς μὲν ἦν Πεισιστράτου τοῦ τυράννου καὶ πρῶτος
ἐξωστρακίσθη τοῦ περὶ τὸν ὀστρακισμὸν νόμου τότε πρῶτον τεθέντος διὰ τὴν ὑποψίαν τῶν περὶ Πεισίστρατον, ὅτι
δημαγωγὸς ὢν καὶ στρατηγὸς ἐτυράννησεν.

221

συγχωνεύσειαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα τοῖς ἐπιγιγνομένοις παράδειγμα εἰς τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον ὡς εἶχον πρὸς
τοὺς προδότας καταλίποιεν.

When Hipparchus, the son of Charmus, did not stand his trial for treason before the people but let
the case go by default, they sentenced him to death. Then, as they did not secure his person to
answer for the crime, they took down his statue from the Acropolis and, melting it down, made a
pillar of it, on which they decreed that the names of sinners and traitors should be inscribed.
Hipparchus himself has his name recorded on this pillar and all other traitors too. Clerk, please
take the decree which authorized the statue of Hipparchus to be taken down from the Acropolis
and then the inscription at the base of the pillar with the names of the traitors later engraved upon
it and read them out.
[DECREE]
What is your impression of them, gentlemen? Had they the same attitude as yourselves towards
wrongdoers? Or did they, by obliterating the memorial of the traitor, since they could not
command his person, punish him with all the means at their disposal? It was not so that they melt
down the bronze statue, but that they leave behind an example to future generations for the rest of
time of their attitude toward traitors. (Trans. Burtt?)
The story of Hipparchus highlights Lycurgus’ process of producing authoritative paradeigmata from
ambiguous evidence. Firstly, given that Lycurgus is the only extant source for the story about this statue,
we should consider whether Lycurgus is embellishing or outright inventing the story, as Rosalind Thomas
suggests, to make a rhetorical and ideological point. It is a suspiciously convenient story, after all, and if
we look closely at the wording of the passage, I believe there is evidence of some tampering. The way
that Lycurgus describes the process by which Hipparchus’ statue was taken down is markedly similar to
an inventory practice used in Lycurgus’ time called kathairesis, in which statues, phialai, and other votive
offerings that cluttered the Acropolis were removed and melted down to be used for other purposes. This
would be done by official decree of the Council. Lycurgus uses the word καθαιρέω a number of times in

222

this passage to describe what was done with the statue, along with the word ανδριάς to describe the statue
itself, language that also appears on kathairesis inscriptions.
505
In addition, we should note that Lycurgus
has the decree ordering the kathairesis of Hipparchus’ statue and the inscription on the new stele read out,
but he does not produce anything stating that the names of traitors are to be inscribed on it because
Hipparchus himself was a traitor. The humanlike statue of Hipparchus is transformed into a non-human
entity that holds the names of incurable citizens, just as Hipparchus himself undergoes a civic death in his
self-exile. Lycurgus thus manipulates paradigmatic epigraphic material and procedure to reinforce this
paradigm of honor and punishment that he is attempting to create.
It is the physicality of this negative paradigm that gives it its authority, and Lycurgus uses this to
his advantage. He is effectively “inscribing” his speech to give it the inviolable authority of the
inscriptions he cites. Lycurgus’ language is clearly influenced by the standard formula for honorific
decrees of this period: ‘τί δοκοῦσιν ὑμῖν, ὦ ἄνδρες’ instead of ‘ἔδοξεν τῆι βολῆι/τῶι δήμωι’; ‘ἐπειδὴ καὶ
τὸ σῶμα…’ standing for the motivation clause; but the prescribed punishment (ταῖς ἐνδεχομέναις
τιμωρίαις) replacing the usual positive valence of the action formula. Most important, however, is his
manipulation of the hortatory intention of this passage: οὐχ ὅπως τὸν χαλκοῦν ἀνδριάντα συγχωνεύσειαν,
ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα τοῖς ἐπιγιγνομένοις παράδειγμα εἰς τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον ὡς εἶχον πρὸς τοὺς προδότας καταλίποιεν.
It is almost as if Lycurgus is appropriating the decree to destroy Hipparchus’ statue to write an honorific
decree to the Athenians’ ancestors as he speaks, honoring them for their due punishment of the traitor
Hipparchus. And by imitating the actions of their ancestors, the jurors would be worthy of the exact same
honors. His manipulation of the distant past allows him to appeal to the authority of the Athenian
ancestors in concert with the authority of contemporary honorific inscriptions.
506
It is an effective
interpretive move through which Lycurgus can assert a version of the truth about honors and punishment
while bolstering collective identity through condemnation of the individual.

505
See D. Harris 1992 for a publication of one of the kathairesis decrees from the Lycurgan period. Monaco 2011
discusses the historical context for public and private offerings on the Acropolis and elsewhere in Lycurgan Athens.
506
Ober 2008: 187-189 shows how Lycurgus uses this and other examples to form a community of common
knowledge about the treatment of traitors.

223

Conclusion
In this chapter I discussed the developments in Athenian civic education in the period known as
Lycurgan Athens. This period was marked by a gradually increasing conservatism in the democracy and
further cementing of authoritarian features described in Chapters 4 and 5. These changes were responses
to Athens’ catastrophic defeat by Philip II and the Macedonians at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE.
The city was sent into panic and so the Athenians doubled down on solidifying their democratic identity.
I argued that the ephebeia aimed to provide young citizen men with a specific kind of civic
education that would train them to the fill the role of paradigmatic citizen later in life. I suggested that the
military nature of the program was necessary to validate its educative function, because the military was
the only site of centralized educational authority that the demos approved of. The design of the program
seems to have been born out of the discussions of intellectual circles about the best way to educate
citizens. Thus the ephebes were provided with consistent, regulated civic education in an environment
that also stressed unity among the ranks. But this came at the cost of certain freedoms: they were
temporarily removed from the oikos, polis, and politeia for two years so that they could learn self-control,
order, and obedience while guarding the borders of Attica.
I then turned to the civic education of adult citizens in the 330s. I discussed the cultural, religious,
and civic renaissance brought about by Lycurgus and his colleagues to show that the shift in civic
education was not limited to one trial for treason. Between the renovation of the theater, the creation of
authoritative tragic texts, the revitalization of old cults, and the founding of new ones, Athens was
experiencing a move toward centralization of education authority in ways it had not seen before.
Lycurgus’ prosecution of Leocrates gives us a glimpse into the theoretical and cultural
underpinnings of these developments. I argued that Lycurgus was in conversation with the philosophers,
but not necessarily a devoted follower of them. He accepted and understood their arguments for an
authoritarian style system of civic education and came up with his own way of adapting it to democratic
practice. In his prosecution of Leocrates, he invents a kind of protreptic education that turns the Athenians

224

toward a version of “truth” and “virtue” that subsumes the individual to the collective and emphasizes
obedience and loyalty to the democracy. This is a significant change from earlier political theory of the
early 4th century, when the Athenians were still negotiating a loose set of civic values. Lycurgus had a
clear idea of what the truly paradigmatic citizen should be and how he should teach that to the demos.
From this perspective, there is really nothing all too surprising or deviant about Lycurgus’ prosecution or
rhetorical style. He saw an opportunity to widely distribute his educational philosophy and took it. It is
hard to imagine a better venue for delivering his grand ideological statements to the population of
Athens—non-citizens and slaves included—than in a low-stakes, high-profile case brought before the
Areopagus.
In effect, Lycurgus’ speech lies somewhere between protreptic philosophy, honorific decree, and
traitor stele. The speech itself stands as a monument that will guide present and future citizens toward
virtue. This virtue ultimately derives from the citizen’s loyalty to the oikos, polis, and politeia (within the
limits Lycurgus has placed on them). He closes the speech with a powerful call to action:
νομίζοντες οὖν, ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἱκετεύειν ὑμῶν τὴν χώραν καὶ τὰ δένδρα, δεῖσθαι τοὺς λιμένας καὶ
τὰ νεώρια καὶ τὰ τείχη τῆς πόλεως, ἀξιοῦν δὲ καὶ τοὺς νεὼς καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ βοηθεῖν αὐτοῖς,
παράδειγμα ποιήσατε Λεωκράτη, ἀναμνησθέντες τῶν κατηγορημένων, ὅτι οὐ πλέον ἰσχύει παρ᾽
ὑμῖν ἔλεος οὐδὲ δάκρυα τῆς ὑπὲρ τῶν νόμων καὶ τοῦ δήμου σωτηρίας.

Thinking, then, Athenians, that the countryside and trees supplicate you, and the harbors and
shipsheds and city walls beseech you, and the temples and sacred objects call for your help, make
a paradeigma of Leocrates, with the accusations in mind, that neither mercy nor tears have more
power over you than the salvation of the laws and the demos.
The final piece of Lycurgus’ protreptic vision is in place. Lycurgus now embodies the patris and polis,
thus grounding his authority in these inviolable domains. His version of the truth is the city’s version of
the truth, and his speech is itself an institution of Athenian democratic civic education.

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PARADEIGMATA in LYCURGUS 1
For the sake of space and clarity, I have only included references to Leocrates as a negative paradigm
when the word παράδειγμα is used explicitly. References to Leocrates are more frequent than they appear
here.
Passage Subject Protreptic/
Apotreptic
Explanation Notes
1.9 Leocrates Apotreptic Leocrates’ punishment will be
example for future citizens
παράδειγμα τοῖς
ἐπιγιγνομένοις
1.12 Areopagus Protreptic Areopagus is “finest example” of a
court because all of its decisions
are just
κάλλιστον ἔχοντες τῶν
Ἑλλήνων παράδειγμα τὸ ἐν
Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ συνέδριον
1.15 Athens Protreptic Athenians are model for piety,
respect for parents, and philotimia
for fatherland

1.27 Leocrates Apotreptic L.’s death will be example to
others
παράδειγμα τοῖς ἄλλοις
1.46-51 War dead Protreptic The most honorable thing is to die
for one’s fatherland; consequently
the punishment for deserters
should be as harsh as the war dead
are honorable.

1.70-74 Salamis Protreptic Those fighting at Salamis moved
the city entirely instead of
abandoning it, were ἀγαθοί

226

1.83-89 a. The polis

b. King Codrus
Protreptic a. City’s greatest good is that it
has become a paradigm of good
deeds for Greece

b. Codrus is paradigm for self
sacrifice and love for one’s
fatherland
a. 83: παραδείγμασι
χρώμενοι καὶ περὶ τούτων
καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων βέλτιον
βουλεύσεσθε…
… τῶν καλῶν ἔργων
παράδειγμα τοῖς Ἕλλησι
γέγονεν
1.92 Quotation of
unknown
iambic lines
Apotreptic Gods punish wrongdoers
1.93-94 Callistratus Apotreptic Callistratus was condemned to
death by Athens but fled, was
eventually punished by gods

1.95-97 “Place of the
Pious”
Protreptic Young man attempts to save his
father from eruption of Etna, gods
spare them because of son’s filial
piety

1.98-99 Erechtheus Protreptic Erechtheus obeyed the Delphic
oracle and sacrificed his daughter
to drive away Eumolpus’ invasion

1.100-101 a. Euripides

b. Praxithea
Protreptic a. Euripides chose to dramatize
this episode to teach love of
fatherland

b. Praxithea’s speech is example
a. 100: ποιητὴς…
ἡγούμενος κάλλιστον ἂν
γενέσθαι τοῖς πολίταις
παράδειγμα τὰς ἐκείνων
πράξεις

227

of sacrifice for greater good; the
lives of many citizens are more
important the life of one girl

b. Quotation from
Euripides’ Erechtheus
1.102-103 Hector Protreptic Hector exhorts the Trojans to die
for their homeland
Quotation from Homer,
Iliad 15.494-499
1.104 Marathon Protreptic Ancestors emulated deeds from
Trojan War; expressed arete in
deeds, not words

1.105-110 Tyrtaeus Protreptic Spartans advised by god to take
Athenian general to war against
Messene (7th c BCE), chose
Tyrtaeus; Athens had unsurpassed
arete. Tyrtaeus taught about dying
for one’s country, shame for
fleeing, protecting the elderly
Quotation of Tyrtaeus and
Simonides
1.112-116 Phrynichus and
Critias
Apotreptic Phrynichus, leader of Four
Hundred, was assassinated and
posthumously tried for treason on
motion of Critias (later member of
the Thirty); condemned anyone
who argued on behalf of
Phrynichus. Ancestors were much
harsher on traitors than current
Critias’ decree read out

228

citizens.
1.117-119 Statue of
Hipparchus, son
of Charmus
Apotreptic Hipparchus fled into exile instead
of standing trial for treason, so a
bronze statue of him was melted
down an turned into a traitor stele,
with his name inscribed on it.
Permanent example of attitude
towards traitors
Decree and text of traitor
stele read out

119: τοῖς ἐπιγιγνομένοις
παράδειγμα εἰς τὸν λοιπὸν
χρόνον ὡς εἶχον πρὸς τοὺς
προδότας καταλίποιεν
1.120-121 Deserters to
Deceleia
Apotreptic Decree punishing with death those
who fled to Deceleia during the
Peloponnesian War (c. 410 BCE)
Decree read out
1.122 Decree for
execution of
unnamed man
on Salamis
Apotreptic A man (Lycidas [Her. 9.5] or
Cyrsilus [Dem. 18.204]?) on
Salamis tried to speak treason,
members of the Council killed him
with their own hands. Shows
nobility of character of ancestors.
Decree read out
1.124-126 Stele with
names of
traitors and
enemies of the
Demos
Apotreptic Demophantus Decree in the
bouleuterion provides more
examples of attitude toward those
who break city’s laws; used to
argue that it is better to kill a
would-be traitor than risk being
enslaved
124: τὸ γὰρ μετὰ πολλῶν
παραδειγμάτων διδάσκειν
ῥᾳδίαν ὑμῖν τὴν κρίσιν
καθίστησι

Demophantus anti-tyranny
decree read out
1.127 Ancestors Protreptic Ancestors model proper behavior ὑπομνήματα δ᾽ ἔχετε καὶ

229

toward traitors; Demophantus
decree authorizes death of traitors
παραδείγματα τῆς ἐκείνων
τιμωρίας
1.128-129 Spartan
treatment of
traitors
Protreptic Spartans had good laws that forced
citizens to risk their lives for their
city; treated traitors with no mercy

Gods do not help traitors because
they commit impiety by depriving
them of cults
128: καλὸν γάρ ἐστ᾽ ἐκ
πόλεως εὐνομουμένης περὶ
τῶν δικαίων παραδείγματα
λαμβάνειν
129: ἵνα δ᾽ εἰδῆτε ὅτι οὐ
λόγον ἀναπόδεικτον
εἴρηκα, ἀλλὰ μετ᾽ ἀληθείας
παραδείγματα, φέρε αὐτοῖς
τὸν νόμον.

Law of Spartans read out
1.132 Birds Protreptic Most people are better than
animals. Even birds, who are
flighty by nature, will protect their
nests and young
Two lines of poetry read
out, author uncertain.
1.150 Leocrates Apotreptic Leocrates’ execution will be an
example showing that emotions do
not outweigh salvation of the laws
and people.
παράδειγμα ποιήσατε
Λεωκράτη, ἀναμνησθέντες
τῶν κατηγορημένων, ὅτι οὐ
πλέον ἰσχύει παρ᾽ ὑμῖν
ἔλεος οὐδὲ δάκρυα τῆς
ὑπὲρ τῶν νόμων καὶ τοῦ
δήμου σωτηρίας.

230

Conclusion
The central question I aimed to answer in this dissertation was how the historical events of the 4
th

century BCE affected the discourse of civic education in Athens. My study looked to historical, rhetorical,
philosophical, and material evidence and revealed that the discourse surrounding the education of citizens
in democratic values in behaviors was concerned with the issue of authority, both political and epistemic.
Drawing on Hannah Arendt, I view authority as transcendent of its possessors and founded in irrefutable
and timeless powers. Athenian democratic culture preferred decentralized authority shared among the
demos and sourced from the oikos, polis, and politeia, rather than a single authoritative individual or
group that had direct control over how the people of Athens learned to be democratic citizens. By the end
of the 4
th
century, however, both gradual shifts in attitudes and exigencies of the time led the Athenians to
recognize individual members of the demos as educators of the people and to institutionalize civic
education.
The story began with the defeat of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, after which Sparta
installed an oligarchic regime at Athens that came to be known as the Thirty Tyrants. The Thirty began a
reign of terror which incited a civil war between democratic and oligarchic factions in Athens. The
democrats won, a general amnesty agreement was put in place, and the process of recovery began. Part of
this process involved figuring out how to live alongside former oligarchs, while ensuring unity
(homonoia) among the citizens and making sure the democracy would never fall into civil war (stasis)
again. The answer, I argued, lied in the inculcation of democratic values and behaviors in the citizens of
Athens. The Athenians were able to develop a shared set of baseline indicators of good and bad citizens
through extensive public discourse over several decades. These civic values were grounded in the diffuse
authority of the oikos, polis, and politeia, rather than a single authoritative educational institution, and
Athenian citizens were responsible for both teaching and learning them through paradigmatic displays of
these values and behaviors.
But the process was not a smooth one, and anti-oligarchic sentiment and anxieties around civic
education led the Athenians to charge Socrates with impiety and corruption of the youth. His trial and

231

death were immortalized in three early dialogues by Plato: the Euthyphro, the Apology, and the Crito.
Through these works we can see that despite the Athenians’ general success with learning how to get
along with former oligarchs, they were still quick to target those whom they perceived to be threats to
their democracy. Plato uses the occasion of Socrates’ trial and death to propose serious criticisms of the
way the Athenians were learning to be citizens. These dialogues present an image of their informal
system of civic education as imperfect at best and counterproductive at worst. Deriving authority from the
household or learning from fellow citizens led to an inherently unstable city in Plato’s mind. Even worse,
their miseducation led to the unjust execution of Socrates who, despite everything, obeyed the directive of
the laws, which Plato posits as the only reliable authority for civic education in Athens.
Plato would further develop this line of thinking over the course of his career, taking part in a
broader trend among philosophical circles looking for an answer to the question of how to best educate a
city’s citizen population. Isocrates, whose philosophical school preceded that of Plato by a few years,
spent most of his career studying and theorizing this issue. He strongly believed that the answer was an
enlightened monarch who possessed goodness both in his nature and in his morals. He also believed that
he himself was the best person to teach a monarch to be good. In the mid-4
th
century, Athens regained her
empire and began showing signs of authoritarian, if not tyrannical, types of rule, especially in interstate
relations. Isocrates turned his attention to curbing the tyrannical desires of the demos and educating the
Athenian democracy. The Social War (357-355 BCE) had a particularly profound effect on the focus of
his project. He advocated for restoring the Areopagus to its former premier status in Athens, believing it
to have the capability to impose an authoritarian style of education that would inculcate good citizen
behavior. Likewise, Plato further devoted his philosophy to theorizing an educational authority that could
not be corrupted and so looked to law and the gods, rather than human beings. Though he developed the
idea of a philosopher-king in the Republic, by the time he wrote the Laws he realized that human beings
simply are not capable of resisting the corrupting force of absolute power. Instead, he argued that the
authority to educate the citizen body of his imaginary city Magnesia should be derived from law and the

232

gods. Persuasion, not coercion, would be a key factor in keeping citizens in line, achieved through
explanatory preambles to each law that would explain why they must be followed.
Meanwhile, the Athenian demos was also at work negotiating the authority to educate among
citizens and institutions. The epigraphic record shows that public inscriptions were being used as a tool
for civic education in new ways. The paradigmatic citizen had a medium through which his paradigmatic
status was literally set in stone. After the Social War, honorific decrees were used by the city to solicit
benefactions from wealthy foreigners and by the 340s, Athenian citizens themselves were being honored.
Naturally, the elevation of the individual in relation to the collective caused some tension, and the
Athenians had to find a way to once again prioritize the collective. Honors for citizens became even more
frequent, and a limited set of civic values were encoded in the process. The inscriptions were geared
toward promoting these values rather than just the individual. In this period, democracy came to be seen
not just as a regime type, but something with its own intrinsic authority and something to be worshipped.
Finally, the most authoritarian expression of democratic civic education came about in the 330s
BCE, after the Athenians lost to the Macedonians at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338. Under the direction
of Lycurgus, who was minister of finance at this time, Athens experienced cultural and political
revitalization. The establishment of the ephebeia was a landmark moment in Athenian history because it
was the first ever institution of education in Athens run by the city itself. However, this came at the cost
of the freedom of the ephebes enrolled in it: they were effectively removed from civic life for two years to
act as border guards on the Attic frontiers. At the same time, they were guaranteed education in civic
virtues which the Athenians viewed as particularly important for young citizen men: self-control, order,
and obedience. Civic education outside of the ephebeia was also changing. Lycurgus’ activity in public
life reveals that he wanted to establish himself as an educational authority in Athens. He leaned heavily
on the use of religion and theater to inculcate a sense of civic identity and loyalty to democracy in the face
of Macedonian domination. His prosecution of Leocrates for treason in 330 BCE reads more like a
protreptic treatise of political philosophy than a serious forensic speech. He used Leocrates, an otherwise
innocent man, as the prime example of the bad citizen, contrasting him and others with authoritative

233

versions of exemplary stories of people who have displayed civic virtues. Lycurgus’ prosecution
ultimately failed, but only by a very small margin.
This is, of course, not the whole story, but one version of it focused on a limited range of issues.
There is still much to be said about civic education in Athens. The relationship between the Sophists and
demotic authority needs more thorough study, as does civic education in the 5
th
century generally. My
current focus on the 4
th
century stems from both my personal interest in this historical period and from the
temporal distribution of the evidence, especially the epigraphic material. Nevertheless, a study of the 5
th

century could still prove fruitful because of the material from tragedy, comedy, and historiography that is
rarely preserved from the 4
th
century. Aristophanes, for example, practically demands further study as he
proclaims in several of his plays his importance as educator of the demos. I expect to expand on what I
have already accomplished here with more attention paid to other important 4
th
century sources such as
Aristotle, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and the generation of politicians active at the end of the
4th century. Authors already under discussion, especially Plato and Isocrates, likewise deserve more
thorough treatment in future scholarship. In addition, I hope my study of the ancient world can contribute
to the ongoing conversations about the intersection of democracy, authority, and education in modern
democracies.
507

Education always has, and always will be, used to promote the ideology of those in power, for
better or for worse. The case of Classical Athens invites us to think further about education as a corollary
to politics. Is education an inherently authoritarian enterprise? If so, what does “academic freedom” really
mean from an institutional standpoint? How much control, if any, should a state have over institutions of
education? Who decides what is right and what is wrong in matters of morals, ethics, and history? What
are the limits of the transformative or reformative power of education? The United States is currently
being forced to confront these questions in an ugly way, as state legislatures, such as those of Florida and
Oklahoma, are banning books and censoring the speech of teachers in an attempt to suppress the identities

507
See work by, e.g., Amy Gutmann, David Estlund, and Michael Merry, who all offer different approaches to the
issue.

234

and freedoms of people of color and members of the LGBTQ community. Those who are carrying out
these policies are becoming more and more open about the fact that democracy works against their
interests, to the point that democratically elected officials are even being forcibly removed from their own
legislative chambers, as in Montana and Tennessee. We are facing an urgent crisis of democratic
authority and education ourselves, and if we truly care about equality, equity, freedom, and political
harmony, we must find a way to teach our citizens the values and behaviors that support those ideals.

235

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation analyzes the discourse concerning civic education in Athens (Greece) in the 4th century BCE. Civic education, the process by which the citizens of a city learn behaviors and values appropriate for their political system, was an important facet of ancient Athenian democracy that has received little scholarly attention. Athenian civic education was informal and relied on exemplary displays of citizenship by citizens themselves in lieu of formal, state-run institutions of education. It was thus the duty of all Athenian citizens to display good democratic behaviors both to prove their proper education and to educate others. Drawing on oratorical, philosophical, historiographical, and epigraphic material, I argue that the discourse around civic education reveals a broader concern with the authority of both individuals and the collective, especially when it came to education. Athenians were largely suspicious of professional teachers and preferred an educative authority that was distributed among the domains of the city, its constitution, and the household. Critics of this system argued for centralized, authoritative forms of education that relied on experts rather than the relatively haphazard and unreliable informal system of education. Despite the citizenry's reliance on informal means of civic education, over time Athens saw increased centralization of educative authority in response to various crises. By the end of the 4th century, attitudes toward civic education had shifted significantly, causing the Athenians to create their first state-run institution of civic education while according paradigmatic individuals more authority than ever before.

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Creator Allbright, Joshua James (author)

Core Title Civic education in the classical Athenian democracy

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

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Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

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