Alexander the Great or Antiphon the Sophist?

Author(s): Philip Merlan

Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Jul., 1950), pp. 161-166
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 ALEXANDER THE GREAT OR ANTIPHON THE SOPHIST?
PHILIP MERLAN

IN HIS most recentpublicationTarnre- misses the point. Why does Plutarch refer
peats his assertion that Alexander the to Zeno's Politeia as "greatly admired"?
Great was the first to enounce, in the- Only to say: If Zeno's Politeia, which was,
ory, not only by implication through deeds, after all, only a dream and an image, is so
the principle of the brotherhood of man greatly admired, how great should be the
and the unity of mankind.' It is the pur- admiration for Alexander the doer? In
pose of this paper to disprove this asser- other words, to make his point, Plutarch
tion, together with some other statements, must present Zeno's Politeia as being very
incidental to it. I begin with the latter, famous, and it would be unfair indeed to
which all refer to ideas of Zeno the Stoic. ask him whether he really thought that it
deserved its fame.
I Thus there is no reason to change our
a) In De Alex. virt. i. 6. 329A-B (cf. opinion as to the content of Zeno's Poli-
Stoicorum veterumfragmenta, ed. Arnim, teia. Plutarch's excellent summary stands
Vol. I, Frag. 262) Plutarch says that the unimpeached.
theory of a world-wide state (a cosmopo- 2. The Politeia as quoted by Plutarch
lis) was enounced by Zeno in his greatly advocated a cosmopolis. But, according to
admired Politeia (a work belonging to Tarn, we know from another passage in
Zeno's first, Cynical phase) and that Plutarch, namely, Lycurgus 31, that the
Alexander the Great supplied the deed to basis of Zeno's Politeia was Lycurgus'
Zeno's word. Tarn sets out to prove that Sparta, a small community, not at all a
Plutarch could not have meant this par- world-state; thus the Politeia could not
ticular Politeia. His proof is based on two have advocated a world-state (Tarn, Al.
main arguments. the Gr., II, 418; cf. "Alexander, Cynics,
1. Plutarch refers to the Politeia as and Stoics," AJP, XL [1939], 44 and
"greatly admired." But the Politeia, be- 62f.)
cause of its shocking content (defense of However, when we look up the Lycur-
cannibalism, promiscuity, incest, etc.)2 gus passage, we find that Plutarch does
had excited such an animadversion that not say at all what Tarn (perhaps misled
Plutarch could not have meant this Poli- by Arnim in St. vet. fr. , I, 261 and 263)
teia when he spoke of a book "greatly ad- makes him say. He rather says: Lycurgus
mired" (Tarn, Al. the Gr., II, 419). was of the opinion that happiness in both
It is difficult to understand Tarn. Does the single man and the state depends on
he not confuse the concepts "repute" and arete and homonoia; he therefore wanted
"good repute"? Does he not judge by Vic- his citizens to be nonbanausic, self-suffi-
torian standards what a Greek could or cient, and self-possessed. And now Plu-
could not have admired? The reference of tarch continues:
Plutarch is precise enough; Tarn's argu- ,raVrTv Kac HX4rcopv eXa,83E r-s lroXvrelas
ment hardly outweighs this precision. v7ro6ENv KacL Aw)4Cv?7s
K1cqZK VCfv KacL raivres
But, what is more, it seems that Tarn OUOt TrL 7rEpl TOVTroErv 7rtXECLP7aarcTEsEI7retv
ICLASSICAL XLV, JULY, 1950]
PHILOLOGY, 161

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162 PHILIP MERLAN

f7ratvomrat, lypa4u,ara icacA Xyovs Zeno's was the word, Alexander's the
4iroXtir6v-
'
TES gAOvov.O'6 oV ypA4u,ara icait X6oyovsaxx' deed. Tarn finds it difficult to explain
what Plutarch meant when he referred to
ep,ycw lroXtcrEav a4u1i<,rov EIS 4ws E6EJ)VeJyK&/IE-
vos . . . EtUICOSr Zeno's ideas as logos (Tarn, Al. the Gr., II,
s brepipe -rj 66p -ro1vs rW'7rCOrE
roXtmEvocfa,Evovs Ev -rois 'EXXnot. (Cl. 421, 423). It is not easy to see where the
Lind-
skog and K. Ziegler, Vol. III, Part 2 difficulty is. Here, as so frequently, the
[1926], p. 52. 1-16). formula X&ycy4`pPyw stands for what we ex-
In other words, Plutarch says: This basic press by opposing (mere) theory to prac-
quoted
assumption regarding the state, namely, tice.6 The passage from Lycurgus
that its happiness will depend on apET'7 above shows that it is Plutarch's formula
and o6o'vota of its citizens (this is the used by him also to describe the relation
rOEo-tsr7S 7roXuTELas) was adopted also between Lycurgus, the statesman, and
by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and all other (mere) philosophers like Plato, Diogenes,
famous theorists of constitutions (the Zeno, etc. Nobody can misunderstand it;
does not mention therefore, nobody should find it difficult
1roXtrEvvEa'yEvot). He
Zeno's (or anybody else's) Politeia; he when applied by Plutarch to the relation
does not say that Sparta was Zeno's (or between the (mere) philosopher Zeno and
anybody else's) model or basis; he does Alexander the Great.
not use the word "politeia" to designate c) Tarn tried to prove that Zeno, Frag.
the title of a book by Zeno (or anybody I, 262 Arn. does not belong to his Politeia.
else). Tarn misinterpreted the whole pas- He tries to prove the same for Frag. I, 270
sage completely.3 Arn. (Tarn, Al. the Gr., II, 419 f.). His ar-
It is worth while to notice that Tarn gument is: In Frag. 270 Zeno says that the
contradicts even himself. If Sparta was wise will marry. In Frag. 269, however,
the basis for Zeno's Politeia, how can Zeno advocates promiscuity. Thus the
Tarn explain that in it Zeno defended (or two fragments contradict each other, and,
advocated) promiscuity? In Lycurgus' as we do know that in the Politeia Zeno
Sparta the institution of marriage was advocated promiscuity, Frag. 270 must
highly respected.4 Furthermore, if Sparta belong to a later phase of Zeno's philoso-
was anything like Zeno's Politeia, how phy and to another work.
could Plutarch praise Lycurgus for having As Frag. 270 is quoted by Diogenes
done in practice what the Politeia advo- Laertius vii. 121 explicitly as being from
cated in theory? If Tarn finds it impos- Zeno's Politeia, Tarn's theory does not
sible that Plutarch could have referred to seem convincing. Is there no other way to
the Politeia as "greatly admired," how explain the seeming contradiction? Indeed
can he find it possible that Plutarch there is. We find it in Frag. III, 611 Arn.,
praised a state and a statesman who in- assigned by Arnim tentatively to Chrysip-
spired the Politeia? pus7 but which we now find in Festa's col-
Thus, also, the second proof of Tarn lection as Zeno's Frag. II, 28.8 Once more
breaks down. Sparta was not the model of we find repeated that the wise will marry,
Zeno's Politeia.5 only we find this assertion preceded by the
Now, as we saw, Plutarch says that, by word TVuyKarTa0LacLL.9 Thus what Zeno
having done what the theorists had mere- said was obviously that the wise man who
ly advocated in words, Lycurgus deserv- lives in a conventional society will con-
edly achieved a greater fame than they, descend to certain of its standards. This
This leads us to another assertion of Tarn. could have been said in the Politeia. There
b) In De Alex. virt. Plutarch says that is no difficulty in assuming that Zeno

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 ALEXANDER THE GREAT OR ANTIPHON THE SOPHIST? 163
criticized existing institutions as unnatu- first to proclaim the brotherhood of man
ral and described what would be the ideal and the unity of mankind. The answer to
condition of society, while at the same this assertion is as follows:
time giving advice to the wise concerning There is direct and unmistakable testi-
how to live under actually prevailing con- mony proving that this idea," the idea of
ditions. After all, Zeno is the founder of a the equality of all men, Greeks and bar-
school which found it possible to recon- barians alike, was proclaimed a century
cile its rigorism with the more latitudi- before Alexander the Great.'2 This testi-
narian demands of actual life, a school mony is provided by a passage from
which added to the concepts of "good," Truth by Antiphon, the Sophist, a passage
''evil, and "indifferent" the concepts first published as part of P. Oxy., 1364
irpo,qyjpvov and a'rorpory,uevov, thus making (B. F. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Oxy-
possible decisions in the field of matters rhynchus Papyri, XI [1915], 99 f., No.
indifferent. It is quite possible that there 1364, 11. 266-99) and which can now be
were some seeds of this ambivalent atti- read as Antiphon, Frag. 44B Diels.'3
tude even in Zeno's Politeia. This seems The fragment reads as follows:
easier to assume than to blame Diogenes
FRAGMENT B
Laertius for having quoted a passage be-
longing to another book as being from COL. 1 (232-6 H.)
Zeno's Politeia. It is certainly strange to 35 [robs 'K KaXwV7raTEr]
see Tarn assuming precisely the same mis- COL.2 (266-99 H.)
take in Plutarch and in Diogenes Laertius.
pwv er[atbov-
Tarn's reasoning is partly based on, and
/LE84am K[aBo-feGa,
4aL
partly leads him to, the assumption that
TOVS be [bK J17) Ka-
there was a great difference between the
XOiVOY'K[ov 6vTas
early and the later Zeno. According to
Tarn, the early Zeno must have been 5 oivr er[atbo0vjue
much closer to the Cynics than the later. Oa oivr o-E36j4[e0a.
But it seems that Tarn underrates the
ev rovrco[cas
cynicism of the later Stoa in general and
orp6saAXX[XoVS
therefore also Zeno's later cynicism. Zel-
f30e3ap3apW' [ye-
ler's discussion of this problem (III, 15
10 Oa, firet 4n%et
[1923], 286-92) shows convincingly that
iravra irav-[s
even the later Stoics did not give up any
010uoLwslrEcfK[a-
of the most shocking doctrines of cyni-
J/EV KaL f34pfla-
cism. While a certain development toward
PO KaO IEXX7V[S
greater respectability might have taken
15 EivaL. OK07rELV
place in Zeno after he wrote his Politeia,
the change should not be exaggerated.10 be 7rapfXet ra
To sum up, none of Tarn's reassign- rcv Tvhc [`rWV
ments of Zeno's fragments and none of his avawyKa' [Wv
interpretations of Zeno are tenable. irac-tv av[Gpco,-
20 7rots- r[oploaL
II Te Kar[& 'ravr
But all these are only minor points. We Svva[ra 7lrak-,
now come to Tarn's most startling asser- Kat ev [raat rov-
tion: that Alexander the Great was the TOls ovr76 V[ap3a-

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164 PHILIP MERLAN

25 pos Aow'pto[rcLr speaks of the physical similarity of all

{5a}?,/1-V 9b[Mts men for its own sake, while actually An-
OVUr"EXXNY[*] a- tiphon does it only to prove by it (o-Ko0rEZV
vairveo,iev lrapeXeL) the all-inclusive human equality.
re yapets rova- In short, the Antiphon fragment an-
30 sp[a] 'aravmes ticipates the slogan "fraternity, equality."
Ka-r TOa-rooua If Tarn refuses to see this, one is left won-
K]a Ka-r[d] r's p- dering: What more should a Greek of the
vas K[al oo-010 fifth century have written to convince
Ae]V X[ePoiv &-
Tarn that he was professing the principle
35 [7ravTes ? . . ]14
of the unity of mankind?
One aspect of Antiphon's doctrine de-
What Antiphon says clearly is: It is serves particular attention from the his-
the sign of ignorance or a dullard"5to base torian of ideas. In Antiphon the convic-
social distinction on one's being or not be- tion of the equality of man has an entirely
ing well-born. For, we all, Greeks and bar- secular and naturalistic character. If he
barians alike, by nature have the same was the first to hold or to express it, we
nature in every respect (6,uolws lre4wKacqev shall have to say: the idea of brotherhood
etvaL). This can be seen from the fact of man originated without the idea of the
(oKOlrEZV rapfxet) that the natural neces- fatherhood of God as its counterpart. It
sities (breathing, eating) are the same for originated as a nonreligious idea, as a pro-
all men and can be provided for by all test against prejudice in the name of na-
men in the same way (we all breathe by ture-this nature being conceived, as far
mouth and nose and eat with our hands) as we can see, without any divine quali-
and in none of these respects (i.e., neither ty.'9 The equality of biological functions
as to our needs nor as to our ways of satis- is the all-important factor in interhuman
fying them) is there a difference between relations. It is obvious that a correct in-
Greek and barbarian. terpretation of the Antiphon fragment is
I think the passage is clear enough.'6 of great interest.20
However, Tarn interprets it in a peculiar III
way. According to him, all that Antiphon Once we appreciate fully the Antiphon
tried to prove in it was that all men belong fragment, other well-known passages re-
to the same physical species. But, says lated to our problem can be interpreted
Tarn, "to say that all men belong physi- with greater confidence. The most famous
cally to the same species Homo sapiens is of these passages is probably the one by
not to say that they are brothers."'7 Alkidamas:21 all were sent into being by
How is it possible to interpret the frag- God as free men, no one was created by
ment in this way? Tarn manages it by not nature as a slave (Baiter-Sauppe, Or. Att.,
mentioning the introductory clause (that II, 154). With the sound of the Antiphon
there is no reason to base social distinction fragment in one's ears it will be difficult to
on birth)18 and by omitting from his inter- accept Tarn's dictum that, when a Greek
pretation the Greek words from TKOI-EZVto before Alexander talked of all men, he
'EXX-qv (with the additional result that he meant all Greeks, while the barbarian did
has to deal with the juxtaposition "Greek not count (Tarn, Al. the Gr., II, 401). It
and barbarian alike" only once), thus cannot be ruled out that Alkidamas meant
creating the impression that Antiphon only Greeks, but it certainly is not sure.

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 ALEXANDER THE GREAT OR ANTIPHON THE SOPHIST?
And even the discussion of the slavery
topic in Aristotle'sPolitics22 appearsin a that, when Aristotle wrote his Politics,
somewhat different light. The whole of
chapters 5 and 6 of Politics i is one criti-
cism of the assertion found in chapter 3:
only by convention is one man a slave,
another free; by nature (i.e., actually)
there is no difference between them (A 3.
1253b. 21-22). This criticism Aristotle
brings to a conclusion by saying: The dif-
ference of opinion as to whether freedom
and slavery (identified frequently with the
concepts "Greek" and "barbarian") are
natural institutions is justified to this ex-
tent: it cannot be said that all men who
(actually) are free are so by nature or that
all men who (actually) are slaves are so by
nature (A 6. 1255b. 4-5). In other words,
Aristotle admits that conventional and
natural slavery or freedom do not coin-
cide. Aristotle still insists, however, that
there is such a thing as natural slavery.
This, in Aristotle, may well mean: All
barbarians and some Greeks are slaves by
nature. But nothing prevents us from as-
suming that the author referred to by
Aristotle in chapter 3 meant: Nobody,
neither Greek nor barbarian, is a slave by
NOTES
1. W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great (2vols., 1948);
"Brotherhood and Unity," II, 399-449. Previous pub-
lications: W. W. Tarn, "Alexander the Great and the
Unity of Mankind," Proc. Brit. Acad., XIX (1933),
123-66, and "Alexander, Cynics, and Stoics," AJP,
LX (1939), 41-70, the latter being an answer to
M. H. Fisch, "Alexander and the Stoics," AJP,
LVIII (1937), 59-82, 129-51.
2. On the possible meaning of this "defense" cf.
D. R. Dudley, A Hi8tory of Cynici8m (1937), p. 108,
n. 1.
3. This has already been said by Fisch, op. cit., p.
69, but obviously not incisively enough. As a result,
Tarn did not react to this criticism of Fisch.
4. By Plutarch's own standards, that is: Lycurgu8
15. They did certainly differ from ours; cf., e.g., W.
Erdmann, Die Ehe im alten Griechenland (1934), pp.
102, 298, but see also E. Kessler, Plutarch8 Leben de8
Lykurgo8 (1910), pp. 64-70, esp. 67, n. 3, and 69.
5. It is worth mentioning that Philodemus blamed
Zeno for having drafted in his Politeia constitutions for
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165
nature.23 In other words, it may well be
ideas similar to those of Antiphon were
still alive.
I should not like to leave the reader
with the impression that Antiphon was a
bold innovator.24 On the contrary, he ob-
viously presents only one component of
the physis-nomos discussion so character-
istic of the fifth century. It would have
been strange if nobody had applied this
pair of opposites to the problems free-
slave and Greek-barbarian, to come to
Antiphon's conclusions. Herodotus is
hardly a revolutionary spirit; but in the
famous story concerning the different
ways in which Greeks and barbarians dis-
pose of the corpses of their ancestors (iii.
38) Herodotus obviously implies that the
difference of mores between Greeks and
barbarians is only a matter of convention.
How far is it -from here to the assertion
that all differences between them are So?25
But, innovator or only a representative
of his age, long before Alexander the
Great thought of it or did anything about
it, Antiphon the Sophist had proclaimed
that all men, Greeks and barbarians, are,
alike in every respect.
nonexisting men, neglecting men in existence (W.
Cronert, Kolotes and Menedemos [19061, p. 57, col.
XVIII, 11. 9-11). Could Philodemus have said this
unless Zeno's Politeia was entirely utopian in charac-
ter?
6. Cf. F. Heinimann, Nomos und Phy8i8 (1945),
pp. 43-46.
7. We should not forget that under "Chrysippus"
Arnim lumped together all passages which are not
ascribed by our sources to any particular Stoic, indi-
cating, however, by smaller print, that he, after all,
had no particular reason for assigning them to
Chrysippus.
8. N. Festa, I Frammenti degli Stoici antichi, Vol. I:
Zenone (1932), esp. pp. 13 f., 23 f. The passage as-
signed by Festa to Zeno occurs in an excerpt from
Arius Didymus in Stobaeus, II, 94. 8-15 W., entitled
"Doctrines of Zeno and the Other Stoics" (Stob., II,
57. 13 W.), such other Stoics being quoted by name,
whenever Arius Didymus considered a doctrine to be
peculiar to them. It is therefore reasonable to suppose
166 PHILIP MERLAN
that doctrines for which no other name is quoted be- n. 1. The Heraclitus passage (Frag. 107 Diels) and the
long to Zeno. Arius Didymus and Diogenes Laertius Aristophanes passage (Nu. 492) listed in Liddell-
probably used the same source for their presentation Scott, s.v. ,fRplapos, are decisive. Cf. G. Nenci, "La
of Stoic philosophy (see on this problem H. Strache, Filobarbarie di Ecateo nel giudizio di Eraclito,"
De Arii Didymi in morali philosophia auctoribus Rivista di filologia classica, LXXVII (1949), 107-17,
l1909], p. 78), and, if a passage is assigned to Zeno by esp. 112-14.
Diogenes Laertius, another very similar in Arius 16. See on it, e.g., Oxyrh. Pap., Vol. XI, p. 94; J.
Didymus (Kad ya,.7aetv [scil. Tdl ao?>dv]cbs 6 Zi)PWPv077a1P ev Mewaldt, "Das Weltbiirgertum in der Antike," Die
IIoXLTelo, [Diog.];
Kal 7ratb8o7rotjreoOat KaIl . . .uyKaTGafalveLv
Antike, II (1926), 177-89, esp. 179 f.; E. Bignone,
[scil. T6v oo4,6v] KMc eCS-y&Aov Kat e-S TeKvoyovpla'[Stob.]) is Studi sul pensiero antico (1938), pp. 58, 68-97; W.
quite likely to be Zeno's, too. But even without this Jaeger, Paideia, I (1939), 323-28. It certainly does not
assignation of III, 611 Arn. to Zeno the reconciliation sournd like an "occasional phrase which looks like a
of I, 262 Arn. with I, 270 Arn. seems to be rather easy groping after something better than the hard-and-
(cf., e.g., A. C. Pearson, The Fragments of Zeno and fast division of Greeks and barbarians" (Tarn, Proc.
Cleanthes [1891], p. 205). Brit. Acad., XIX [19331, 124).
9. On this word and the problem involved see also 17. Ibid., p. 149, n. 6.
A. Dyroff, Die Ethik der alten Stoa (1897), pp. 236
18. Could it be that Tarn never paid much attention
with n. 2 and 237. to all the emendations of the text since it was flrst pub-
10. As already Philodemus noticed: W. Cr6nert, lished in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri? Cf. the literature
op. cit., pp. 55-57 with n. 261. listed in Diels5, II, 346.
11. Which I should prefer to express as being the idea 19. Cf. U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Platon, 2d
of equality of man, meaning simply that the inequali- ed. (2 vols., 1920), I, 84.
ties taken for granted at a certain time exist only by 20. For the psychological problem involved cf. M.
convention. Scheler, Vom Umsturz der Werte (2 vols., 1919), "Das
12. Cf. S. Luria, "Zur Geschichte einer kosmopoli- Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen," I, 43-236,
tischen Sentenz," Comptes rendus de l'Academie des esp. pp. 125 f., 142 f., 170, 192 f., and, above all,
sciences de 1' URSS, 1925, pp. 78-81; W. Nestle, Vom 161-65.
Mythos zum Logos2 (1942), pp. 370, 377-81. 21. See on it all the literature listed in nn. 16 and 18.
13. H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th
22. See on it, e.g., E. Barker, The Politics of Aris-
ed. revised by W. Kranz (3 vols., 1934-37), II, totle (1946), Index, s.v. "Slavery."
352 f. I print the fragment as it is printed in Diels. All
restorations seem to be safe and sound, but, even 23. Ibid., commentary a.l.
without them, the sense is perfectly clear. 24. Cf. E. Bickerman's review of Tarn's Alexander
14. The translation of this fragment in K. Freeman, the Great, CP, XLV (1950), 41-45, esp. 44.
Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1948) is com- 25. On Herodotus and the sophists see Schmid-
pletely wrong. Miss Freeman should have followed the Stahlin, 1/2 (1934), 572-77; on his (original) philobar-
translation in the Oxyrh. Pap., Vol. XI, p. 103, bot- barism, ibid., p. 566, n. 1; on his egalitarianism, ibid.,
tom. p. 579 f.
15. For this interpretation of fefapfap6AeOaCf. S.
Luria, "Noch einmal ueber Antiphon in Euripides' SCRIPPS COLLEGE AND
Alexandros," Hermes, LXIV (1929), 491-97, esp. 494, CLAREMONT GRADUATE SCIIOOL

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